POTTY MOUTH
nytheatre.com review by Tim Cusack
August 15, 2003
Every once in a while, a show will take
me completely by surprise, which is exactly what happened with Andy
Horwitz’s solo piece Potty Mouth. Now despite never having had a
lustful thought about a woman in my entire 34 years, the prospect of an
hour’s worth of another gay man’s sexual encounters had absolutely zero
appeal for me. Horwitz, however, proves to have a winningly
self-deprecating take on the whole men-who-have-sex-with-men thing, and
from the moment he walked out on stage and personally introduced himself
to each of the people in the audience, he had us in the palm of his
hand. He disarmingly builds on this capital of good will as he recounts
his sexual exploits both in New York and in Orlando during gay days at
Disney World. In some ways this is a classic loss-of-innocence
narrative, as our na�ve hero discovers his own pair of "gay sex X-ray
specs," which enable him to "see" the enormous amount of gay cruising
and semi-public sex taking place all around him. Now this is really explicit stuff, complete with pantomimed sex acts and more dirty talk than an entire Kristen Bjorn porn video. What saves it from being a narcissistic mess is Horwitz’s commitment to refusing to compromise for one second the truth of his subjective experiences. Boredom, anxiety, disgust, confusion, tenderness, surprise—his is one of the few representations of sex that actually captures its complexity, as well as its inherent absurdity and potential to change your life. It’s also hilarious. If his final discovery that everything he needed he already had at "home" feels a bit like a platitude from Madonna’s Ray of Light album, it doesn’t make the sentiment any less true or necessary. Andy, you may have come to the realization that you were a "bad" self-loathing slut, but from the audience’s perspective you’re a very, very good slut. Keep having sex—and keep writing about it.
