When I first started telling my sex stories on my podcast Two Foreskins Walk into a Bar, I thought people would laugh, cringe, maybe enjoy the shock value. What I didn’t expect was how many men wrote to say: “I’ve been there” or “I thought I was the only one.” That taught me something important: when you lay yourself bare, you don’t just entertain. You connect.
That connection is even more vivid when you perform it live. I’ve taken the podcast and turned it into a solo play, with the new title Desire Under the L Train. I’ve been performing it in New York, and now I’m bringing it to London for one night only.
The story follows a version of me after the end of a ten-year relationship and at a time when my writing career was about to vanish. I was a bottom who had hit rock bottom. So I leave London for New York with a suitcase and a plan: ninety days of being a slut.
What unfolds is a frenzy of hookups, orgies and humiliations, but also moments of unexpected joy, pleasure and connection. And a lot of self-reflection.
For me, there’s something radical about queer desire and hookup culture. The joy of meeting a man once and, for an hour or two, and hearing his story at 4 am in a Flatbush sublet or on a park bench, or the smoking area of a club. Two strangers on different paths meet momentarily and connect.
My hookups have sometimes been clumsy, ridiculous, even bleak—but they have also been tender, funny, and strangely profound. And I have made a few friends for life along the way.
The play started out as a podcast (just been nominated for an award in the British Independent Podcast Awards!)… Then I started performing snippets in Club Cumming in the East Village.
From then it became a solo play, which I’m now bringing to London for one night only, to see how the material goes down with UK audiences. I’m performing at The Divine, which feels the perfect venue given the play’s East Village roots.
Humour runs through the play. You’ll laugh a lot. But I also hope you leave deeply spoken to, seen, understood, maybe even less alone. People tell me how the story is outrageous, hilarious and haunting. That’s so nice to hear. But the thing I love most is when someone says, “I saw myself in that.” Not because they’ve also been spit-roasted in an orgy in Brooklyn, but because they’ve also teetered across the double-edged sword of intimacy – with all the joy and peril it brings.
That’s what I want to offer with this show. Not just laughs, not just filth, but a space where we can look at desire and need — in all its messiness and beauty — and see it as something that binds us, rather than something to be ashamed of.
Desire Under the L Train – one night only on Monday 20 October, 8 pm, at The Divine, 33-35 Stoke Newington Rd, London N16 8BJ, United Kingdom.
EXTRA DATE ADDED DUE TO DEMAND MONDAY 27th OCTOBER 8pm
Chris Thompson is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His plays include ‘Of Kith and Kin’ (Bush Theatre and Sheffield Theatres, directed by Robert Hastie), ‘Albion’ (Bush Theatre, directed by Ria Parry), ‘Carthage’ (Finborough Theatre), and Dungeness (National Theatre Connections), Two Foreskins Walk into a Bar (Kraine Theatre, New York).
“Chris Thompson can write moments so raw and tender they make the audience gasp. “
The Sunday Times
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