{"id":4184,"date":"2006-01-12T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2006-01-12T14:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4184"},"modified":"2023-08-17T07:25:18","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T11:25:18","slug":"the-books-sexaholics-murray-schisgal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4184","title":{"rendered":"The Books: \u201cSexaholics\u201d (Murray Schisgal)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next script on my script shelf<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Sexaholics.jpg\"Sexaholics and Other Plays – Acting Edition<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by Murray Schisgal<\/p>\n

A very funny and also frightening play – about two people who are sex addicts. When we first meet them, they are having a mad sexual encounter, and are the kinds of people who are instantly emotionally intimate. We think it’s great … but slowly, as we watch the first scene unfold, we realize how messed up it all is. They are both married to other people … and they are risking everything to have these one-night stands. It’s a compulsion – they can’t stop themselves. She (Julie) starts to really feel bad about it during the first scene … and she starts to talk about wanting to go to “a meeting” where other people who can’t stop themselves from giving in to the sex drive meet and talk and 12-step to Health. He (Tony) is totally offended by the suggestion that he might need help. I’m making this sound rather dreary and actually, it’s a very funny play.<\/p>\n

They both get into recovery – and the next time we meet them is a couple years later – when they have gotten the sex drive under control, they are “happily” married to their respective spouses, and all is well. But of course all is NOT well. The play is a kind of lampoon on the self-help culture in general.<\/p>\n

Here’s a very funny excerpt from the first scene. The two of them have just met. They just had mind-blowing sex. They come out of the bedroom and say, “So what’s your name again?” They start to talk. It’s obvious that these people are emotional vacuums. They have completely glommed onto one another because that’s what addicts do. In this section of the first scene, they start to confess some of their past sins to each other. As you’ll see, it is a mix of amusing and disturbing. Schisgal’s a master at that.<\/p>\n


\nFrom Sexaholics and Other Plays – Acting Edition<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by Murray Schisgal<\/strong><\/p>\n

TONY. I once had sex with two nurses. In the operating room of a city hospital.<\/p>\n

JULIET. I once had sex with two bus drivers. On a bus traveling over eighty miles an hour.<\/p>\n

TONY. I once had sex with a stewardess on a DC-10 going to Frankfurt, Germany.<\/p>\n

JULIET. I once had sex with a scuba-diver, under water in Montego Bay, Jamaica.<\/p>\n

TONY. How old was the oldest man you ever slept with?<\/p>\n

JULIET. Arnie Schneider. Sixty-eight. You?<\/p>\n

TONY. Emily Rhinebeck. Sixty-one. The youngest was sixteen.<\/p>\n

JULIET. Fourteen for me.<\/p>\n

TONY. Did you ever sleep with a black man?<\/p>\n

JULIET. Of course. Did you ever sleep with a yellow woman?<\/p>\n

TONY. In San Francisco. Did you ever sleep with a midget?<\/p>\n

JULIET. I almost married a midget.<\/p>\n

TONY. YOu’re kidding.<\/p>\n

JULIET. No. I was only eighteen when he proposed. I didn’t wanna tie myself down.<\/p>\n

TONY. I don’t blame you.<\/p>\n

JULIET. How much did the heaviest person you ever slept with weigh?<\/p>\n

TONY. Two hundred and thirty-seven pounds.<\/p>\n

JULIET. [skeptically<\/i>] Tony …<\/p>\n

TONY. I’m telling you the truth! I met her in Miami, when I was nineteen.<\/p>\n

JULIET. How did you know she weighed exactly two hundred and thirty-seven pounds?<\/p>\n

TONY. Because I saw her weigh herself. In a drugstore. She said she wouldn’t go to bed with me if she weighed over two hundred and forty pounds.<\/p>\n

JULIET. Why not?<\/p>\n

TONY. Because she was on a diet, that’s why not! She said the only way she could keep her weight down was by not having sex every time she weighed over two hundred and forty pounds. Lucky for me she was three pounds under the limit.<\/p>\n

JULIET. [hands him second martini<\/i>] Listen to this. I once had an affair with a married man who decided he was getting too fat. He thought if he lost weight his sex life would improve. So he started a diet under a doctor’s supervision. He ate nothing but steaks, skirt steaks, sirloin steaks, any kind of steak. And he went from two hundred and sixteen pounds to one hundred and fifty pounds in less than six months.<\/p>\n

TONY. Did his sex life improve?<\/p>\n

JULIET. Now that’s the strangest thing. The more weight he lost and the more steaks he ate, the less interested he was in sex. He went from having sex three times a week, to one time a week, to one time a month until eventually he became completely impotent.<\/p>\n

TONY. Did he go off his diet?<\/p>\n

JULIET. No, he moved to California.<\/p>\n

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