Tammy Paolino: "River Huston is a sexuality educator for the new millennium, and that is just one line on her audacious resume."
River Huston puts comedic, dramatic eye on sex, weight and love By TAMMY PAOLINO Courier-Post Staff
If your concept of sex education includes a red-faced nurse who sent the boys out of the room so the girls could look through pink pamphlets and watch a film strip, your concept is about to get rocked.
River Huston is a sexuality educator for the new millennium, and that is just one line on her audacious resume.
Over the course of her 43 years, Huston claims to have been an aerobics instructor, a south-of-the-border pot farmer, an armed robber (well, sort of -- she actually got unwittingly hit on by an armed robber), a dominatrix, a cabby, a poet laureate, a stand-up comedian, a sex columnist, and a marathon runner -- not necessarily in that order.
All of those experiences are stitched into the rambunctious quilt that is Sex, Cellulite & Large Farm Equipment, Huston's one-woman show, which runs through March 28 at the Society Hill Playhouse in Philadelphia.
The multi-media show, produced by Stephen Stahl (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Lady Day), is both comedic and dramatic, and is a hybrid of Huston's stand-up comedy, AIDS activism, lectures about body image, slam poetry, personal memories and deeply held philosophies about beauty, survival, recovery and love.
To be quite clear, this is not a show for the easily offended. In fact, unless you're Dr. Ruth, you'll probably find at least something to blush about.
After all, it says "Adult Content' right there on the posters and tickets. Within moments of the lights dimming, Huston is running around the stage waving sexual aids and demonstrating how to properly put on a condom, and not with her hands.
Her message
But Huston's life story, her sincerity and the importance of her message elevate these antics to a higher place than mere NC-17 shock humor.
Huston wants to get our attention, to be sure -- but she's also out there trying to save lives.
The genesis of Sex, Cellulite & Large Farm Equipment was Huston's arrest in the mid 1990s for conducting a similar condom demonstration in a Central New Jersey high school on Diversity Day.
Up to that point, Huston was doing her comedy bit in clubs and talking about her life as an HIV-positive woman at conventions and lectures. It made for a rather dyslexic life.
"I had done (an earlier version) of the show as more of a stand-up gig, just me and a microphone. It was very different. And I'm asked to be the keynote speaker at all these conferences, and I always had a pretty sober audience.'
It wasn't until Huston wrote her show and collaborated with Stahl, that it all came together.
"It grew out of the arrest, definitely,' Huston recalls. "I used to talk about my challenges in life, and that's all I would talk about. I'd be speaking in prisons, where people would be in there for life, and afterward, they'd be walking up to me, saying "It will be all right, honey.' '
Spreading hope
Huston says she needed a way to spread her hopeful message, and a way to get real about her life and about sex: "I needed to find a balance.'
The balance is struck in the play, which allows Huston to get crazy with props and physical humor, interact with slide projections from her life, impersonate her mother, and settle in for some real heart-to-heart confessions.
Yes, she talks about HIV and how she thinks she got it, how she found out, and the depression, binge eating and suicidal thoughts that followed.
"I'd never done that whole HIV bit and talked about my (first) husband' in my show, Huston recalls. "I was hesitant to do that. It's hard to go there, but if you don't go there, it's not the truth. It can be rough, but it also gives people insight into your experience.'
Huston's first husband killed himself after being hospitalized for AIDS; the couple already had separated when Huston found out at a routine test that she was infected.
"Not all of life is rosy. People don't have to compare themselves to my story to get it. You don't have to be HIV positive. Everyone has a challenge of their own, and I think they understand that if you can try to find the humor in it, and move along, you can try to find the best life you can.'
And this is not an AIDS play.
In the hour-and-a-half show, Huston wisecracks about dating, mourns America's obsession with "skinny,' speaks of the importance of self-love and positive thinking, and shares her healthy appetite for sex. (Her simulated orgasm will make you forget all about Meg Ryan in that deli scene!) She also discusses surviving a brain hemorrhage; discovering that, in addition to HIV, she suffers from a rare blood disorder, and her misadventures in a string of dating disasters.
And at the heart of the play is Huston's life-long struggle with her weight, and how she came to accept her own body and even love it. At one point, she shares her triumph at finishing the Philadelphia Marathon at a time when she weighed in at 200 pounds. She also invites her audience to join her Goddess Flesh Club, a society whose only mission is to "celebrate cellulite.'
Storybook ending
When she's not giving lectures or working on her play, Huston still writes and performs poetry. She has several books published, including A Positive Life, a coffee table book of portraits of women living with HIV.
She was removed from her post as poet laureate of Bucks County after using the "F' word, but she's clearly found the right venue for her verse.
Asked what she most wants her audiences to get out of her one-woman show, she says it's this message: "Be kind and gentle with yourself.'
Huston's story of survival would be inspiring without its storybook ending -- or rather, its storybook present. But it does have one.
One day, a delivery man came to the door of her home in Bucks County, Pa., to drop off some of her unsold books. Today, the couple is happily married, and on opening night, there he was, beaming at her from the front row of the theater.
But Huston is quick to point out that finding Prince Charming should not be the goal.
"Here's the thing . . . I could have cared less if I was with someone. I had gotten to a place where I was so content, and so happy in my life. I didn't believe one single thing about how hard it was to find a man. What I have now, it's all bonus rounds. It is so spectacular. It's not like, now I have a man, my life's complete . . .'
"You start it (your life) right now, I don't care what your age, what your status, what your job. It's a short trip, and we're here. Don't waste time.'