I'm Very Into You

by Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark / adapted and directed by Sara Lyons

Sex, Power, Portishead, Send: I'm Very Into You invokes late great feminist author Kathy Acker and Australian media theorist McKenzie (Ken) Wark in a stage adaptation of their 1995 email correspondence following a steamy love affair. Their queer desire hovers in the air between San Francisco and Sydney at the dawn of the digital age.

I'm Very Into You uses social engagement, multimedia, and a stripped-down design to place Kathy and Ken's rich digital epistolary in conversation with our contemporary lives. Director Sara Lyons invites a diverse cast of local queer, feminist, and non-binary performers who embody Kathy and Ken as points across a wide gender spectrum, and respond with their own true personal stories of gender slippage, online intimacy, and queer desire. This living archive grows with every performance as I'm Very Into You conjures the legacy of Kathy Acker and examines how intimacy has evolved through the internet and expanding queer expression over the last two decades.

script segment written and performed by sair goetz for I’m Very Into You, The Wattis Institute (San Francisco), 2018

This summer, I met my opposite sex. [pause, stunned]

Well, I should say gender, because we’ll eventually be the same(?) “sex(?)”

[deadpan, just updating a friend] She’s growing boobs now, and my dick will arrive in 20-30 business days. 

[then, giddy:] It’s this sweeeeeet newish model: it can even fucking come when you squeeze the tip! I am psyyyyched. 

[glow with it for a sec]

She’d call herself a punk femme, where I usually identify as glitter masc. 

Now we do this long distance thing and we found this way to have sex that’s just as kinky and kooky as what we do in person. The solution is: animated gifs. 

It’s the perfect millennial role-play: She can be Jessica Rabbit, tied up on train tracks, back arching, chest heaving. I can be Frodo, eyes rolling back, ready for the darkness of Mordor to take me over.

But honestly, it’s best when we can get outside of the human body all together

The sexiest gif she ever sent me was actually of one of those inflated “tube guys” or “air dancers” you usually see waving over car dealerships. This one was bent over, head resting gently against a telephone pole, arms limp, and the “butt” up in the air, bouncing for attention.[bites lip]

The sexiest I’ve ever felt was when I was a lizard, all four paws on the ground, my long tongue going in and out of the hole of a Cheerio. [stick tongue out 3 times]

The thing is this: a waterfall surging forward over and over and over again, has no notion of shame.