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"I'll be the big furry guy looking around for you," the brains behind CockTales warned me.
Meeting to discuss his new production of penile confessions, I still wasn't prepared for the 6-foot-plus Canadian woodworker who greeted me at Beech Street House with, "Fuck, man! Thanks for meetin' me!"
Wearing a microfiber neck buff, furry trapper hat and a flannel that matched my H&M mini skirt, Sean Bowie is the type of man who turns from a daunting pillar of testosterone into your best friend the moment that he says hello.
CockTales, he tells me over what looks like ginger ale through a straw, is his response to The Vagina Monologues. "Sitting watching that show, I felt so left out," he said.
So the Canadian native, who moved to Portland and traded the stage for fatherhood, developed a tell-all production from the perspective of male genitalia.
"It's like the doorway to your soul," he tells me, miming an unnerving hand gesture for emphasis. The tales are uproarious, gut-punching and sensitive in turn. What's more, they're true. Bowie—not unlike The Moth—posted on Canadian theater forums for confessions from peni-ed folk. Stories about accidental erections at Thanksgiving dinner, nude beach trips and cow's teeth on foreskin rolled in.
It's a passionate, yet light-hearted magnum opus that's he's staging just for the hell of it.
"If we call it a wash, I'll consider that success," Bowie said.
And the show feels like that—audience and cast belly-laughing and cringing together like friends just shooting the shit. The actors—wearing only tighty whiteys, holsters and cowboy hats—got a few dollar bills in their waistbands on opening night.
But like drunken stories around the fire pit, it gets a little messy and drawn-out. The kicker comes. Then, five minutes later, the skit ends. A penis-themed skit show doesn't quite deserve its intermission, but you bear with your buddies through those rambling break-up stories, don't you?
This is your last weekend to see the paean for peni, with high points like these:
"Some skin was stuck to my underwear with blood. Not good at all. It looked like an uncooked sausage that had been poked a few too many times with a fork."
"It's funny how small a man's cock becomes when he goes to a nude beach."
"I was checking every hour or so, hoping they would somehow, magically be gone. But there they were—spots on my cock. I had spots on my cock."
"Growing up on the farm was a blessing and a curse as far as me and my cock were concerned. On the one hand, sex was everywhere. On the other hand, it was all animals."
See it: Headwaters Theatre, 55 NE Farragut St. No. 9, 7:30 Wednesday-Sunday and 4 pm Sunday, Feb. 14, through Feb. 21. $10-$20.
Or Watch their Facebook Valentine.
Willamette Week