I need to stop deleting my sexts. For the past 10-odd years of my flirtatious life, I’ve sent, received, screenshotted, but ultimately deleted hundreds of kinky virtual messages from electronic records. The intent behind this hurried erasure has always been protective. I am not sure if you have heard, but the internet, and specifically social media, has a cruel habit of circulating and shaming young women who express a desire for sexual satisfaction. The possibility of one of these salacious sexts falling into the hands of a bully, a teacher or, God forbid, a grandparent induces an overwhelming level of ignominic fear. So, I’ve deleted my old sexts. After seeing Rachel Mars’ unabashedly arousing solo piece, Our Sexts Are Shit: Older, Better Letters at Under the Radar Festival, however, I wish I had written them down first.

In Our Sexts, Mars delights in the smut of centuries past. Over the course of 60 minutes, she chronicles the sensual cravings of creative spirits we associate with literature, modernist art, humanitarianism — James Joyce, Georgia O’Keefe, even Eleanor Roosevelt for example. Mars — an award-winning, UK-based theater marker — credits “the internet, friends, and two sexologists” for aiding (and abetting) in the raunchy research. Our Sexts elevates even further beyond letter recitation when Mars bifurcates her play into a second form, one that is less didactic and more intimate. She projects onto an overhead screen a series of anonymous sexts that she has received in chat rooms or over Whatsapp throughout the course of her life. As the old-time letters and modern-day DMs intertwine, the magic that is pulsing (excuse the verb) through the course of Mars’ play is revealed. With Our Sexts, Mars is uncovering the too often repressed sexuality of our artistic heroes as well as the degradation of long-form lust throughout time. She is poking fun at the odd fact that sexual invitations have actually gotten less creative even as technological and social progressions have made sex more accessible, advanced, and gloriously queer than ever before! Sexters of today may own more tools, plugs, or straps, but they have little lyrical prowess over the horny men and women of yesteryear. For example, a 21st century man asking Mars to sit on his face pales in comparison to James Joyce’s coprophiliac fart fetish. The result of this comparison is equal parts side-splitting and sobering. 

Mars does most of the heavy lifting during the performance — she is the sole, small-but-mighty force on stage, flicking on lights and projectors and props to get her screens and letters in order. She warps her voice and cadence as she introduces and then recites each love letter, but always returns to a more intimate, fireside-chat-like stoicness when talking to her audience about receiving pleasure in her contemporary, queer, female body. Sound Designer Dinah Mullen peppers the show with a delightful array of music from “Lips” by The xx to “Make Me Feel” by Janelle Monáe, each tune a sonic accent to a new letter. After the show, my guest raced up to the stage manager’s booth to secure the soundtrack. Further proof that Mars has built a deliciously demonic world that we should all want to re-enter over and over again. Mars knows there is a lot to learn from history’s horniness and challenges our current society to get better at expressing it. So, moving forward, I’ll be scripting my sexts. I’ll be preserving my pleasure with pen and paper, and treating them like the love letters they were always intended to be.