TINGLE

WRITER'S STATEMENT| By: Camilla Werner-Longo

“You should tell him to eat pineapple.” A sentence that’s been burned on my brain for over a decade. I was 17 and like the rest of my friends, I was at the height of figuring out the power of my sexuality and exploring "first times” with boys. Losing your V card. Blow jobs. Hooking up. Giving head. Everything but. Getting dome. What the hell was that? OMG. You did what to a guys what? Ew. And what comes out of it tastes like...WHAT??? Gross. Excitement mixed with horror, with a dash of disgust and a pinch of intrigue. The perfect combination for any girl navigating the art of getting it on.

So like most teenage girls do, I kissed and I told my friends everything. And one day during lunch, my more "experienced” friend looked me dead in the eye after hearing me dish about how things were going with my boyfriend and said one word: PINEAPPLE. It was what everyone was talking about to make things more palatable down there and I was sold. Not one second was wasted. By the end of the day that boy knew exactly what he needed to eat more of, if he wanted me to do any more of that in the future.

Flash forward to some time in 2021, I’m eating pineapple by the pound one summer evening to offset how miserably hot it is and realizing whenever I eat too much of it my tongue feels like it's burning. The hypochondriac in me is immediately overwhelmed with the desire to figure it out. Am I allergic? Is this normal? Do other people feel this too, or am I just insane? Come to find that it is - wildly enough - perfectly normal. In fact, the reason that you might feel that little tingle on your tongue is because there’s an active enzyme in pineapple that works to break down proteins, so what you’re actually feeling is the enzyme trying to eat you back. Though fret not, once ingested the acid in our stomachs destroy the enzyme and therefore all of it’s hard work in trying to chow down on your insides is essentially squashed.

Almost instantly upon learning this, I was hit with memories of the symbolism of pineapple and the reason every girl was cluing in the other girls on why their guy should be eating more of it. Then I thought: what if pineapple actually was able to eat you from the inside out, if you ate enough of it? Hm. But what would make someone eat that much pineapple in order for you to be eaten alive in the first place? Oh right. Sex. And thus the idea for TINGLE was born.

As a writer, I have always been attracted to towing the line between things that are funny but terrifying or ideas that feel like they’re leading us down one path in the beginning but switch up in the end. As an actor, there’s nothing more exciting than being able to dive into both. We’re flipping an age old Sex Tip on its head for the hell of it and packing a punch at the end that leaves you wondering ‘what in God’s name just happened.’

Because honestly, is there anything more fun than that?