Sex is for men. This is a lesson we learn from a very early age. Maybe it is a nice lesson to learn if you are a man, though I imagine the pressure to be seen to know all about it from the off could feel a teensy bit much now and again. I’d probably take that over the internalised shame and alienation from your own body – and from one of the main drivers of pleasure that exists – so that we may all enjoy perpetuating the species, though, I think.
(Why yes, this is all about me! And yes I did grow up Catholic, which can’t have helped. You’re such a sweetheart for noticing!)
But sex is never more for men than when you see it on screen. Somehow, despite everyone’s best intentions (if they are even there in the first place), we always end up with the same old scenes, in the same old positions, in the hopes of eliciting the same old spike in viewing figures.
Dying for Sex manages to upend just about every expectation. The new Disney+ miniseries is inspired by the true story of Molly Kochan, who shared on a Wondery podcast with her best friend Nikki Boyer the sexual experiences she sought after a diagnosis of terminal breast cancer.Michelle Williamsplays Molly, who takes the fateful call from her doctor during couples counselling with her husband Steve (Jay Duplass), where they are discussing his lack of sexual interest in her since he effectively became her nurse.
Beset by visions of her seven-year-old self (“She knew what I had done with my life and she was mad about it”) and memories of getting great head in her 20s, Molly leaves the session, buys a two-litre bottle of off-brand diet soda and a packet of menthols and calls her best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate). Nikki – an actor and chaos demon who, unlike Molly, has had plenty of orgasms with other people – gladly agrees to take over Steve’s caretaking duties to allow her friend to go in search of all the great sex she wants and, thanks to the wave of horniness the diagnosis sparked in her, needs.
So begins the variety of sexcapades inherently promised to the viewer; beginning with masturbation over a male model type Molly is almost brave enough to bring to a hotel room, on through dates via a kink app, a BDSM sex party, “pup play”, finding her way round a cock cage and eventually discovering that her nameless neighbour (Rob Delaney) likes to be kicked in the dick and that she likes kicking him in the dick. Much, if not all, of human genital life is here. But it is Molly’s inner monologue that dominates – what she is looking for, what she is missing, what she craves physically or emotionally from the experience. Dying for Sex is only sexy when Molly finds it so. It never mentions the word, but it is a feminist endeavour to its core.
Contributing to the success of this endeavour is the fact that at least as much time and loving attention is given to illustrating the friendship between Molly and Nikki. From the start, you can sense their long history in every exchange, but as the series and the disease progresses we watch the balance between them shift. Molly must borrow some of her friend’s confidence and free spirit to make her way in this new world, while Nikki must take on some of Molly’s sense of responsibility to stay on top of the treatment paraphernalia and the nightmarish administration required to access the American healthcare system. By the end it is not just the definition of sex that has been expanded but that of soulmate too.
The vagaries of cancer treatment and the difference medical attitudes make to a patient are taken in (the older male doctor throws questions about vaginal dryness to the palliative care team as it’s “really a mental issue”), along with an episode of childhood abuse that caused Molly’s estrangement from her mother (Sissy Spacek) and her main obstacle to previous intimacies. It is a lot to deal with and, perhaps uniquely in the annals of modern television history, Dying for Sex feels like it could do with longer episodes or a longer season, so that more justice could be done to all parts of Molly’s life. But perhaps the pell-mell rush is in keeping with her pressing need to do all that she wants before the inevitable arrives. There is never enough time.
Dying for Sex is on Disney+ now.