Confessions of a Cock-Hound

With all the recent press of David Duchovny seeking treatment for sex addiction, I have found myself almost obsessively fascinated with the illness. Sex addiction? Does such a thing exist? Yes. I know - I dated one...sort of. And yes, the sex was off the hook. Everything else was a train wreck.

I am particularly fascinated with female sex addicts. You see, in general, it's much easier for a woman to obtain sex than men, provided that she isn't too picky in her mates. Unless the guy is a celeb, it's generally easier for a woman to fuck five different guys a week than the other way around. This particular woman I was seeing said she did it cause it's a "confidence-builder." A confidence builder? I could see that for men since skill and inner confidence are necessary for that level of success. For a woman? Hmmm...how much "skill" is truly required here? When something is obtained so easily, can that really build confidence? That's like me being more confident because I ordered a pizza from Dominos. Aren't I the shit?!

After some googling, I was stunned at the limited information available on this topic, except for a recent memoir by Kerry Cohen Hoffman, a self-professed sex addict. Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity chronicles Hoffman's sexual antics that date back to age 11 when she spends the next two decades engaging in a variety of sexual acts with men she barely knows, and the shame, loneliness, emptiness she feels afterward. There is plenty of sex, but this book is definitely not sexy.

Inherent in my evolving philosophy of Dicknotism is that sex is a gift you give to another. If you don't like who you're fucking, you won't like yourself after you're done fucking them. What lead Cohen down the wrong path is that she saw sex as a tool to get something from someone else. She even opens the book by describing her first experience with the male gaze.

A semi truck, slowing at an intersection, honks. I look up and see a middle-aged man, thirty-five, maybe forty. He is smiling at me, his eyes on my body, dark stubble on his cheeks and chin… The man’s eyes linger on me, friendly, suggestive.

Quickly she realizes the power of her sexuality and sees sex as a tool to get power over men. She seeks not only power, but fulfillment, self-esteem, and love. Sadly, it took her over twenty years to realize that sex can bring none of those things. They come from within. Yes, it's cliche, but just because it's been said before doesn't make it any less true.

Her story is the perfect cautionary tale of what happens when you sleep walk through life. Too many people do things not because it will bring happiness or self-fulfillment, but simply out of habit. Even if that activity erodes their own self-esteem or core values, they are almost trapped in their own insanity. They engage in the same behavior over and over again looking to get something, yet when they don't get it, they do it again anyway. They know no other way. Yet sex addicts do get something (besides STDs is they're reckless). They get to avoid intimacy.

Sex addiction is truly a misnomer. It's an intimacy disorder. People in this situation engage in sex not truly for pleasure and enjoyment, but to avoid intimacy. Why? Intimacy leaves us very vulnerable to emotional pain. Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt in their cult classic, The Ethical Slut, define intimacy better than anywhere else I've read:

Intimacy is based on shared vulnerability. Write this on your bathroom mirror. We'll never discount all the wonderful things that we get from sharing love, laughter, happiness and such, but nothing deepens intimacy like the experiences that we share when we feel flayed, with our skins off, scared and vulnerable, and our partner is there with us, willing to share the scary stuff. These are the times that bring us the closest together.

So, what can we learn from Hoffman's story? Periodically take an audit of your life. What do you want? What are your core values? How can you truly "seize the day?" Are your actions in alignment with those values or are you just another sleepwalker?

I highly enjoyed Hoffman's memoir and I'm sure you will too. You can listen to the author herself in an excellent 30 minute interview below:



-Big D