Sex Drive

Arriving in New York with a failing relationship and a body she felt out of touch with, Stephanie Theobald set off on a 3,497-mile trip across America to rebuild her orgasm from the ground up. What started as a quest for the ultimate auto-erotic experience became a fantastic voyage into her own body.

She takes us from ‘body sex’ classes with the rockstar feminist legend Betty Dodson to a weekend with the first African American Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, fired by President Clinton for suggesting that masturbation should be talked about in high schools. Along the way, we are immersed in a countercultural America of marijuana lollipops, alien pleasure churches and ‘ecosexual’ sexologists.

Sex Drive is a memoir about desire, pleasure and loss, merging sexuality and spirituality, eighteenth-century porn and French Enlightenment philosophy. A new sexual revolution has begun – and this time, women are in the driving seat.