This book is part memoir, part meandering travelogue through alternative sexuality in 21st century America. The book starts as Witt turns 30 and, newly single, moves to San Francisco—the hotbed of alternative sexual culture in the U.S. today. In San Francisco she focuses her work as a journalist on writing about novel forms of sexual expression cropping up in the Internet age, and the new communities that embrace them. Witt visits polyamorous communities, a BDSM porn company, devotees of a practice called “orgasmic meditation”, and women who earn a living livestreaming their autoerotic acts, as well as other pioneers pushing the boundaries of human sexual expression. She also chronicles her own attempts to find love and lust through the brave new world of online dating. Witt’s forays into all of these strange landscapes remind us of just how radically technological advances and evolving social mores are re-writing the rules of nearly all social interactions today, perhaps most prominently those involving our biologically hard-wired drives to find sex and companionship.
