"Secrets of a Supersexpert"

-by Tracey Cox
2008
The best thing i can say about this book is that i would recommend it to a child of mine. Happily my own hypothetical progeny will grow up in the most loving, unrepressed household around, but there are many sons and daughters (and mothers and fathers and orphans and bachelors and widowers and grandmamas) who should have this book, a guide to all things sexual. Not just a physical how-to, but also psychological, and a study of what we know about how our sex drives work. Tracey doesn't sentimentalize the fact that when it comes to attraction and love, the idea that we are in control is ridiculous. We are all of us love-seeking biological machines, and the chemicals produced during infatuation are the same ones triggered when a drug addict gets a fix. Infatuation leads to bonding which leads to falling in love, and the most fascinating thing i learned is that the chemicals we produce when we fall in love are directly contrary to the chemicals that make for sexual excitement and pleasure. Our bodies want to fall in love, but then our infatuation chemicals want to run out and play again with someone new. Not a ringing endorsement for Judeo-Christian values. But much space is devoted to "jump-starting" sexual attraction in mated couples.
I like Tracey. Not all the time, but enough to think that she'd be good company. There are a couple moments when she comes off as a recovering cheerleader, but many more when she just seems like good people. I love how she calls Mars/Venus psychology nonsense, explaining that differences between men and women are insignificant compared to how alike we are. I don't like how she advocates the "virgin-whore" mentality, encouraging women to be demure in public but eager sluts behind doors...this taps into our society's sexual repression, which should be attacked, not acquiesced to. It's precisely because we're so repressed that we have so many problems in the bedroom. Maybe she ignores that point because without our repression, most sex therapists will be out of a job.
I suppose the biggest test of a book's greatness is whether it changes your life...and i don't think i'll ever again deal with a woman saying "i've never had an orgasm", in quite the same way.
Tracey spends a lot of time on the nuts and bolts of navigating sexual communication and dealing with physical problems that "arise" (for example, dispelling the myth that something's wrong if every erection doesn't resemble Rambo's forearm). She's no research scientist, but she refers you to them. She devotes ample space to sex toys and porn, both of which she is hugely encouraging of, for men and women. She says that the women who react negatively to porn have probably never been exposed to the huge industry of female-produced porn...and come to think of it, neither have i. Hmmmmmmm...
The photos, of which there are MANY, are quite annoying. The models, sculpted and shaven and airbrushed, resemble real people, well, not at all. It's also quite ridiculous to have a frank and open sex book show you page after page of naked singles and couples and threesomes, but never once allow actual genitals to be seen. For her sake, i hope that Tracey had no say over this embarrassment.
The only other critique i'll add comes from my friend Ansuree, who asked how in a million years someone in the throes of passion could possibly remember the 1003 things Tracey throws out?
Quibbles aside, i eagerly recommend that all couples in the preliminary stages of a sexual relationship read this entire book together. Come to think of it, the old and not-so-old vets should too.