When Molly Kochan was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer aged 42, she had a rather unexpected reaction. Within weeks of her diagnosis she had left her husband and embarked on an odyssey of sexual self-discovery, trying anything from kicking a man as hard as she could in the crotch, to spending time with a foot fetishist and engaging in, er, “water sports”. After relating one such date to her friend, Nikki Boyer, the pair decided to make a podcast about her new mission and in 2020 Dying for Sex was released. So extraordinary is Kochan’s story that the notoriously choosy five-time Oscar nominated actress, Michelle Williams, broke her acting hiatus to play her in a new TV adaptation of the same name. After two days immersed in Kochan’s story I feel like a human raisin: dehydrated from crying and laughing. It’s so desperately sad to keep realising that this vividly funny and thoughtful person died in 2019. When Kochan started hormone treatment, two things happened: her libido increased and she couldn’t sleep. So she began posting sexy selfies in her underwear to men she met online all over the world – she loses count at 183 – to “distract [herself] from pain or illness”.
Photo swapping progresses into FaceTime calls and, eventually, physical liaisons – including with a man who wanted to be treated like a dog and be caged up in her house (Kochan simply laughs when reporting this on the podcast: “I’m so interested in learning why?”). Many of these experiences are condensed into one character called ‘Neighbour Guy’ in the Hulu show, played by Rob Delaney. Kochan is delightfully open-minded and kind about these hook-ups and when Boyer manages to interview some of the men Kochan met it is clear how caring she was towards them, even for just one night.
The question of why she is experiencing these desires haunts Kochan personally, and we eventually learn of a terrible childhood incident, where she was molested by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of seven. Dominating her partners gives her a sense of control in sex when she had none as a child, helping sexual experiences to feel empowering rather than shameful or, as she says on the podcast, a “power struggle”. This sense of agency is also important to coping with her cancer diagnosis – another thing she feels like she has no control over. Her newfound agency encourages her to meet with her doctor on her own terms, asking him to sit to answer her questions and allowing her to address him by his Christian name. It sounds like a small thing but juxtaposes brilliantly with the scenes showing the harrowing realities of cancer care: from scars, tubes and walking sticks to being strapped down to have radiotherapy on her eyeball.
In the podcast, Kochan realises, with time, that the reactions to her photographs and her trysts don’t shield her from her cancer like they did at the beginning, and what she really desires is connection. Sadly she doesn’t get that romantic love in the end, but she has a deep, beautiful and enduring friendship and love from Boyer right up to – and beyond – her final breath. Following Kochan’s death, Boyer got to work on the podcast with the assistance of the recordings she and Kochan did together, along with Kochan’s bequeathed phone, laptop and book manuscript. The podcast is just six episodes long, and Boyer has explained since that she and Kochan intended it as the first of many series, with follow-ups to include a fuller exploration of Kochan’s childhood trauma and Boyer’s own heartbreaking health battle with miscarriage and IVF, which she was going through during Kochan’s cancer treatment and which the TV show leaves out.
Fans of the podcast will see plenty of moments from the podcast however, including many of Kochan’s recorded words in the script, but some interesting changes have been made. Most obviously, it is based in New York rather than LA, meaning Kochan is wearing dungarees and camisoles over T-shirts for dates, rather than the sexier tight black jeans and bra-showing tank tops we know she wore in LA. Similarly, Boyer is made out to be more like a quirky thespian, scattily taking on Kochan’s medical care and struggling to hold down a home, job and relationship, whilst in real-life she is clearly very “together”. It also seems like, in reality, Boyer was less hands-on with Kochan’s care than she is in the show, and didn’t, as far as we know, sacrifice acting jobs to care for her. But her devotion in getting her best friend’s story made into the podcast and TV show, and publishing Kochan’s manuscript, is clear from Jenny Slate’s tender portrayal of Nikki in the show.
Timing is everything when it comes to getting a TV show made or a podcast commissioned. The contrast in cultural context from when Kochan and Boyer were thinking about the Dying for Sex podcast in 2018 (top TV shows: Yellowstone, Succession, Jack Ryan) vs when it was actually released in 2020 (top TV shows: I May Destroy You, Normal People, Sex Education) is stark. Even more recently there have been some brilliant TV shows and films (Babygirl, The Idea of You, The Principles of Pleasure, Sex, Love & Goop) and books (All Fours by Miranda July, Want by Gillian Anderson, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo) exploring the desires of women, particularly women in their 40s, and the idea of female self-discovery through sex. Kochan’s story ends with self-acceptance. “I realise I did get to fall in love. I am in love. With me,” she says, as she frantically sought to finish her book, Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole in her final days. And so, when death came, she felt ready. As she says in one of her last recordings, she looked forward to it, like “going on a trip”.
