Sex journalist Clark-Flory shares the confusing, funny, and sometimes painful moments that shaped her young adulthood, offering a look at sex and culture for modern young women.
... luminous ... Clark-Flory is a funny, bighearted writer, and she examines herself and her subject matter from every angle. As a memoirist, she puts herself under the microscope and applies the same unflinching investigation she applies to the sexual landscape she analyzes. She retrospectively interrogates her own contradictions...She recounts graphic experiences not for prurient voyeurism but to understand her motivations at the time ... As a cultural critic, she seamlessly weaves in theory and research from phenomena spanning the orgasm gap to the differences in sexual performance between genders ... To call Want Me a sexual coming-of-age story is to give it short shrift; this is a book of insight, both cultural and personal. The author’s journey concludes with an ecstatic integration of past and present sexual selves, voices that don’t contradict but converse. We get the feeling that this isn’t the end, but another step along the road. As she writes, You arrive and arrive and arrive again. We watch Clark-Flory watch herself, and it is majestic to behold.
Clark-Flory writes of this dissonance fearlessly. She throws herself completely into the world of porn sets, sex shops, strip clubs, and BDSM dungeons in search of deeper truths about society’s oldest obsession. Amid her theoretical research, Clark-Flory comes of age before readers’ eyes. Subtly chronological, this memoir-in-essays follows Clark-Flory through destructive hookups, faked orgasms, job insecurity, the loss of her mother, marriage, childbirth, and parenting. It is a wonder to witness an essay about Magic Mike Live (the Vegas strip show response to the 2012 film) become an existential exploration of mortality. The book is so brilliantly niche that it becomes completely universal.
... savvy, deliciously racy ... The author engrossingly traces her journey toward sexual enlightenment through a succession of lustful and often adversarial encounters with men and women, all described in voyeuristic detail ... She is always candid and often wry, whether discussing a male revue, an orgasmic meditation retreat, or the realities of true love and childbirth. The book features perspectives on female sexual behavior from developmental psychologists and sex researchers, adding intellectual depth to an often humorous chronicle as well as bonus layers of emotion and heart buried beneath the social observation and erotic fantasy. These elements make Clark-Flory’s story an encouraging endorsement for women’s sexual liberation ... A provocative, resonant memoir of emboldened self-discovery.
