The author poses with Veronica Vera
New York last night was the latest stopping off point for the “Sex Drive Road Show” as author Stephanie Theobald is describing the grand tour of her new book, Sex Drive: On The Road to a Pleasure Revolution. The racy memoir, which Emma Thompson claims caused her to “quiver,” sees Theobald embark on a road trip across the US in search of her lost Sex Drive. Along the way, she seeks out advice from the incredible sex-positive feminists of the 1970s and 1980s and so begins a fantastic voyage into her own body.
Guests at the party, thrown by New York Times-acclaimed “sex tech” entrepreneur and director of Unbound, Polly Rodriguez, 30, included leading figures from the worlds of film, fashion, journalism and sexuality. An early attendee was Bianca Jagger-esque beauty and former Robert Mapplethorpe model, Veronica Vera. “VV” to her friends was at the center of the New York sex world of the 1970s and 1980s. She appeared in porn films, made cable sex shows and advocated for sex workers’ rights. Today she runs Miss Vera’s School for Boys Who Want To Be Girls. VV reflected last night about things she misses about the New York of the 1970s. “I’d wear a sheer blouse with no bra and you could walk down the street like that, no problem!”
Other guests included screenwriter and producer Gabrielle Kelly, Bronwyn Cosgrove, fashion writer and author of Vogue on Coco Chanel, Burlesque dancer Elle Anhorn, Sari Cooper, the director of Center for Love and Sex and Shelby Marne, a director of Skirt Club, the discerning women-only play club.
They sipped champagne as they listened to Theobald read a humorous passage from Sex Drive about attending 89-year-old Betty Dodson’s newly-revived “BodySex” self-pleasuring classes. Other chapters immerse readers in a counter-cultural America of marijuana lollipops, alien pleasure cults and “ecosexual” sexologists. Theobald said she believes Sex Drive is timely. “#MeToo was about men imposing their pleasure on women. The pleasure revolution is about women asserting their own pleasure.”
She concluded the night by advising guests to purchase not just a copy of Sex Drive but also a “Squish” vibrator ($99) invented and produced by her hostess, Polly Rodriguez. “Your week will definitely get more fun if you add those two things to your daily routine,” she said.
https://unbound.com/books/sex-drive/