The turn of the screw
She shared her sexcapades while dying of cancer. Now, a new memoir reveals more of one podcast star’s wild journey
As a terminally ill cancer patient, Molly Kochan laid in a hospital bed for the last two months of her life, determined to accomplish a momentous feat: finishing her memoir.
“She was healing wounds on her deathbed,” her best friend, Nikki Boyer, told The Post. “Her lifelong dream was to write a book and be a published author. She waited until the last few months of her life to do it. She was thinking the clearest she ever had in her life.”
Kochan passed away from metastasized breast cancer in March 2019, at 45. But her unconventional journey of living with the disease has become posthumously famous in the popular Wondery podcast “Dying for Sex.”
Faced with a grim diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer in 2015, the Los Angeles resident left her unsatisfying marriage and embarked on an erotic odyssey that took her into the world of kinky fetishes, casual sex and naughty sexting.
The six-part podcast, narrated by Boyer, is made up of the two friends’ titillating conversations about Kochan’s hookups, her illness (she first battled breast cancer in 2011) and why she used sex to help understand her life. Released in February, it’s been downloaded some 5 million times.
Now, the story continues with Kochan’s memoir, “Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole,” available on Amazon.
In the book, details are revealed about Kochan that were excluded from the podcast, such as her last name. It’s also completely in her voice. Although Boyer had interest from publishing houses who asked her to write additional chapters, she decided to self-publish the story to avoid clouding her friend’s words and intentions.
“I met with some publishers but they wanted me to supplement it. It just didn’t feel like Molly’s book anymore. This book doesn’t take away from the podcast. It’s just another layer of her,” said Boyer.
In her final days, Molly had nearly 200 suitors.
(The pair lost count at 183.) They included a Ryan Reynolds look-alike who was into masochism, a mortician she made out with while he was in full clown makeup and a European foot fetishist. She was insatiable, spurred on by meds that made her “horny all the time,” she said. “[My body] needed to be touched.”
Another side effect? Sleep became so difficult, Kochan had more time to date. The idea for the podcast came after the pals met for lunch in 2018 — and realized Kochan had already been on two dates that very morning.
The memoir includes not just Kochan’s saucy stories, but also delves into her fraught early life. A child of divorce, she grew up in New York City with her codependent mom, Joan, who came from a well-heeled uptown family. Her father, Alex, managed bands including REO Speedwagon, leaving New York for California after the divorce.
Kochan alleges that one of her mom’s boyfriends sexually abused her when she was young. She reflects on her teenage flirtation with Orthodox Judaism — and losing faith in God as she sunk into a shame cycle triggered by the assault. The abuse, she reveals, stunted her creative drive and ambition.
“I was potentially setting myself up to be in the perpetrator’s spotlight again,” she writes. “Any form of recognition, any possible criticism or even accolade, would mean eyes would be on me and historically that wasn’t safe. So I became confused and unmotivated . . . I internalized all the fear I carried about the outside world. What could have been life-enhancing expression, became profound self-doubt, depression and sadness, that looked like lack of ambition.”
It also warped her view of sex: “Disassociation was probably a skill I developed the night I was molested.”
But when Kochan found out her expiration date was imminent, something snapped. She pursued sex and human connection with reckless abandon — and, sometimes, just recklessly.
“Whenever my health scares escalated, so did my sexual adventures. It was a way to trump the distraction,” she writes.
The illness also prompted Kochan to repair the frayed relationships with her parents.
“Her book addresses her trauma and I don’t think she was able to do that until she really reconnected with her mother and father,” said Boyer. “We all screw up, but she forgave them and loved them deeply.”
Kochan never fell into true romance, writing: “I wish I could cap off the whirlwind hospital story with an amazing tale about a guy who swept me off my feet and made me blush, but my visitor never showed up.”
But in the end, she did find love.
“I realize I did get to fall in love,” she writes. “I am in love. With me.”