Book Review: The Great Cock Hunt

BY VINCENT LAMBERT

The Great Cock Hunt
by Alex

Does anyone read books anymore? And does anyone, in this age of easily accessible Internet porn, read them to get off? The editors at Kensington Books sure hope so as they went to the trouble of tracking down popular sex blogger Alex and signing him to a book deal. The result, The Great Cock Hunt, has just been published, and fans of the down-and-dirty blog of the same name won’t be disappointed. Alex started his blog, which grew out of a series of e-mails that he and his friends exchanged divulging their sexual exploits, in 2005. His vivid descriptions of his sex life soon found a wider audience when he decided to share them online. Now, for his first book, the 30-year-old New Yorker takes his explicit experiences and places them in a narrative that is often entertaining and fun.

Cock Hunt starts off as Alex and his best friends Lizzie (the Grace to his Will) and Tommy head to their college reunion. Along the way, Alex encounters numerous guys he’s slept with and one he’s even been in love with. The drama builds as the weekend goes on, with Alex sucking and fucking, drinking and drugging his way through. The writing has a certain blog-like quality with short chapters and Alex often interrupting the action to add pithy commentary. Sure, his analogies are trite (“Tommy’s a total slut with barely any morals and the ethics of an Enron executive”), but the whole thing has a wonderfully gossipy feel. It’s as if someone turned Us Weekly into a novel and all the celebrities were actually gay, or if you just happened upon a gaggle of queens on Fire Island dishing the dirt and they let you listen in. Among the hot hookups and twisted relationships, there are sex scenes—lots of sex scenes (there’s even a straight coupling!). So, again: Does anyone read books for porn these days? Maybe not, but the scenarios Alex dreams up are boner-inducing all the same.

As a lead character, Alex comes across as a tad on the shallow side, a superficial stud with the body of a Chelsea boy and the ego to match, but his experiences in love (and lust) are ones that most gay guys will identify with. He’s an Everyfag for the Manhunt crowd—although it’s hard to believe that anyone out of his teens could be this horny. As a writer, it’s too bad he doesn’t have more faith in his story line; after a while the sex sequences start intruding on the plot and have a tacked-on feeling. And the abrupt ending (the story doesn’t so much end as it just stops) leaves the reader hanging, but it does give the impression that there are more tales to tell. Hopefully, as long as Alex is having sex (and it seems like he’s just getting warmed up), he’ll be compelled to write about it. And who wouldn’t want to eavesdrop on that? (Kensington Books)