#A year after her death, ‘Dying for Sex’ podcast star has a new memoir

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: starting and finishing her memoir.

“She was healing wounds on her death bed,” 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 the age of 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 previously battled breast cancer back in 2011) and why she used sex as a vehicle to understand her life. Released in February 2020, it’s been downloaded some 5 million times.

Now, the story continues with Kochan’s memoir, “Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole,” available now 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, now the host of Wondery’s feel-good the Daily Smile podcast.

The memoir includes not just Kochan’s saucy stories, but also delves into her fraught childhood. 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. She alleges that one of her mom’s boyfriends sexually abused her.

Kochan reflects on her 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.

But there was one rough sexual encounter that bordered on assault and led her to finally unpack everything about the abuse she endured.

“She really talks about what sex did for her,” Boyer said of the book. “It wasn’t so much about the kinks and fetishes. The first escapade she had with this one guy, and it reignited something. He ends up killing himself and the stuff she processes around this guy is revisited trauma. It was never in the podcast and I don’t think she fully wrapped her head around it.”

The illness also prompted Kochan to repair the frayed relationships with her parents, who were part of a small circle of loved ones with the author in her final days.

“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.”