Writes a book about it - meh, big deal
- check out her photo - looks like a shemale to me, not that there's anything wrong with that... 
When she published an erotic memoir of the most explicit kind, it was hardly surprising that Suzanne Portnoy wanted to conceal her identity.
After all, it's the kind of thing that would make even the most liberal-minded woman blush.
As an educated professional - 46-year-old Portnoy is one of London's top entertainment industry PRs - and as the mother of two teenage sons, it is understandable that she didn't want everyone to know exactly what she'd been getting up to in her spare time.
And yet, last year, Portnoy happily published an account of her seedy journey from middleclass wife and mother to shameless divorcee, without any sign of regret.
Now, for the first time, she is willing to reveal her identity in the Mail and defend herself against charges that she is no more than an amoral woman desperate for any kind of reassurance about her own attractiveness.
Perhaps she regards herself as a kind of poster girl for those very modern women who feel that sleeping with as many men as they want is the best route to fulfilment.
Though Portnoy is an extreme example, her story reveals just what a false god promiscuity can be. Now juggling ten lovers including a builder, a property developer, a social worker and a theatre director, she is still shameless about her antics.
In her book, The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker, she gleefully recounts the sordid episodes which have come to dominate her life.
She tells how once, 30 minutes after informing her receptionist that she had a lunchtime meeting, she was at a naturist health spa in North London making love to a stranger in one of the "private massage rooms".
On another occasion, she boasts of managing to fit in a bout of lovemaking between doing the school run and starting work.
"I guess I conduct my sex life much like an unattached young man," she says.
"Most women can't detach sex from emotions but most of the time I can. I've realised since my divorce just how important great sex is to a marriage or relationship and what a challenge it is to be with the same person for a long time."
But if she saw her book as some kind of apology for promiscuity, revealing all about her sordid sex life has ruined some of her friendships - not to mention brought profound unease to her two teenage sons, of which much more later.
She adds: "One friend told me that she and her partner had been discussing me and felt I needed to get treatment for sex addiction.
"I was furious and told her that a sex addict would pay prostitutes, hire escorts and do whatever they had to in order to get sex every day.
"I've never been like that and I can't just sleep with anyone. I have to at least find them desirable.
"But, in hindsight, I do admit that for years my sex drive ruled my every waking thought and took over my life so, yes, ultimately the friend was right, I was a sex addict."
Of course, we can only take her word for the veracity of these sexual adventures - it is almost impossible to tell whether she has embellished them or not.
But would any woman really want to paint herself in this way if it were not true?
Looking back at Portnoy's past, it is hard to see what brought her to this point. The daughter of a financier father and marketing executive mother, her parents - who are now in their late 60s - have enjoyed a long and monogamous marriage.
"I grew up with traditional attitudes to sex," says Portnoy, "that it was part of a loving relationship."
But somehow the message didn't sink in. She lost her virginity at 17 to a lighting assistant at the Old Vic theatre in London, an experience she describes as "quick and painful" and claims she had slept with more than 100 men before meeting her husband a decade later.
The story of how she descended into such behaviour is all rather sad.
Interestingly, she claims she had low self- esteem as a teenager and yet speaks of her youthful desire for commitment as if it was a flaw in her personality.
"Having a guy want sex with me made me feel needed and for the duration of the liaison I'd feel great.
"But I always wanted more - dates, a relationship, a second encounter - and, despite me bombarding them with calls and following them around, they never did, which did nothing for my confidence, but got me stuck in a vicious cycle."
The difference now, she says, is that she approaches sex without any of the moral restraints generally associated with the female sex.
Instead of dealing with her low feelings of self-worth and finding a decent man to love her, she turned her back on the idea of commitment and embraced emotional detachment and promiscuity instead.
She says: "Somewhere along the line I learned not to be that needy twentysomething and to detach my emotions from sex."
Even so, by the time she was 27, she was tiring of her promiscuity.
As she puts it: "The lure of being a perfect wife and mother beckoned."
She met her husband David, a high-flying marketing executive, at a party and thought he was the most handsome man she'd ever seen. She says that although there was no great spark she decided he would make good husband material.
"By then I'd begun to look for a potential husband and father," she says. "Not someone who was going to set my world on fire in the bedroom."
Within six months they were living together and a year later they were married.
At first married life seemed to suit her. She became, by her own admission, "mother earth personified", breastfeeding her two babies and wandering around with them strapped to her in a sling.
"For ten years I lived the life of a glorious, middle-class homemaker," she says, "eventually returning to work part-time after my second baby."
Yet she admits that after a few years, the attraction of married life paled. With the arrival of each baby the physical attraction between them petered out more and more. Eventually, she says, their sex life ground to a dramatic halt.
"I was lonely. For the last four years of the marriage I was completely celibate," she says.
"My sex drive just died. I was nothing more than a fat, frumpy wife, mother, cleaner, who had spent so much time focusing on everyone else's happiness that I'd forgotten to nurture my own.
"I was married to a man who was married to his job and our relationship had never been particularly sexual anyway but when I'd had my babies my just disappeared.
"I didn't look at my husband any differently so it was very frustrating to understand what had happened to me and for a while I worried that this was the end of my sex life for ever.
"I even went to my GP and asked what was so wrong with me that I couldn't bear to sleep with my good-looking husband. He suggested we needed therapy."
But with her husband working long hours and frequently away from home, lonely Portnoy turned instead to what she thought was a "penpals" website.
She recalls: "I soon discovered that most of the members who masqueraded as would-be penpals actually had their hopes pinned on cybersex."
After several months of e-mail exchanges with one particular man who lived in the U.S., she flew over to meet him and started a casual relationship.
Needless to say, love and romance had nothing to do with it. They carried on their long-distance affair for 18 months, during which time, she says, "we met up often".
Though she appears to have felt not a shred of guilt, eventually Portnoy confessed all to her husband, who she says remained calm throughout.
Perhaps he simply wasn't surprised. The couple agreed that the marriage was over and decided to divorce, with Suzanne keeping custody of the children.
At that point, it seems, she embarked on a mission to "put herself out there" and throw herself back into seeing other men, losing two dress sizes in preparation for a series of sexual conquests which shows no signs of abating after six years.
In that time she has slept with over 60 men - many of them countless times - and others whose names she cannot even remember.
On rare occasions she has developed feelings for her lovers.
"Every once in a while I do actually break my rules," she says.
"I've had a few boyfriends along the way but have enjoyed liaisons with other men at the same time, often with my boyfriends in tow." Portnoy's indiscretions include a fling with the editor of a lads' mag who took her back to what she describes as "his grim basement flat with a flowery duvet cover that looked like a gift from his grandmother".
Then there are the fumbling, amateurish lovers she wishes she hadn't bothered with and the men who simply wished to take advantage of her amorality.
Each of her sexual exploits are recounted in detail in her book.
She says: "My hope was that in writing the book, I'd deliver the message that despite middle age and motherhood, sex and love affairs are still on the agenda.
"I wanted to show other fortysomething divorced women that instead of heading straight out to hunt for husband number two, why shouldn't they have a little fun first and rediscover their sexuality?"
Unfortunately for her, she seems to have done the opposite - turning herself into a study in the intrinsic shallowness of such a life.
Indeed, her sordid tales are laced with anecdotes of sexual liaisons leaving her more disappointed, bored and unhappy than immersed in the sexual nirvana she would have people believe she enjoys.
If she worries about the health consequences of her behaviour, it doesn't seem to overly concern her.
She talks of practising safe sex and of having HIV tests regularly as if to absolve herself of any guilt.
But it is the moral implications of her actions that are so worrying. It is impossible not to wonder just what effect her sexual shenanigans have had on her teenage sons.
She may insist that they are "among the most sensible people" she knows, but what sort of mother subjects her impressionable children to a steady stream of lovers treading their way through the house to the much-used bedroom?
"I don't ever have men back to the house when my sons are there," Portnoy says defensively.
"But, yes, I have had longer-term lovers over the years who've stayed over and virtually lived with us so, of course, the kids have seen them.
"Thankfully there has never been an incident where one of the boys has appeared in my bedroom while I'm with a lover because I've always been careful to make sure they're in bed asleep if I do have a longer-term boyfriend over. But it's two years since that last happened." Now her sons are in their teens and awake later, she tries to keep her sex life to the two weekends a month when they are with their father.
She adds: "People always assume that my kids must be so screwed up but actually they are very open-minded and we talk about everything."
But then what is surely the real story begins to emerge: "My youngest son sometimes gets a little upset. He asked me recently; 'Why can't you just be with one person, it's not normal to have so many men.' My response? Is it not more important that your mother is happier than she's ever been despite not being in a monogamous relationship?
"I try to conduct my liaisons when the kids are at school or at their father's house but, of course, they have a reasonable idea of what my sex life entails and over the years, they have met some of my lovers.
"Their father told me recently he had no idea that I'd slept with so many men until my youngest son let slip to him after asking me one day whether I'd slept with a lot of men before I met their daddy.
"When I told him he asked me how many and I told him honestly that it was over 100.
"My ex-husband wasn't shocked - he's fairly laid-back - although we are polar opposites in the bedroom. He could count on one hand the number of women he's had sex with and believes in monogamy."
Astonishingly, she doesn't believe her frank admissions could have a negative effect on her sons, although her argument will carry little weight with most parents.
"My view is that if you want to have strait-laced kids then you should be outrageous yourself.
"I don't think I'm being selfish. If I thought one or both of them was sleeping around I'd have to sit them down and tell them that I didn't disapprove so long as they were practising safe sex.
"The youngest one is more curious and also more disapproving than the eldest. When I had a long chat with them about writing the book, he was very anxious for me to retain my anonymity, that my sex life should remain private."
That wish, it seems, has now gone by the board.
And yet if she feels no shame in connection with her sons, the mention of her parents, at least, does bring the merest hint of a blush to her cheeks.
She admits they have no idea of the extent of her behaviour: "Only that I don't want to commit to one man." She adds: "They know I've written a book so can probably guess my sex life is pretty extreme but I don't want them to read it and they've never asked to." Of course, in the end, the crucial question is whether or not Portnoy's behaviour has made her happy.
Reading between the lines of her book, it is impossible to believe that it has, despite her claim that she wrote it because: "I'd reached a stage in my life when I had achieved true happiness, albeit not in a typical way."
She may claim that she misses "nothing whatsoever" about monogamy. Yet in the next breath she talks wistfully of wanting what she calls a primary partner: "Someone who'll go to dinner or the cinema or travel the world with me while allowing me the freedom to have emotionally detached sex with a few other men too."
Incredibly, she insists she has calmed down in the last year and that sex no longer rules her life. Married men are off limits these days "apart from one I meet for sex every three months".
And yet on the weekends, when her sons are away, she makes love with up to four men, mixing and matching from her elite list of "ten men I can call anytime I want sex and at least one will oblige". These ten are, apparently, the select lovers whittled down from the conquests of the last six years.
"I have a man for Fridays, a couple for Saturdays and another for Sundays," she says without a trace of embarrassment.
Questioned about the morality of behaviour, her answer is terse.
"Big deal, so I have sex up to four times a week.
"If I was married or in a relationship with one person I'd be having sex thrice weekly according to statistics so I can't see what the problem is, just because I sleep with different men.
"It's always safe sex, I don't put myself in dangerous environments and I'm not exactly going to get ."
And yet if great sex is her 'raison d'etre', even that has been something of a disappointment.
Shamelessly, Portnoy says that around 20 per cent of her lovers were dismal experiences, but she justifies it all to herself anyway.
She says: "I had to have the bad sex to find the good sex and, yes, there have been plenty of less-than-satisfying experiences.
"I guess I do look back and it does seem a bit extreme." Ironically, if anything, the book serves as a warning that mindless sex leads to nothing but emptiness.
And if she thought women would applaud her openness and honesty, she was wrong.
One reader wrote in an online review after finishing her book: "A pity she doesn't do it with a little more discretion and a lot more elegance."
And another: "All the sexual conquests were people who had failed in some aspect of their life. They seemed to use sex as a way of succeeding. I finished it feeling incredibly sorry for her."
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