Quest for Sex

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he 'wants a woman.' Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition – one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes."
—C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Sometimes, a man really has to get it on. So much, in fact, that it's totally worth spending an obscene amount of time and money if the end result is getting laid. If the primary plot of a work of fiction is an examination of this time and money we have a Quest for Sex.

The reasons for a man's quest can vary to a fairly wide extent—he might just be out to use Sex as Rite-of-Passage since A Man Is Not a Virgin. Other times the man isn't a virgin—he just really, really wants it very badly. Sometimes to the point of needing to commit adultery in order to get it. Because, let's face it -- he's a dude. What's he supposed to do about it?

This plot trope has been common in recent years as laxity from the Moral Guardians has made sex comedies centered on this premise easier to distribute. Still, expect many examples to eventually feature an Aesop about sex not being everything at the end, if only because building a character's entire motivation around getting laid often ends up seeming, kind of, you know, shallow.

Popular in the Sex Comedy.

No real life examples, please; All The Tropes is not a gossip site.

Examples of Quest for Sex include:

Anime and Manga

Film

  • American Pie is pretty much the embodiment of this trope, as are most of the movies related to it.
  • Divorce Italian Style features this as an Unbuilt Trope, as is to be expected since it predates current usage by several decades. The usage here as a result tends to be a lot more macabre and disturbing, as the main character in pursuit of his goal to have sex with his 15-year-old cousin, devises a highly elaborate plan to manipulate his wife into having an affair so he can legally have her murdered, and then marry said cousin. Said plan includes knowingly destroying his entire family's moral reputation, and at one point (accidentally) killing his uncle.
  • Porky's and the multiple movies spawned by its success use this as the main thrust (so to speak) of the plot. The same can be said of American Pie from a decade later.
  • In the movie 48 Hrs., Reggie goes out of his way to get some. It's not the main plot, but a subplot.
    • Justified in that he was in prison, and is going back at the end.
  • Superbad uses Deconstruction to take on this premise.
  • Eyes Wide Shut provides a rather dark version of this.
  • The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
  • Sex Drive is about a man who steals his brother's car and drives across the country to have sex with a woman he met online.

Literature

Live-Action TV

  • Samantha from Sex and the City has this quest as her main character trait, and shows no signs of giving it up: She's the oldest character in the main cast.
  • Barney from How I Met Your Mother does this on a regular basis. How far is he willing to go to get laid? He once found a sorority that had gotten in trouble for lewd behavior, dressed up as an old woman, and had himself instituted as their new house mother, "Mrs. Stinsfire". And that's just Phase 1 of the plan.
  • In Kids in The Hall, a recurring character simply (and more or less accurately) called the Chicken Lady wants nothing more than to have sex. However, since the vast majority of the available dating pool is human, things tend to go spectacularly badly.
    • They also have the character with the accurate name of Cabbage Head, who has similar goals. He fails because he's a sexist jerk that most women can't stand.

Theatre

  • In Aphra Behn's play The Rover Belvile, Blunt,Willmore and Frederick are on this quest for sex.

Video Games

  • This is the premise of the Leisure Suit Larry series: in the first, Larry, rapidly approaching 40, decides to finally lose his virginity and sets out to Lost Wages, determined to have sex with a woman by the end of the night.
    • This doesn't bear out under closer inspection. Larry may keep telling himself that he's a swingin' single, but he ends each of the first three games committed to (what he considers) true love. There's even a whore in the first game, and if Larry uses her, he says outright that it's not enough (though it does remove the time limit).
    • The second game is even subtitled "Looking For Love in Several Wrong Places."
  • The entirety of the Rance series of games is the title character going on this, all the while saving the world and killing demons.

Western Animation

  • Glen Quagmire of Family Guy lives this quest.
  • The South Park episode "Erection Day" has Jimmy trying to get laid, under the impression that it will help his inexplicable erections before the talent show.
  • There are several episodes of Beavis and Butthead where the titular characters come up with plans to get laid. Said plans always fail.
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