If Democratic voters are struggling to see what sets John Hickenlooper apart from the 2020 pack they need to look no further than his autobiography, which outlines in excruciating detail his quest to lose his virginity and, seemingly, every sexual exploit since.

The candidate's book, The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics, outlines the journey from a child in the Philadelphia suburbs to the president of a brewing company, mayor of Denver, and then governor of Colorado.

Sprinkled throughout is the minutiae of his angst-ridden relationships with women, named and unnamed. A Washington Examiner analysis totaled Hickenlooper's declared sexual partners at seven, including his two wives. Even his experience of the 9/11 terrorism attacks is viewed through the prism of whom he was in bed with at the time.

While Beto O'Rourke and Sen. Bernie Sanders have been asked to explain sexually charged writings from their youth, neither has yet laid out his entire carnal journey for the whole world.

Hickenlooper, 67, begins recounting his sexual odyssey on page 88. He was 18. A date with Mary Nixon had foundered because he was "definitely not experienced," as had one with "Sherri LeFevre, another daughter of one of Mom’s friends" because he tried to put his arm around her, "which she promptly returned to me as if it were a giant earthworm."

But now, Hickenlooper was ready for more. "At the very least, I fully planned on finally losing my virginity. Enter Angela," he wrote. He was 18 and so besotted with Angela — though "she wasn’t what you would call model-gorgeous" — that when she rejected him he was acutely depressed and prescribed lithium.

Next up was a woman from San Antonio. "She was pretty ... she had the greatest Texas twang." He was 20 and this was it. "One night, in that spring of 1972 ... the girl from Texas and I got together. I needed a friend. We got especially friendly."

"I was smitten, and fate (and maybe pity) intervened, and I ended up losing my virginity to the San Antonio Rose. It was a magical moment, but it wasn’t with the person I had hoped it would be with."

[Related: Hickenlooper: 'The federal government should get out of the way' of marijuana legalization]

Hickenlooper tried to have sex with "a girl from Minnesota, Blair. Her dad was a college professor," but things didn't go as planned. "The one time Blair and I found ourselves in bed together, Angela was all I could think about and, well, I guess you could say I reversed direction, and that was that — or rather, there was none of that."

He then met "beautiful, free-spirited" Margie at a photography class after taking "a naked self-portrait in a tub" when he was "a little high." He took nude photos of her and then had an idea. "I suggested to Margie that I photograph her naked, standing in the center of Middletown’s Main Street on a drizzling night, under a streetlight." She agreed and when stopped by a policeman, they escaped any charges by promising to send him one of the photos.

The troubles with lovers don't stop there. Hickenlooper was briefly engaged to a woman named Gwynthlyn Hoage Green in 1979 when he was 27.

"She was gorgeous, smart, five years older than I was — for whatever that matters — and very much part of a wonderfully brilliant and artistic family."

"Gwyn was the best of both her parents. She was an anthropology grad student, keenly interested in the witches of South America. She traveled just about everywhere with a small green and red parrot on her shoulder. The bird’s name was Loro, Spanish for 'parrot.' There were times when I couldn’t tell if it was Gwyn or the bird nibbling on my neck."

But he decided that "she was dealing with her own demons, and/or smoking a lot of marijuana to avoid them." He became resentful that he would "find her reeking of pot with nothing to show for the day." He wrote: "I’d come home to Gwyn, frustrated with myself, and I’d find her on the couch, clearly stoned, sitting with the parrot on her shoulder."

Green died in 2009 at the age of 63.

[Also read: 84-year-old ex-San Francisco mayor: So what if I dated Kamala Harris?]

At 29, Hickenlooper became engaged to a Swedish woman called Nalen, who was "beautiful, to be sure, with dark hair, high cheekbones, wide eyes that seemed to see into people, into me." She was "empathetic and independent" but: "I came to believe that we were not compatible. She was as introverted as I was extroverted."

He broke up with her, telling her in a letter, which he reproduced in full: "There really are no reasons for my fear. But sometimes emotions carry more weight than reasons." Nalen, Hickenlooper reveals, "later married a handsome Alaskan."

Hickenlooper recounts that he met "my next girlfriend" in 1986, a fellow campaign worker in Boulder. He was 34. "Eileen Kelly was a Wesleyan grad and a writer — a good writer."

They worked together on Moonlighting, the TV show starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, but the show was canceled in 1989. "Eileen and I also decided to cancel our romance. Incredibly amicable. Once again, I wasn’t ready for a long-term relationship."

When he was 42, Hickenlooper met a woman called Devany McNeill, who was 29. Hickenlooper spares the reader the details, summarizing: "In keeping with my pattern, I dated Devany for three years, and she understandably got tired of merely dating, so we split, though we remained friends."

At one point, Hickenlooper's romantic desires eclipsed one of the gravest moments of American history. He devotes four paragraphs to his experience during the 9/11 attacks, when he was 49, which he introduces by saying that he "was visiting the intriguing Helen Thorpe in Austin Texas" that day.

"On September 11, 2001, Helen and I were just getting out of bed in Austin when we heard the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center."

Months later, they were delighted to discover "that we were pregnant." The two were married in 2002, had a son together, and divorced in 2015. Hickenlooper writes that the couple underwent extensive marriage counseling. He realized things were doomed when he felt "awkward" when they arrived at a hotel to find only a double bed because "at home, we had not slept in the same bed for some time."

Hickenlooper concludes his romantic history by describing meeting his current wife, Robin Pringle, who he explains "was twenty-some years younger than I was." He writes: "She had what we used to call Bette Davis eyes, large and luminous, and she had been wearing a bright pink skirt with a black blouse, loud but elegant. She wasn’t exactly my style, but I liked her."

They began dating in 2014 — before his divorce — and married in 2016. Hickenlooper writes: "In case any of you were wondering, no, Robin was not pregnant."

For more than a decade, British politician Nick Clegg has been widely ridiculed for revealing in a GQ interview with Piers Morgan in 2008 that he has slept with "no more than 30" women. Then leader of the Liberal Democrats party, he is now head of global affairs for Facebook.

Unfortunately, Hickenlooper's will not be a contender for the UK Literary Review's Bad Sex Award. Alhough it honors "an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description" and seeks to draw attention to "poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description" it is limited to works of fiction.

Hickenlooper announced his candidacy for president on March 4, arguing that he was best positioned to carry Democrats to victory in 2020.

"I believe that not only can I beat Donald Trump, but that I am the person that can bring people together on the other side and actually get stuff done," he said.