“How did you feel about our first session?” I asked George.
“It was okay.”
“Did you find anything helpful?
“Not really.”
“What were you hoping to get out of it?”
He glared at me.
“Let’s discuss what we’re going to explore today.”
I explained that we would try Sensual Touch again, just like the first session, only this time, after I explored him, he would touch me.
“I don’t need another massage.”
“George, I know you’re frustrated, but if you want help, you have to go through this process. It’s not going to happen instantly.”
“I know, that’s what you’ve said.”
By now I was struggling to keep my voice and expressions neutral. I reminded myself to be compassionate, but I was also wondering why George was here. He didn’t seem to have faith in me or in surrogacy work. I told myself to see him as a challenge. Maybe I could convince him to open his mind to some of the exercises and understand that if he wanted a different result he had to try to change his behavior and his way of thinking.
We went to the bedroom and undressed. When George flung his tan suede coat on the chair next to the bed I was reminded of how broad his shoulders were. It landed spread out, arms hanging over the sides of the chair. George didn’t have a thimbleful of fat anywhere on his triangle-shaped body. His brown hair was thinning a little on top. He combed it back, so that a spray of it hovered slightly above his head.
The December cold had chilled the air in the bedroom, so I turned up the heat. I asked George to tell me if it got too warm. Then I pulled back the bedspread and invited him into bed.
I got in next to him. He stretched his arms over his head so his ribs jutted out.
I asked George to take some deep breaths.
He made a sniffing sound, accompanied by a single sharp inhale.
“And then let that breath out.”
He blew out as though he were blowing up a balloon.
He stopped and stared at me with unvarnished contempt—a look I had seen on the faces of many of the adults I’d known in my younger life. It touched a raw nerve, and only a few years earlier it probably would have made me feel exposed, affirming my deeply held conviction that I was a horrible person. Now, it made me angry, though I willed myself to contain my emotions and to remain professional.
I asked him to mentally scan his body from head to toe to detect and relieve any tension.
“Focus on your eyes. Do you feel any tension there?”
No answer.
“How about around your mouth?”
Silence.
“I notice some tension in your jaw. Can you release it?”
George still said nothing. His eyes looked like stones, and his body was as tight as a compressed spring.
Finally he said, “This is a joke. You really get paid for this? Again, how is this supposed to help?”
That was it. I had tried my best to work with George, but now I was done.
“It won’t help, George. It won’t help because you’re not willing to try. I’m not sure why you came here, but I think it’s clear that you’re not ready to put in the effort.”
I stood up, put on the robe that lay over my chair, and told George to get dressed. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his big feet landing on the floor with a thud. He pulled the leg of his pants off of the chair and all of his clothes toppled down. He glanced at me to see if I had noticed it and then quickly looked away when he realized I had. He thrust both legs into his trousers, put on his pullover, wedged his feet in his socks and shoes, and grabbed his coat.
I followed him down the hall to make sure he was on his way out.
When he reached the foyer, he turned to me and said, “I wouldn’t take a woman like you anywhere but a McDonald’s,” and then threw the door open.
George’s attitude reminded me of the binary attitude that pervaded my childhood. There were two kinds of women: the nice girls and the whores. I had hoped that I had left that in my past. Still, I have to admit he also made me doubt my own performance. If I were a better surrogate would I have been able to help him? Could I have done more to inspire him to change?
After I had cooled down a bit I called George’s therapist and explained what had happened. “I did my best,” I said to Madelyn, “but I just couldn’t get through to him.”
“Cheryl, we can’t help everyone who comes to us,” Madelyn replied.
At this early stage in my career, just a year into it, it was important for me to hear this. I felt so passionately about surrogacy work and I wanted to believe that I could help everyone who came to see me. Even in those early days, I had seen clients transformed by this work. And it wasn’t only the client who benefitted. The process of becoming a surrogate had changed how I saw myself and my potential. For a moment, the work with George had opened up that well of self-doubt that I’d worked hard to fill.
6.
no virgin mary
By the time I was a senior in high school, I had visited just about every Catholic parish in Salem and a few outside of it. I made the rounds and juggled priests, usually with my friends Marcie and Lisa. It was my way of avoiding confessing the same sins to the same priest and receiving the same reaction every Saturday. As I cycled through different parishes I thought I could maybe convince the priests (and perhaps even myself) that I wasn’t a serial sinner.
One cold October morning I walked the tree-lined route to St. Mary’s with Marcie and Lisa. My legs felt rubbery and my stomach was doing back flips. I was also unusually quiet. “What’s wrong?” Marcie asked. “Oh nothing, just tired,” I answered. In reality, I was panicked. I was about to confess a mortal sin—again. I was thumbing my nose at God’s law. At least with Bill, I could tell myself that I was sinning for love. God might not forgive that, but maybe he’d show some mercy because of it. Intimacy with John was just for pleasure. I was trading my soul for a good time in the backseat of a Dodge on Kernwood Road. What kind of a person was I?
I had a few brief moments of relief when I walked into St. Mary’s and felt a welcome rush of heat, but my anxiety quickly returned and soon I was sweating. The earthy scent of incense made me feel even queasier. I tried to remind myself that afterward my friends and I would head over to Forest River Park, meet up with other friends, and the fun would start. We would spend hours laughing and gabbing. C’mon. Calm down, I told myself.
I sat in the confessional and tried to settle down. A few seconds later the priest entered the other side of the booth. Through the iron lattice I could see his cheek, which looked yellowish in the dim light. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession.” I started describing some venial sins: To spare her feelings, I had told my cousin that I liked her new hairstyle, when I really didn’t. I had felt envious of a friend who was going off to college in New York City. I had lied to my mother. Then, it was time for the big one. I admitted to having sex with my boyfriend.
The priest had been silent up until then, and had he remained so, I probably would have seen him—or one of his counterparts—the same time next week. Instead, he said, “It’s girls like you who ruin young boys’ lives.” Suddenly my fear turned to anger. In that single moment, all my timid questioning, all my quiet skepticism, finally gave way to rage. I hardly had to cajole John into having sex. Perhaps I was a sinner, but was he really a victim? Wasn’t he equally culpable? “What about my life, Father?” I asked. “Twelve Our Fathers and nine Hail Marys” was his only response. I left the church that day without saying a single prayer and I never returned to confession.
I continued to go to Mass every Sunday with my family. It would have been nice if all of my shame and guilt evaporated when I decided to stop going to confession, but it didn’t. I still took communion. Yet another sin. When the priest placed the wafer on my tongue I had trouble swallowing it. I was submerging the symbol of the most holy
and pure into the rot inside of me. Without confession, my guilt now multiplied. And yet, I had broken free from a dogma that I knew was irrational, unfair, and unkind. I had started to form a new identity apart from the Church and it was both exciting and frightening. That’s not to say that my struggle was over. I still vacillated between anger and fear, reason and belief.
In 1962, my last year of high school finally arrived. What I was going to do for a career was not a matter of much concern for my family. My brothers had to go to college because they were future breadwinners and a solid education would give them an edge in the job market. My father, in particular, thought spending money on higher education for me made about as much sense as buying a car for our cat. True, my poor grades in grammar school had kept me out of the classical, or college-prep, track in high school. But even if they hadn’t, I had no reason to believe that a college career would have been encouraged or funded. A girl like me, it seemed, should be satisfied just to find a husband who could provide for her and the kids she would soon bear.
My guidance counselor, Mrs. Russo, was the first one to mention Bay State Academy in Boston to me. Bay State offered a two-year secretarial program that taught typing, shorthand, and other skills that I could parlay into an office job, one of my few employment possibilities. When I discussed it with my parents, my dad scoffed. What did I need more schooling for? For her part, my mother became a surprising ally. She insisted, against my father’s strident objections, that he would fork over the money for me to start Bay State in the fall. So, as my last year of high school wound down, I got ready to go to what would be the closest thing to a college I would get near for quite awhile.
Bay State Academy was actually a great experience for me. I met women I liked and I learned some valuable skills. That’s why, when it came time for the second year, I was disappointed when my father put his foot down and flat out refused to pay for it. “It’s a waste of money,” he declared. Especially now, since Dave Mallory at Kressler Engineering had a job opening that would be perfect for me. Dave was an old friend of my father’s. He was the vice president at Kressler, a thriving structural engineering firm in Boston. I had learned enough at Bay State Academy to do the available job and to save my father a year of tuition. If he only knew who I would meet at Kressler and the path it would start me on, Dad would have happily written the check for my second year at Bay State.
At six-foot-two, Michael Cohen had a commanding presence, and when he swaggered through the Kressler office few people, regardless of where they sat on the corporate totem pole, failed to notice him. After his size, the first thing I noticed about Michael was his hands. They were long and delicate, yet strong. He was twenty-three, had flawless skin, dazzling blue eyes, and a deep voice that was so sexy it sometimes made my knees weak. He also had blond, wavy hair that he wore long—or at least what was considered long for the time. Michael was the “office boy,” but if there was ever a misleading title that was it. That his intellect and confidence soared above his position was apparent to everyone.
When he wasn’t running errands for our bosses or printing blueprints, Michael sat in the desk next to mine. One Monday morning, when I asked him how his weekend was, he responded with, “Great, I fucked all weekend.”
“Whaaaaaat?”
“Yeah, we just got up to eat.”
Was this guy for real? No one—and I mean no one—in my world talked about sex that openly. His comment left my eyes wide open and my jaw hanging. I must have looked silly, but it didn’t faze him. He then asked me about my weekend, but I was dumbfounded and couldn’t respond.
Michael and I started eating lunch together regularly, and soon we were in an ongoing dialogue. He could ask me anything, even the most personal question, and not seem like he was prying. Never before had I had such straightforward discussions. We talked a lot about sex, but we also talked about movies, politics, books, his college courses, my family, his family, our dreams for the future, and everything else under the sun. Yet, if our conversations were forthright, they weren’t always honest. At first I told him I was a virgin because I feared he would think less of me if he knew the truth.
Michael had been suspended from Boston University for taking tests for other students. When he was caught taking an exam for a business major, he was called before the disciplinary board. He defended himself by pointing out that the student who had hired him was a future captain of industry who had made a sound business decision by finding the best man for the job and hiring him. Needless to say, the board wasn’t persuaded and slapped Michael with a one-year suspension.
Nothing about Michael was conventional. He kissed me before our first date. We were in the elevator descending to the ground floor for lunch when he reached out and gently pulled me to him. He planted the most sensuous kiss on me that I’d ever received. It was tender and erotic at once. There were never any half-measures with Michael. Everything was done with passion, and that kiss was no exception.
With Michael, I started to flourish. I grew out my hair and bought a new, sexy, Michael-approved wardrobe. He gave me a reading list and suddenly I realized I was smart and had insight into literature that none of my teachers had been able to evoke. We dabbled in marijuana and psychedelic drugs. Sexually, I explored even more. I had and gave oral sex for the first time with Michael, and I also had my first orgasm with intercourse. Just as important, I made love for the first time with the lights on, and I had conversations about what I liked and didn’t. It was a time when life teemed with possibilities, and together we set out to explore them.
For Michael, most of what I had been taught about sex was barely worth taking seriously. “Ridiculous,” he laughed when I told him about the prohibition against masturbation and other Catholic dogma that had passed for sex education in my childhood. “It’s about control. Keeping you scared and ashamed is how they control you,” he declared. He even seemed angry that I had been subjected to so much hurtful misinformation. Could it be that the problem really wasn’t with me, but with the doctrine?
For the first time in my life I had the opportunity to have open, nonjudgmental, and genuinely frank discussions about sex. Michael approached sex from a secular perspective that was new to me. Now, not only could I challenge what I had been taught, but I could also arrive at alternative opinions and ideas that actually made sense to me. One night, long after I had come clean about my sexual past, I told Michael about my last experience in the confessional. “Idiotic,” he sniffed. “Why do they have such a hang-up about virginity? It makes no sense,” he added.
I explained how I believed God was watching as I wantonly dismissed the rules, and my fear that when I died, he would act. Michael scoffed at this. After all, he wasn’t Catholic. He was Jewish. At the time I had no idea what that actually meant. All I knew was that he didn’t seem to think of God as some kind of cruel schoolmaster.
Only weeks into our relationship, Michael and I maintained separate addresses on paper only. I was nineteen and shared an apartment with two other women in Boston, but I spent most nights at Michael’s place. My parents knew about Michael and we had what I considered to be an unspoken agreement to avoid the question of whether or not we were sleeping together. They didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.
Early one morning when I was at Michael’s apartment the phone rang. I still had an hour before I had to get up for work and I considered not answering, but around the fifth ring it was clear that the caller wasn’t going away. Michael covered his head with his pillow. Half-asleep, I grabbed the receiver.
“We have to talk,” my father said.
“Dad?”
“You have to come home this weekend.”
“How did you get this number?”
“He’s in the book. You have to come home this weekend. We need to talk.”
I had the sinking feeling that our unspoken agreement had just come to an abrupt end.
That weekend as I took the bus to my parents’ house, I had a feeling familiar to wh
at I’d experienced on those Saturday morning treks to the confessional.
I had to steady myself before I opened the front door.
“Let’s talk in the den,” my father said.
This can’t be good, I thought, as I followed him. What he said next left me reeling.
“It’s obvious you’re no Virgin Mary. I know what you’ve been up to with your boyfriend.”
I gulped. I felt like I had just been slapped in the face. Then it got worse.
“You might as well marry him because no decent man would have you now.”
I started crying. I was speechless. My father had essentially deemed me damaged goods.
That night, Michael and I spent hours talking. The guilt and shame had been heaped back on me in full force. First, my priest tells me that I’m the kind of girl who ruins young boys’ lives, and now this. It seemed I couldn’t escape judgment, even if I had fooled myself into believing that I had. When I told Michael about what my father had said, his response was predictable and comforting. “Your father’s living in prehistoric times. No ‘decent’ man would care if you’re a virgin or not.”
I tried to explain to him again how the Church had turned me against myself, how it had made me feel shame for having any interest in sex. When I was done talking, he said something so lucid, so simple, and that still remains profoundly true to me today. “There is no God who is less compassionate than you.” I had never thought of God as compassionate, but I realized then that I could no longer believe in one who wasn’t.
7.
better late than never: larry
When, exactly, is the optimal time to lose your virginity is a question I can’t answer. For my parents and the Church it was only after you had said “I do.” At fourteen, I felt tremendous guilt for having sex for the first time with Bill. Mark O’Brien was ashamed to find himself a virgin at thirty-six. Just what age is the right age depends on so many factors I doubt even an army of relevant professionals could arrive at a definitive answer. I do know, however, that my client who lost his virginity with me in 2005 was decades past the age when most of us consider it normal to first have sex.
An Intimate Life Page 8