A few days later I sat in his office wrapped in a paper gown.
“Yes, Miss . . . Mrs. Cohen,” Dr. Sutton said as he looked down at my chart.
“Well, as I mentioned to the nurse my IUD—”
“Yes, I heard all about it. What is it you’d like me to do?”
“I was wondering about getting it replaced.”
“Really? Well, I can’t promise that it won’t come out, and since you’re afraid of the Pill, maybe we should try another alternative that will save us both some time.”
He opened a drawer and took out something that looked like a guitar pick with legs.
“This,” he pumped his hand, “is the Dalkon Shield, and it won’t come out.”
It was possible that Dr. Sutton just had an awful bedside manner, or that he didn’t respect women in general, or that he was too arrogant to show any sensitivity to any of his patients. Sure, it was possible, but what I believed then and still do today is that he had contempt for me because I was on welfare. I suspected that his well-heeled patients saw a whole other side of him.
“I—okay—I guess so,” I said.
Dr. Sutton told me to get up on the table and put my feet in the stirrups. He opened my vagina with a speculum and pushed the Dalkon Shield into my uterus. The pain took my breath away. He peeled off his latex gloves and said, “You can get dressed now,” and left the room.
The new IUD remained uncomfortable. At first I thought that maybe it was because it was new, but a week later, and then two weeks later, it still felt painful. Unlike the Lippes Loop, I could never forget the Dalkon Shield was jammed into my uterus. After about a month I made another appointment with Dr. Sutton, whose only response was, “Well, that’s what you wanted to use, wasn’t it? You don’t want to use the Pill.” I was too intimidated to question him, even though I knew something was wrong.
The new IUD also made sex less pleasurable, both with Michael and my new lover, Jeff, who I had met through a friend. Jeff was smart, artistic, and adventurous. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but his personality was so vital that it hardly mattered. He had a sleek new red Mustang and we often drove up to Marin County or down to Santa Cruz and found a secluded place to make love.
About three months after I began using the Dalkon Shield, Jeff picked me up one Sunday evening and we hit the Great Highway, landing at the beach. I had been feeling a deep ache in my lower abdomen for a few days that was unlike the discomfort I normally felt from my new IUD. I hoped it would go away and I didn’t take it terribly seriously, in part because I’d grown accustomed to ignoring the pain. I reclined back in the passenger seat, put my feet up on the dashboard, and held Jeff’s hand. We looked out over the ocean and watched the sun sink into it. We kissed for a few minutes. Then I pulled away and told Jeff I needed to pee. I walked to the front of the car and squatted down so that the few other people in the parking lot couldn’t see me. A few drops trickled out, burning as they escaped. I looked down at a quarter-size circle of urine on the ground below me. Suddenly, I was seized with the most excruciating pain I had ever felt. It was worse than childbirth, worse than the pain after the car wreck. I felt like the inside of my vagina was being invaded by a knife. The pain was so bad I couldn’t stand up. I passed out for a few seconds and when I came to I managed to clutch the bumper of the car and straighten out my legs enough to limp to the driver’s side.
“Get me home. Please. Something’s terribly wrong,” I panted.
“Oh Christ, what’s going on?” Jeff cried.
“Get me home. Get me home,” I pleaded.
He lay me down in the backseat of the Mustang and got onto the road. I passed out again. Jeff shook my arm and when I came to I saw his head snap forward to look back at the road.
The next time I woke up, Michael was carrying me out of Jeff’s car and into his, where I drifted away again and didn’t wake up until I was in the emergency room. Michael and a nurse poured me into a wheelchair. I was taken straight to an exam room, where the last person in the world I wanted to see soon walked in. Dr. Sutton happened to be on duty that night. By now, the pain was so great that it hurt to breathe.
“Lie back and spread your legs. I need to examine you,” Dr. Sutton said.
He took some swabs of my vagina, inserted his fingers, and felt around. I was in excruciating pain throughout his brutal examination. All the while he was talking to the nurse who stood beside him.
“Get those to the lab and call Dr. Ivy,” he said, still inside of me.
Then, without saying a word to me, he ripped out the Dalkon Shield. I screamed so loudly that Michael came running into the room. I wasn’t sure how much more pain I could endure.
I was admitted to the hospital and the next morning I learned that I had infectious peritonitis, cervicitis (inflammation of the cervix), and pelvic inflammatory disease. In short, I was a mess. Later tests showed that my fallopian tubes were so scarred that it was highly unlikely that I would ever get pregnant again. As it turned out, this wasn’t an uncommon outcome for many of the hundreds of thousands of women who used the now notorious Dalkon Shield. At twenty-six I was done having children. Even though Michael and I agreed to have only two, in the back of my mind I always thought I had time to reconsider.
I had been in California for two years, and in that time I had survived a major car accident and now this ordeal. I was beginning to wonder if anything good would happen to me again. Maybe I should have just stayed in Boston. Compared to what I was going through now, my parents, the New England winters, and all of the other things I had complained about didn’t seem so bad.
In reality, there was no going back, and it hadn’t been all gloom and doom. I’d made some wonderful friends in California. They were young people who had come from all over the country, people like me who were questioning what they had been taught and who were experimenting with alternative lifestyles and new ways of thinking.
As the years passed, I became confident that I had made the right decision. Sure, we had had a rocky start, but moving to California afforded me all sorts of opportunities and experiences that I never would have had back in Massachusetts. In 1973, five years after my move across country, my friend Alison invited me to an event that reminded me how far I was from Salem and started me on a career path I would never have dreamed of in my earlier life.
Alison asked me to attend a talk on sex at a church (a church!) in Berkeley. It was being led by three women who had just founded San Francisco Sex Information (SFSI, pronounced Sfissy), one of the first telephone hotlines for unbiased, fact-based sex education in the country. “Sexual ignorance is not bliss” is SFSI’s motto.
Alison and I had dinner at a small café a few blocks away from the church. As we often did, we got lost in conversation and didn’t leave until about ten minutes to seven. Neither of us was worried, though. We had only a short way to walk. As we reached the church we saw a line that snaked around the building. Would we get in? Alison and I took our places in line, shocked at the turnout. As it started to move we grew less optimistic that we would make it in. The church was obviously too small to hold everyone who wanted to attend. As I got near the doorway, I looked in and saw a sea of people, many of them standing. Alison walked in and I followed. Just as I stepped inside I heard the greeter apologize to the people behind me who had to be turned away because there was simply no more room left.
The evening started with a film that I will never forget. It followed a woman as she masturbated and reached climax. This wasn’t only shocking because of what she was doing, but because of who she was. This was a normal-looking woman, with an imperfect body that she seemed perfectly at ease with. The star of the film was Shirley Lewis.
When the movie ended and the lights came on, the stark silence of the room was almost palpable. A few moments later Alison turned to me and asked, “Do you ever do that?” When I nodded my head yes, she replied, in a kind of conspiratorial whisper, “So do I.” So, other women liked sex too? We broke up
into discussion groups and I found that I was far from alone, not just in my shame, but also in my confusion and anger about how my sexuality had been treated within the Church, my family, and society. This was the first time I had ever been encouraged to talk openly and publicly about masturbation or any other sexual practice. Times were indeed a-changin’.
The next morning when I told Michael about the event, the first of two serendipitous things happened. Turned out, Michael, who had been taking a class at the now-defunct Center for Intimacy, knew Shirley. In fact, she taught the class he was taking. Michael mentioned to Shirley how impressed I was with her and he learned that, in addition to her work as an educator, she was also a surrogate partner. Then, about a week later, my friend Elizabeth gave me a copy of Surrogate Wife by Valerie X. Scott, who had been a Masters and Johnson–trained surrogate. The coincidences were starting to mount, and I began to wonder what it might be like to be a surrogate myself.
I wasn’t alone anymore. Many people struggled with issues around sexuality and maybe I could help them. I no longer had to apologize for being a woman who enjoyed having sex. I still didn’t know if I liked it more or less than other women, but I was starting to think that it didn’t matter if I did. It occurred to me that maybe I could even actively channel a strong libido into something that would help individuals feel happier and, I hoped, might make the world a better place.
I contacted Shirley to learn more about what exactly a surrogate did. No, they didn’t just show up and have sex with a client. There was a protocol that lasted, on average, six to eight visits. It could be shorter or longer depending on the client’s needs, and there were specific exercises designed to address the most common sexual problems. Surrogates worked closely with traditional talk therapists and all of their clients were referred by them. They worked with both couples and individuals. Most of the people they saw struggled with premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, lack of desire, little or no sexual experience, poor body image, anxiety, physical disability, or some combination of these issues. A keen sense of compassion and a deep capacity for empathy were essential because, as a surrogate, you helped people address some of the most deeply personal, anxiety-provoking issues that they would ever face. Potential surrogates also must have addressed their own issues with sexuality.
The practice of surrogacy originated with Masters and Johnson, whose groundbreaking research in the 1950s and ’60s popularized the study of human sexuality. William Masters and Virginia Johnson were married researchers who did some of the earliest scientific work on the human sexual response and sexual dysfunction. Their books, Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inadequacy, were bestsellers and some of the first works to demystify sexuality. At their center in St. Louis they trained the very first surrogates and created the template for the process we use today.
Originally, Masters and Johnson worked with married couples who were struggling with a variety of sexual issues. Later, they opened their practice to single men and the profession of surrogacy was born. Another pair of married researchers, William E. Hartman and Marilyn Fithian, developed additional exercises and wrote a number of insightful books, including Treatment of Sexual Dysfunction. They worked with surrogate partners in California who were trained by Caroline and Emerson Symonds, two highly-respected sexologists. At the Center for Social and Sensory Learning in Southern California, Barbara M. Roberts, MSW, began training surrogates and therapists as well as offering workshops for the public. Shirley referred me to two therapists who worked well with surrogates and in a few days I had an appointment with one of them in Berkeley.
By this time, my marriage had been open for almost five years and I had enjoyed my share of sexual partners. Michael and I had come to a working agreement about how we would handle outside relationships. We wouldn’t let them interfere with our time with our children. We would only go out one night a week each, and one of us would stay home with Jessica and Eric. If one of us came home late, there was no sleeping in the next day. We got up at the same time the next morning to make breakfast and get the kids off to school. When I discussed my new career course with Michael he was supportive and I don’t think this was just another example of Michael’s disquieting lack of jealousy. I believe he truly understood the value of this work and wanted to see me find a career that I could embrace and nurture. If Michael had ever had conventional attitudes about sex, he had jettisoned them so long ago that it wouldn’t occur to him to be critical of this profession. He also understood that traditional mores about sex needed to evolve, and if surrogacy could play a small role in helping with that, so much the better.
Tom greeted me with a welcoming smile. He was one of only a few therapists in the Bay Area (San Francisco) who were training surrogates and referring clients to them. The field was in its infancy and the training was rapidly evolving. We talked for two hours and Tom asked me questions about my background, my relationship with my family, and my attitude toward sex. We had an instant rapport. I think Tom understood immediately that I was well past the point in my own sexual evolution where I would demonize anyone for having a sexual problem. It would be the first step in our training together. Then Tom asked me to do something that made me suspicious. “Why don’t you take off your clothes so I can see what you’d look like with clients,” he said. Was this his way of hitting on me? Also, I didn’t shave my legs or my underarms at the time. I wondered what he would have to say about that. Our meeting had gone well and I liked Tom, so I decided to take a chance. I pulled my loose-fitting dress over my head and took off my underwear. “You look good to me,” Tom said. I was relieved that he didn’t make a pass at me, but I still thought it was inappropriate. I wanted to be a surrogate, not a fashion model. Did my body really need to be cleared before I could start training? Tom never mentioned another word to me about this, so, if it was a test, I supposed I had passed.
I also began training to be a phone counselor at SFSI. They had established an 800 number for people to call with questions about sex. For one of the first times in U.S. history people could pick up the phone, ask questions anonymously, and get reliable information and referrals for expert help. In my initial interview with a SFSI staffer I was asked a number of questions and several hypothetical scenarios were put to me. For example, my interviewer asked what I would do when callers said that they feared they were masturbating too much. “I would ask them what they meant by ‘too much.’ If they’re masturbating because they are afraid to meet someone or if it’s getting in the way of normal daily functioning, like going to work, I’d refer them to a therapist. If they’re doing it because it’s pleasurable and relieves stress, I’d probably tell them that it’s perfectly natural,” I answered.
SFSI training allowed me to be an effective phone volunteer, and it also augmented my surrogacy education. As part of the training, we watched films of people engaging in a variety of sexual practices and then discussed our reactions to them. We were encouraged to talk frankly and to honestly examine our responses and what they might tell us about ourselves. The movies showed heterosexual sex and both male and female homosexual sex. One showed an older couple—and I mean as old as my grandparents—making passionate love. To my surprise, I got aroused when I watched a film of gay men having sex. When I saw one of a man and woman having anal sex I was both excited and repelled. Taboo can be a turn on.
Through discussions with fellow trainees and SFSI staffers I realized that what was more important than my visceral reactions was my ability to suspend my judgment of the consensual acts I had witnessed, and of the people who called for information or help. It was okay if a particular practice didn’t appeal to me. What would make me an effective educator and sounding board was not the range of my sexual repertoire, but my ability to empathize and maintain objectivity.
A key part of my surrogacy training came when I attended a two-week workshop with Tom at the Department of Public Health in Berkeley. If Tom had made a misstep in our initial meeting
by asking to see my body, he had redeemed himself by being so generous with his time and expertise. The workshop was led by a husband-and-wife therapist team who had trained with Masters and Johnson. They laid out the principles and practice of conjoint therapy. Few professionals use this model today because it is not cost-effective, but at the time it was an exciting new form of couples therapy. It was always conducted by a male-female team, and the hope was that both partners in the couple would feel that they had an ally. In the workshop, we got a crash course in anatomy and for the first time I learned the complexity of both male and female genitalia. They showed us the undifferentiated genital chart, which I continue to use in my practice today. It reveals how the fetus differentiates into male or female and the similarities in genital tissue. Much of what Tom and I learned became part of my surrogacy work.
Between my training to be a surrogate and my SFSI training, my knowledge of human sexuality exploded. I realized just how many assumptions and misconceptions I harbored. I met people from all walks of sexual life and many of the biases I held about them were challenged. For example, I always thought people who were involved in sadism and masochism (S&M) had to be pretty unsavory. To my surprise, I learned that they took great care not to cause any real harm during sex play. Ironically, another thing I learned was that it was okay to say no. People didn’t have to continue with or engage in any activity just because they were taking a more open and experimental attitude toward sex. This may not seem noteworthy now, but for someone who grew up in the ’50s it was a real eye-opener to be told that, even as a woman, I had the right to choose or not choose any kind of sex, no matter the circumstances.
One absolutely invaluable skill I learned was how to listen. This was tough because I love to talk! In both my SFSI and surrogate training I had to learn how not to jump in, but rather give people the space they needed to say what they wanted to say. This made me a better surrogate, but it also made me a better wife, mother, and friend.
An Intimate Life Page 14