“She loves watching me get bigger and bigger and giggles when I spill out of my shorts. Yesterday I touched her hair for the first time. Pretty soon it will be time to invite her in. Not yet, though.”
I flashed on Pamela telling me there was no sign Bradley had reoffended. Why was he telling me this? Didn’t he realize I was obligated to tell the authorities? Didn’t he know I would? Then I started panicking. What if he attacked me? If I had to save my life, I’d knee him in the crotch with all of my might, but would it be enough? What if he overpowered me? What if he was quicker than me? No one was around, so my screams would go unheard. What if he sprung up and grabbed me around the throat? My fear for myself may have been a little misplaced because Bradley showed no signs of agitation. In fact, he seemed no more affected than if he had just rattled off his street address.
I slowly stood up, began dressing, and asked Bradley to do the same. I told him we had come to the end of our first session. “Bradley,” I said, “it was nice to meet you. I’m not sure if surrogacy work will help you with the issues you’re dealing with, so let me have a talk with Pamela before we schedule our next session.”
He zippered up his pants, put on his denim jacket, and headed out. I watched him get into his car and drive off. I misdialed Pamela’s phone number twice, and when I said hello my voice sounded hollow.
“Cheryl?” Pamela asked.
“Yes. It’s me. Sorry. I just finished my session with Bradley. He has to be stopped.” I told Pamela what Bradley had revealed to me and asked if she would call the police, or if I should. Pamela promptly hung up with me and made the call.
My experience with Bradley was without a doubt the most frightening incident of my career. After my hair-raising experience with him I took a few days off. I was reminded of how vulnerable I am in the work that I do. I was so accustomed to thinking of my clients as the ones taking the risks and gathering the courage it took to make change that I rarely thought about the physical danger my job could pose.
One morning that week, as I sipped coffee in my kitchen, I decided to go through my file cabinet that was jammed with client files. I opened the top drawer and pulled out as many as I could carry over to the sofa. I started thumbing through them. There had been so many successes, so many kind, decent people who had come to see me because they wanted to have deeper intimacy, love, and connection with a current or future partner. These were my clients. This was exactly what I needed to put the ordeal with Bradley into perspective. I was reminded, again, why I do this work.
14.
a frightening new disease
“How are you different from a prostitute?” It’s high on the list of the most common questions put to me. Sometimes it’s asked sheepishly; other times it’s an accusation disguised as an inquiry. In the early part of my career I struggled with how to best answer it. I was clear on the difference, but I didn’t know how much detail to go into about what I did with clients and why a profession like mine was necessary.
Steven Brown, a male surrogate I’d become close friends with in the late ’70s, solved that problem for me by crafting an analogy that I still use today. When you go to a prostitute it’s like going to a restaurant. You choose from the menu, you eat, and when you leave the proprietor hopes you will return and tell your friends. Seeing a surrogate is like going to culinary school. You learn the recipes, develop your skills in the kitchen, broaden your palate, and then go out into the world with your newfound knowledge. If all goes well, you create delicious meals for select dining partners again and again. “That’s exactly right. In a way I’m more Julia Child than Xavier Hollander,” I said when Steven first shared this with me. Call me the happy cooker.
Steven was one of only a few male surrogates and his clients were primarily gay men. I liked him from the first time we met. With his dark hair, angular face, and tall, lean body, he had no problem finding sex partners. He and I dished about our lovers and laughed about exploits. We discussed our work as well, and this helped both of us to become better surrogates. You can’t swap work stories with the other PTA moms when you’re a surrogate, so I was thankful to have a confidant who shared my profession and could appreciate its challenges and rewards. Steven and I leaned on each other in the way true friends can. Sometimes he would half-jokingly say we should get married, but I already had two husbands.
On October 31, 1981, Bob and I drove to Reno and got married. The ceremony took place in the City Hall building and was conducted by a Justice of the Peace. She read a Native American wedding blessing that seemed like it was written for us. “Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be the shelter for each other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be the warmth for the other,” it began. This was the kind of mutual care that sustained our partnership. “Treat yourselves and each other with respect, and remind yourselves often of what brought you together. Give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness, and kindness that your connection deserves,” it went on. I had no doubt that this would be the creed that governed our future together. When she was done with the prayer, Bob and I exchanged rings and walked out of the chapel into the crisp autumn air.
We checked into Harrah’s hotel and had some of the best sex of our lives. We were now husband and wife, and our lovemaking was a celebration of our deepened union. It was a four-poster honeymoon. I felt the kind of joy I’d feared I no longer had the capacity for after the events of the last year. I could still love and be loved. Bob and my commitment to each other was unshakable and now it was official—well, sort of. It couldn’t be legal because I was still married to Michael.
I didn’t care. Bob and I could never have children, as I was infertile and he’d had a vasectomy. So when he asked me if I would marry him, just for us, I said yes because I truly trusted and loved him. The ceremony was never meant to be official in any way, but rather a pledge of personal devotion to each other. Bob explained that he knew that I was the love of his life, and that having me in his life part-time would be more fulfilling than having someone else full-time.
When Michael learned about how I had spent Halloween he was furious, but it didn’t matter to me. I had suffered the humiliation of his extramarital family, so as far as I was concerned, if he had a problem with me taking a second husband, that was just too bad. “You’re going to have to deal with it, Michael—just like I’ve had to deal with you having a family with Meg,” I declared. Michael made a hasty call to a lawyer friend. His hope, I’m sure, was that he would hear that I had jeopardized our family’s financial future. “What if he sues us? He could take everything,” Michael roared. Michael never elaborated on what specific legal maneuvering he feared, and I didn’t press him. Bob would never do anything of the sort and neither Michael nor I could articulate the legal grounds that he would act on even if he were so inclined. We both knew it was a bid to drum up fear, regret, and guilt in me, and we both knew it wouldn’t work. Michael’s hollow threat didn’t scare me and he quickly dropped it.
Bob’s dedication to me never waned. In 1983, Michael tossed another hand grenade at our relationship. Meg was pregnant again. If I was impressed that Bob didn’t judge Michael, I was also impressed that he didn’t judge me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he demanded to know what was wrong with me. Why did I continue to stay with someone who used my heart as a doormat? Love has its own logic. Bob knew this, and I guess he also knew that the best way he could help was to love me in his own uncompromising way. I had never known such unselfish adoration. Without him, I probably would have concluded that I was fundamentally unlovable, simply not good enough for anyone to devote himself to me. Bob gave me proof to the contrary. But it was still Michael whom I lived with and returned to almost every night.
I wasn’t ready to leave Michael. My love for him resembled a law of nature. I didn’t choose it any more than I chose to stay firmly planted on the earth by gravity. I couldn’t fully explain to myself or anyone else why I loved him, and that scared me. I had warned him tha
t he was going to destroy the love I had for him if he kept hurting me. It wasn’t gone, but it had begun to look irrational, and I had started to resent it. Sometimes when I was alone, I sat quietly and tried to imagine returning to the affection I felt for him in the early days. No matter how hard I looked, though, I couldn’t glimpse a road back. All I could see was that imagination has its limits.
It wasn’t only my personal life that was roiled in the early ’80s. Around that time the surrogacy world was rocked with fear about a frightening new disease that filled the media. We weren’t sure exactly how it was transmitted and not even a hint of a cure or treatment existed. It affected mostly gay men, but it had been diagnosed in heterosexuals as well. At first Steven knew one person with it, then he knew two, then five, then seven. Fear shot through the San Francisco bathhouses that he and his friends frequented. People talked in grave tones about what was starting to look like an epidemic. It was a wasting syndrome, and its victims were struck with repeated infections, lymphoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma, thrush, pneumonia, and other grim conditions. Steven had seen friends go from burly to skeletal as the disease ruthlessly winnowed away their bodies and lives. AIDS had made its terrible debut.
Surrogates and other sex workers were as confused as the general public—probably more scared. In 1983, the news media reported that AIDS had been seen in heterosexual women. Conjecture flew about how the disease was transmitted. Could you get it from kissing? From sharing a cigarette? Was it airborne? Like every surrogate I knew, I was trying to find reliable information and exact truth from the onslaught of rumor and speculation. I was also questioning if I could stay in my profession. I considered suspending my practice. Maybe it was time to look for other work. I had trained as a massage therapist. I supposed I could do that, but what if I touched someone who was sweaty? Could I get AIDS from that? If my worry wasn’t going to spiral into panic, I needed information fast.
The CDC issued a statement about the transmission of AIDS in 1983 saying, in part, that AIDS “ . . . seems most likely to be caused by an agent transmitted by intimate sexual contact, through contaminated needles, or, less commonly, by percutaneous inoculation of infectious blood or blood products.” They also said that there was no evidence that it was spread via air, or that casual contact posed a major risk. The picture became clearer. I could stop worrying that I or my kids would contract AIDS with a handshake or from a cough. Still, I needed a plan to keep myself as safe as possible. Surrogates were starting to leave the profession, and I had decided that I wasn’t going to follow them. I loved being a surrogate. It was my life’s work and I wasn’t going to walk away from it. I pledged to become as educated as I could about AIDS, and to change my practice to limit my vulnerability to it.
In 1984, Steven, a few other Bay Area surrogates and I piled into a van and drove to Palm Springs for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, or “Quad S” conference, where there would be much talk of AIDS and its transmission. We had gone to these conferences in the past, and while they were always an occasion for serious discussion, they were also festive. It was an opportunity for likeminded people to join together and to catch up with old friends. The days were spent learning, trading notes, and opining on the pressing issues in our field. The nights were for fun. We gathered together for dinner and drinks and the laughing and socializing often stretched into the early morning hours.
That a new era was in store for us couldn’t have been more evident at Quad S that year. Even the airy Southern California hotel with its aquamarine color scheme and curved walls couldn’t disguise the mood. People were crying and recalling friends and members of our community who had been taken by the scourge that was now upon us. Anxiety was high. These were surrogates and other sex educators, therapists, physicians, and a variety of other professionals. Many of us were reeling from losses and all were confused about how to best advise the people who turned to us for help. Past conferences seemed like a somewhat raucous college reunion. This one seemed more like a memorial service.
It was the first time I remember hearing the term “safe sex,” which later gave way to the more accurate “safer sex.” Our community may have been mourning, but it also had to become educated at breakneck speed. We were entering a new era in which the old fears of treatable STDs and pregnancy were nothing compared to what we now faced. The takeaway messages from the convention about prevention were unequivocal. Condoms were now a must. For the first time we learned about using dental barriers and non-microwavable plastic wrap for oral contact. If you wanted to stay safe, say goodbye to anonymous, unprotected sex. A new era had been foisted on us and its choices were stark. Our thinking may have been as progressive as ever, but our actions needed to become a lot more conservative.
When I returned to the Bay Area, I enrolled in a class on eroticizing latex at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. We learned how to turn condoms, dental dams, and other preventative tools into sex toys. In addition to providing us with potentially life-saving information, the class was proof that sex education could be fun. We practiced putting on condoms with our mouths and devised creative ways to have non-penetrative sex. I also learned how to erotically check that a condom stayed in place in the midst of vigorous intercourse. From then on I kept a supply of condoms at my office. Using them is mandatory—and fun. I started modeling not just good, but safer sex.
15.
going oral: kevin
Like many people, I roared with laughter at the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry finally shares “the move” with George. It may have been especially funny for me because people sometimes think I teach “techniques” that are sure to please all women (or men). But I don’t teach them, and they don’t exist. What drives one person wild may have another reaching for the TV remote.
The technique I do teach, however, and that has a proven track record of working, is communication. Sometimes it can be communication about serious underlying issues, but more often it’s simply the ability to talk about what feels pleasurable and what doesn’t. It’s tough for some of us to tactfully tell a partner that we don’t like what he or she is doing, and to suggest an alternative. We worry about bruising egos or hurting feelings, and there is a great temptation to avoid discussion that makes us feel awkward. It’s comforting to think that not talking about a problem will somehow make it go away, but we all know that doesn’t work. It drives whatever the problem is underground where it can fester and mutate into more of an issue than it ever would be out in the open.
Talking honestly and respectfully about what works and what doesn’t under the sheets is the best way I know to build an exciting sex life. Many clients have proven this to me, but the one who exemplified it the most was Kevin, who came to see me in the mid-1980s.
Kevin was suffering from what he called “impotence.” He had a girlfriend, Diane, whom he loved, but he regularly lost his erection with her. Diane had begun to wonder if he didn’t find her attractive, or if he was bored with her, and this drove him to therapy. He didn’t understand how he could have such attraction for the wonderful woman in his life and not be able sustain an erection with her. He feared that there was something radically wrong with him, or that he was simply a bad lover whom Diane would eventually trade for a better one.
That Kevin was determined to change was evident at our first session. He had an earnest desire to understand and address his issue. He also had a level of frustration with himself that was at odds with the rational approach he had adopted. He knew self-blame wouldn’t fix the problem, but he felt it anyway.
I asked Kevin to talk about why he had come to see me.
“I don’t understand, and I’ve tried to look at it in every way I can,” he said.
He took off his wire-rim glasses and placed them on his khaki-covered knee.
“I mean, I love my girlfriend, she turns me on, and yet when we try to have sex, I lose my erection.”
Unlike many other clients, Kevin could talk
about sex without embarrassment. Words like “erection” are difficult for some clients even to utter, but I couldn’t detect any change in his demeanor as he said it.
I asked him if he had experienced this in the past.
“Never. And Diane is the first woman I truly love,” he said.
“Do you become partially or completely flaccid when you lose your erection?”
“Completely. It’s like I go back to not being aroused at all.”
I asked Kevin if there was a pattern to how he and Diane typically made love. Did they start with foreplay, or just jump into it? What kind of touch did they engage in? Who typically initiated sex?
“When we first started seeing each other, I mostly made the first move, but now I’m so scared of failing that I’ve backed off. For a while Diane was initiating, but now she’s scared too. When we were having . . . er . . . trying to have sex, we started with foreplay, which we both love. We French kiss and touch each other all over. Then she goes down on me or I eat her out. That’s usually when the problem starts. That’s when I lose it, and ruin everything.”
“Do you both enjoy oral sex?”
“Yes, I like getting it and giving it, and so does Diane.”
Given this, it was curious that the mood typically shifted at this point. It would be important to pay close attention to how Kevin responded when I performed oral sex on him during the Sexological. Maybe this would give us both some clues to what was undermining his sex life.
“Kevin, this isn’t your fault, or anyone’s fault. We’ll try to get a better sense of what’s underlying your issue as we work through some exercises, but one thing that will help is if you can try to let go of self-blame. Let’s start with you trying to be compassionate with yourself and not seeing this as a failure on your part. Deal?”
“Okay. Deal,” Kevin replied, somewhat grudgingly.
An Intimate Life Page 18