On Seeing A Sex Surrogate
by MARK O'BRIEN
MARK O’BRIEN was a poet and journalist who lived in Berkeley, California. After contracting polio at the age of six, he spent most of his life in an iron lung. In 2012 Fox Searchlight Pictures released The Sessions, a film adapted from O’Brien’s essay “On Seeing A Sex Surrogate,” about having sex for the first time at the age of thirty-six. He is also the subject of the 1996 Academy Award–winning documentary Breathing Lessons. His work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and Whole Earth Review. He died in July 1999 from post-polio syndrome.
In 1983, I wrote an article about sex and disabled people. In interviewing sexually active men and women, I felt removed, as though I were an anthropologist interviewing headhunters while endeavoring to maintain the value-neutral stance of a social scientist. Being disabled myself, but also being a virgin, I envied these people ferociously. It took me years to discover that what separated me from them was fear — fear of others, fear of making decisions, fear of my own sexuality, and a surpassing dread of my parents. Even though I no longer lived with them, I continued to live with a sense of their unrelenting presence, and their disapproval of sexuality in general, mine in particular. In my imagination, they seemed to have an uncanny ability to know what I was thinking, and were eager to punish me for any malfeasance.
Whenever I had sexual feelings or thoughts, I felt accused and guilty. No one in my family had ever discussed sex around me. The attitude I absorbed was not so much that polite people never thought about sex, but that no one did. I didn’t know anyone outside my family, so this code affected me strongly, convincing me that people should emulate the wholesome asexuality of Barbie and Ken, that we should behave as though we had no “down there’s” down there.
As a man in my thirties, I still felt embarrassed by my sexuality. It seemed to be utterly without purpose in my life, except to mortify me when I became aroused during bed baths. I would not talk to my attendants about the orgasms I had then, or the profound shame I felt. I imagined they, too, hated me for becoming so excited.
I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be held, caressed, and valued. But my self-hatred and fear were too intense.
I doubted I deserved to be loved. My frustrated sexual feelings seemed to be just another curse inflicted upon me by a cruel God.
I had fallen in love with several people, female and male, and waited for them to ask me out or seduce me. Most of the disabled people I knew in Berkeley were sexually active, including disabled people as deformed as I. But nothing ever happened. Nothing was working for me in the passive way that I wanted it to, the way it works in the movies.
In 1985, I began talking with Sondra, my therapist, about the possibility of seeing a sex surrogate. When Sondra had originally mentioned the idea — explaining that a sexual therapist worked with a client’s emotional problems concerning sex, while a surrogate worked with a client’s body — I had been too afraid to discuss it. I rationalized that someone who was not an attendant, nurse, or doctor would be horrified at seeing my pale, thin body with its bent spine, bent neck, washboard ribcage, and hipbones protruding like outriggers. I also dismissed the idea of a surrogate because of the expense. A few years earlier, I had phoned a sex surrogate at the suggestion of another therapist. The surrogate told me that she charged according to a sliding scale that began at seventy dollars an hour.
But now my situation had changed. I was earning extra money writing articles and book reviews. My rationalizations began to strike me as flimsy.
Still, it was not an easy decision. What would my parents think? What would God think? I suspected that my father and mother would know even before God did if I saw a surrogate. The prospect of offending three such omniscient beings made me nervous.
Sondra never pushed me one way or another; she told me the choice was mine. She gave me the phone number for the Center on Sexuality and Disability at the University of California in San Francisco. I fretted over whether I would call; whether I would call and immediately hang up; whether I would ever do anything important on my own. Very reluctantly, when no one was around, I called the number, after assuring myself that nothing terrible would happen. I never felt convinced nothing terrible would happen, but I was able to take it on faith — a frail, stumbling, wimpy faith. With my eyes closed, I recited the number to the operator; I was afraid she’d recognize it. She didn’t.
“UCSF,” a voice answered crisply.
Trying to control the shakiness of my voice, I asked for the Center on Sexuality and Disability. I was told the Center had closed — and, momentarily, I felt immeasurably relieved. But I could be given a number to get in touch with the therapists who had once worked there. Would I like that? Uh-oh, another decision. I said ok. But at that number I was told to call another number. There, I was referred to yet another number, then another, then another. I quickly made these calls, not allowing myself time to change my mind. I finally reached someone who promised to mail me a list of the Center’s former therapists who were in private practice.
About this time, a tv talk show featured two surrogates. I watched with suspicion: Were surrogates the same as prostitutes? Although they might gussy it up with some psychology, weren’t they doing similar work?
The surrogates did not look like my stereotypes of hookers: no heavy makeup, no spray-on jeans. The female surrogate was a registered nurse with a master’s in social work. The male surrogate, looking comfortable in his business suit, worked with gay and bisexual men. The surrogates emphasized that they deal mostly with a client’s poor self-image and lack of self-esteem, not just the act of sex itself. Surrogates are trained in the psychology and physiology of sex so they can help people resolve serious sexual difficulties. They aren’t hired directly, but through a client’s therapist. Well aware of the likelihood that a client could fall in love with them, they set a limit of six to eight sessions. They maintain a professional relationship by addressing a specific sexual dysfunction; they aren’t interested in just providing pleasure, but in bringing about needed changes. As I learned more about surrogates, I began to think that perhaps a surrogate could help someone even as screwed-up and disabled as me.
When Sondra went on vacation, I phoned Susan, one of the sex therapists on the list I got fromucsf, and made an appointment to see her in San Francisco. I felt delighted that I could do something about my sexuality without consulting Sondra; perhaps that’s why I did it. I was not sure whether calling the therapist was the right thing to do in Sondra’s absence, or whether it was even necessary, but it felt good to me.
The biggest obstacle to seeing Susan turned out to be the elevator at the Powell Street subway stop, which went from the subterranean station to the street. Because of my curved spine, I cannot sit up straight in a standard wheelchair, so I use a reclining wheelchair which is about five and a half feet long. The elevator in the BART station was about five feet across, diagonally. Dixie, my attendant, raised the back of my wheelchair as high as she could and just barely managed to wrestle me and herself into the elevator. But when we reached street level, she could not get me out. This was ridiculous: if I could get in, the laws of physics should permit me to get out. But the laws of physics were in a foul mood that day. Dixie and I went down to the station level and discovered that I could get out down there. We complained to the station agent, who seemed unable to understand. We tried the elevator again. The door opened on a view of Powell Street. Dixie tried lifting and pushing the wheelchair out of that cigar-box elevator in every possible way.
“Well, do you want to go back to Berkeley?” she asked in frustration.
I thought what a waste it would be to go back now. I told her to raise the back of my wheelchair even higher. It put a tremendous strain on my thigh muscles, but now Dixie was able to wheel me out of the elevator with ease. Liberated, we strolled Powell Street, utterly lost.
Eventually, we found Susan’s office. Right away, I realized I could trust her. She knew what to ask and how to ask it in a way that didn’t frighten me. I described to her my feelings about sex, my fantasies, my self-hate, and my interest in seeing a surrogate. She told me the truth: it would never be easy for me to find a lover because of my disability. She told me that her cerebral palsy, the only evidence of which was her limp, had repelled many people. I found this hard to believe. She was so bright, so caring, so pretty in her dark and angular way. (I was already developing a crush on her.)
Susan said that she knew of a very good surrogate who lived in the East Bay, and that she would give the surrogate’s name and phone number to Sondra when she returned from her vacation. If I decided to go ahead with it, Sondra would call the surrogate and tell her to phone me.
Doing that now seemed less scary. Because of our talk, I had started to believe that my sexual desires were legitimate, that I could take charge of my sexuality and cease thinking of it as something alien.
When Sondra returned from vacation, she told me that she had a message from Susan on her answering machine. She asked why I had seen another therapist without informing her. Sondra seemed curious, not angry as I feared she might be — actually, as I feared my parents would have. I said that I wasn’t sure why I went to see Susan, but that I had felt odd discussing surrogates with Sondra, because she seemed to me to be so much like my idealized mother figure.
Meanwhile, I searched for advice from nearly everyone I knew. One friend told me in a letter to go ahead and “get laid.” Father Mike — a young, bearded priest from the neighborhood Catholic church — told me Jesus was never big on rules, that he often broke the rules out of compassion. No one advised me against seeing a surrogate, but everyone told me I would have to make my own decision.
Frustrated by my inability to get the Answer, a blinding flash that would resolve all my doubts and melt my indecision, I brooded. Why do rehabilitation hospitals teach disabled people how to sew wallets and cook from a wheelchair but not deal with a person’s damaged self-image? Why don’t these hospitals teach disabled people how to love and be loved through sex, or how to love our unusual bodies? I fantasized running a hospital that allowed patients the chance to see a surrogate, and that offered hope for a future richer than daytime tv, chess, and wheelchair basketball. But that was my dream of what I would do for others. What would I do for me?
What if I ever did meet someone who wanted to make love with me? Wouldn’t I feel more secure if I had already had some sexual experience? I knew I could change my perception of myself as a bumbling, indecisive clod, not just by having sex with someone, but by taking charge of my life and trusting myself enough to make decisions. One day, I finally said to Sondra I was ready to see a surrogate.
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