An Intimate Life (12 page)

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 what 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

W
hen, 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.

“Seventy?” I asked Carol, a local therapist who sometimes sent clients to me. “Seventy. He just celebrated his birthday,” she answered. Carol smiled and took a sip of coffee. We were sitting in a café around the corner from her office when she told me about Larry. By this time I had been a surrogate for roughly three decades, and working with septuagenarians wasn’t new for me. I did a double take not because of his age, but because of the issue he was dealing with: Larry was a seventy-year-old virgin.

“Wow. Pretty brave of him to tackle this now,” I said.

“So I guess I’ll send him your way?” Carol replied.

A few days later Larry called and scheduled his first appointment with me.

He had a full head of straw-colored hair and a grey-flecked beard. His eyes were so dark that the pupil and the iris were indistinguishable. At seventy, he continued to work at the engineering firm he had helped to start nearly forty years earlier. He couldn’t remember a time in his career when he worked fewer than fifty hours a week.

Even though it was January, he wasn’t wearing a coat. When I asked if he was warm enough he said that January in the Bay Area was like the Caribbean compared to the Chicago winters he had grown up with. “They weatherproofed me for life,” he added. I smiled and motioned for him to sit down on my office sofa.

Larry was articulate and insightful, and he had thought a great deal about how his upbringing had shaped his life. He was an only child raised by parents in a miserable marriage. His mother devoted nearly all of her energy and attention to Larry. “My mother sacrificed everything for me,” he said, “and she demanded a lot of me in return.” Academic achievement was everything. While she would never admit it, Larry had believed for a long time his mother expected him to support her after he had completed the advanced degree that would land him a high-paying job.

He knew from an early age that his mother felt trapped. She had little education and at the time there were few career options for women, so she stayed with his father, the breadwinner of the family. She insisted that socializing and dating were luxuries Larry could indulge in later, after critical goals had been achieved and his economic status secured. “Frivolous. That’s what my mother called any extracurricular activity, including dating,” he said. “She thought if I got a good education and then a good job, everything else would just fall into place. It made me think that affection was some kind of prize you earned for accomplishing stuff, not something you just got for being you.” There was a directness that bordered on urgency in how he talked, and, unlike many other clients, I had to do very little to ease his history out of him. Larry wasn’t only ready to have sex, he was ready to tell his story.

When Larry finally suspected he had achieved enough to merit a relationship, he was already in his thirties and so self-conscious and anxious about his lack of experience that his attempts at intimacy fell flat. He recounted one particularly painful story about a woman he dated for a brief time. Kathleen was attractive, funny, and smart and he fantasized about a future with her. “I dreamed of coming home to her every day, of her face lighting up when I walked through the door, of her . . . wanting me,” he said. When Kathleen started to talk about past relationships, however, Larry quickly changed the subject to one he was more comfortable with. His level of education gave him plenty of other topics to choose from, and he became what he called a “master of the creative segue,” a skill he found useful whenever a conversation shifted to talk of relationships.

Their third date was the last for Larry and Kathleen, and the last ever for Larry. He remembered that she wore a tight pink dress and he felt aroused from the moment he saw her that night. As he sat across the table from her at dinner, he felt himself getting hard and he started to panic. He got so jittery he spilled his glass of wine. “In my mind I tried to talk myself down and focus on the conversation as much as I could, especially since I could see my anxiety was making her nervous,” he said. As dinner went on he relaxed and by the end they were feeling close enough for Kathleen to ask him to continue on to her apartment.

They walked hand in hand and there were moments when Larry thought this might be the night that ushered him into a world it seemed every other adult but he had entered already. “I kept thinking that the next day I would wake up a different person—a normal person,” he said. After a quick drink, Kathleen led Larry into her bedroom. They sat on the bed and started kissing, or tried to. When Kathleen pressed her lips to his, Larry’s anxiety escalated to panic. “I felt like I was being speared through my chest and I could feel my stomach convulsing,” he said. He got up, stammered good night to a confused Kathleen, and left. He bolted down the two sets of stairs that led to her apartment and continued to run until he could barely breathe. “I literally ran away,” he said. He looked down at his shoes, and I could hear him saying “okay, okay, okay” softly as he tried to pull back from crying.

“It’s very brave of you to come here, and you’re not alone in your anxiety,” I said.

He leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed for a few seconds and then told me he didn’t want to die without having sex.

Larry had run away from so much that night and it was heartbreaking to think of someone going through his whole life without tasting the joy and intimacy of sex and relationships. While he may have stayed in it longer than most, Larry was in a vicious circle that traps and paralyzes too many of us. He was anxious and fearful because of his lack of experience. This led him to avoid sex and kept him inexperienced, which compounded his anxiety, which, in turn, made him more averse to sex and intimacy. The sad outcome of all of this was the grinding loneliness Larry lived with for nearly all of his seventy years.

We talked for a little while longer. I told him about the surrogacy process and reassured him that his fear was not uncommon and that we would go at a pace that was comfortable for him.

When we got to the bedroom, I closed the blinds, drew back the beige top sheet on my bed, and we both undressed. We lay down on our backs next to each other and I asked Larry if he was comfortable. He wanted to trade sides with me.

Larry was wide-eyed and a film of sweat covered his forehead.

“It’s natural to feel anxious at this stage. It’s why I always start by teaching some relaxation exercises,” I said.

I asked Larry to put his hand on his abdomen and to start breathing deeply enough that he could see his hand rise and fall with each breath. I joined him, and we lay beside each other inhaling and exhaling for a couple of minutes.

“Now, let’s check in with your body so you can free any tightness in it,” I said.

I asked Larry to close his eyes and bring his mind to the top of his head. “In your mind’s eye see the top of your head. Then feel where your head meets your neck. If you’re holding any tension in the back of your neck, drop your chin slightly and see if that makes it more comfortable. As I walk you through your body, make any adjustments you need to be more at ease.

“Now be aware of your shoulders and your shoulder blades and the space between them. Be aware of the contact they make with the bed. Notice where your shoulders and your arms connect. Come down your upper arms, into your elbows, forearms, wrists, and hands. Take slow, deep breaths. Then come back to your chest. Be aware of your pectorals. Then your abdomen.”

We continued to drift down his body.

When we reached his feet, I asked him to wiggle his toes and then let them relax.

Larry and I took a few more breaths together.

“How do you feel now?” I asked.

“Better. More fluid, not as tight,” he said.

We moved on to Spoon Breathing. Larry lay on his side and I nestled behind him. “Just take nice, easy, normal breaths,” I said. I followed the rhythm of his breathing and soon we were breathing in and out together.

Spoon Breathing usually makes clients feel safe and nurtured, and I could feel Larry’s body become ever looser as we snuggled together, breathing in unison.

I stayed in this position a few minutes longer than I normally would have. This was the first time Larry had been touched in a sensual way in decades. I knew he was frightened and I wanted him to have a sense of feeling secure and cared for.

After several minutes, Larry rolled over onto his abdomen and we began Sensual Touch. I started at Larry’s feet. They were bony and he had thick toenails. I cradled his feet in my hands and made circles around the arches and heels.