An Intimate Life (24 page)

“I decided to wipe the slate clean, to forget about my experience in Bangkok and to just focus on finding a woman I could love. I thought the sex would naturally follow. I thought I just needed to be in love with a woman for my plumbing to function properly. If I just relaxed, it would happen.”

He returned home from Vietnam more mature and with a good measure of confidence. He could handle himself in tough situations and knowing this gave him hope that he would get past his personal troubles. When he looked around, he saw couples everywhere. If they can do it, so can I, he told himself. Also, he was only twenty-three. Maybe some of his friends got started earlier, but he was still young enough for his virginity to be unremarkable.

Bob met Jane at work. She was statuesque with a pretty face framed by long black curly hair. She was quiet yet friendly, and he was attracted to her instantly. After some shy flirting, Bob took a chance and told her he had two tickets to see George Carlin and asked if she wanted to join him. Bob soon realized, much to his surprise and delight, that his strong feelings of affection were reciprocated.

“I was flying high as a kite. I finally knew what all the talk about the thrill of first love was about,” he said.

That summer Jane quit her job to work at a tiny resort near Yosemite. She encouraged Bob to visit her as soon as he could. Two weeks later he found himself driving with much anticipation up Route 120 for a long weekend tryst with Jane. He couldn’t remember ever having been happier.

He and Jane hiked the enchanting High Sierra backcountry trails together. At night they retreated to his mattress-equipped van, and enjoyed energetic and delicious foreplay. They pleasured each other with their mouths and hands, but when it came time for intercourse Bob suddenly stalled. He felt a familiar sense of dread well up in him. Once again, he couldn’t get an erection. Sweet Jane tried to comfort him. She assured him that this was just an anomaly and soon they would have intercourse that was as sublime as their foreplay.

“I wanted to believe her, but this time I was mortified and deeply disappointed with myself. I couldn’t blame my surroundings anymore,” Bob said.

He tried another few times with Jane, but an unfortunate pattern had been set. The intimacy and excitement would build between them and then he would panic, tense up, and think back to his other false starts. As much as he was attracted to Jane, and as much as he craved sex and intimacy with her, he couldn’t get an erection.

“I tried to reassure Jane that it wasn’t her, but I think she came to believe that I just wasn’t attracted to her.” She didn’t know how to deal with it. She had never encountered a situation like that before.

After several more long weekend visits to Yosemite, Jane lost interest and started avoiding him. His letters went unanswered.

Bob was crushed, and he sank into a depression that didn’t lift for several years. He blamed himself. He was trapped in loneliness and saw no escape. He thought of it as a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement. He was his own jailer, except he didn’t have the key for his release.

“Did you see a professional for your depression at that time?” I asked.

“I saw a psychiatrist for a few months, but it didn’t help. But at my last appointment he did give me the number for the UC San Francisco Human Sexuality Department. He told me that they could refer me to a therapist who worked with surrogates. That was five years ago. I couldn’t call them until now.”

“What made you finally do it?”

“I know I have to change. I can’t go through life like this anymore. I’m tired of being lonely and I’m tired of hating myself. What have I got to lose at this point?”

Bob had a textbook case of performance anxiety. He was mired in the vicious circle that he recognized in himself, and it was my job to help him break it.

Throughout our work together, I did a number of exercises with him. Sensual Touch was one of the most important because it took his focus away from his penis and broadened it to his whole body. I wanted him to experience sensuality and pleasure and let his penis follow along in any way it wanted. We did the Sexological and discovered that he was highly reactive and had many areas of sensitivity. I also taught him communication skills and touching techniques.

Bob gradually overcame his performance anxiety and got better at achieving and maintaining an erection. In our sixth session, Bob and I had intercourse, and he finally lost his virginity. This was a huge victory, but one problem persisted. He had delayed ejaculation. This is not uncommon for men who struggle with anxiety. Bob couldn’t come when he was inside of me or when I stimulated him with my hand or mouth. He could only bring himself to orgasm by masturbating after I had come.

During our last session I encouraged Bob to continue with the exercises he had learned during our time together. I told him, truthfully, that in time I thought he would be able to ejaculate while having intercourse. Then I went into the bathroom to shower and he followed me.

Bob called me the day after our final session to tell me he would pick me up next Wednesday for our photo outing to the University of California’s Botanical Garden. Since Bob was no longer a current client it was easier to give myself permission to date him. When he was my client, it had been difficult to come to terms with what was unfolding on a personal level.

Like therapists, surrogates are supposed to avoid personal entanglements with clients. But I felt such a deep connection with Bob that I couldn’t ignore it. He was unassuming, bright, and thoughtful. I could talk to him, the way I could talk to Michael, except that I didn’t have to contend with an outsized ego or the chronic fear that I somehow wasn’t enough. I didn’t see how anyone could be hurt by what we were doing.

When Wednesday arrived, I packed up my camera and waited for Bob at my home. Michael, who only worked sporadically, lay on our couch reading a book and when Bob rang the doorbell he let him in. I came out of the bedroom and found them chatting.

“Nice day for a visit to the Botanical Garden,” Michael said.

“Yeah, I’m hoping to get some good shots. Great light today.”

“I see you two have met,” I said.

“Well, I’ll let you two go,” Michael said and extended his hand to Bob.

It had been in one of our post-session conversations that I had told Bob about my open marriage and that I had recently broken up with my previous lover. Given the work I do he suspected that my marriage was not of the Ozzie and Harriet variety, but the more I got to know Bob the more I wanted him to know the particulars of my arrangement with Michael. If a personal relationship was in the cards for us he had to know that exclusivity would not be part of it—at least for the foreseeable future. While I wasn’t ready to admit it, I was starting to imagine a life without Michael to be at least possible, if not desirable.

Bob’s reaction was what I expected. He was nonjudgmental, curious, and accepting. He had an endearing quality of being open—even innocent—while still being worldly. It was one of the things I was coming to love about him.

Seeing Michael and Bob side-by-side was an interesting experience for me. I had always been attracted to men with large physiques and Michael was in that category. Bob, on the other hand, was more compact and wiry. And their personalities stood in sharp contrast too. Michael was cocksure about everything. He was a hedonist who always wanted things on his own terms. He felt compelled to foist his opinion into every conversation. C’mon Michael, you’re not delivering the Sermon on the Mount, I sometimes found myself thinking when he bloviated about one thing or another. Yes, he was a smart man, but his pontificating was starting to sound pompous and pedantic, and some people found him abrasive. Although Bob was much less sure of himself, and felt uncomfortable in social gatherings, he was much more present emotionally. There was an honesty and sincerity about him that was lacking in Michael. Being with him was more of a shared experience. And our bodies fit together perfectly. Sex with him was sweeter and more intimate than any I had experienced, even with Michael. Bob still suffered from delayed ejaculation and he could only come by masturbating himself after intercourse, but his performance anxiety was firmly a thing of the past. We both hoped that one day he would be able to climax inside of me. It was particularly important for Bob because he saw it as the final hurdle to achieving the kind of intimacy he had pined for all of his adult life.

As Bob and I drove up the Berkeley hills, the August air got warmer as we ascended. Bob parked just outside of the garden and we slung our cameras around our necks. We walked to one of its main paths where red rhododendron, yellow pansies, maroon-speckled white peonies, and a tapestry of other flowers vied for our attention. It was a clear day and the spectacular explosion of color made even a novice photographer like me eager to snap some pictures.

For someone who didn’t know an f-stop from a shortstop, I soon found myself beginning to comprehend some of photography’s basic concepts and terminology, such as shutter speed, aperture, focal length, and depth of field. It was clear Bob was enjoying our first outing together, and I was grateful for the gentle and patient manner in which he demystified my new camera.

Of all the experimental shots I took that afternoon, the two most memorable are of Bob walking on his hands down a narrow path, and standing on an arch bridge smiling back at me. The first showed his playfulness; the second his kindness.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was entering into a new phase of my life, with one foot each in very disparate worlds. The seeds of confusion had been sown, a new emotional landscape lay before me. I soon found myself on a passionate roller coaster, loving all my time spent with Bob and yet still wanting to make my marriage with Michael work.

Bob and I adopted a regular routine of seeing each other about once a week. We went to plays, movies, and museums. There were a few more photography lessons and lots of long hikes. It was all fun, but I think I was happiest when we just hung out, made love, and talked. Sometimes Bob looked at me with such love and affection in his eyes that I would get teary. Maybe love was simpler and sweeter than I had ever imagined.

Bob had season tickets to a few local theater companies and five months after our first date we made a plan to see
She Loves Me
, a romantic musical about two coworkers who don’t get along well in person, but fall in love via anonymous letters. Late in the morning of the chilly December day that we were set to see the play I went to Bob’s house and we had one of our leisurely afternoons full of lovemaking and conversation.

We both got so lost in the fun of the day that it came as a shock to suddenly realize that curtain time was only ninety minutes away. Hours had gone by as we lost ourselves in exuberant and blissful sex that had brought me to orgasm a number of times. We planned to have dinner before the show, but Bob was insatiable. We still had to shower and get dressed, and we could always put off dinner until after the play.

I was expecting the wonderful, but what I got was the sublime. With both our eyes and limbs locked in a passionate embrace and our hair and bodies slick with sweat, Bob and I climaxed together for the first time. It was the first time Bob had been able to come while having intercourse. The metamorphosis was complete. Now Bob not only had overcome his inability to get an erection, but his issue with delayed ejaculation.

As with so many men who struggle with this problem, his first orgasm inside a partner occurred totally unexpectedly when he was free of worry and concerns, making love with someone he both loved and trusted.

As Bob and I sat through the show that night watching the main characters, Georg and Amalia, unwittingly falling for each other, we held hands and exchanged loving glances. The music was beautiful, the lyrics clever, and the acting fabulous. Launching a relationship with a former client was risky, but our paths crossed, the moment was right, and the risk paid off in spades.

12.

a second family

A
s we began the 1980s, Michael and I were as close to monogamous as we would ever come. The first few years after we had opened our marriage were a time of intense experimentation for both of us, but eventually we traded extracurricular dalliances for regular and reliable outside relationships. Mine was with Bob, and Michael’s was with someone he’d met in 1976 at SFSI.

Meg wasn’t Michael’s type. He usually fell for Rubenesque sorts whose personalities were as voluptuous as their bodies. He loved curvy, outspoken, fun-loving women. Meg was short and slight. She wore her blonde hair close-cropped and had a tomboyish quality about her. An avid biker and runner, she had a taut, muscular body with little extra in the way of padding. She was also quiet and pensive. When I first met her I thought she would be just another one of Michael’s flings that would fizzle soon enough.

I had made a certain peace with our arrangement. There were even moments when our parallel lives seemed to strike a comfortable equilibrium. Michael and I could enjoy outside lovers and still honor our primary commitment to our children and the family we had created. At times I felt vindicated because of it, like I had proved my parents and their generation wrong. “See,” I wanted to say, “I broke all the rules and came out on top.” I had a career I loved, plenty of loyal friends, and, despite its eccentricity, a marriage that had lasted longer than many people had predicted. Overall, I was proud of how Michael and I had forged our own way in life, jettisoning convention and tradition that had outlived its usefulness and holding tight to what mattered.