An Intimate Life (27 page)

In the days leading up to our first meeting, I did my best to manage my fear and trepidation. I had to remind myself frequently of the ultimate goal of this work. Pamela and I had another discussion about Bradley the day before my appointment with him. We talked about how I would alter my protocol to suit his treatment. We decided that given the intensive and customized therapy he was receiving from Pamela, I wouldn’t delve as deeply into his childhood and early sexual history as I did with other clients.

Like many pedophiles, he had been sexually abused as a child by a close family member. Pamela had been working with him for about three months. He complied with treatment, he reported to his parole officer when he was required to, and there was no indication that he had reoffended. Bradley was living near his sister and holding down a steady job as a technician at a local lab. He seemed to be doing all the right things, yet Pamela hadn’t seen him express much insight or remorse. Could someone like Bradley really be rewired and transformed, or was the pathology too insidious, too deep to be reached by surrogacy or any of the therapy modalities currently available?

I scheduled Bradley’s appointment for the morning, hoping to get it over with early in the day and limit the number of anxious hours that would inevitably lead up to the appointment. I got up earlier than normal and did some of the invaluable breathing and relaxation exercises I had learned in my surrogacy training. By the time he arrived, I had tamed most of my apprehension and was determined to do the best I could with him.

When I opened the door and saw this slight, dark-haired man, however, I felt a chill run down my spine. He was, in a word, creepy. My fingers started to tingle and my breathing sped up. I felt like a cord was being cinched around my shoulders and chest. I started talking immediately to pull myself out of my fear. “Thank you for coming,” I said. Bradley nodded and stepped into my office. He had ruddy skin and oily black hair that looked like it was unwashed and maybe recently dyed.

I asked a few perfunctory questions. He told me a bit about his limited experience with women, which involved failure to maintain an erection and difficulty staying in a relationship for more than a few weeks. The last time he’d had a girlfriend was eight years ago, when he was twenty-two. Bradley had a vacant, impervious quality I’d never encountered in anyone else. I described the surrogacy process to him and explained how it involved a gradual deepening of intimacy and regular feedback.

Then it was time to go to the bedroom. I felt my stomach gather into a knot, so I took a deep breath while I led Bradley down the hall. Once we’d undressed I noticed that his skin had a purplish tinge to it. I don’t want him on my sheets, I thought, even though I knew that’s where we were headed. As we lay next to each other, I started working through various relaxation exercises, as much for myself as for him. I asked him to close his eyes and to take some deep breaths. He ignored me and started chattering about the drive over, the food in prison, his upcoming fishing trip, his growing dislike of his boss, and any number of other random topics. Every time I tried to encourage him to quietly focus on his body and take deep breaths he would stop talking for a few seconds and then return to rambling.

Lying beside him was difficult, and for the first and only time in my career, I decided to omit Spoon Breathing. I simply couldn’t stand to be that close to him. We began Sensual Touch. I knelt down on the floor and started touching Bradley’s feet. His toenails were too long and had crescents of grime beneath them. A voice in my mind screamed, Get the hell out of here! If only I could. By this time I had moved my office into my home. If I fled I would have to leave Bradley there. I continued up Bradley’s body. His skin was cold and clammy and the backs of his knees were crisscrossed with spider veins. He smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes.

Bradley had not stopped yammering and as I made my way up his body he started talking about things that made my flesh crawl. He told me about Gina, the child he had molested. She was the seven-year-old daughter of a former employer.

“Bradley, it’s important for you to try to concentrate on your body right now. Just follow my hands and notice what kind of sensations you have as I touch you.”

“Gina betrayed me,” he said, totally ignoring my latest plea for quiet. “Theresa would never do that.”

“Theresa?” I asked.

“My neighbor with the blonde curls,” he said.

My hands were on the backs of his sinewy thighs.

“Theresa comes over after school to look at me in my special shorts. The ones she can see me in.”

I took my hands off of him and sat back on my knees.

“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

“H
ow 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 that 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.