An Intimate Life (30 page)

I could account for my father’s unexpectedly easy response in a few ways. To be sure, he had mellowed with age, but I sensed there was something deeper at play. I think my dad had decided that he wanted a relationship with me and that meant he had to accept me for who I was. The father I grew up with would have been mortified by the disclosure I had made on national TV. While I didn’t ask him to confirm it, I also thought that he may have even seen the value in what I do. When King had asked me how I help people as a surrogate, I responded that few of us grow up with any credible sex education. Our ideas about what our sex lives should be come from conversations with our friends, movies, books, and pornography—all notoriously unreliable sources. With that kind of misinformation, it’s no wonder so many people are confused and distressed. I explained that a big part of my work is to educate people so that they have more realistic expectations of themselves and others. My father’s generation, those who came of age in the ’30s, and mine in the ’50s, lacked any reliable sex education. We both had grown up in a time when talking about sex was taboo. I was trying to share what I had learned so that later generations wouldn’t come of sexual age in an information vacuum. Maybe he actually thought that was worthwhile. At any rate, he ended the conversation with, “Let us know the next time you’re on TV.”

My mother stayed tight-lipped until my next visit, which came about four months later. Several years earlier, Mom and Dad had moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. When I arrived in early summer it was so hot that I spent most of the time indoors, where the temperature was made arctic by the air conditioner squeezed into the living room window. I had hoped my mother would bring up the show, but by the third day of my visit I recognized that if I wanted to discuss it I would have to make the first move. I was proud of how I had handled myself in the interview, and I thought Steven and I offered a realistic depiction of surrogacy work. As my mother watched the news one evening, I sat down next to her on the couch. I asked her if she had seen
Larry King
along with Dad, even though I was almost certain she had. She nodded and sat up a little straighter. I thought of just dropping it, but I pushed ahead. I was going to explain my work to my mother. If I was prepared to reveal and defend my profession before the American public, I could do it in front of my mother.

“I’m glad you saw it,” I said, wagering, perhaps unrealistically, that our talk would go well.

Mom said nothing.

“I thought I did a good job of explaining my work.”

I wanted my mother to agree with me, or disagree, or tell me to shut up, or just say something. Instead she just stared at me, her face resolutely neutral.

“I’m trying to help people feel less ashamed and confused about sexuality. We don’t come from a culture that opens up comfortably about it. We barely talk about it, and parents aren’t given any education about how to talk to their kids. There’s nothing I like more than helping people feel more comfortable with their sexuality, and have more information than I did.”

I stopped there because I didn’t want it to seem like I was accusing her. I was tired of fighting with my mother.

“You don’t have to talk about that stuff. It just happens naturally,” she said.

She’d finally said something. It was wrong, but she had piped up and at least acknowledged me.

“No, Mom, it doesn’t. Our brains are too complex for it just to happen naturally. We live in a culture that’s negative about sexuality. We don’t approach it from an informed perspective, and we’re given constant mixed messages about it. Sex may be natural, but it doesn’t happen naturally.”

I looked at my mother, trying to gauge whether any of what I was saying was getting through to her, but she maintained an expressionless face. We sat there and looked at each other for a few seconds. Although my mother was pretty icy, I had to acknowledge that she wasn’t screaming at me or accusing me of scandalous behavior.

“Do you remember when I told Larry King that I work with disabled people? Well, that’s one of the most rewarding parts of my job, and I’m able to work with them as well as I do because of you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Do you remember Greta next door?”

Greta was the developmentally disabled girl whom my mother always treated with such dignity and respect. Once I came home and found the then twelve-year-old Greta sitting on our back steps crying. Blood trickled down her legs in two thin red stripes. My mother took Greta in, helped her bathe, and gave her a sanitary napkin. She sat her down at our kitchen table and made her a cup of tea, all the while talking to her in a reassuring but not patronizing voice. There was a boy who had a facial deformity who worked at the bus station that we would sometimes use. My mother always said hello and smiled at him just as she would anyone else.

“The way you treated them taught me a lesson about respecting everyone. It also taught me to look beyond what you see on the outside. I think about that a lot when I work with disabled people.”

My mother and I stared at each other. I wasn’t going to say anything. She would have to break the silence.

“I don’t know where you come from. You’re like nobody else in this family,” she said.

At least now she was calling me different. In the past she had called me so much worse. Maybe this wasn’t a warm and fuzzy moment, but it was progress.

I still grappled with which kind of media to engage with and which outlets to avoid. This was the beginning of the “trash TV” explosion, and a number of daytime talk shows jockeyed to be the most shocking, most titillating hour of the day. A year earlier Geraldo Rivera had waded into the fray with
Geraldo
. I had watched the show a few times and I knew that it was unabashedly sensationalistic, and that’s what I had to consider when they called several months after my
Larry King Live
appearance.

Marty Klein, a local therapist who I knew from SFSI and other organizations, had just published
Your Sexual Secrets: When to Keep Them, When and How to Tell
, and Geraldo was putting together a show based on this theme. Years ago I had confessed what I thought was a secret to Michael: that I sometimes masturbated to achieve orgasm if sex with him didn’t bring me to climax. I thought I was sparing his feelings and protecting his ego by waiting until he fell asleep before starting. When I told him about it, he was unfazed. In fact, he said it wasn’t much of a secret at all because he wasn’t always asleep when I thought he was. I had told Marty about this, and when the Geraldo producer asked if he knew a couple who had faced a secret, he sent him to me.

I knew that I couldn’t expect an in-depth discussion or debate on the show, but still, it was a chance to talk openly about sex in a national forum. I thought about Brian, my client whose wife left him for masturbating. If we could talk openly about this and other sexual practices, maybe we could reduce the suffering of people like Brian, not to mention his wife. So, even though I knew I wasn’t going to receive the most sensitive treatment, I went to New York with Michael to tape the episode. Remembering Dad’s request, I let my parents know that I was going to be interviewed on TV again.

Along with Marty Klein, Michael, and myself, the panel included a sex worker whose primary clientele were people with infantilism, a client of hers who secretly engaged in it, and a women who kept her exhibitionism under wraps.

To no one’s great surprise, the panel was treated as a freak show, a menagerie of oddballs on display for the amusement of the general public. The guest with infantilism, a little-understood condition in which people become aroused by being treated like babies, sat behind a screen and talked about how he liked to be bottle-fed and wear diapers. The exhibitionist revealed that she liked to have sex in phone booths and other public places. I must have seemed downright dull compared to them. They were on the fringes of human sexuality. I was just Cheryl Cohen, Secret Masturbator, or at least that’s how the caption under my face identified me to the viewing audience. Decades after I had masturbated on the sly because of guilt and shame, I had come out to the world as a secret masturbator. I had to admit I was a little amused by it. What would the nuns at St. Mary’s say? What would the priests say? What would my family say? The answer to that last question came soon enough.

“Burn it.” That was my beloved grandmother’s response when my cousin Jean showed her the VHS tape she had made of it. I talked to my cousin over the phone about a week after the show aired, and we laughed about Nanna Fournier’s response, but the tone got much more sober when it came to my parents. They had not said a word to anyone about the show and no one dared to ask. I was scheduled to visit them back East in a few months. They would either break their silence or they wouldn’t, and I wasn’t sure which worried me more.

Most in my crowd of friends and acquaintances responded to the show in a uniformly dispassionate way. If they had one complaint it was that it was a shame that an opportunity to have a national conversation about taboo subjects was reduced to an exercise in voyeurism. I decided that I would avoid outlets that I thought would sensationalize without making at least a token effort at serious discussion and education.

When I talked to my mother on the phone, I could hear the anger in her voice. If I thought we had made a modicum of progress when we talked about the Larry King interview, I now suspected that we were about to take a leap backward.

In a rare move, Michael decided to join me for the trip back East. As it neared, we needed to pick up a few travel items, and the Saturday before we were due to leave we got in the car and drove around Berkeley buying supplies. As we rolled up to a stop sign, a police car came up next to my side of the car and the driver beeped the horn. “What do they want? We haven’t done anything,” I said to Michael. The cop behind the wheel motioned for me to roll down the window. My stomach tightened as I cranked it down about halfway. There were two officers in the car and they were both smiling. “Hey, weren’t you guys on
Geraldo
?” the driver asked. “Good work,” they both said, and gave us a thumbs-up. Michael and I breathed a sigh of relief. Only in Berkeley. I loved living in the land where cops would applaud you for revealing a sexual secret on national TV, and where few people failed to understand my mission even if they thought doing the show didn’t exactly further it.

When Michael and I arrived at my parents’ house, I was reminded of just how much of a bubble good-old Berkeley is. My mother’s response was frosty from the outset. She couldn’t even muster a smile when we walked through the door. It was a shame. She was getting old. She had fine lines etched around her mouth and across her forehead. Would we make peace before it was too late? Luckily, Michael and I arrived at night so we excused ourselves and headed off to bed.

At breakfast the next morning I tried to steer the conversation toward topics I knew would please my parents. I talked about Jessica and Eric and how well they were doing. Michael stuck to talk about the weather. We polished off our eggs and toast quickly, and as soon as we were done we went our separate ways. Michael and I dashed out for a walk in the beautiful New England fall. The oak and maple trees looked like they were on fire with their dazzling array of yellow and orange and red. We walked hand in hand to the town center.

“Well, this has been fun,” Michael said sarcastically.

“I know. It’s the show. I know this is about
Geraldo
,” I said.

It had been around four or five months since the show had aired, and my mother’s anger hadn’t waned.

“I’m going to confront her about it when we get back. I’m sick of walking around on pins and needles. If she’s going to freak out, let’s get it over with.”

“Okay, but it’s probably best if I stay clear,” Michael replied.

“Of course it is.”

The crisp fall air was laced with the scent of burning firewood. It smelled comforting and homey. I only wished I was heading back to another home.

I could hear the sound of the TV when we walked through the door. I peeked into the living room and saw Mom sitting on the couch. My father was gone, probably running errands. Michael kissed me and headed to the kitchen.