An Intimate Life (6 page)

The afternoons with her devolved into a predictable and frightening cycle: She would tell me to read a word, I would read it incorrectly. “Sound it out,” she would demand, and when I still misread it she would grab my arm and squeeze it so hard that I sometimes cried out in pain. Once, she became so enraged after I misread “can” three times that she lifted me off my chair by my arm and then slammed me back into it. I started having so much anxiety that the words on the page blurred when I tried to read them, which made my performance and my mother’s anger worse.

What I couldn’t understand and what I would resent for years was that my mother was an otherwise compassionate woman. We had a neighbor Greta who was mentally handicapped. I had seen my mother be so gentle and kind with her. I had seen her insist that Greta be treated with dignity and respect. And it wasn’t just with Greta that my mother showed tenderness. She was a good neighbor who readily helped anyone who needed a hand. Why couldn’t she show any sensitivity to me? Did she know that there was something bad about me? I figured I must have been fundamentally unlovable and in need of drastic improvement. Trouble was, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to better myself.

I was probably in third grade when I concluded that something about myself had to be kept secret. I had come to believe that I was what was then called “retarded.” I just didn’t show it like Greta did. I had to keep it quiet or I would never be allowed in the same classroom as my friends—that is, if any of them still wanted to be my friend after they found out. I would become a social outcast and an embarrassment to my family. Nanna Fournier was the only one who would probably stand by me, but I wouldn’t tell her. She might still love me, but imagine her disappointment if she found out. Certainly no one would want to ever marry me if this got around. On one hand, I thought I was lucky not to be obviously retarded. On the other, I suspected I might be better off if I were. Then, at least, people would lower their expectations and I wouldn’t disappoint them.

At the end of each school year, I dreaded the terrible news that I would have to repeat a grade. To my relief, it never came. I managed to squeak by from year to year. Maybe it was to compensate for my academic deficiencies, but I soon became a real cutup, and at times a devilish one. I could chat with anyone and loved to talk. I was, by nature, an optimist and even a leader, at least on the playground. I learned that I was funny and had a knack for socializing and storytelling. I could reenact movie scenes, reeling off the dialogue in the voice of Natalie Wood or Tony Curtis or any of the other popular movie stars of the time. I could make my classmates laugh and they liked me for it.

By the time I reached junior high, I couldn’t always hide my poor performance in school, and my friends started to help me keep pace with the rest of my class. Often before heading off to school we met at Martha’s Sweet Shop around the corner from St. Mary’s. Martha’s had a soda fountain and played the latest and hippest rock and roll. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Big Bopper—my friends and I swooned over them while we enjoyed Lime Rickeys and English muffins smothered in butter and jam. My compatriot Lisa and I would sit next to each other on the stools that swiveled all the way around and she would carefully go over my homework, replacing my mistakes with the right answers.

Unfortunately for me, our morning cheat sessions didn’t last beyond the first few months of the eighth grade. One chilly morning as “Chantilly Lace” blared from the jukebox and Lisa and I huddled over my math homework, I spun around and saw two dark figures approaching the door, their habits swirling around them like smoke. As they got closer there was no mistaking them: Sister Agnes Genevieve, my eighth-grade teacher, and Sister Alice, the Mother Superior. Somehow they had found out about the pre-class homework swapping at Martha’s, and they put an end to it that day. Even though I worried about how I would now eke out passing grades, I was partly relieved that the sisters had intervened. Cheating was, after all, a sin—one that I could now ill afford since I had begun committing the queen mother of sins: masturbation.

Since the concept of self-esteem had a long way to go before it would become part of the popular culture and something that good teachers would be careful not to undermine, most nights I was racked with anxiety about the humiliation the next day might bring, and unable to sleep. Unfortunately, the antidote was a mortal sin.

Starting when I was around ten, I masturbated and brought myself to orgasm nearly every night. It was the only thing that helped me relax and fall off. If my nights began with anxiety, my days began with guilt. I became convinced that every earache, every toothache, every injury was God punishing me. Later, I had painful periods that often kept me in bed. These, too, I thought were God’s judgment. I couldn’t escape his gaze or his wrath. Sometimes I imagined my guardian angel looking away in disgust as I touched myself and rocked back and forth in my bed.

I had displeased God and my Guardian Angel. Not to mention, my mother. One evening she caught me masturbating and bellowed, “Get your hands out from under the blanket now!” as she stood in my bedroom doorway.

The priests to whom I confessed were equally appalled. Every Saturday afternoon as I reeled off the “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” that were supposed to absolve me of the sin I committed under the covers, I pledged, again, to resist temptation. My confessors let me know that I was guilty of a particularly vile sin and that I was doing nothing less than letting down Jesus Christ himself with my unwillingness to resist it. They were disgusted and disappointed with me. Soon, they would have even more reason to feel this way.

3.

irreconcilable differences: brian

F
ather Dennis had a baritone voice that made him sound like he spoke for God himself. In the confessional his full-throated announcement of penance carried with it as much condemnation as salvation and I dreaded it so much that my voice shook as I listed my sins, which invariably included masturbation. But that was a long time ago. It was part of a childhood policed by a God who was as vindictive as he was omniscient. A God, who, by 1976, I no longer believed in. Still, it was Father Dennis’s bottomless voice that I flashed on as I listened to Brian, a client who came to me in the fall.

I was three years into my career as a surrogate partner at that time and one of around one hundred in the profession. Today there are few trained surrogates in the United States. The International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA) puts the number at fifty. Even in the late 1970s, when the numbers were at an all-time high, I would estimate that there were no more than two hundred of us, most living and practicing on the coasts.

Brian met me in the one-bedroom apartment I had converted into an office. I used the living room as a consultation room and the bedroom for the physical part of my work with clients. When I decorated the apartment I did my best to make it a place that clients would feel comfortable and at ease in. I had overstuffed chairs in the living room, and the walls were painted a soft peach. Fresh cut flowers often adorned the end tables and I usually made snacks available. The last thing I wanted was for a client to feel like he was in an austere, clinical environment.

At thirty-two, Brian suffered from difficulty achieving and maintaining an erection. His penis would only partially stiffen for a few short minutes before turning flaccid again. He had struggled with this since his marriage broke up two years ago, and it was easy to see why. Cecile, Brian’s now ex-wife, was a devout Catholic and she divorced him because she had caught him masturbating in their bedroom one afternoon. I found it interesting that she was willing to overlook the Catholic ban on divorce, but not its prohibition on masturbation. I never met Cecile, but I wondered about the agony she must have felt at having to weigh the sin of divorce against the sin of masturbation and make a choice that would leave her religious conviction, not to mention her immortal soul, intact. In this difficult reconciliation, it was clear which evil was judged the lesser.

Brian was short and stocky. He owned an auto mechanics shop that he had worked hard to build into a thriving business. He sat in the easy chair across from me and bounced his leg up and down nervously. He recounted the day Cecile stumbled upon him in the act. “She only wanted it once a week, so I used to do it a lot. I usually did it in the shower or at the shop after everyone went home,” he said. “But that day, I was in the bedroom. It was a Saturday and she was out in the garden, so I thought she’d be outside for a while and that I was safe.”

He had almost climaxed when Cecile opened the door and screamed, “What are you doing?” Brain scrambled to get on his pants, covering his penis with his hand. “It was like I was ashamed not just because of what I was doing, but of being naked, of my body.”

Cecile made Brian sleep on the couch that night. The next morning she told him that what he was doing was a sin and it was perverted. He was a married man. He should have outgrown his need to masturbate. If he loved her, he wouldn’t do this.

Not only had Cecile imbibed the Catholic dogma about masturbation, she also harbored one of the more persistent myths about it. She believed that once you got married, you “matured” sexually and that meant leaving masturbation behind and transferring your sexual energy to your spouse. Sure, it was 1976, the sexual revolution still had some steam left, and it was the progressive Bay Area, but old myths die hard.

A few awkward weeks passed before Cecile announced she wanted a divorce. Brian pleaded with her not to leave. He promised he would never touch himself again. He offered to go to counseling. All of this left Cecile apparently unmoved, and before the end of the year the divorce was finalized.

As we made our way through our first session, Brian talked a lot about Cecile. I had a strong sense of what she thought, but what did Brian think? Did he see himself as guilty? “I don’t know. I don’t think she would have left if I wasn’t doing something terrible,” he said. “I destroyed my marriage over . . . that.” He ran his hand through his honey-colored hair. “I know that I haven’t been able to have a real erection since she caught me. It’s been two years now and I keep hoping it’s going to change.”

“It’s sounds like you are punishing yourself,” I said.

“Probably,” he said.

“Brian, it’s unfortunate Cecile is so misinformed, and maybe one day she’ll get better information, but you did nothing wrong. Masturbation is natural and healthy.”

“Even if you’re married?”

“Married, single, divorced, engaged, cohabitating. Yes, there’s nothing wrong with masturbation.”

I think Brian knew this on some level, but hearing it from me reinforced it. Surrogacy work often begins by assuring people that sexual impulses are no cause for shame. Brian’s thoughts were ambiguous, at best, about what he had done. He may not have believed self-pleasuring was a marriage-killing sin, but he was far from comfortable with it. I asked him to tell me his views on masturbation and what he had been taught about it.

“I was raised Catholic, so I was told it’s a sin. I guess I never wanted to believe that. No one ever discussed it in my family or anywhere else. I don’t know. A lot of my friends think that a real man doesn’t need to do it because he has a woman.”

I assured Brian that those ideas were myths, too, and I asked him what happened when he started to become aroused and touched himself.

“I start to fantasize, but then I catch myself and shut it down. Then I get anxious about whether or not I’ll ever be able to have another hard-on. The irony is that I haven’t been able to masturbate since Cecile left me.”

He added that since the divorce, the few times he had been with a partner had ended in embarrassment and apologies for not being able to “perform.” This humiliation and the fear that he would never have another relationship spurred him to see the therapist who eventually referred him to me.

“I have a homework exercise for you,” I said. “I want you to give yourself permission to fantasize. Try to initiate fantasies throughout the next couple of weeks and try to give yourself the okay to continue with them. Remember, they are just fantasies, so they can be anything you want—they can be immoral, illegal, or fattening—anything.”

Like many clients, Brian was in a bind. I could sense that he was curious and wanted to separate sexual fact from fiction. On the other hand, he was so guilt-ridden and afraid of sexuality that even learning more about it felt wrong. Clients frequently arrive with plenty of opinions, feelings, and attitudes about sexuality. The problem is that too often they are forged by cultural fallacies, media-generated stereotypes, and plain old lies. I continue to be amazed at how solid education delivered without judgment can eradicate much of the guilt and shame that turns life in the bedroom into a struggle instead of a pleasure.

I asked Brian if he was ready to try some physical exercises. When he said he was we headed to the bedroom and got undressed. I peeled away the quilt on the bed and invited him to lie down. Then I got into bed next to him.