Could You Be a Sex Surrogate?

"It's an open secret," one Los Angeles psychiatrist told me more than a year ago, "but lots of us are using sex surrogates now. For some clients, we've tried everything, and this is the only thing that works. It's a very powerful therapeutic adjunct." A colleague put it in homelier terms: "After all, you don't learn how to play tennis by talking about it."

What are surrogates? Who are they? Whom do they help? How do they help them? My vague wonderings turned into a concrete repertorial project when opportunity knocked in the form of an invitation to attend a dinner meeting of the Southern California Regional Chapter of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex. The society is a professional group, made up mostly of psychiatrists and psychologists, who meet regularly to share information they can use in their practice.

On this particular evening, they gathered—appropriately enough it seemed at the Tai o' the Cock Restaurant on La Cienega in Los Angeles to discuss "The Surrogate Partner in Sex Therapy." The group had a surrogate partner on the podium. She was Carolyn Symonds, a tall, rather plain woman who looked more like a scholar than a sexpot. Her hair was streaked with gray, and it just hung there on top of her head like a mop. She wore no makeup, but when she began to speak, her face became animated and her eyes shone with the fervor of a nun who has found a new cause. She told the group that she had been a surrogate working with doctors in the Los Angeles area for two and a half years and that she was now helping train surrogates herself at something called the Sensory Awareness Center in San Bernardino. "In my work," she said, " can see changes firsthand. I see men come to me as bundles of anxieties and leave with confidence and hope."

The discussion that followed was a lively one. One woman in the audience demanded to know how surrogates were different from prostitutes, and Carolyn Symonds replied that her work was therapeutic. Some one shouted out, "So's a prostitute's!" A psychiatrist in the audience asked, "Why can't therapists act as their own surrogates?"

Afterwards, I went up to Carolyn Symonds, introduced myself, and told her would like to do a story about her work. We agreed to discuss it further and parted, she to Santa Cruz, California, and I returning to New York City. We corresponded and she finally agreed to let me write about her work "But," she wrote, "if you really want to know what surrogate training is like, you should come to our next training session and be an aid.” She told me that four trainees, all women, would be coming soon to San Bernardino and each of them was supposed to be bringing a man who would work with one of the other trainees. One of the trainees was coming all the way from New York. Could I perhaps stand in as her aide? Maybe I could be a surrogate's surrogate.

Weekend One

So I returned to California and drove out to San Bernardino one Friday morning to find that the Sensory Awareness Center was an anonymous little house in a middle-class neighborhood north of town. I was 10 minutes late for the 8 PM start so I hurriedly knocked at a well-lighted door. No answer. Finally I pushed the door open and found myself in a big bedroom dominated by a huge king-sized bed. At the foot of the bed was a Sony videotape camera. Just then Carolyn came padding into the room. "I'm Kaiser," I said, pretending not to be surprised to find her nude.

"Bob," she said, "you're only a little late, but we've begun. Take off your clothes. Hang 'em up right here." I did so quickly, and when I turned naked to Carolyn, she stuck a gummed name tag on my chest and led me into a living room that was lit about as well as the usual photographer's darkroom. Some music was playing, there was a cluster of bodies in the middle of the room, and Emerson Symonds, Carolyn's former husband and the director of the Center, was sitting at a table with his legs crossed. He was a wiry fellow with a beard and a friendly smile. I shook his hand and he bade me get into the first warm-up exercise of the weekend, something he called a "group grope." So I joined the group. I touched others and others touched me. I backed, by accident, into the huge erect cock of one of the aides, which was startling. Well, I thought, at least one of us isn't scared.

Symonds modified the exercise. He asked each of us to close our eyes and take a partner for an exploration game. (I peeked long enough to see that by accident I had drawn a pretty young trainee). Symonds then told the trainees to explore—from head to toe. "Know him," he said, "as a blind man might, so that you could do a sculpture of him later. Start at the top of his head and finger every bump. Work down to the forehead… the eyes, the ears..." When my partner got to my lips, kissed her fingers, and smiled. She shook with soundless laughter. She got down on her knees to mold my waist. Symonds spoke again: "When you get to the genitals, do not linger there—but neither should you ignore them." My partner obeyed him. She didn't ignore, but after a brief inspection she continued on down my legs to my feet, turned me around, and worked her way right back to the top of my head.

Then I did her. She kissed my fingers when I got to her lips, just as I had done. I memorized the curves of her breasts and, dutifully, did not ignore her other interesting parts.

Meet and Greet

We stopped the exercise (one of a series called touchy-feelies), the lights came up, and we sat around on pillows for a discussion. I forgot what we said. I was too busy sizing up the group. Symonds was the guru and Carolyn was a kind of co-equal. Though the two of them had been separated for years, they still continued to work together as team teachers. There were not four other women, but five. Each had a name tag on her left breast.

Samantha was a voluptuous brunette of about thirty-five. She had a bemused smile on her face and kept hugging herself

Allie was fortyish, with dark hair and large lustrous brown eyes. She had a solid strength about her.

Jackie, who had great boobs, a sizable ass, and a dimpled face, looked like a college girl. She was taking notes.

Stacey, the girl had drawn in the touchy-feely exercise, was obviously the youngest in the group. She had a narrow ass, nice knockers, and a little blond cunt which she took pains to display by lying flat on her back during the discussion and thrusting her pelvis up and out.

Cass was mid-thirtyish and fat, but she had milk-white skin, a pretty face, and a Rabelaisian sense of humor which she employed at every opportunity. She was a New Yorker, and she made it plain from the start that she was the "Pandora" featured in a recent New York magazine article by Linda Wolfe about sex surrogates. I wondered for a giddy moment what it was like to be in Pandora's box.

As for the other three men, I won't give their names. They aren't professionals. They were simply giving their bodies for two weekends to science, as it were. One was a high school teacher, one a salesman, and the third a graduate student at UCLA. Nice guys. The salesman thought he might like to become a male surrogate. (The Center trains male surrogates, too, but they weren't doing it that weekend). The teacher, it turned out, was going through a hellish divorce and a teaching colleague had recruited him for this, thinking it would be a good distraction for him. The student from UCLA was the one with the big cock and he was there simply because he liked sex.

"Some of you may wonder," Carolyn was saying, "what all this touchy-feely stuff has to do with sexual dysfunction. The point is that we've got to start by getting away from an exclusive concentration on the genitalia, we've got to learn to enjoy our whole bodies." This, of course, is what we had been doing all evening, it was a familiar idea to anyone who had read Masters and Johnson or Dr. Reuben. If a man is impotent, if he can't get it up or keep it up, he tends to worry about it. Anxiety only compounds the problem. An impotent man should try to get pleasure from other parts of his body. He should enjoy himself without anyone's expecting him necessarily to come across with a sexual performance. Inevitably, nature takes its course.

We ended the evening, and sleeping arrangements were made. The trainees moved off to two A-frame structures in the backyard. Two of the men slept in the big king-sized bed had seen when first entered the house, while the salesman and I got settled down on the living-room floor. Symonds and Carolyn went into the second bedroom. Samantha came into the living room with some blankets and slept on the floor, too.

A Lesson Below the Belt

When I awoke the next morning Carolyn was cooking breakfast, and as soon as we finished eating we began something called the "sexological examination." In other words, we spent all day looking at one another's vaginas and penises. Carolyn explained that a big part of the female surrogate's work is to help the dysfunctional male eliminate the feelings of awe and alarm and the sense of dirtiness which many men (and women, too, for that matter) associate with the female genitalia. "A man ought to know what a woman's body is like and how it works." As Carolyn spoke, she was lying on a table with her knees bent up. She had a speculum with a light in it in one hand and a mirror in the other.

She went on to ask us if any of us knew the science behind the female orgasm. Carolyn took each of us by turns and showed us. The sensations are outside the vagina in the clitoris and at the opening of the vagina. She pulled back the hood of her clitoris and showed us, under a bright light, the pearly glans. She encouraged us to pull back the hood and gently touch the clit. Then she had each of us, one by one, insert a forefinger into her vagina while she squeezed her vaginal muscles. Imagining her vagina as resembling a clock, we found that when the forefinger was up at the twelve o'clock position, there was no pressure on the finger when she squeezed. At neither ten o'clock nor two o'clock was there any pressure either. But at four o'clock and eight o'clock we could certainly feel Carolyn's squeeze on our fingers. Moreover, Carolyn's sighs indicated that she was obviously getting some pleasure from the thrusting at four and eight o'clock.

At this point, Symonds brought in another table, placed it alongside the one Carolyn had been lying on and invited the surrogate trainees, two by two, to get up on the tables and go through the process Carolyn had just finished. We all took turns inserting the speculum, and looking into the vaginas. They were all the same—but all different too.

Next it was the men's turn for a sexological examination. As we had examined the four trainees, now they examined us. They sat on chairs all in a row and we lined up facing them with our cocks hanging down towards their laps. Carolyn encouraged them to handle our cocks and balls and report aloud on what they saw and touched. "Heavy balls!" cried Cass. "Huge," said Allie.

We stood before each surrogate in turn while they oohed and ahhed. "Does this feel good?" said Jackie, stroking the glans of my penis, "Uh, sort of," I said. She moistened her fingertips with saliva and stroked some more. "This feel better?" she asked, "Oh, yes," I said and moved on Stacey smiled up at me and started playing with my balls. I held my breath. Carolyn looked over at my glistening glans. "Be careful!'" she warned. Stacey knew what she meant. "We don't want any accidents," said Carolyn sternly. In a way was grateful for that intervention. In another, wasn't. My balls had begun to ache.

I went out in the backyard for a quick, cold outdoor shower. When I returned, Carolyn and Symonds had paired us up with permanent partners for the rest of the sessions. I drew the ox-eyed Allie. The high school teacher was given the little beauty who had turned me on, the salesman drew Cass, and UCLA got Jackie (a nice pairing this, two graduate students, for Jackie was doing her doctoral dissertation on the subject of sex surrogates).

"There aren't many rules around here," said Carolyn, "but one of the few is you don't sleep with your assigned partner or engage in any activity that hasn't been assigned yet."

"Does that mean we can sleep with anyone else?" asked Cass with a lascivious laugh.

Dinner Discussions

I dressed for dinner that evening—in my nightshirt, which everyone thought was pretty funny. After dinner, of course, so as not to appear too singular, I took it off. We had a discussion, a pretty wide-ranging one, with eager Cass asking the most questions.

Cass had been doing some sex therapy herself in New York, but judging from her arguments with Symonds and Carolyn, it was a therapy which was pretty different from that being taught here at the Center. "Why can't I cater to my client's quirks?" she asked, "If he wants a blow-job, why can't I give it to him? What if that's the only way he can get off?"

Patiently, Symonds and Carolyn tried to explain. "We're not trying to help him get off,' " said Carolyn "Prostitutes help guys get off. We're trying to help them deal with their dysfunction. If the only way a guy can get off is through oral copulation and you perform oral copulation, you're not helping him with his dysfunction."

"What we're trying to do" said Symonds, "is to help reorganize a patient's nervous system."

"So we're not helping guys get off," repeated Carolyn. "Actually, we're trying to retrain them."

We ended the evening—paired off now with our permanent partners—on something called a "foot, face, and hand caress.'' It started with almost biblical ablutions as Symonds brought out bottles of lotion and towels. What do you say about a foot caress? Well, it does feel good to get one. There was also a certain amount of pleasure in giving one, especially under the expert guidance of Symonds, who would croon, "And now as you get down to the tips of her toes, you slide gently away so gently she will hardly even know you've gone." But what did this have to do with sex or with sexual dysfunction?

"Just part of the general learning here," said Carolyn, "to de-genitalize sex—to a certain degree, at least. There are a lot of people, you know, who will probably never be able to fuck. But they, too, can find some sensual enhancement."

On Sunday we graduated from feet. We gathered in the big bedroom and entwined ourselves like a can of angleworms on the king-sized bed to watch a videotape of a nude couple giving each other a really super "body caress." They used lots of lotion and oil, they didn't ignore the nipples and the genitalia (although they didn't linger there) and they used not only their fingers but their palms, wrists, and forearms, as well. When the entire body caress was finished, the two lay fitted together like two spoons, their eyes closed, breathing in unison. "The concentration on breathing," Symonds said, "reduces sexual tension and anxiety."

After the videotape was over, we couples split into different rooms and tried out the body caress. When Allie and I had finished, we too lay together back to front like two spoons, breathing as one.

The Waiting Game

Despite all this de-genitalized sex, there was a certain feeling of anticipation in the air during lunch, for we'd seen the posted schedule of events and something called "pleasuring and clamping" was listed on the afternoon agenda.

Again we were instructed by a videotape, but this time there was a different couple on the screen, handsomer than the first pair, to show us just what the exercise entailed. The man pleasured the woman to a point just short of orgasm. Then she did him. He lay on his back, she sat astride him and, after a few caressing preliminaries started stroking his penis. When he had clearly arrived at the point of ejaculation she quickly and firmly took hold of his penis just below the glans with her first two fingers and thumb. He didn't come. Within less than a minute, she was caressing him again with her hands. He again became tumescent and warned her that he was coming. But he didn't, for she clamped again and, after another minute passed, went on to work him over once more. They repeated the process a third time. This might have become boring, but finally the male on the screen failed to tell his partner soon enough and he came in her hands. This seemed to be OK. "Accidents will happen," said Symonds. "Don't worry about it if it happens to you."

The tape stopped, the screen went black, and everyone exhaled. Symonds told us all to go off to our appointed rooms with our partners. "We'll be dropping in on you to see how you're doing," he said. The point of the film we had just seen was clear enough. It was an important bit of lab training for the surrogate who would later have to work with the most common of all sexual dysfunctions, premature ejaculation. What surprised me and the other men was that the clamping was so effective. We just lay back, almost came a number of times, and enjoyed. Of course, we too had our little accidents—but not until the appointed hour was almost up.

Weekend Two

Weekend number two: More, much more, of the same. Inevitably, despite Symonds's warnings that "there'll be no fucking here," penises got into vaginas.

There was a new lesson on female masturbation. We watched one woman pleasuring herself on videotape. "This should be done," said Symonds, "in such a way that orgasm is almost incidental." I asked what female masturbation had to do with surrogate training. Symonds and Carolyn said that they weren't quite sure, but that this is something men ought to know about, as it was far more common than most people imagine. Men shouldn't become alarmed about it, and they certainly shouldn't take it in a personal way. "There are times," Carolyn said, "when we women want to pleasure ourselves. And this doesn't have anything to do with our men. It certainly doesn't imply that they are inadequate, it's just a different mode. If we want to do it, our men shouldn't get uptight about it."

For the rest of the weekend there was lots of mutual pleasuring and lots of clamping. There was a videotape on the use of the "scissors position" as a starting point and how to get into the other positions from there. We all had to practice this ourselves, and naturally a lot of what is known in crass circles as fucking resulted "Hey," hollered Cass, during one of the last discussion periods, "I thought we weren't going to have any sex?"

Sunday afternoon: We'd done it all. The women were tired but happy. None of them had freaked out. Except for occasional moments of torture, the men had enjoyed the exercises. Everyone had learned some new things, and most of us had learned more than a little about ourselves and about the once mysterious functionings of the opposite sex. No one fell into any govious abiding attachments. I was sorry that hadn't managed to participate in a little after-hours screwing with Stacey, but at least did get what every journalist really lives for—my story.

Graduation Day

Then, at long last, getting dressed in preparation for our several departures, received an unexpected bonus Symonds handed out certificates to both the surrogates and aides as well! My diploma sized parchment read:

"This Certifies that Robert Blair Kaiser has successfully completed forty-six hours of intensive workshop training in sensual and sexual enhancement and has demonstrated proficiency in the application of sensual and sexual techniques for the enhancement of his personal life."

I accepted the document with a lewd laugh. Many men are proficient, I thought, but few have a parchment to prove it resolved to display mine proudly. In fact, I'm thinking of having a miniaturized version printed on the back of my business cards—either that or hiring a skywriter to hang it up over Manhattan.

If you enjoyed my story, follow the tales of another surrogate in Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate.

Oscar-nominated documentarian Kirby Dick's Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate explores the relationship between a sex therapist, two of her problem patients, and their sex surrogate.