SALON

Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 12:00 AM UTC

The sexual healers next door

Ben and Jen Rode offer women coaching, massage — and G-spot orgasms. It's legal in California

By

Topics: Sex, Love and Sex, Sex Work, massage, reiki, California, erotic touch,

The sexual healers next door (Credit: Wallenrock via Shutterstock)

Just over eight minutes after getting onto the table, Becky is crying. “Let your goddess out,” says Ben Rode, the 29-year-old man rubbing down her naked body with oil. “This is your goddess ceremony.” Meanwhile, Ben’s 31-year-old wife, Jen, who is five months pregnant, performs Reiki, floating her hands over Becky’s head and neck, asking questions about a past life as a queen. Swelling, chiming New Age music plays in the background, as the picture-perfect pair let out long, throaty exhalations to prompt Becky to breathe deep.

Most surfaces in this Alameda, Calif., bungalow bear crystals and lit candles. It feels like being in a womb: In the kitchen, a stove is on with the door cracked open and next to the massage table a faux fireplace blazes. After nearly an hour of working her body over, Ben’s hand slides between Becky’s legs and he begins walking her through a guided meditation on her ideal man. “Imagine seeing him for the first time,” he says. “You lock eyes from across the room.” After a lengthy narrative buildup, he says, “His lips gently touch yours. Your knees melt out from under you.” Ben, a tall all-American sort with ice-blue eyes, moves his fingers to her clitoris, ”Let your pleasure spread, down your legs, all the way up to your boobs.” As Becky’s moans deepen, he announces, ”K, I’m going inside.”

He slides on a pair of latex gloves and liberally applies lube to his middle and ring finger. As he enters, Becky’s “ahhhs” almost turn into song, and then she begins sobbing after Ben tells her, “You’re ready for him.” Jen, a petite, near-platinum blonde, begins to recite the affirmations that the three agreed upon during the intake interview. ”You’re ready for your beloved,” she says. ”Your dreams are your own!” Ben shouts to Becky, “Rub your clit,” and she does, her moans turning into yelps. “Good goddess. Feel your goddess,” he says. “Feel the Becky inside you. Feel her. Feel how powerful she is, ready to take on the world. She gets exactly what she wants.”

Ben intensifies his hand movements and then yells, “Push it out! Let it go! Surrender to the process!” Here she starts wailing like a mother who’s lost her child, then howling like a wild animal caught in a trap, and then making a sound I’ve only ever heard in a scene from “Saw II.” “You’re so fucking ready, woman,” he says. “You’re so ready, goddess.” Her back arcs, butt hovering in the air, and clear liquid begins spraying out from between her legs. With this, a droplet of ejaculate lands on my shoe.

- – - – - – - – - -

While their sessions encompass a host of services — from past-life readings to motivational coaching — there is clearly a sexual component in the literal climax. But unlike a “happy endings” masseur, Ben is licensed in the state of California as a sexological bodyworker. Last year’s release of “The Sessions” starring Helen Hunt and John Hawkes increased pop-culture awareness about the existence of “sexual surrogates,” who sometimes engage in sexual intercourse with clients — but the realm of sexological bodywork, which in the U.S. is only recognized in the Golden State, is still little known.

The Rodes, who married seven months ago, just a month after meeting, call their particular brand of therapy “explosive sexual healing.” Most of a typical three-hour session, which costs $497, is spent talking to the client about her personal challenges and goals, developing affirmations, and then engaging in full-body massage and Reiki. This all builds to the G-spot orgasm, which they use “as a state of hypnosis or trance,” says Ben, who is also a hypnotherapist. He compares it to “hacking a computer.” As their website explains, “What we’ve noticed is that a woman’s blocks to having a FULL release (1 or 2 steps beyond orgasm), are the same blocks she has to getting what she wants out of life.” They also claim they can cure everything from depression to migraines.

Ben says they limit their services to women because his expertise is in the female body (although they have hopes of Jen getting her sexological bodywork certificate so that they can develop a way to offer couples joint treatment). At 17, he set out to read everything he could about female pleasure. He says his sexual partners started telling him, “This is sexual healing. What are you doing to me?” and he began to think this might be his calling. He completed a two-month program at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco to get his certificate in sexological bodywork and started booking sessions in the evenings after his full-time job as a mailman.

After falling in love with Jen, who was formerly a preschool teacher who offered Reiki, clairvoyance and “intuitive counseling” services on the side, he quit his postman gig and began doing bodywork full-time with his new partner at his side. Jen’s wifely presence seems to neutralize the practice. At the same time, it’s easy to imagine clients worrying, “Is she really OK with this?” But Jen tells me jealousy is simply not an issue — not even on the rare occasions when she can read a client’s mind and tell that she’s thinking naughty thoughts about her husband. (When Jen told me how rare this was, Ben joked about being disappointed.)

Comparisons to sex work are inescapable. Joseph Kramer, founder of the New School of Erotic Touch in Oakland, Calif., estimates that 90 percent of sexological bodywork does not involve genital touching. “We teach people to touch themselves well, to touch their partners,” he says. “We keep our clothes on, the touch is one way. We’re playing with erotic states, but there’s not any interaction.” He allows, though, that “it’s a form of sex work.” The key difference from prostitution, he says, is that “it’s contained.” Kramer explains, “The playground is not our bodies. The playground is your body and I’m here to help you to map out what’s possible with your body. This is foundationally about how you feel your own erotic embodiment.” And referrals are often made from psychotherapists, he says.

In California, the certification is recognized by the Department of Consumer Affairs, but Kramer still advises sexological bodyworkers to first talk to the county clerk, district attorney or police force about what they do. There’s a movement in several other states to recognize sexological bodywork. Kramer says it’s been “much easier” to get the profession recognized in British Columbia, Australia, Switzerland and Germany. This surprises him none: “Some [U.S.] states are still teaching pure abstinence for sex education, even though it’s been proven not to work,” says Kramer, but he remains optimistic. ”I think the actual breakthrough will come when there’s enough data on what we do.”

Kramer compares sexological bodyworkers to Freud and Jung at the turn of the century. “They were starting their psychological investigations and it’s taken 110 years or more to get to this place where psychotherapy is so prevalent,” he says. ”Not too long ago people thought psychotherapy was really weird.”

- – - – - – - – - -

In the denouement to Becky’s session, following a second explosive orgasm that did not quite reach my foot, the flushed 31-year-old yoga instructor showered and got dressed. Then she sat down with me next to a table bearing a crystal ball and tarot-like Oracle Cards. “It doesn’t feel sexual at all,” she says, wearing a blissed-out expression. “It’s not a place of thinking about sex.” She describes it as “an alert type of meditation” and a “restful awareness.” Indeed, the triad’s throaty exhalations were very reminiscent of your average yoga class. The squirting? Not so much.

Tracy Clark-Flory

Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter and Facebook. More Tracy Clark-Flory.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 84 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations