Salon.com > The Sessions

Sex surrogacy is my calling!

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Standing outside the theater doors, Cheryl Cohen Greene, who inspired Helen Hunt's Oscar-nominated role in "The Sessions," leaned in and told me in a hushed tone, "I've watched it 11 times and I cry every time." Just feet away, an audience sat in the dark, watching the Hollywood version of her life -- or at least her experience working as a sex surrogate with severely disabled poet Mark O'Brien -- unfold on the big screen.

Cohen Greene and I were at Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, Calif., the city where the movie takes place, for a Fox-sponsored screening ahead of this year's Academy Awards. It was our first time meeting but, having watched the movie, I felt like I already knew her. Hunt nailed Cohen Greene's Boston accent, not to mention her radiant warmth and penetrating gaze. In real life, as on-screen via Hunt, she brings an immediate, disarming intimacy to even clothed conversation. In fact, standing there in the theater lobby with her, I felt a bit naked.

Don Juan in a wheelchair

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

We were on our way from Albuquerque to Santa Fe when we saw the sign: “Las Vegas 100 miles.” Sex wasn’t what we came for, but attractive strippers and legalized prostitution wouldn’t be a bad way to top off a vacation for an average 22-year-old American male who just happens to be disabled. My friend and I were in New Mexico for the Opera Festival (the equivalent of Woodstock for an opera fan like me). But with my parents thousands of miles away for the first time in my life, who’s to say I couldn’t add a little carnal fun to the mounds of spiritual bliss I was about to experience?

“Shall we go?” I asked Greg. I’d known him since he became my aide during my sophomore year of high school. Being wheelchair-bound due to cerebral palsy, I needed someone to take notes for me, feed me and, yes, even take me to the bathroom. Seven years later, he was the ideal traveling companion.

“Yes, we definitely should,” he said. Years of practice had accustomed him to my barely understandable speech, as well as the perversity of my thoughts.

Alas, it was not to be. Just when it seemed that my endeavors to have sex this one time would finally pay off, God delivered a crushing blow.

I was a sex surrogate

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:00:00 +0000

The ad in New York magazine said they needed women who were “bright, articulate and enjoyed helping people.” A little skimpy on information, but I decided to call. I’d just returned from an eight-month dance-teaching gig in Brazil, and I had no idea what to do next.

I know many women wouldn’t take the job they were advertising, but I’d had my own sexual trauma in the past, and needed healing from that. Since I had spent many years in self-destruct mode, I wanted to use my need for sexual connection to help others. Finally, I had my answer: working as a sex surrogate.

Like Helen Hunt’s character in “The Sessions,” a sex surrogate is a therapist who helps people overcome their bedroom dysfunctions. Yes, it involves sleeping with strangers, but unlike prostitution, these men weren’t in search of a good time. They were in pain and filled with shame. They had tried everything. Usually, a sex surrogate is a last resort. And over time, they taught me more about intimacy and vulnerability than I could have imagined.

“The Sessions”: Is this unlikely sex fable Oscar-bound?

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:18:00 +0000

What’s the connection between sex and romantic love, and how well does it work when we try to decouple the two? That question, in dramatic form, goes back at least as far as the invention of romantic comedy during the later Renaissance, and very likely all the way back to the first time two simians did the deed and started thinking about it too hard afterward. Both the strength and the weakness, I would say, of writer-director Ben Lewin’s intimate drama “The Sessions” come from the way it recasts that hoary question in a specific contemporary context.

Previously known as “Six Sessions” and before that as “The Surrogate,” this movie was a breakout hit at Sundance back in January, largely because of the brave and commanding performances of John Hawkes and Helen Hunt. It’s based, as they say, on a true story, though one should always be leery of that. Hawkes plays Mark O’Brien, a poet and journalist who has been severely disabled by childhood polio but decides, at age 36, that he wants to lose his virginity – after a whole lifetime, as he puts it, when people have only touched his body when they had to, in order to bathe or dress him. Hunt plays Cheryl Cohen Green, the professional sex surrogate – yes, that’s different from a prostitute, as she calmly explains -- whose job is to help him accomplish that goal.