Salon.com > Denise Dowling

Sexual healing

Wed, 22 Aug 2001 19:08:00 +0000

With her porn-star name and smoky purr over the phone, one conjures Bryce Britton as a cashmere sex kitten. But the Los Angeles sex therapist who answers the door of a salmon stucco bungalow is earth mama incarnate: a 50-ish, huggable redhead in a breezy violet dress. If male clients fantasize about crying on Britton's pillowy shoulder, their baser impulses are reserved for the surrogates she pairs them with to experientially cure them of premature ejaculation, impotence or other dysfunction.

Britton is one of the few therapists to employ surrogates, whom she prefers to call "sensual guides," since the term "surrogate" implies a substitute. In the past 15 years, she has helped more than 1,200 men and currently employs one male and two female guides. An average course of therapy is three months or 15 to 20 sessions and can cost up to $5,000.

No neon sign swings outside her Santa Monica, Calif., office, winking Sex Therapy! Still, strolling neighbors swivel their necks in "Exorcist"-worthy contortions and a mailman insists on hand-delivering her mail. Clients are referred from other therapists or respond to Britton's ads in holistic magazines. Britton can discern from a phone conversation if someone just wants a shag -- for instance, if the caller is panting.

Covering up the breast

Mon, 09 Oct 2000 19:00:00 +0000

This is a story about breasts. And about a federal agency going out of its way to not alert journalists to a major publicly funded cancer study.

There was, to be sure, a press release. "In one of the largest studies on the long-term health effects of silicone breast implants, researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Md., found no association between breast implants and the subsequent risk of breast cancer," it began.

But even if you have breast implants, you undoubtedly haven't heard about this study -- unless you somehow stumbled across the release buried in the NCI Web site. NCI press officer Brian Vastag says that -- in a peculiar deviation from normal procedures -- he was "forbidden" from alerting journalists to the online release. In an up-yours gesture to his superiors (motivated, perhaps, by the fact that he'd already given notice to quit), Vastag last week forwarded the link for the press release to a listserv for members of the National Association of Science Writers.

The Rembrandt of pulp

Sat, 11 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

My college roommate was Mistress Domino. She was also Carrie, a freshman from upstate New York who didn't drink or do drugs or sociology assignments. Every day after class Carrie strolled down Fifth Avenue to a club near Wall Street, where she traded her sneakers for stilettos. She lounged on a satin sofa until a stockbroker tickled her Chanel vamp toes. Then she led him downstairs to a dungeon, called him a pig and swatted his behind with a horsewhip. That was all. Or that was all she would say after my jaw dropped when Carrie first told me about her extracurricular activities.

Like Carrie, J.B. Rund makes no apologies about a fondness for flagellation. "I'm not a pervert," the Manhattan-based publisher declares in a scotch-and-cigarette voice. "So I get excited by high heels? And women tied up?"

For more than two decades, Rund has been publishing fetish art, books and cartoons in an effort to bring fetishism to the mainstream. "My friends look at these cartoons and say, 'How can you get a hard-on from that stuff?'" he says. "But they only get turned on by ladies with big knockers. If they were normal, other things would excite them as well. I'm not sick; I'm different. Thank God for pistachio ice cream; it would be boring if everyone liked vanilla!"

Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Couple

Mon, 14 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Mr. Perfect Couple California has no pants. Somewhere between California and Texas, his pants went AWOL. He and his perfect wife must find tuxedo pants before tomorrow's evening wear competition. Mrs. Perfect Couple Kentucky has a scratchy throat and she's supposed to sing about God and an acorn for the talent segment. But Mrs. Kentucky and Mr. California know nothing's perfect. Heck, even their marriages aren't perfect! Just don't let the judges hear that or they may be disqualified from the fourth annual America's Perfect Couple pageant, held every November in Houston.

With so much divorce and adultery and couples waving their dirty laundry on talk shows, someone has to polish the image of a tainted institution. During the pageant, five couples compete in Western and evening wear and are grilled about what makes their marriage so special. Fluffy-covered albums with photos and love tokens account for 15 percent of their final score. Mr. and Mrs. California are automatically penalized because "no one told them to bring a scrapbook." The winning couple must sign a contract stating they won't separate or divorce in the next year.

“Pimpin' is hard work”

Sat, 29 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Don Juan was born to pimp. The Chicago dandy always had a way with the ladies. Girls at school handed him their lunch money and, after graduation, their welfare checks. "Growing up in the inner city, my role model wasn't no doctor or no lawyer," he explains. "Either I was watchin' some pimp come out with three girls or I was watchin' a dope dealer get into a fine automobile. I tried to work, but it just wasn't in my blood. I considered the pimp game a great trade because I didn't like going to jail. I'd rather send someone else in my place."

Don Juan is one of hundreds of men attending the Players Ball, Chicago's annual gathering of pimps and their stable of prostitutes. The party has been a November tradition since 1974, when bell-bottomed macks or pimps, from Milwaukee and Chicago, first gathered to celebrate Don Juan's birthday with drinking and dancing. "The Players Ball brings people together to recognize that pimpin' is hard work, despite what the public thinks," Don Juan rasps in his whiskey-stale voice.

The Date Doctor is in!

Sat, 06 Nov 1999 17:00:00 +0000

All men should be smooth as Gerald. When he fetched me for our date, it
wasn't on his bicycle. He brought a buttery yellow rose and opened every
door. At the Pacific Ocean Pier in Santa Monica, Calif., he sacrificed the tickets he
won at the arcade shooting gallery so I could trade them for a barbed-wire
tattoo appliqui like Pamela Anderson's real one. At the first sign of
goose bumps, he offered a sweater and at the end of the evening, he didn't
try to paw me. Gerald was a perfect gentleman -- for only $75 bucks an hour.

Gerald is an actor by day and power dater by night. He works for Bart Ellis,
a Los Angeles social worker and relationship expert who founded "power
dating" 10 years ago. The Date Doctor can't promise to cure
lonely hearts, but he can up your eligibility if you get a sorry-I'm-busy
signal after every date. Ellis sends clients on a mock date with one of his
10 power daters, who then reports back to the doctor on how a client could
improve the stakes for finding a mate. Then Ellis delivers the unexpurgated
advice. Perhaps a client needs to stock up on her Scope, for instance, or
keep his monologues to a minimum. While few amateur dates would ever dare
offer such self-improvement tips, these pros are trained to dispense advice readily. One employee wrote that a client's clothing style was "retirement home-ish," before adding, "He was so boring. He prattled on about his family and baseball -- I thought he would never shut up! He's a nerd!"

The surfing rabbi

Tue, 03 Aug 1999 19:07:00 +0000

"I don't need to preach," says Rabbi Nachum Shifren, an Orthodox Jew who calls himself the Surfing Rabbi. "I just take people surfing and they get turned on to the divine energy of the ocean."

Should the Timothy Leary approach fail, there's always Shifren's book, Web site or video. "Surf and Soul," his self-published autobiography, chronicles a "spiritual journey from Malibu to Jerusalem, as an assimilated surfer travels the world and begins to discover his Jewish soul ... eventually becoming a Chassidic rabbi who lives and breathes the essence of surf and soul!"

According to Tzvi Fishman, a Hollywood screenwriter and author of "Tuvia in the Promised Land," "Rabbi Shifren's journey makes 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' look like child's play!" Since emigrating to Israel four years ago, the 47-year-old has taught hundreds of people to surf, most of them foreign Jews traveling in Israel. "I recently had a yeshiva group of about 50 girls, mainly Americans, and we went surfing -- in modest clothing, of course," Shifren quickly adds. (But the lanky rabbi with the long salt-and-pepper beard is not all that bashful; he swaps his skullcap and prayer shawl for a Body Glove surfing top and spandex trunks when he hits Tel Aviv beach.) Some of the rabbi's other students opt for accompanying him on a Costa Rican surfari, where they harness the spiritual side of a good ride before tucking into 5-star kosher meals and campfire Kabbalah class.

Boys of paradise

Fri, 16 Apr 1999 17:03:00 +0000

It's been a month since blood was shed at Deep Springs. Students slaughtered
one of the ranch pigs, then feasted on bacon and ham sandwiches for days. A
new arrival moved into the dorm last week, and already the men are
discussing whether to sacrifice it. This 36-inch beast of blazing
technicolor and surround sound has become a fractious intrusion: No matter
that the TV was bought with Sprint long distance points and is mainly used
for "Spartacus" screenings, it still signifies the "Bennington-ization" of
Deep Springs. "Last year we lived in filth and squalor," declares Nathan
Deuel, looping a thumb under the straps of his Carhartt overalls. "But it
was a noble filth and squalor!"