(1987) The Celestial Bed Page 3

  physical disorders, for example, no hormone deficiencies, no disease. If the problem is not physical, I meet with the patient and listen to his full sexual history. Listening to this, I can usually pinpoint how things went wrong with the patient. I will ask him questions such as — when you were growing up was nudity allowed in the home? Was there much hugging, kissing, caressing, touching in your family? The answers to these questions are usually No. Later, maturing, the patient has his first sexual experience. It is usually negative. Then the patient is in trouble. In speaking to him, I try to calm him by explaining that fear and ignorance are strangling him, and that given help and time he can be free and sex can be as natural for him as breathing.

  ‘When it is your turn to take over as surrogates, and lend me assistance with the patient, you must understand that the ongoing reasons the patient is in trouble are twofold: first, he has difficulty communicating with other human beings; second, he has low sexual self-esteem. To solve these problems, you have to make the patient know you are caressing him not because you want to arouse him and bring him to orgasm, but because it is giving you pleasure. Since we are not a pleasure-oriented society, we don’t often allow ourselves to enjoy something nice unless we work for it. Most of us don’t experience pleasure for pleasure’s sake, without having to earn it or pay back for it. Your primary goal with a patient is to enjoy yourself and, in so doing, transmit the same enjoyment to another.

  ‘I told you that I take the patient’s sexual history, and talk things over with him. After that I try to match the patient with the one of you who might be most compatible with him. Knowing the patient’s age, education, social background, interests, I try to pair him up with the one of you who comes closest to fulfilling his needs. Then I personally brief you on the patient, and then I arrange a private meeting with the patient, the surrogate, and myself.

  ‘After that, I turn him over to you. I expect the assigned surrogate to give me a full report, usually on tape, sometimes in person, on each session as it is completed. Occasionally I will call a surrogate in to discuss the case, possibly make readjustments. Certainly I will meet with the patient regularly to find out how he feels about what is going on.’

  Freeberg paused, and studied the surrogates seated before him and listening intently.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘what is going on? What you are doing with the patient is carrying out what you will be trained to do in the next six weeks. You will be doing a series of sensual exercises with the patient. We call each exercise a “sensate focus”.

  ‘Your first meeting, and every one after that, will take place in the privacy of your own home. This meeting will be half social, half work. The social part is to put a frightened guest at ease. You might offer the patient something to drink. Preferably tea or a soft drink. No alcohol. No stimulants. Remember, what you are trying to do is to tap into the patient’s own potential for exhilaration without outside help. The two of you have your refreshments and, fully dressed, you talk about — well, whatever you wish - food, sports, current events. You tell the patient a little about yourself, and get him to speak of himself. Try to alleviate his anxiety.

  ‘Finally, at that first session, you get to a hand caress. It is the least unnerving thing you can do. You are really focusing on the sense of touch. You begin by demonstrating a hand caress. You ask the patient to close his eyes, and you close yours, and you don’t talk. We don’t want any visual or verbal input to confuse the comforting hand caress.

  ‘During the next session you go to a face caress. You touch the various parts of his face, going smoothly, lightly, over every bump and crevice, fingertips on the face’s bone structure, the skin, the fuzz on it. You do this to the patient, and then he does it to you. It is amazingly relaxing and sensual. Incidentally, exercises need not be in rigid order. You can modify or change the order according to the situation or circumstances.

  ‘Anyway, at the third meeting, if all is going normally, you do a footbath. Literally a footbath. Clothes remain on, but feet are bared, soaked in warm water, and rubbed.

  ‘Not until the fourth meeting do you get into the initial nudity. You each undress yourself, or if you both wish, you undress each other. Usually, this isn’t a problem, but sometimes it’s not simple. Lots of people are used to undressing in the dark. As adolescents, they usually had not been troubled by being naked in a locker room, although some had worried about other boys whose penises were larger, who were hairier, or more muscular. And they don’t worry about being naked with a doctor or a nurse. But once they put on street clothes, and then have to take them off, it can be more difficult. Usually it isn’t too difficult since almost all men are

  used to disrobing when they have sex, and no matter if it’s good or bad sex, they are used to being naked then.

  ‘So now you both have your clothes off. Now you do the exercise called body imaging. You, the surrogate, stand in front of a full-length mirror, allowing your patient to sit back and watch you, and you point out various parts of your body from head to toe and then honestly confess what you dislike or like about your anatomical self. Then your patient does the same. You learn a good deal about yourself and each other during this exercise.’

  Freeberg paused again to draw another cigarillo out of his box and light it. He glanced at his digital watch.

  ‘I don’t want to exhaust all of you unduly, so I’ll go a little faster from here on. After all, everything I mention will be demonstrated to you in your training. Now, after body imaging comes the sensual shower — it can be a shower or a bath — together in warm water, and you lather one another and use soap as a lubricant. At the next session you do a nude back caress. Just what that implies. After that, the exercise of the frontal caress without touching breasts and genitals. This is followed by the frontal caress including touching each other’s breasts and genitals. But no big deal. Breasts and genitals get no more attention than touching the nose or the neck.

  ‘At the next session comes non-demand genital pleasuring. This

  means what it states. You have your patient lie on his back and

  you caress his genitals. The goal is not to stimulate or arouse, but

  to concentrate on giving someone pleasure, and they don’t have to

  pay you back in any way.

  ‘During the following meeting you will be expected to try two things. One is the anatomy tour and the other is something we call The Clock. We do the anatomy tour because most men, while familiar with their penises, have no idea what women’s genitals look like. Usually, they climb into bed, grope in the dark, hope to find the right place, and then go at it. In the anatomy tour you use a flashlight and speculum to show and explain to a male what is inside you. Then you do The Clock. You consider your vagina has a clock inside, with numbers one to twelve going around in there. You have the patient insert a finger and pressure you at one o’clock or six or eleven, so he can feel what it is like in a woman’s vaginal barrel and how she reacts differently to pressure in various places. Sometimes you might let the male keep his moving finger in

  your vagina until you experience orgasm, a real orgasm, so he can feel what happens inside you.

  ‘At this stage in the therapy, you will clearly see that your patient is getting erections, partial or totally. But even if his penis is almost flaccid, I assure you he is getting some kind of erection. When your patient has this, he is ready for his final exercises, perhaps the last two or three. If he is suffering premature ejaculation, you can control it easily by the famous squeeze method. We’ll all practise it in your training.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve now come to the ultimate act. The act, obviously, is penetration, successful sexual intercourse. OK, here is how you go about that…’

  Freeberg talked on for another ten minutes, aware that he had the avid attention of his pupils. His smoke had gone out and he threw the cold cigarillo into the ashtray, found a fresh one, and stood up to stretch. Lighting the cigarillo, he smiled and said, ‘Now you can ask ques
tions.’

  He dropped down onto the sofa again and lifted the palms of his hands. ‘The floor is open to you.’

  Lila Van Patten sought his attention. ‘Dr Freeberg, can we tell our friends and acquaintances what we are doing?’

  ‘Why not?’ Freeberg countered. ‘You will never disclose to anyone else the identity of your patients. That is confidential. But if you wish to speak about your own career work, what you do professionally, you can certainly tell anyone. However, I will caution you about one problem. Public acceptance. There are some people who may regard you as a prostitute - women might be appalled that you can make love to a stranger for pay, and many men may think of you as an easy mark. You’ll have to use your own judgment.’

  Beth Brant raised her hand. ‘What if your patient gets turned on and wants to go from step four to fourteen right away? What if he wants to skip the intermediate steps and get into coitus as quickly as possible?’

  Freeberg nodded. ‘That happens frequently. The minute you touch your patient’s genitals, he’ll perceive that as an invitation to enter you as fast as possible. But that’s his very problem, don’t you see? His problem is he goes from step four to fourteen because he is too anxious to get there, and he misses all the richness and learning in between. Any such attempt should be aborted right away.’

  Janet Schneider was waving a pad. ‘I made notes when you spoke of the face caress. Is it just caressing? What if he wants to kiss you?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that. Let him do so and direct him. Lots of men don’t know enough about kissing.’

  Consulting her pad again, Janet went on. ‘When he touches my genitals, I may approach an orgasm. What would I do about that?’

  Freeberg nodded solemnly. ‘You just have it,’ he said. ‘You let it happen. Try to control your external reaction, if possible, because it might scare him and make him feel more inadequate. On the other hand, it might excite him and make him feel virile. Again, you will have to be the judge.’

  The single male surrogate’s voice spoke up. Paul Brandon. ‘About the nudity. We work in the nude from the body-imaging point on?’

  ‘Always after that,’ said Freeberg. ‘As a matter of fact you’ll get so used to being nude it won’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Oh, I have no problem with that,’ said Brandon quickly. ‘Just wanted the information.’

  ‘My turn,’ said Elaine Oakes. ‘At penetration, intercourse, well, is it safe?’

  ‘The patient will have been examined thoroughly, I assure you. He’ll have no diseases.’

  ‘I meant impregnation.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, you’re probably on the pill. If you aren’t, an alternative is the use of a diaphragm when it comes to coitus.’

  Freeberg waited. There were no more questions. But the word coitus had triggered a question of his own. He regarded his listeners briefly.

  ‘Well, I have one last question,’ he said. ‘Now that you’ve heard it all, have an overview, do any of you wish to withdraw from the programme?’

  The five facing him remained immobile. Not one of them stirred or spoke.

  Freeberg smiled. ‘Good,’ he said softly. He came to his feet. ‘Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, right here. Tomorrow you’ll be on your way to becoming professional sex surrogates. God bless us, one and all.’

  Two

  Six weeks and a day had passed, and now Dr Arnold Freeberg was seated behind his desk at ten minutes to two in the afternoon waiting for the last of his group meetings to begin shortly. Looking out of the window, he could see that this day in mid-July was overcast, somewhat bleak, and he wished the sun was shining. Because he felt sunny inside. The gruelling training period had been a complete success. He had a team of bright, warm, sex surrogates, and he was eager to get them on the road.

  As he waited in his office for the arrival of his surrogates at two o’clock, he thought about what he had accomplished in the morning. He had reviewed the tapes of his first four patients referred to him by colleagues. The patients had all been dysfunctional men. There had been no female patient set for Paul Brandon yet, but he knew that several were being considered by psychiatrists for referral, so Brandon would soon be busy, too. Freeberg had given Suzy the tapes to transcribe on her word processor.

  Following that, Freeberg had met with Gayle Miller, his original surrogate, who had finally arrived from Tucson a week ago, after graduating from the University of Arizona and winding up her affairs there. He had not seen much of her during the week -except for one visit she’d made to his clinic when he had introduced her to his surrogate trainees - because she had been busy finding and settling into a bungalow in Hillsdale. She had also been busy preparing her application for graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles - seeking admission to the doctoral program in psychology - and her request for a fellowship or financial aid while at UCLA. She had delivered all this along with her University of Arizona transcript and three letters of recommendation to the university.

  When she had come in this morning, to assist him with his send—

  off ceremony, Freeberg had been so delighted to see her, so reassured by her confident professional presence, that he had invited her to the Market Grill next door, the coffee and sandwich shop where they might lunch together. Following Gayle out of the clinic, and then into the street towards the grill, he had realised that she was certainly the most attractive of his surrogates.

  As they seated themselves in a booth, Freeberg noticed once more how graceful and beautiful Gayle was, attired in a pink silk blouse, nipped at her waist by a yellow leather belt, and below the belt a pleated silk skirt that clung to her thighs when she walked. Watching her, as she studied the menu, Freeberg enjoyed Gayle’s pretty face. She had dark glossy hair trimmed in a gamine bob, encasing a countenance that resembled the features of an Oriental porcelain doll — behind her big lavender sunglasses were widespread green almond eyes, and beneath the glasses a pert nose, and a generous mouth with a full lower lip. The rest of her person, he recollected, was equally arresting. He had seen her nude several times six years ago in Tucson during her own surrogate training period. Printed indelibly on his memory were her smooth sloping alabaster shoulders, her protruding firm full breasts with their large brown nipples, her small supple waist, narrow hips, and ample thighs (one with a beauty mark), and her shapely legs. He tried to remember: she must have been, must be now, five feet four or five inches tall. And, dim in his memory, there had been some kind of tragedy in her case record, something that had motivated her to undertake the surrogate work for him.

  The important things about Gayle Miller, he reminded himself, were not hysical. She had proved to be intelligent, adaptable, forthright, articulate, and possessed of a sweet and giving personality. The fact remained that she had enabled him to have total success with his most disturbed and seemingly hopeless patients.

  At lunch, he had gone along with her in ordering a salad and a hamburger sandwich, and he had glowed at the realisation that this experienced twenty-seven-year-old woman was the leader of his team.

  But that had been earlier. Now, at his desk, Freeberg saw that it was two o’clock, and his new surrogates were beginning to arrive. He greeted each of them as they came in and informally took their places on the sofa before him and in the pull-up chairs. He shuffled

  his notes, deciding he would speak very briefly, and then bring Gayle Miller in from Suzy’s office, introduce her, and let her give them one last word of reassurance.

  Freeberg did not stand up. He eased back into his leather swivel chair and surveyed his group.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said to them. ‘You all had yesterday off, and I hope you’ve recovered from your training period. Actually, I missed you. We’ve been so close in the last six weeks, that I feel we’ve become a family. I’m not here to address you once more. You got enough of that the day before the training began, and during every work day of the six weeks we trained. I feel that you know your job now, and that each o
f you is dedicated to it and will do well. Just keep one thing in mind. With each of you I’ve tried to build a bridge, a human bridge to help troubled people cross over from a place where they are — a bad place - to a better place where they want to be, a place that will make them whole again and alive, not only sexually but in their careers and in their personal lives.

  ‘Remember this: the men who are coming to you want to learn something. They want to learn how to be loving human beings. They are coming to you with their disorders and their quiet desperation. They are in effect pleading with you, trying to say to you, “Here I am, and I don’t know what to do about my disabling problem. Please help me.” To them, you are their last resort.

  ‘Anyway, tomorrow we begin. I’ve drawn up a schedule for meeting with you and your patients tomorrow morning and afternoon. The day after that you will each be largely on your own, except for your continuing reports to me. Before you leave, I will meet privately with each of you to discuss your first assignments.

  ‘Enough from me. I’m now going to bring in Gayle Miller. She was the one surrogate I used, in Tucson, before I trained you. You each met her the last week of training, when she came by to say hello. But you had no chance to talk to her. I thought it might be useful if Gayle spoke to you briefly about her own experiences, and gave you a chance to ask any more questions that come to mind. Now let me get Gayle Miller.’

  *

  Just before leaving Suzy’s secretarial office for Freeberg’s more imposing office, Gayle had hesitated to speak to the therapist once more.

  ‘What do I do?’ Gayle had asked.

  Freeberg had smiled. ‘Stage fright? You just go in there and do whatever comes naturally. Sit down behind my desk, or stand next to it as you prefer. Chat with them casually, about your work. They’re waiting there, friendly but apprehensive. Whatever I’ve told them is one thing. But to them, I’m somewhat removed from the main scene. Whatever comes from you comes from someone who’s been in the field. It’ll make them feel more comfortable. Give them a few minutes from the voice of experience, and if they have any questions, simply answer them candidly. You can do it, Gayle. Good luck.’