[h=1]Surrogate sex partner inspires story, film[/h] Edward Guthmann, SFGate San Francisco Chronicle EXCERPT:
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
In 38 years as a surrogate partner - a profession formerly known as a sex surrogate - Cheryl Cohen Greene has helped all kinds of clients. She's worked with couples, with married men and single men, with disabled people, with men in their 60s, 70s and 80s who have never had sex.
One of her clients, the poet and journalist Mark O'Brien, was stricken with polio at 6 and spent most of his life in an iron lung. In 1986, when O'Brien was 36 and a virgin, he hired Cohen Greene as his surrogate partner. They met six times and remained friends until O'Brien's death in 1999.
Their story is now an independent film, "The Surrogate," which premieres Jan. 23 at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring John Hawkes ("Winter's Bone") as O'Brien and Helen Hunt ("As Good as It Gets") as Cohen Greene, it's adapted from a 1990 article, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate," that O'Brien wrote for the Sun magazine of North Carolina.
Written and directed by Ben Lewin, "The Surrogate" was filmed in Santa Monica last spring on a $1.3 million budget. Cohen Greene, a paid consultant, spent a week on the set in May and plans to attend the world premiere at Sundance. "I haven't seen the whole film," she says. "But it's pretty frank from what I can tell."
O'Brien was also the subject of a 1996 Oscar-winning documentary short, "Breathing Lessons" by Jessica Yu.
At 67, vibrant and attractive, Cohen Greene still works as a surrogate partner, seeing clients in her Berkeley studio. She's married to her second husband, Bob Greene, and has a daughter, 46, and son, 43, from her first marriage.
Born and raised in Salem, Mass., she moved to Berkeley in 1968, and says her work as a surrogate grew from her years as a volunteer with the San Francisco Sex Information hotline. "It was fascinating to listen to people and not be judgmental, to learn about myself and see what buttons got pushed. ... Up until then I'd never even met gay or bisexual men or women."
In the early '60s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, best-selling authors of "Human Sexual Response," started training surrogate partners at their research institute in St. Louis. Cohen Greene learned the Masters and Johnson approach from a Berkeley sex therapist. It incorporated the "sensate focus" method of sensual touch and genital exploration with verbal feedback.
END EXCERPT
Can anyone explain how "Sexual Surrogates" are NOT over educated prostitutes? Because, Merriam Webster defines prostitute as:
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
In 38 years as a surrogate partner - a profession formerly known as a sex surrogate - Cheryl Cohen Greene has helped all kinds of clients. She's worked with couples, with married men and single men, with disabled people, with men in their 60s, 70s and 80s who have never had sex.
One of her clients, the poet and journalist Mark O'Brien, was stricken with polio at 6 and spent most of his life in an iron lung. In 1986, when O'Brien was 36 and a virgin, he hired Cohen Greene as his surrogate partner. They met six times and remained friends until O'Brien's death in 1999.
Their story is now an independent film, "The Surrogate," which premieres Jan. 23 at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring John Hawkes ("Winter's Bone") as O'Brien and Helen Hunt ("As Good as It Gets") as Cohen Greene, it's adapted from a 1990 article, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate," that O'Brien wrote for the Sun magazine of North Carolina.
Written and directed by Ben Lewin, "The Surrogate" was filmed in Santa Monica last spring on a $1.3 million budget. Cohen Greene, a paid consultant, spent a week on the set in May and plans to attend the world premiere at Sundance. "I haven't seen the whole film," she says. "But it's pretty frank from what I can tell."
O'Brien was also the subject of a 1996 Oscar-winning documentary short, "Breathing Lessons" by Jessica Yu.
At 67, vibrant and attractive, Cohen Greene still works as a surrogate partner, seeing clients in her Berkeley studio. She's married to her second husband, Bob Greene, and has a daughter, 46, and son, 43, from her first marriage.
Born and raised in Salem, Mass., she moved to Berkeley in 1968, and says her work as a surrogate grew from her years as a volunteer with the San Francisco Sex Information hotline. "It was fascinating to listen to people and not be judgmental, to learn about myself and see what buttons got pushed. ... Up until then I'd never even met gay or bisexual men or women."
In the early '60s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, best-selling authors of "Human Sexual Response," started training surrogate partners at their research institute in St. Louis. Cohen Greene learned the Masters and Johnson approach from a Berkeley sex therapist. It incorporated the "sensate focus" method of sensual touch and genital exploration with verbal feedback.
END EXCERPT
Can anyone explain how "Sexual Surrogates" are NOT over educated prostitutes? Because, Merriam Webster defines prostitute as:
That one does other things as well, doesn't, IMO, change the fact that they are selling sex.
) neither is it something that I would condemn someone for out of hand if it is what they choose to do. At least they provide a useful service, unlike those leaches on the stock markets of the globe or professional politicians. 
