Crippled by shyness, the 40-something professional can barely look Fern Arden in the face as he talks about still being a virgin at such an advanced age.
"Don't worry," the Manhattan sex therapist tells him. "We can work on this."
If the doctor's voice sounds confident, it's with good reason. Arden is the founder of an exclusive private clinic off Central Park West that provides a very specialized type of treatment for psychosexual problems like this one.
She employs an all-female staff of sex surrogates, officially known as "surrogate partners," who give clients one-on-one coaching in caressing techniques, kissing, feeling relaxed with another person in the nude and, inevitably, the sex act itself.
Alamy
Helen Hunt plays a sex surrogate in the acclaimed film "The Sessions" — but in real life there are sex surrogates working right here in NYC (above). They say they provide a valuable service to clients who have problems with intimacy.
"The focus is not sex, but familiarity and intimacy," insists Arden, who founded the Abel 2 Counseling Center 22 years ago. "We provide an environment, not for sexual pleasure, but for sexual learning."
The licensed sexologist has never spoken about her practice to the media before, mainly because, she says, "I have famous clients." But she agreed to talk to The Post following Friday's release of the independent movie "The Sessions," which is already generating Oscar buzz.
It tells the real-life story of a sex substitute from California who takes on a profoundly disabled man needing to experience sex before he dies.
"People tend to be ill-informed about what a surrogate partner does," explains Arden, who hopes the award-winning film about the late polio sufferer Mark O'Brien and his surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Greene, will shine a much-needed light on the profession.
"They think of it pejoratively, the same as a sex worker, but it's not," she adds. "Just as you have legitimate massage therapists and people who run massage parlors, there is a huge difference between them."
In fact, in 1973 a group of sex surrogates based in Los Angeles tried to accredit their profession. Today the International Professional Surrogates Association has about 30 surrogates registered in the US, though Arden's staff are not members. Per the organization's code of ethics, surrogates must have completed a two-week training program with the society and work under the supervision (but not observation) of a licensed sex therapist.
But, according to one law expert, the business is still illegal.
Derrelle Janey, a defense attorney at the Manhattan law firm Gottleib and Gordon, likens the sex surrogacy practice to prostitution — after all, money is being received for sex: "It doesn't matter if the client is disabled, it doesn't matter if he is suffering from some kind of emotional distress — that just makes it kind of sad. They have agreed to pay money for a sexual experience, and everyone understands that's the transaction. In my view, that's prostitution."
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