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when I entered the last of the borrowed bedrooms where I would see him.
    “I’d like you to see your penis hard.”
    I undressed Mark and myself. Mark’s penis was again already erect, so I took the mirror to the side of the bed to give him a view of himself aroused.
    After he motioned to me that he was finished looking, I climbed into bed next to him.
    “What do you think, seeing your penis this time?” I asked.
    “I think it’s alright, really alright,” Mark said and smiled.
    I held him for a few minutes and then he asked if he could taste me. I knelt over him and slowly lowered my vulva to his mouth. He kissed it softly and then pushed his tongue in. He swirled it around my inner labia and pushed it into my vagina. He moved it in and out rapidly and then sucked with his lips. He kissed my clitoris. It felt wonderful. After a few seconds I pulled back and brought the breathing tube to his mouth. I was aroused. When Mark signaled that he was done, I moved the breathing tube back to the respirator. I snuggled up next to him and circled my leg over his hips, feeling his penis poking into my thigh.
    I put a condom on Mark and then brushed my finger around the head of his penis and squeezed the shaft lightly. Then I straddled his body so that his penis was inside of me. I began languorously moving up and down. My vagina started to flutter. I had also reached a high level of arousal. I slowed down to prolong the Plateau stage for both Mark and me. I breathed in and out and then remained still, asking him where he was on the arousal scale. “About eight,” Mark said. I kept still for another minute and then lifted myself up so that the shaft of his penis was partially outside of my vagina. Then I eased down and pulled up again. Mark orgasmed. He had stayed aroused and inside of me longer than he had in any of our past sessions. Even after he came Mark remained hard enough for me to move up and down again and achieve full orgasm myself.
    He asked almost immediately if I came. When I told him I had, he beamed.
    “Do you need more oxygen?” I asked.
    “No. I actually don’t,” he said. “If only this counted as respiratory therapy, maybe I could get SSI to pay for it.” We both laughed.
    Polio had caused Mark’s chest to be misshaped. It tented up a little and was hairless. I leaned forward and tenderly kissed it. Mark gulped and I grabbed the breathing tube. “No,” he sputtered. I realized that he was crying. “No one’s ever kissed my chest,” he said. Then my eyes filled with tears. “It’s about time they did.”

    Mark stayed in touch with me on and off for years after our final meeting, and I was delighted when, in 1994, eight years after our first session, he called to let me know he had met someone. Susan first became aware of Mark by reading some of his poetry online. She was so moved by his words that she emailed him. An online relationship was born and soon it evolved into a real-life one. Mark was tickled that his fear of never finding anyone had been proven wrong, and he was thrilled to have entered the relationship with some experience behind him. “Thanks to you I didn’t have to say I was a virgin,” he said.

2.
    the sin under the covers
    M y work has given me enough stories to fill this and any number of other books. Some, like Mark, center on people with extraordinary lives and challenges. But most are of those who grapple with more straightforward concerns, like erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation. When I chip away the particularities and personal eccentricities, I almost always find that much of what they struggle with on the deepest levels are issues few of us would find alien. Loneliness, anxiety, fear, guilt, or shame about sexual feelings, low self-esteem, poor body image, and body ignorance are just a few in the constellation of all-too-common issues that I see every day.
    My career as a surrogate now spans close to four decades and includes hundreds of clients. I