I'm contacting the most famous surrogate partner in the world: Cheryl Cohen Greene. At nearly 70 years old, she has had sex with more than 900 partners and she shows no sign of slowing down. If she isn't intimidating enough, Cohen is portrayed by Helen Hunt in The Sessions, a new film that chronicles how she helped a severely disabled man, Mark O'Brien, explore his repressed sexuality and find love.
As her character does in The Sessions, Cohen answers the phone with a warm Boston accent. Her friendly disposition instantly puts me at ease. No subject seems off limits. At one point, when recalling O'Brien's "Love Poem for No One in Particular," her voice wavers on the edge of weeping. Exuding compassion and honesty, her disarming personality makes it easy to see how she forms such an intimate bond with so many people, helping clients overcome all manners of sexual dilemmas through her specialized therapy, which often includes sex.
Drafting on the exposure generated by The Sessions, Cohen teamed up with Lorna Garano to pen the memoir, An Intimate Life: Sex, Love and My Journey as a Surrogate Partner, which juxtaposes accounts of Cohen's clients with the story of her own exploration of sexuality and love.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2012.