There was no Leo Grande.
At least not the green-eyed one from that film on Hulu where Emma Thompson hires a sex worker to help her widow soul remember how to want. I didn’t have that. What I had was two people working over a middle-aged, pandemic-bloated body. Not sex workers in the legal sense, but practitioners of Yonis R Us (let’s call it that). They run these retreats. Glamorous locations. Women of every age—from the fresh-faced to the extremely elderly—learning to reconnect with desire.
It was supposed to be “hands-on bodywork.” A happy ending was possible, yes, but theoretically incidental.
The real point was radical self-acceptance. Plight.
Sexuality without the performative pressure of hetero-normative expectations. No goals. Just sensation.
My monkey mind did not like this plan.
It doesn’t just chatter during meditation; it screams from the treetops. It scans for threats. Is that spot on my leg fatal? Why didn’t they text back? Are we dying? I needed a Magic Vagina Whisperer to shut my brain up. Someone to play my nerves like an instrument. Or maybe a bagpipe. I wasn’t sure yet.
Then Nanette*, the founder, offered me a private, complimentary session that night.
“Yes please!” I said. Four seconds later. Panic.
Not because I thought letting strangers touch naughty bits was immoral. I’ve interviewed sex workers. I know providing touch to people starved for it is a gift. Viva the specialist.
No, the panic came from the mirror.
I had a belly. A bush that looked like an abandoned parking lot after a rainstorm. Emma Thompson said she couldn’t rush to a spa before filming her nudity scene. Fair point. But I also couldn’t lose thirty pounds by evening.
So I decided to own the bush. Screw it. Behold the body. It felt empowering, mostly because I was out of options.
The Setup
San Diego. A charming house down a shady lane.
Nanette answered the door. She’s short, curvy, warm—like a fairy godmother who knows what’s under your mattress. She introduced Rod Steele*, a blonde, muscular ideal specimen. Gentle too. Lovely even.
We sat in the living room. Snacks on the table. We talked. I picked at food. Finally, they led me to the bedroom. There was a table, similar to a massage bed. I got on it. Dropped my sheet. Waited.
When they started, I closed my eyes.
Good move.
Sensation play began immediately. They always asked. Consent first, every time. Scarves dragged over thighs. A wheel toy with little spikes. The instruction was simple: stay present. Feel this. Nothing else.
Then hands moved lower. Below the bathing suit line.
Consensual flogger flicks. A butt plug. The details are foggy. I’m not a grandmaster of chess; I can’t give you a move-by-move breakdown like Bishop to E5.
What I do remember is the pressure mounting.
I wasn’t close to climax.
But I felt I should be. Politeness demands it. You are being stroked by two beautiful, attentive people for free. The least you could do is reciprocate with some biological fireworks. Right?
I lay there. Naked. Stimulation ramping up. And I worried if their hands hurt. If they regretted offering the discount.
Absurd, right?
The Machine
Enter the Wand.
You know it. The giant vibrator. The jackhammer of the intimate world. It has a ripcord soul. If gas-powered vibes ever exist, this is the chassis.
They applied it.
Nothing happened.
My brain hit the brakes. “Shit, it’s not happening!” I thought. The least arousing thought possible. The monkey mind was back, howling about failure.
Why?
I realized the missing piece: chemistry.
It wasn’t just mechanical input. Sex isn’t just body part A touching body part B. It’s the smell of a specific neck. The jawline of the person touching you. The electricity of mutual hunger. Alain de Botton puts it well—he argues great sex is rare because nature is stingy with its gifts. It requires timing, biology, psychology, and luck all aligning.
A glory hole doesn’t appeal to me because it lacks the person. I needed the backstory. The person.
Nanette and Rod were professionals. Kind, skilled, lovely people. But I didn’t know them. There was no “I will sell this house!” fire, to borrow an Annette Bening reference. I wasn’t swept away by desire for them. I had to force it.
So I pulled up porn in my head. Two straight college guys getting too hot and bothered to maintain their heterosexuality. A classic trope.
Make it happen.
Eventually, through sheer will, I climaxed. Check.
Was it huge? No. Was it goal-less? Definitely not. I ruined the concept of purposeless pleasure by adding a deadline.
The Aftermath
Back in the living room. Popsicles. Exceptional ones, mind you.
Rod and Nanette sat on either side. We cuddled. A+ aftercare.
We debriefed. Rod suggested trying the plug again later. I ate another popsicle.
Did I enjoy the work?
I support the practice. Statistically, multi-partner sex is a top fantasy. If you can shut your brain off and let two strangers attend to you, you’d probably dig it.
But not me. Not tonight.
The most intense act of the night was the mental masturbation of worry. I proved to myself that biology cannot be brute-forced without the spark. That’s a rare thing, what we had there. And I needed more.
There is value in this space, though. You can be sexual without the weight of pleasing a specific other person. No emotional hangover. No reverb. You go deep. You touch. You eat ice cream. Then you leave.
Simple. Clean.
Except for the howler monkey in the room, of course. 🐒
