I finally watched The Sessions the other day. For those who don’t know, it’s a movie based on the true story of a man living in an iron lung. Or, part of his story, anyway.
In 1990, Mark was 41, and published an essay detailing his experiences some years before with seeing a sex surrogate. He was a poet, clever, self-deprecating, but unable to move his arms, legs, or torso, and only alive with the assistance of an iron lung. Using only his mouth and the help of others he wrote, and advocated for the rights of disabled folks to live independently everywhere.
His story is beautiful. The essay is unglamorous, sharing not only the physical experience of seeing a surrogate in order to get over the hurdle of his first time, but the emotional experience of facing shame around his sexuality, and his unhappiness with his own body. While he doesn’t describe the experience as life changing, and he didn’t immediately find true love, the fact that he realized that sex wasn’t impossible, that his body was capable of it and it wasn’t really that scary tells me that it did something. And though he hadn’t found love by 41, he did soon after.
I wish Mark had written another essay. Something later, after he met Susan, his love and life partner, telling us more about his continued friendship with the surrogate, Cheryl, and about how her presence in his life, even such a brief presence, changed his approach to women.
Jessica Yu made a short documentary about his life, called Breathing Lessons, which I have not managed to find in my brief searching. But I did find, and watch, The Sessions, a more recent film, somewhat of a biopic, costarring Helen Hunt as Cheryl, the surrogate.
I hated it.
I watched it because when it was released a few years ago, it was hailed as this cute, sex-work positive film and it was supposed to help change opinions about sex work, sex surrogacy in particular. I actually really like Helen Hunt, and honestly she did a great job. All the actors were fantastic, which sucks, because the script they were given was a hot pile of garbage. William H. Macy plays his catholic priest, a down-to-earth, funny man, earnestly religious, and supportive of Mark’s person and his journey. Mark’s assistants are played by a variety of talented actors who bring humor, love, and honesty to their roles. And John Hawkes did excellent work bringing Mark’s particular ways of speaking and moving to life, with the charm and wit he was known for.
But the stories never really hooked me. The director didn’t give us time to invest in any of the characters’ relationships before they just, ended. In the film, he falls in love with one of his assistants and she doesn’t reciprocate, but they have a tearful goodbye where she tells him she loves him, too, just not that way. The film hasn’t given us enough time to fall in love with either of them by then, so it just feels forced. Another assistant has a forced not-romance with the front desk agent at a hotel they use for his sessions. It adds nothing to the film and wastes time that would have been better used elsewhere.
But the relationships I hate the most are Cheryl’s. Mark starts to fall for Cheryl, a pretty normal thing for a client when seeing his first sex worker. But then she falls for him, too, something that didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen in the span of four sessions. It certainly doesn’t happen to experienced providers. Her falling for him is particularly unbelievable because of how just painfully awkward their sessions are. He writes that they were awkward, and his physical limitations mean that makes sense to me, but she’s just so…. Abrupt. I was extremely turned off by her brusque manner in the first few sessions, and she chides him for being afraid and anxious. She doesn’t kiss him until their last session, even though kissing is pretty standard first base stuff, and she also doesn’t offer him simple affection, only sex.
I know they’re trying to paint her as a professional, but she a professional sex-having person. She’s not there to paint his bicycle, she’s there to help him feel normal about himself, and experience sex and pleasure. If I were him, and my sex surrogate came in and undressed herself that fast, then roughly undressed me, I’d be… not happy. Worse: he has nothing to compare it to so he has no idea that she sucks!
So her falling for him after eight hours of clinical, awkward sex just isn’t believable for me.
But what’s even more upsetting is how her husband is portrayed. He doesn’t work, and she portrays that as something awkward and undesirable. He wants her to convert to Judaism, which is fine, but it’s written as if it’s shallow and disrespectful to her. Mark mails her a love poem, which was unwise of him, but otherwise harmless, except that her husband finds the people and picks a fight with her over it. A fight which we never see them actually discuss, she just gives him the silent treatment, then says “you were right, I shouldn’t have gotten angry that you opened, read, and then threw away my mail.” And that’s the end of it.
I don’t know what the screenwriters were doing with that. I think they were trying to give us a reason for why Cheryl might be unhappy in love, open to falling for Mark. Except it was neither compelling, nor did they follow through on it. The conflict between her and her husband was shoehorned in to try to give interest to the viewer, but it just felt fucked up. Like, pick one, guys. Either her husband sucks and she learns from Mark not to put up with shitty treatment and leaves, or her husband doesn’t suck and is able to manage his jealousy like an adult and the two of them work through their feelings together, or he’s supportive and they are able to take the love poem for what it is: a beautiful expression from a client who appreciates and adores her for a job well done.
She doesn’t even tell Mark how inappropriate it was! Like, if that’s the conclusion we’re coming to in the story, then do something with it! It’s like the filmmakers wanted to have it both ways: romantic conflict, and also everything is completely fine.
Finally, Cheryl is shown making notes about Mark’s emotional and mental state. That is outside the scope of practice for a sex surrogate. Surrogates work *with* therapists, not *as* therapists. She might have had some training, and she would have shared her thoughts with his therapist, but they used her note taking as a way to *tell* the viewer about Mark, instead of *showing*. I believe they were trying to show us her falling in love with him? Perhaps? But as with many of the love stories, there wasn’t enough to make it feel real.
The Sessions didn’t seem to get a lot of views when it came out. It had a lot of potential to talk about Mark, his life, his work advocating for the disabled, the work of sex surrogates, and the role of religion in people’s lives, but it wasted screen time on weak, contrived love stories instead. Cheryl should have been a lot gentler from the get-go, kept her opinions within her field, and had a better way of handling conflict with her husband than the silent treatment.
Overall, I thought the acting was pretty darn good, but the script was awful and the film suffered for it. Uninspiring, busy, unsatisfying, I wish I could have seen the biopic this should have been instead of the stilted mess they gave us.
So if you saw The Sessions hoping to find the courage to take your own first steps toward seeing a sex surrogate, and it turned you off? Take heart: it turned me off, too. I may not have the same mental health training, and unless you ask, I won’t be talking with your therapist about our time together, but I have experience helping people move through the awkward, scary, early phases of their sexuality. I have watched more than one person leave a world of insecurity and fear behind them and put themselves out there. It’s not entirely my doing. These people have put a lot of effort into overcoming their demons, a lot of time in therapy, at the gym, dating, second guessing themselves… but part of that can be done with me, and I promise, I’m a lot less brusque than she was.