Sexy Hot Beauty

Rita Bell is a sex surrogate, which means men pay her to have sex with them as a way of resolving their sexual problems. Though she doesn’t have actual intercourse with every client, there is usually some form of sexual contact, since the men come to her with specific difficulties, like erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, or its opposite, “retarded ejaculation.” There are several differences between her work and prostitution: She talks to her clients at length about their dysfunctions, and she looks less like Julia Roberts than like a zaftig hippie aunt.

But she advertises in the same publications prostitutes do, and her married clients never tell their wives. In a city where image is everything, it seems the difference between a prostitute and a sex surrogate is the difference between pornography and erotica: lighting.

Rita grew up in a liberal, sex-positive family and went to a Seven Sisters school in the seventies, where “people were very free about sexuality,” she tells me as we sit in her cozy prewar living room. After graduating, she worked in the film industry, and in 1986, she saw a documentary about a sex surrogate in California and became intrigued. Later, she began seeing a female psychologist who knew a surrogate who was looking for help. Continue reading ›