A Manhattan studio apartment feels especially cramped when you’re watching the couple who live there take a sex lesson. Even scrunched into the farthest corner of the love seat, I can’t put more than a few inches between me and the bed, where Mike, a fitness-center manager, lies atop his girlfriend, Shannon. While I scribble furiously in my notebook ("I feel like I shouldn’t be watching this") and struggle to keep my expression blank, Mike holds Shannon’s face and kisses her, grinding his body against hers. He peels her tank top over her head, slips off her pants, unhooks her bra, slides her red panties down her legs, and strips to his bor briefs. Mike has some serious abs. In fact, both he and Shannon are toned and lithe, as if they fell in love at the gym. (They did.)
If there is one thing to be learned from Valentine’s Day, it’s that scheduled romance isn’t unromantic—not if you’re doing it right
Shannon and Mike (not their real names) are "warming up," in the words of their sex coach, Eric Amaranth, who kneels beside the bed, offering tips and encouragement. Watching this gorgeous couple writhe on the sheets (they seem pretty warm already), I have trouble imagining that their sex life is anything short of pornographic. So why do they need coaching? "They want to learn more," Amaranth says. "Everyone should. Some people think it’s wrong to work on sex—that it should just flow naturally because of how the two people feel about each other. Come on! Sex isn’t always about lovemaking. Sure, that’s a form of sex, but there’s also animalistic, hot fucking."
I’ve touched on one of Amaranth’s biggest pet peeves—the idea that you are who you are in bed, and that sexual prowess can’t be learned. "That is such a destructive myth," he says, shaking his head.
Personally, I never subscribed to that myth. Probably because I’d never heard of it. Before meeting Amaranth, it hadn’t occurred to me to seek formal sex guidance (isn’t that what the Internet is for?) or to reject it. But after hanging out with him a few times and tagging along to a couple of his talk sessions (tonight is the first time I’ve seen his clients naked), I’m intrigued.
A few minutes ago, before the clothes came off, Amaranth used a vagina-like toy called a Fleshlight to show Mike how to stimulate the G-spot with two fingers "for 100 percent coverage," and now he rolls two Magnum XLs onto a pair of vibrators—a necessary safety precaution, since he uses the same toys for all of his "guided" sessions. On the hardwood floor, toys of all shapes and sizes, three brands of lube, a prostate massager, the Fleshlight, a clear cock ring, and a silicone butt plug sit on a white towel. It’s like a sexy version of your dentist’s tool tray, if your dentist specialized in a different orifice.
Amaranth is straight-backed, wiry, and fastidious—shirt tucked in, dark hair cut close to his scalp, beard cropped short on his whittled jaw. You might mistake him for a religious ascetic if he weren’t always saying things like "There are things men don’t know about hand jobs, like how to hold the glans with a diagonal grasp so that the coronal ridge has full contact with its surface area." (Obviously.) Mike’s the one who looks like a sex pro, standing there in his underwear, tattoos scattered on his muscular torso. But the pupil just takes the vibrators from his sensei and nods thoughtfully.
In addition to coaching—a two-hour session runs $240—Amaranth offers health-and-wellness tips; sex-enhancement workouts; personal shopping for toys and lingerie; and for those willing to shell out up to $7,000, a full sex-life makeover. His client list includes newlyweds, 18-year-old "beginners," premature ejaculators, couples who have young children and are desperate "to figure out how they can still have a sex life," middle-aged single ladies on the cusp of cougardom, and sexual alpha types who are hungry for Amaranth’s "advanced" secrets. Then there are the Mikes and Shannons, regular people who fuck respectably without guidance but who thought a little sex coaching might be fun.
"There’s stuff you can only learn through lots of practice," Amaranth says. "And if you can’t get solid, powerful technique down, then you’ll never be a sex god."
As a young man, Amaranth started reading about sex for the same reason most guys start reading about sex: He really wanted to have some. He loved the way women looked when they were aroused. He wanted to master the art of getting women off. Nothing was going to stop him, not even his virginity. When the time came to have sex, he was going to be ready.
And the more he read about sex, the more engrossed he became in the details. In college, he felt dissatisfied with his professors’ myopic focus on sex therapy—all that soft stuff about feelings and emotional connection—and their dearth of knowledge about applied sex education. (By then he’d started applying his own education, having lost his virginity at 19.) So he turned to the work of Betty Dodson, pioneer of sexual liberation, queen of the vibrator, one of the original members of the "sex-positive feminist movement," and author of Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving, a book about masturbation that has sold over 1 million copies internationally since its release (forgive the pun) in 1974.
At 22, after corresponding with Dodson for months, Amaranth took a bus to New York from his college in Virginia and showed up on her doorstep. Hours after he offered himself as a student, they chucked that charade and hopped into the sack. So began Amaranth’s apprenticeship with Dodson, and also, despite their forty-seven-year age gap (!), their ten-year love affair.
Amaranth ignored criticisms of the relationship. So what if his old lady was, well, an old lady? Who wouldn’t want to go to bed with one of the world’s leading sex teachers? He holds that most people don’t appreciate the full spectrum of hot. "Big breasts and a tiny waist, yeah, okay, that’s hot. But so is sex done with advanced technique. When both partners really know what they’re doing, that’s hot." Undeniably, Betty Dodson knew what she was doing. And after ten years of banging her, so did Eric Amaranth.
Mike is kneeling on the bed in front of Shannon, tentatively wielding one of the Magnum-wrapped vibrators. Amaranth asks Shannon which kind of "pressure" she prefers, and then tells Mike to use the toy on her through a towel. "I like it better without," Shannon says, and Mike flings the towel aside.
As you’ve probably gathered, Amaranth is passionate about the power of toys. They enhance sex, he says, because they free the body from its usual constraints. With toys, a couple isn’t restricted to four hands, two mouths, and one penis that comes in one size and is sometimes out of commission. "When I have sex," Amaranth explains, pointing to a few dildos, "that’s my penis and that’s my penis and that’s my penis." (You might think a groovy, sex-positive guy like Amaranth would dispense with the clinical language and opt for raunchier slang. And sometimes he does—when the client requests it. Otherwise he keeps it cleanish. He’s also impervious to the giggly, immature reactions that the subject of sex elicits in most people. He could probably say "vagina" ten times, slowly, without laughing, while staring you in the eye.)
"But what if a woman doesn’t want her boyfriend to fuck her with a bunch of dildos?" I wonder.
"That’s okay," Amaranth says. "If she has a strong aversion, it’s unethical to keep harping, but she should be interested in at least trying it out. If you have too many blocks, resentments form. And that’s destructive to your sex life."
As we discuss these "blocks," I offer the example of anal sex—a classic male enthusiasm that many women abhor. "What can a couple do to find common ground in the anal-sex department?"
"Start with smaller things," Amaranth says. "You don’t have to start with the penis. Also, he should combine the anal penetration with clitoral stimulation, because at first anal penetration alone won’t create an orgasm. Later, once the sensations have been integrated, he’ll be able to bring her to orgasm with just penetration."
Although perfecting anal-sex technique might sound like a dream job, being a sex coach, especially a male sex coach, has its drawbacks. Take, for example, the one-on-one sessions Amaranth does with straight women who want help masturbating. Predictably, this kind of session can become a blue-balls hatchery. Once he met a client, a businesswoman in her late thirties, in a hotel room. As Amaranth knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed, guiding her through "manual clitoral stimulation paired with G-spot vibrator stimulation" (his words for what others might call, simply, "masturbating with gusto"), she moaned, "I so want your cock inside me!"
Incidents like this are not uncommon, but he says he remembers his manners every time. "Thank you for that vote of confidence," he told her, "and for the honor. But I’m just the guy giving you instructions."
Every once in a while, those instructions simply aren’t enough. "Do you ever have couples who just suck at sex?" I ask. "No matter how much coaching you give them?"
"It can be tough for people who have severe coordination issues," he says. "This one woman said she couldn’t make men come. We did a session where we were each holding a dildo, so I could demonstrate a technique and she could copy it. And I saw what the problem was: Her coordination was so bad, she couldn’t even do the up-down, up-down motion."
Fortunately, he says, the hopeless moments are a lot less common than the big, satisfying breakthroughs. "The woman will have the first G-spot orgasm of her life, and then the guy’s high-fiving me. One time the couple took me out for sushi."
Forty-five minutes into the session, as Mike tests out the two vibrators, Shannon isn’t just relad—she seems to have forgotten we’re even there. In turn, I relax, too. I’ve been hiding behind my notebook, feeling like some Jane Goodall of the Upper West Side, but now I stop writing and just watch: A pink flush rises from Shannon’s chest to her cheeks, her breathing quickens, and her back arches. She clutches Mike’s thighs and digs her nails in.
Amaranth reminds them that it’s not "orgasm time" just yet. He wants Shannon to have a wider range of experiences first. He tells her that if she thinks she’s about to come, she should force herself to take a ten-second break. Shannon complies, pushing away the vibrator. Lying spread-eagled on the bed, panting, she rakes her fingers through her sweaty hair. But just moments later, she starts squirming again. Mike resumes with the toy, and Amaranth asks him whether he can feel her vagina opening. When Mike says that he can, Amaranth offers him a larger dildo.
With ten minutes left in the session, Amaranth tells Shannon that she’s welcome to finish. At this point, Mike is moving a fluorescent pink dildo in and out of her while she draws small circles on her clit with an Eroscillator, a toy designed by the inventor of the first successful electric toothbrush. Shannon, having delayed her orgasm several times, explodes and pulls Mike down on top of her. They lie spent, their breathing synchronized, in a tangle of limbs.
Amaranth smiles. "Cuddle time," he says.
He uses the remainder of the session to explain a few sex positions that Mike and Shannon can try later. ("We do that one all the time!" Mike says proudly when Amaranth details a tummy-down, man-on-top configuration.) As a gift, he presents Mike with a brand-new cock ring. "This isn’t just something to use if your dick isn’t getting hard. Even if you’re 100 percent hard, this will bring you to 110 percent. You know the hardness you have when you come? With this, you’ll have that hardness the whole time. Then when you come, your hardness will be at 115 percent."
Shannon pulls on a pair of yoga pants and fishes her tank top off the floor. Mike, still in just his underwear, starts tidying up the apartment, making small talk. While Amaranth washes his toys in the sink, Mike and Shannon tell me their story. They started dating a year ago. They’re training for a triathlon. They don’t mind sharing such a small living space; they’re just happy to be together. And although they claimed to hire Amaranth out of "curiosity," they fell in love on the sly and left their marriages for each other. So doesn’t it make sense that they would hire a sex coach to preserve what they know can get lost? Wouldn’t it make sense for most couples?
For a culture as sex-obsessed as ours, it’s a little weird that so many people just wing it. Shouldn’t we all welcome Amaranth’s sextopian vision? It’s a world where everyone fucks at the highest level, nobody ever gets laid the same way twice, and your girlfriend can’t wait to hop into bed every night—with you and all your penises.
Could you use some face time with the Sex Coach? Shoot us an e-mail explaining why in a few words. Who knows? We may even hook you up with a free session.