Except for his college years, Roger Andrews has lived in Fort Lauderdale his entire life. He recalls his childhood as a happy time, with a warm, nurturing mother compensating for a cold, distant father. As a boy, Roger was no loner. He had male friends. But around girls, he was always shy. "My first relationship with a girl, in junior high, went very wrong. We liked each other and went out a few times. But I felt totally inept. I didn't know what to say or do. So I stopped seeing her, cut her off. I couldn't tell her why. She was hurt, and cried. I felt awful."

Roger's experience describes many people's adolescent relationship fumblings. But instead of soldiering on and learning interpersonal skills by trial and error, he became socially paralyzed. "I shut myself off. I can't really explain why, except to say I was very shy. I was keenly interested in women, but I felt intimidated by them. I had no idea how to get beyond casual friendships to anything romantic. And I haven't improved much to this day. The teen years -- that's when you should begin to experience intimacy, not just sex, but the ability to feel close to potential lovers. That part of me got stuck at 12 years old -- and here I am, 49, still trying to figure out how to grow up."

"Every older virgin has a unique story," Johnston explains. "They run the gamut from terrible shyness to emotionally barren families to sexual abuse. But all older virgins feel terrible shame. They feel embarrassed and humiliated by their lack of relationship experience." Age 30 seems to be a line of demarcation. "By 30," Blanchard explains, "older virgins feel so socially awkward and out of sync with the world around them that they choose to hide."

Roger hid. Throughout his teens, on Saturday nights, he stayed home. His parents noticed. To encourage him socially, his father pushed him to play a musical instrument. He picked drums and gravitated to jazz. "I was into Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Chick Corea. I was in a decent garage band. We played weddings, and I played in theatrical orchestras for musicals."

Roger's work in musicals led to an interest in acting. In college at a university in the South, he became involved in theater and won Best Actor his junior and senior years. "It was surprisingly easy," Roger says. "You have a script. You have lines and you say them. You don't know if you'll get the laughs you want, but you know you'll get the girl because it's in the script. My shyness was never a problem onstage, just in real life, where there is no script."

Friends invited him to parties, but he never attended. After a while, they stopped asking. "I became skilled at pushing people away. I don't think anyone ever tried to fix me up. I wouldn't let them. I think they thought I was gay." But he knew he wasn't. At one point, he tried a dating service, but that went nowhere. "I just didn't have the social skills for dating, and the older I got, the more different I felt from everyone else, the more handicapped."

Living in near isolation, Roger found solace in computers. It was the mid-1970s. He became a hobbyist like the young techies who invented PCs. After college, his computer skills and family connections landed him a job with a data-management company. "The work wasn't difficult. The hard part was dealing with customers. But I needed the paycheck. I used the phone a lot. It was easier than face-to-face contact. When I had to meet people, I forced myself." Co-workers and clients invited him out for lunch or drinks, but Roger declined. "I couldn't shift from technical topics to social conversation, so I never socialized. I couldn't. After work, I just went home and spent my free time by myself, except for the one night a week I had dinner with my parents."

In his solitude, Roger developed what he calls his evening ritual. He drank a beer while smoking cigarettes and cooking himself a nice dinner. Then he downed more beers and smoked more while watching the TV news, followed by cooking shows or tech programs on cable. He ended his evenings polishing off what became a daily six-pack while smoking, watching movie videos, or reading bestsellers: Grisham, Clancy, King. "My ritual isn't just about killing time and getting drunk. It's really a substitute for human relationships. It's comforting. I don't really feel lonely. I could easily go on like this for the rest of my life -- until I got cirrhosis or lung cancer. Except that I yearn to have a meaningful relationship with a woman."

Roger found many women attractive. With some, he was able to overcome his shyness and initiate casual conversations, but nothing more. The only woman he saw over time was the girlfriend of a close friend. "But she was unattainable; therefore she was safe." He also kept a diary. "It was filled with agony and despair over my social ineptitude."

Roger never went to call-girls. "It crossed my mind, of course. A few times I even went through the phone book looking for escort services. But I knew my problem wasn't just a lack of sex. Hell, I could self pleasure and often did. The problem was -- and is -- my inability to develop an intimate human relationship. You don't get that from a call-girl, so I wasn't interested."

As the years passed, he became obsessed with the intimacy and sex he was missing. By age 31, Roger realized that he would never find intimacy on his own, that he needed professional help. "I pulled out the phone book, looked up psychiatrists, and called one at random." He's been in therapy for most of the past 18 years.

Roger's psychiatrist prescribed anti-anxiety medication (Xanax) and an antidepressant (Anafranil). But he wanted more than drugs, so he contacted a clinical psychologist, who urged him into group therapy to deal with his shyness. "I hated the group. I didn't want to talk. I was too shy and clammed up." The group quickly learned that his issue was profound shyness, especially around dating, and reassured him that it was challenging for everyone. "They seemed to think that their reassurances would allow me to step out and date. No way. I just couldn't." At one point, a man in the group confessed sexual frustration and said he might go to California and have sex with a surrogate. (Most surrogates work in California because it's unambiguously legal there.) Roger had never heard of surrogates. Soon after, he left the group and opted for individual psychotherapy. He's been with his current therapist, a woman, for six years. He likes her and feels she's helping him. But he still wasn't dating. He was still a virgin.

Last year, Roger recalled the man in his therapy group who had mentioned surrogates. On a whim, he did an Internet search. "I got tons of junk, and then I noticed IPSA." He e-mailed the organization and heard back from Blanchard, now in her mid-40s, who's been a surrogate for more than 20 years. She provided a phone number and invited Roger to call. He learned that she was not a call-girl, but more of an intimacy coach and therapist; that surrogates don't always have intercourse with clients; that they introduce a client to loving touch and relationship skills. Blanchard said she would send him an application and asked for a $200 good-faith deposit, which would be applied to her fee. "The deposit discourages frivolous inquiries," she explains. Roger agreed.

The application asked why Roger wanted to work with a surrogate. He replied: "I feel alone and anxious because I haven't had any intimate, sexual relationships." It asked for his treatment goals. He listed seven: "(1) To learn to touch and be touched to ease my yearning for physical contact. (2) To feel better about myself because I've had sexual experience. (3) To increase my chances of relationships with women. (4) To end my confusion about the appropriate place for sex in relationships. (5) To satisfy my burning curiosity about women's bodies. (6) To better understand my own body and feelings. (7) To find out what the 'joy of sex' is all about."

Blanchard presented Roger with his options for surrogate-partner therapy: He could involve his local therapist and bring a surrogate to his area, or he could travel to California to work with a therapist and surrogate team there. He wanted to stay in Fort Lauderdale so that his therapist could be involved. Blanchard was willing to go east, but before that, she talked with his therapist.

Roger's therapist was very skeptical. "She kept saying, 'This can't be legal. It's prostitution. I could lose my license.'" Roger urged her to read an Internet interview with Blanchard and to call her. The therapist balked. Finally, Roger said, "Your license is safe if I see a call-girl and tell you about it. What's wrong with seeing a surrogate and telling you about it? I want to work with you on this, but if you won't work with me, I'll go to California and see a therapist there." His therapist relented (and has since become a big supporter of surrogate therapy for older virgins).

Frequently, however, it's the psychotherapist who suggests surrogate therapy to older virgins. Weston has arranged for several middle-aged virgin clients to see surrogates. "The surrogates I work with rely on me to screen the guys, to make sure they're safe and not crazy."

Next page | "I'd never kissed anyone before"

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