For $250, This Weird Dude Eric Amaranth Will Watch You Have Sex And Give You Pointers – Wait, What?

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GQ: 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 boxer 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.)

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.

I do NOT know what to make of this story. I can’t believe there are people out there who will hire someone for about what you’d pay a lawyer to sit there and watch you have sex and give you pointers. Something tells me this dude probably jumps in for some hands on teaching if he can’t explain the techniques and the guy’s just not getting it. I’d be like “move, let me just SHOW you what I mean” and basically start banging away on the chick just cuckolding the shit out of the dude paying me for my time. Damn I need to start up a side business…. But seriously, who the fuck can actually be in the same room watching people have sex? That’s just weird and creepy. I can understand the orgy thing like if you were banging away on your chick while your buddy is on the other side of the room nailing his chick. But having a third wheel just sitting there like a referee watching your every move. That’s just straight creepy. Like “Real Sex” level shit (for those of you who remember that old HBO show back before Internet porn was invented).

Personally I think if you can’t figure out how to have good sex with your partner, you have the wrong partner. And that wrong partner might just be you! That’s why those people who wait till they get married before they have sex. You gotta know if you are compatible in bed because otherwise you’ll be hiring a creepy dude like this to sit and watch you bump uglies.