Mark O'Brien

Life and career O'Brien contracted polio as a child in 1955. The disease resulted in nerve damage and paralysis, and O'Brien required an iron lung to survive.

In the iron lung he attended UC Berkeley, and became a writer, produced both poetry and journal articles. He also became an advocate for disabled people. He was featured in two segments of the radio program "This American Life", in which he spoke about the occasional opportunities he had to leave the iron lung for short periods of time, trying to find love and sex.

O'Brien was the author of several volumes of poetry, including Breathing, and an autobiography entitled, How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man’s Quest for Independence, written with Gillian Kendall.

At the age of thirty-eight, O'Brien began seeing a sex surrogate as he wanted to lose his virginity. He wrote an essay about his process of learning about sex and love. This was later adapted as the 2012 posthumous film "The Sessions", which also explored his later meeting with Susan Fernbach, who became his life partner. The professional sex surrogate was Cheryl Cohen-Greene.