Good Sex: It's All in the Muscles

When psychologist Oleg Frolov wanted to start his school for the sexually unenlightened he hit the hotels of Moscow in search of experienced women of the night to give lessons.


Unfortunately, once he told the women what he was after they looked at him as if he was crazy.


"They didn't understand what I wanted," bemoaned Frolov. "They just wanted money."


As if his frustrated pursuit for a Professor Higgins of the libido wasn't enough, his wife was soon getting dozens of phone calls warning that her husband had gone mad and was forever prowling the streets of Moscow for women.


Luckily, his wife, also a psychologist, knew about the search.


Frolov, a former champion cyclist in Soviet days, got the idea for the school after hearing of a lecture a prostitute gave on sex at a university in Sweden.


After a long search, Frolov did finally find his guru: a woman he refers to only as the "vostochnaya zhenshchina," or "Eastern woman," who had spent 12 years in a Arab sheik's harem. Frolov believes she was trained by the KGB for her foreign assignment.


Trained very well.


"When I spoke to her I realized that I knew nothing about sex," said Frolov, who, together with his wife, put her knowledge to the test.


"It's a thousand times better," he says now of his sex life.


Frolov's institute, called the School for Geishas, is now housed in a rundown building owned by the Orthodox Church near Baumanskaya metro. After renovating he waited for the clients to descend, but at first the phone rang constantly with people looking for sex and not for lessons.


"Those who want sex can go somewhere else," Frolov said. "There are enough places, aren't there?"


"Women can bring their men here without any worries and men bring their women," Frolov said, adding that if he catches any of his staff indulging they'll be sacked.


The school offers a month-long, 20-hour course for $150 to help you blaze the path to sexual fulfillment. Along the way you learn erotic massage, dancing, love-making/relaxation techniques, astrology and muscle control.


Typically it's the men who do the bringing, dropping off their partners so the women can learn some tricks, Frolov said - adding that the men usually returned to the center themselves a few months later, on orders from the newly trained women.


Sitting in his office, Frolov, a small, cheerful man heading toward middle age, describes lovemaking technique in simple language with lots of expressive hand movements.


The school's basic ethos is that for good sex you need to connect in a pure emotional way with your partner. But good muscle control helps as well.


Among the staff to help you on your way is an astrology teacher who boasts of being the grandson of Boris Pasternak's lover, but the school's star teacher for beginners is Vladimir Muranivsky.


Muranivsky teaches female clients how to use what he calls their "intimate muscles" for sexual satisfaction. Forty-three years of study has made him the world's top expert, Frolov claims, and he attracts clients from all over the world. Sex-show performers fly in from from Thailand as Muranivsky has perfected the art of teaching somebody how to write with their "intimate muscles."


"It takes three years to learn [such things] elsewhere," Frolov said. "Here it takes three months."


Male institute members receive their own intimate muscle lesson in a different class.


"Couples come back [after the course] and say it's like a second honeymoon," Frolov said. "Our aim's not just sex, but to give harmony."


Anyone hoping to have a session with the "Eastern woman," however, needs to sign up for the deluxe seven-month course, where sexual fulfillment is promised to hit another peak - and another price, $1,000. Even this may be a bargain: Frolov says he is intent on raising prices further to attract the richer breed of sexually dissatisfied customers.