He thought his new girlfriend’s devotion to a cutting-edge sexual technique was going to open up a whole new world for him—until it turned into yet another rival for her attentions.
I was waiting at the Union Square Starbucks in New York City to meet up with Jessica, a woman I had known for a while and had just begun to date. Jessica was attending an Orgasmic Meditation class nearby. Let me state that again: I was waiting to meet Jessica, a woman I was dating, who was attending an Orgasm Meditation class nearby. Not a yoga class, real estate class, or a class in Mandarin Chinese, but an Orgasmic Meditation session.
Essentially, Jessica, a smart, well-read, sophisticated woman, was getting her clitoris rubbed. Not just rubbed, but stroked in a very special way—by a certified “stroker” she had chosen from the group. This was obviously a bizarre New Age concept for any guy to wrap his head around, but I was desperate and Jessica was good-looking compared to my tired ass, so I was trying to be a good sport.
Not About Sex, Huh?
Jessica told me that Orgasmic Meditation (OM) “was not about sex,” and that the men kept all their clothes on. Orgasmic Meditation is a practice promoted by Nicole Daedone, who founded the business OneTaste, which is dedicated to spreading the OM gospel. OM is fairly popular in Northern California (surprise) and elsewhere, but is relatively new to New York. Jessica presented it to me as an actual movement rather than simply a pussy-rubbing club. It’s a way of getting the focus back on the woman, she said, and away from traditional Western, man-dominated sex that is often depicted in pornography: Let me do my thing and you play along like you like it.
After first restraining my impulse to make all kinds of sophomoric fun of the situation, I was not unsympathetic. Many women have told me that while they enjoy penetration, they rarely, if ever, orgasm from it, because men are forever frantically thrusting away at them. If they do, it is usually by stimulating themselves while the guy goes at it.
I myself am not the world’s most sensitive sexual partner. I am Western to the core in this regard. I also like to think that I am better at oral sex than I actually am. I have always enjoyed it, but how much have they enjoyed it? The truth hurts. I have had many ambivalent reactions that were real mind fucks, like, “You don’t have to do that every time,” and “Honey, I don’t think I am going to get off that way.”
So my open-mindedness came from self-interest as much as anything else. If there was a chance OM would improve my ability in the sack (and, by extension, my ability to get girls into the sack), then I was on board.
Jessica’s Coattails
With the exception of during high school, I have never been able to enjoy a relationship without experiencing attacks of intense, almost unbearable jealousy. When I got to college, I was instinctively attracted to sexually active girls. In one case, I remember knocking on a girl’s door early in the morning, demanding to know why she had not responded to the ten or so phone calls I had made to her the night before. Yeah, I was that guy. (And then when a girl would break up with me, I would masturbate and imagine her screwing another guy, but that’s another story.)
I had met Jessica six months before at a beach house in the Hamptons. She was funny and sharp. She had cool friends, and was from a tremendously accomplished, Ivy League family. Jessica, I found out, had had a successful career in Hollywood at one point. I wilted at this. I had failed in show business. I had wanted that life so badly for so many years. I had been a stand-up comedian. I had achieved some degree of success, but ultimately failed. Now, I had a clear image of me, perhaps wearing glasses, going to art openings, Jessica at my side, as I occasionally glanced at my iPhone 5. People would try to get to Jessica through me. I would have clout!
Jessica didn’t tell me about OM right away. All I knew was that she was really into this meditation thing. She frequently attended long, full-day sessions. I was impressed by her dedication and passion. She often spoke about her “workshops” and how liberating and inspiring they were—and how OM’s leader and founder would change the world someday. I had noticed that she often had her nails and hair done before she went.
Yoga Men and Hot Valleys
At some point, Jessica told me she was having a gathering and that I could come if I wanted to, but there would be a lot of people from her meditation class in attendance, and she’d be distracted. It was an ambiguous invite. I figured it was probably best to skip it. I could potentially lose ground, since I don’t do too well at parties. But not only did I go, I also went early and helped her set up. She was pensive and demanding and I felt sheepish. Since her buzzer was broken, I was assigned the task of going down three flights of stairs to let guests in each time a new group arrived. At first, these arrivals consisted of herds of very sexy and sophisticated women. So far, so good. Then some guys started showing up—yoga-type guys. I
dutifully let them in, tossing off frat-boy comments like, “I hope you boys are ready. This place is crawling with chicks!” I immediately felt stupid after saying these things. They smiled at me indulgently, with a sort of pity.
I have never really trusted these kinds of guys. I believe that yoga, if practiced correctly, is great and works absolutely. But I don’t always buy the laid-back Zen rap these guys have. I could be dead wrong, but I
think their rap is more insidious than the frat boy’s rap. At least the frat boy is transparent: “Look, I’m a pig, and I want to come on your face and not call you.” The yoga guy is masquerading under the guise of empathy, but also wants to come on a girl’s face and maybe call her. Biology is what it is. There are certain primal impulses that affect all animals and all human beings, from yoga men to truck drivers to lions in the jungle. No degree of civilization can ever bring about a permanent, collective transmutation of these instinctual urges.
At the party, I was speaking to a pleasant young woman from Brooklyn who runs a vegan health-food store. We were discussing the geographic location of Rhinebeck, New York, relative to Poughkeepsie. I knew it was north, but was it east or west of the Hudson? Hmm. Then right behind me I heard a woman talking in a slightly annoying, overconfident voice: “So this guy had two fingers inside me and was working every part of my pussy and rubbing my clit at the same time. We were moving together in complete harmony, and my pussy was so hot.…”
After a few moments of this, I turned to my vegan compatriot and said, “Excuse me, but do you mind
if we suspend this conversation about the greater Hudson Valley area so I can listen to this woman talk about her hot valley?” She laughed and said sure. We both turned and listened. The woman already had an audience of about ten people who were hanging on every word. She summarized, “The point is, this guy gave me hope that, one day, I could have good sex with a man … not my husband—we are too far gone—but some man.”
Shocking and funny, sure, but I also found it poignant. This woman was serious. Then I glanced over at Jessica. She appeared to be having an intense, intimate conversation with a tall, thin guy wearing a green army jacket. He was a little younger than I am. He looked like he might be gay, so I wasn’t
threatened yet. But then the woman who had been talking about her hot pussy pointed to the guy and said that he was one of the top master strokers in OM, “the best in the business.”
I watched through new eyes as Jessica laughed and pushed back her hair nervously while speaking with him. I decided that I was still okay. It was not until Jessica deftly handed the stroker her card as he left that I experienced a violent psychic shift. My dormant jealousy erupted. I didn’t have her card!
If You Can’t Beat ’Em …
But I wasn’t jealous of just one guy. I realized I had a powerful and peculiar rival now, and this infernal entity went by the name of Orgasmic Meditation.
I spent that night at Jessica’s place, but she told me we could not have sex. I suggested that we both masturbate. She told me that masturbation was not consistent with the principles of OM. She told me that we could have sex once I took the full-day workshop and became good at OMing (aka stroking pussy).
Fair enough, I thought. But as the class approached, I became anxious. The women get to pick who practices on them. What if I was picked last? (It reminded me of my gym-class days.) Or worse, what if I wasn’t picked at all, and had no one to practice on? What if I was paired up with a senior citizen?
I understood and embraced much of what the program teaches: slow sex, single-point contact, and women
articulating and receiving what they want. (Hear, hear!) Yet I was ambivalent. At one moment I thought that OM was indeed a divinely inspired movement, and at the next it seemed like just another sex club masquerading as something deeper.
If OM really is a spiritual journey, why would I be getting emails like this?—Buy seven Orgasmic classes today. Forty-seven-dollar offer expires tonight at midnight. And: For this you get access to the OMing hotline!
Founding Mother
Before I attended the full-day Orgasmic Meditation workshop, I went to hear Nicole Daedone, the OneTaste founder and chief proponent of OM, speak at a free lecture. It was a packed house in Midtown. Daedone appeared to thunderous applause. She was buoyant, and she had a genuine air of expertise. She was right about male-dominated Western sex, how it is way too goal-oriented, and about how women have been complicit, have played along with it, leaving both parties detached and dissatisfied.
She went on to describe how daily orgasms will make a woman’s world better all around. They will look better, make more money, and generally live an Orgasmic lifestyle. They will “glow.” Some of it sounded like a sales pitch to me. But many people appeared to be buying it.
Daedone closed her talk with a dramatic grand finale, a vivid account of how she was not just a receiver but an actual stroker herself, and often had had every muscle of her partners’ pussies “pulsating.” She would play with the pussy, direct it, as it were, and bring it in harmony with the cosmos, like a God-inspired maestro conducting a Beethoven symphony.
I felt tight, alone, and remarkably unsexy. And I had a full-day workshop coming the next day!
The Workshop
Jessica and I had started to quarrel. I’d screamed at her in a cab, and she stopped returning my emails for a few days. I was in a melancholy, listless state. I was not entirely sure she would even attend the workshop. The last thing Jessica told me was that my “bad energy was frightening her.” Originally, I had decided to take the workshop because I wanted Jessica and I to enjoy sex together and to become a real couple. Now my reason for attending was more mean-spirited. I did not desire or believe in enlightenment as far as OM was concerned; my mind was now made up and OM was my enemy. It had kept me from getting laid for two months with a woman I desperately hungered for. I wanted to go to that workshop, finger someone—anyone—and then expose OM for the scam/jerk-off parlor that it was….
The building was in SoHo. The room was packed with more than a hundred people, of various nationalities and backgrounds. Average age: mid-forties. A quick glance at the crowd put me at ease right away. They appeared to be a sincere and decent lot of New Yorkers. I saw Jessica there. She looked relaxed and happy and had saved me a seat up front.
As soon as Daedone came out to address the group, I noticed her aura was different. She was no longer a saleswoman, but rather a benevolent and charismatic educator and practitioner. She was completely unscripted. Her mind was on fire.
Ten minutes into her talk, she handed the discussion over to the room. I realized that I’d had it all wrong. OM was nothing to be jealous of, but rather something to celebrate. These were decent, vulnerable people talking about serious things. Some had not had an orgasm in years! Others simply wanted to learn more about intimacy.
The room was remarkably overheated, to the point where a jar of lubricant literally melted. Hot rooms make me claustrophobic and twitchy. I began to ruminate on the heat. Then something quite remarkable happened. A Russian woman to the left of me asked me if she could put her hand behind my head. I said sure. I thought she wanted to rest her hand on the back of my chair. Instead, she calmly put her hand on the back of my head, gently cupping my scalp. Within seconds my body temperature dropped and I was able to focus and observe the group.
After the round-robin talk, it was time to get down to OMing. I was still dying to be with Jessica, but I felt that my nervous energy would turn her off and that would set me back. I wanted to get good at OMing first. Jessica and I agreed to OM with different people. I asked the girl with the magic hand who was sitting next to me; I wanted to return the favor. She was pretty cute, and I felt if I could really get this broad moaning so that the whole room heard it, then maybe I could get Jessica into a frenzy of jealousy.
Pairing Off
Before we set up our nest (pillows, yoga mat, towel, $15 jar of OMing lube) and began the 15-minute session, Daedone spoke some more about the technical aspects of stroking. The men were given No. 2 pencils and told to stroke the eraser tip as lightly as possible. Then it was showtime. Daedone was going to do a live demonstration. A woman walked up to the front of the room, pulled down her pants, and got up on the table fully naked, spread-eagle. It was like some primitive ritualistic sacrifice. We all jostled for viewing space; some stood on chairs.
What took place then was flat-out mind-blowing. All skepticism vanished. Daedone and her partner were artists in harmony. This was no put-on.
Finally it was my time to OM. I could see Jessica doing some stretches. She looked insanely voluptuous. I had made plans with the woman with the cool, kind hands. Jessica had no problem finding a man. He was a balding, laid-back redhead, not traditionally attractive. I did not hate him, but at the same time I knew he was about to see Jessica’s very nice pussy. Luckily, my nest was on the other side of the room from them. While I was not jealous, per se, as this was “not about sex,” the very real possibility of hearing Jessica moan as Big Red worked on her, while I fruitlessly worked on my partner, would be tough to take.
A timer was set for 13 minutes and we were off. I immediately had problems putting the sanitary gloves on, and getting into the correct yoga-like position. Sadly, at this precise time, I had a mini panic attack. All that was good about me vanished; I became neurotic and weird, my sense of humor all but gone. I will say my partner was patient. The staff came around like benevolent angels to guide and instruct me; they cared. They were wonderful.
Finally, with the help of the instructors, I found my partner’s clitoris and followed it as it moved. At one point I lost it. “Excuse me,” I almost begged a practitioner, “can you help me find her clit again?” She did. I looked up to see a very heavy elderly woman spread-eagle about ten feet from me. She was moaning. I remember thinking that it was all quite wonderful and surreal, like something out of a Fellini movie. Probably eight of the women were at full climax, with some shrieking and a lot of them groaning. I did not get so much as a moan from my partner.
Then it was time to give a “picture” of how we felt, and what our reactions were. Most people said they were turned on and had climaxed. One woman gleefully announced that she had a “tremendous orgasm.” When
it got around to Jessica, she said she felt complete euphoria, and her partner, good old Big Red, said he felt like he was playing a guitar. Playing a fucking guitar!
When it got around to my partner, I braced myself. I would not have been surprised if she said something along the lines of,“This American pig cannot stroke no pussy for shit!” As it turned out, she said she had a “throbbing in her head.” She essentially told the entire group, including Jessica, that I’d given her a headache.
I said I “gained perspective.”
Perspective? After saying this, I immediately wanted to fall on a knife.
The relationship with Jessica ended in a bad crash-landing. I never got to sleep with her. Although I did once eat her out and got so turned on I came before I could stick it in. We had several awful fights, and many of Jessica’s OM friends suggested that she get a restraining order against me.
I never returned to OM, but I must admit, every event I went to afterward seemed a bit dull by comparison.
In Practice
Not wanting the whole experience to go to waste, I tried OMing once on my own, outside the structure of the OM environment. It was with my neighbor’s cleaning lady, with whom I had had sex before. I did not really take the time to explain the spiritual components of the practice to the woman, who was turned on immediately and started to gyrate. Her hips were coming off the floor, and she was saying, “Fuck me, fuck me,” three minutes into the meditation practice.
I tried in vain to tell her that “it was not about sex,” but, you know, you really can’t build an entire movement around orgasms, and then tell people it’s not about sex.
Can you?