The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker

by Suzanne Portnoy

  ‘Not really. I’m bored by all of them,’ I said, and explained how it had become so predictable. ‘Always the same desperate middle-aged guy wanting to wank all over me. Or the married ones. They’re fine for a couple of dates until you have to talk to them, and then you become their counsellor and have to hear about the problems at home. It’s a drag.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ she said. Tania presents a radio programme about sex, and I figured, if anyone knew what I was talking about, she did. ‘Have you ever tried tantric?’ she asked.

  ‘What, you mean six hours of staying still, locked together? Trudie-and-Sting sex?’

  All I knew about tantric was what I’d read in the supermarket tabloids. It sounded vaguely spiritual. I’d always thought of myself as a bit of a hippy, and God knows a bit of spirituality, after a year of nonspiritual anonymous sex, probably couldn’t hurt.

  Tania mentioned a woman named Jahnet de Light, who had been on her radio show. ‘She gives tantric lessons. I think you’d really like her. And she lives near you in north London.’ She promised to pass on Jahnet’s contact info.

  Tania sent me Jahnet’s email address the next day, and straight away I sent off a note. I didn’t know what to expect, but felt, if she could get me to concentrate on something other than exhibitionism and playing the hooker, on something that brought my mind and body together, on some kind of connection to another person, I’d be relieved.

  A week later Jahnet emailed back and gave me her phone number. She told me that, when she received my email, which I’d sent from work, she checked out my website, saw I worked in marketing and concluded we might be able to help each other out. I could help her advertise her new tantric life-coaching business; she could help me to explore the world of tantric. ‘I’m taking classes and need six case studies in order to complete my course,’ she said. ‘Would you like to be one of them?’ She explained it would mean having to commit an hour a week to come to her and study tantric. ‘It’ll be free for you.’

  Being Jewish and a sucker for a bargain, I of course said yes. ‘When can we start?’ I typed.

  Three weeks later I met Jahnet in her top-floor Maida Vale flat. I entered a large room filled with Shiva and Shakti statues, books on tantric and Eastern philosophies, and lots of Indian-patterned throw pillows. Large futons covered much of the floor, and a spiral staircase led up to the eaves. Incense scented the air and pale light came through the sheer orange curtains. I have not been to Bombay, but this seemed a close approximation.

  She invited me to sit at a small round table in her lounge, then left to prepare a cup of mint tea. Tania had told me Jahnet was a tantric sex teacher. What she hadn’t told me was that Jahnet was a sex worker as well, and had been in the profession for nearly thirty years. In combining the two specialities, Jahnet, I learnt, was the only tantric sex worker in the country.

  ‘When I turned fifty-one,’ she told me during that first meeting, ‘I decided I was sick of working under the radar, and I wanted to do something more than just jerk guys off all day long.’ She liked giving guys relief, she said, but wanted to add a more spiritual dimension to the act. Jahnet was an alluring half-Indian, half-English/Irish woman, large and voluptuous, with sizeable breasts and thick blonde streaks running through her dark shoulder-length hair. In a mature melodic voice, she told me about the course she was taking that she hoped would help legitimise her work. Jahnet had left school at sixteen, she explained, had no degree and very little discipline, but she was determined to take her career in a new direction while – remaining true to the spirit of a good sex worker – continuing to help others.

  She was studying life coaching through the Open University. ‘Darling, something in me believed there must be a way to harness all this sexual energy I was in contact with every day. I want to help people to achieve their goals – not just in sexual ways but in all aspects of their lives.’ Just what I needed.

  Our ‘classes’ were unusual and varied. We always started with a ceremonial bath. Jahnet would run the water while I undressed, fill the tub with flowers and scent, and then sponge me down. It got me in the mood for our sessions. It helped me to unwind, to the point where usually I wished I could just fall asleep; other times, it made me horny. But I had to remind myself I was there for neither of those things. Jahnet always wore a printed chiffon sarong, but had me sit naked on the futon, unless it was cold, and then I got a sarong of my own.

  The first week the two of us practised breathing techniques, sitting cross-legged facing each other, our palms resting upwards on our laps. ‘Take deep breaths while contracting your vagina,’ Jahnet instructed. The idea was to understand and master my vaginal muscles, so, one day, like her, I could keep a man hard simply by flexing those muscles. She promised it would lead to better orgasms for me, too. Nothing wrong with that, I thought. I called this pussy aerobics. Like a workout session at the gym, it was exhausting. I left with an exhausted pussy that first day.

  The second week Jahnet taught me the art of sensual massage by giving me a one-hour massage of my own. She climbed and writhed over my body while purring in my ear. Soon my entire being was vibrating from the sensation of being touched and stroked and caressed so lovingly. She explained the history of tantra, telling me how it originated in India some three thousand years ago. Tantric, she said, was a meditative form of sex where the object is to experience waves of pleasure, as opposed to a brief clitoral orgasm. A sensuous massage was one member of a whole family of pleasure. ‘I can only teach you the basics,’ she warned. ‘You need to practise your vaginal contractions every day, remember. Once your muscles are tight, your orgasms will be deeper and longer.’

  At the end of our third session, Jahnet gave me an orchid and instructed me to carry it with me until it fell apart. I put the flower in my handbag and took my handbag to work meetings, the gym, and then home. By the end of the day the petals were crushed and lay at the bottom of my bag. ‘"Orchid" means "testicles" in Greek,’ said a friend when I told him about this exercise. I suspected there might be heavy meaning here but didn’t dwell on it. I went back to my vaginal pumps.

  Jahnet spent one session with her hand halfway up my vagina, instructing me in the finer points of vaginal- and anal-muscle control. She would put her fingers up my cunt to confirm I was contracting sufficiently. ‘Squeeze tighter and hold!’ she ordered. ‘Squeeze!’

  ‘This is exhausting,’ I’d complain every week. ‘It’s not like my vagina muscles aren’t in practice.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not been the right kind of practice, my dear.’ Jahnet was part scolding nanny, part sex instructor, part therapist. ‘You’re too much of an orgasm chaser, Suzanne darling. That’s what your problem is.’

  I supposed she had a point. Even Anthony, my hot cop, had said, the last time we met, ‘You’re smart and funny and great. Your biggest problem is that you let your pussy lead and your brain follow.’

  Jahnet assured me that things would get better with time, that one day I’d see how tantra was about pleasure, not about coming.

  ‘But how is this going to help me if my pussy’s tired all the time?’

  ‘All this swinging shit you’ve been doing has made you too fixated on coming, Suzanne,’ she said. ‘Just enjoy the pleasure. You need to relax, to let your mind connect with what’s happening to your body, and to share your pleasure with your partner.’ Tantric, she said, was about creating a circle of energy around me and my partner, the exact opposite of the solo fuckfest I’d been having in my brain in recent months.

  One day Jahnet said something that really freaked me out: ‘I don’t want you to come until I see you next week. That’s your homework.’ Fortunately, she qualified it by saying I could masturbate but had to forget about coming. Once again she stressed that the goal was to stop me from being so completely orgasm-centric. Of course, I cheated. But I got to day four and thought that was pretty good for a beginner. And, when I came, it was fantastic.

  I went through the entire course with
Jahnet. At the end of our final session she set me my homework for the year. ‘I want you to find three tantric lovers, men who you’ll meet only for tantric and nothing else. No attachments.’

  I said, ‘Do you give this homework to all your students?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This homework is special to you. I don’t think you need one man at the moment, like my other students; for you, I think three is about right.’

  She explained how to approach my homework. ‘You will put aside one or two weekends a month to see each one. In between, no contact. On the "tantric weekends" you will devote yourself exclusively to pleasure – of any kind, not just sexual.’ Not seeing my partners too frequently, she said, would help me to keep the focus on the act, not the man. I suppose Jahnet thought that, if I transcended the emotional state, tantric would lead to a mind–body spirituality very unlike the body–body nonspirituality I was used to.

  I liked the next part: ‘On "tantric weekends" you must do absolutely nothing that is practical – no laundry, no cooking (unless you enjoy cooking) and no housekeeping. You should create a sacred space – away from the bedroom – to practise tantric sex, so that you are not limited by the confines of a bed and have space to move around in, to give each other massages, to play, to dance.’

  Before I left, Jahnet told me that, when I found a tantric partner and if I wanted a little practice sesh, I should bring him with me and she would walk us through a tantric experience together. I thought it sounded a little kinky. Having someone watch me have sex with another person didn’t sound much different from the swinging clubs.

  ‘Where am I going to find these guys?’ I asked her.

  ‘That’s for you to discover,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. It may take your meeting a dozen or more men before you find the three that are right for you.’

  I thought the auditioning process could be fun.

  I knew how to find a swinging partner but wasn’t sure how to go about finding a tantric partner. I suspected that the Asda of dating sites, Match.com, would reject any ad from a woman looking for a tantric partner, interpreting ‘tantric’ as a code for soliciting. But, while looking around the internet, my standby pimp, I found a site called Tantra.com. Most of the men were in America. Still, I posted a personal.

  What the fuck, it’s free, I thought, and put an ad on SwingingHeaven as well. Subject heading: ‘Can You Ride the Wave?’

  Tantric student, 43, blonde, blue eyes, 5’5", seeks one or more tantric partners (not at the same time) who want to explore tantra but are not looking for a romantic relationship. Must be open to the idea that deep intimacy can exist outside of a monogamous love relationship.

  I thought it would be worth a punt, even if it risked inundation by randy men attracted by the thought of six-hour sessions of no-strings-attached sex.

  Within a couple of days I had fifty replies, mainly from the very men I feared my ad would attract. I didn’t write to any of them. Soon after, my kids and I left for a three-week holiday in Vietnam. I figured I’d get my rest and relaxation, if not my tantric, there. I promised myself I’d practise the vaginal contractions and keep the masturbation to a minimum. And check the responses to my ads when I got back.

  I brought to Vietnam a delicate jet choker that Jahnet gave me as a parting gift after our last session. ‘When you see a large body of water on your trip,’ she told me, ‘I want you to throw it in and let it go.’ So I did, my second day on the beach. I’d thought by then I’d gone through all the grieving I needed to do for Daniel. But, as I tossed the choker into the water, immediately I felt him pass through me. I had finally let him go.

  When I returned to London, there was a message in an old hotmail address I no longer used. It was in response to a personal I’d placed on Match.com a year earlier and was from a guy named Jack.

  12. A LITTLE LIKE FALLING IN LOVE

  I’d posted my profile in a rage on Match.com a year earlier after yet another argument with Daniel over his smoking and drinking, and then forgot about it after we’d kissed and made up.

  Jack’s letter was intriguing. He explained that he’d been a private detective for twenty-seven years, had a house in west London and was looking for someone who enjoyed laughing, good food, clothes shopping and hot-weather holidays. At last, I thought, a man who rings my bells – has a job, has money, has similar interests. Ding, ding, ding. His picture showed a blondish middle-aged man with a well-worn face – a hot cross between David Bowie and Lance Henrikson. He was looking straight into the camera with an intense sexy stare. I thought he was one of the best-looking men I’d ever seen advertising on a website. His profile didn’t say anything about tantric, but I was sufficiently inspired to feel I might entice him to give it a go.

  I clicked Reply and up popped a form asking me to fill in the blanks and hand over £14.99. Fuck this, I thought. I’m not spending £14.99 to join Match just to meet one guy. It’s my rule of thumb that, feminism aside, I don’t pay for a first date – ironic, given I have no problem attracting impoverished guys happy to let me shell out from the second date on.

  How many private dicks can there be in west London? I wondered. A quick Google search revealed all of one. I composed a note, then sat at my computer staring at the thing. I feared he might take me for a stalker, but soon concluded there wasn’t too much at risk – if anything, I figured, as one who made his living snooping on others, he might actually respect the gesture – so hit Send and off went the note to his work email. I hoped he didn’t have a PA who checked his inbox.

  The next day I got my response. He’d been genuinely flattered that I’d gone out of my way to track him down, he said. He hinted at a past and said he was focusing on the future, was now looking to develop a one-on-one relationship with someone. I knew a relationship wasn’t compatible with Jahnet’s homework assignment to find three tantric lovers, but I thought perhaps I could bend the rules this one time. We arranged to meet in a week’s time and in between spent hours on the phone talking about our jobs, our kids, our day. He had a west London accent and, as it turned out, was one of the rare residents of his trendy neighbourhood who had been born and bred there. His job sounded fascinating, a Raymond Chandler novel come to life, but Jack was more interested in talking about his sideline – counselling men on how to become more sensitive and caring and true to their inner tree-hugger. He’d take groups of men to the woods of Nowhere, where they’d have to rough it for a weekend – no showers, no shaving, no washing machine – and break down the macho walls through soul-searching questions. It sounded a bit new agey, a bit wanky, but I didn’t want to say so.

  When I told my colleague Louise about Jack one day at work, she said it for me. ‘Beware guys who give counselling. It’s usually because they are a fucked-up mess and need it themselves.’ She suggested I stick to finding a nice normal simple guy who just wanted to take me out for a meal, buy me sweet little presents and have a real conversation with me from time to time. ‘I’m not liking the sound of this new man, Suzanne.’ She made finding a normal guy sound as easy as going to Waitrose for a pint of semi-skimmed.

  On Saturday afternoon, four days before my scheduled date with Jack, fate intervened. I had taken my elder son, Alfred, to his favourite sports shop, Lillywhites, so he could blow his birthday money on the latest Arsenal jersey. The store was mad; the queue held twenty people and I was bored waiting. I gave Jack a ring. Turned out he was just around the corner, buying shirts on Jermyn Street. When my son heard me say, ‘Oh, you’re just around the corner from us!’ he screamed, ‘Can your friend pick us up, Mummy?’

  It was not such a bad idea. We were loaded down with shopping, and schlepping our bags back on the Tube was a gruesome prospect. ‘Would it be a big pain to come and get us?’ I asked. As soon as the words were out, I remembered we’d not even met before. That’s another catch about the cyber world: it gives a false sense of intimacy to people who aren’t intimate – indeed, who don’t even know each other �
� at all.

  ‘No problem,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll swing by in fifteen minutes.’

  This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for a first date, I thought. I was wearing turned-up jeans, a long brown sheepskin coat with a turquoise sweater underneath, no make-up and my hair was a mess.

  We met in front of the Trocadero. A huge Volvo Estate pulled up to the pavement, complete with cream-coloured leather seats. ‘Mum! Nice car!’ said Alfred. We climbed in, me in the front seat, my son in the back. I took a look at Jack and saw he was just as handsome as he appeared in his picture. He was wearing a navy wool flat cap and a long blue overcoat. Stylish. Sexy.

  ‘Well, this is an unusual first meeting,’ I said, and introduced him to Alfred. ‘Nice car, by the way. My son approves.’

  ‘What she meant to say was that she’s just glad you actually have a car. My mother doesn’t usually go out with guys that drive. Isn’t that right, Mum?’ I was reminded of my first morning-after with Daniel, when Alfred had told Daniel my farts smelt really bad.

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ I had to admit. ‘Thanks for that, honey. It’s great going on a first date with you.’ Too bad there isn’t a zipper I could pull so I could close his mouth every time he meets one of my new boyfriends, I thought.

  We made small talk on the way. ‘So, you’re into sports, huh?’ said Jack to Alfred. ‘What team do you support?’

  ‘Arsenal.’

  ‘Good team. A friend of mine has season tickets.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Maybe I’ll see if he ever has a spare.’

  Good sign, I thought. Ingratiate yourself with the kid to get through to the mum. Excellent.

  When we arrived back at the house, Alfred said, ‘He’s really cool. You are going to go out with him, aren’t you?’ Then, yelling to his younger brother, he said, ‘Hey, Martin, Mum’s actually met a cool guy with a nice car!’