Everything I believed about BDSM had been wrong. I wondered what else I had gotten wrong.
I made a decision then and there.
I was all in.
I was going to spend the next year doing everything I could to learn about sex and I was going to write about it. Maybe I was a sex writer after all.
I knew that somehow, in a way I didn’t fully understand, I’d reached a turning point, a life-changing fork in the road.
This was just the beginning.
OM’ING
Two weeks had passed since the BDSM class and Sheng’s business card was sitting on my desk, untouched. The gold embossed card stood out among a surplus of pens and loose change.
I picked it up and turned it over in my hand, running my fingers over the tiny, metallic letters.
Like any good student, I’d googled OM’ing. I’d watched videos, read articles, and researched the company, OneTaste, a premier advocate for the practice.
If there was one thing I was really good at, it was academic learning. I did my motherfucking homework.
I learned that Orgasmic Meditation was a structured ritual that involved stroking the clitoris for fifteen minutes. It was a process that was meant to be spiritual and meditative. There were rules. Steps.
If there were a written test, I would have passed with flying colors with time to spare at the end of class.
Unfortunately, I knew this couldn’t be academic. If I wanted to fix my sex life, it wasn’t enough to browse the Internet. This year was about facing some of my insecurity around sexuality and the only way I was going to do that was by pushing myself out of my comfort zone.
One website claimed that OM’ing allowed people to “activate their sex impulse.” I liked that idea because I was deeply concerned that mine was broken. Instead of pheromones, it was releasing a penis-repellent that smelled like desperation and loneliness.
I picked up my phone and texted Sheng to schedule a session.
“Hey, it’s Olive! I’d like to take you up on your offer.”
My friends in the sex-positive community informed me that OM’ing was old news; it had been written about in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the Huffington Post. In some circles, I was late to the game.
Everyone else thought I was nuts for inviting a near perfect stranger to come over and rub my clitoris for fifteen minutes. The entire practice was focused on female pleasure, which made some of my friends, both male and female, ask, “What’s in it for him?” Many of them thought it was a ruse to get me to have sex with him. I didn’t think so. In many of the videos I watched, the men proclaimed that they loved OM’ing as much as the women. My friends couldn’t comprehend why a man would give without getting anything in return. If I were a psychologist, that might have inspired an interesting study about how we’re socialized to think about sex.
But I’m not a psychologist, thank God, so I didn’t have to analyze those questions.
Then again, who knew? Maybe he’d come over and we’d be madly attracted to each other and I’d end the dry spell. I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.
We scheduled the session for an afternoon while my roommates were gone. I had told them about it but had failed to mention that I was planning on using my roommate’s room, which was much larger and cozier than mine.*
I was sitting on the living room couch in my fuzzy fleece pajamas, sans makeup, hair in a braid when the doorbell buzzed.
I hadn’t tidied up my apartment or my vagina. I was intentionally trying to keep it as casual as possible. Looking nice meant I wanted impress him—which maybe I did, just a tiny bit; I just didn’t want him to think I was trying to impress him or that I thought this was anything other than an OM’ing session.
I opened the door to find Sheng dressed equally as casually in sweatpants and tennis shoes, his wild hair a stark contrast to the intensity of his eyes.
“Olive, good to see you again,” he said, extending a handshake.
“Likewise. Come on in! I was thinking we could, um, have some tea first and talk about what’s going to happen,” I said.
“Excellent idea,” he said.
I motioned him toward the couch and ran into the kitchen to grab two mugs.
I returned, sat down across from him, and waited for him to initiate the conversation.
When he didn’t, and I couldn’t take the uncomfortable silence anymore, I said, “Do you mind if I take notes?”
“Of course not,” he replied.
I jumped off the couch and ran to my bedroom to grab my green spiral notebook.
Given that he was a sex coach, I had expected him to be charming and flirtatious. Instead, he seemed a little awkward, which was making me feel more nervous than I already was.
I returned, flipped open to a blank page, and said, “So, how does this work?”
“Well, it’s a process. There’s an order to things,” he said, explaining the steps in a linear fashion. His tone was formal and his vocabulary was textbook-y. He used terms I didn’t know like “vaginal introitus.”
I felt like I was at a doctor’s appointment. Any thoughts I had about this turning into something more than OM’ing quickly dissipated. He was a professional.
I was surprised by the detail of each step and how every step had a name. Where I might say, “Shove a pillow under your butt and put a towel down so things don’t get goopy” someone else had elegantly named the first step “Building the Nest.” I wondered if somebody in the branding department at OneTaste had sat around a table brainstorming names before leaping out of their seat and yelling, “I’ve got it! We’ll call it a nest.”
After the Nest was “Grounding,” “Noticing,” “Stroking,” “Grounding” (again), “Framing,” and finally cleaning up the Nest.
It was, by design, thought-out and carefully planned. There was no room for creativity. Every detail was covered, down to how and where the stroker should sit.
I wrote each step in my notebook, underlining the names. Despite Sheng’s thorough description, I still didn’t get what the endgame was.
“What’s the goal? Like, what if I don’t orgasm?” I asked.
“That’s the point. There is no goal. OM’ing is about teaching you to focus on the sensations in your body. It doesn’t matter if you orgasm or not. That’s what makes it meditative.
“Are you ready?” Sheng asked.
“Yeah . . . totally . . . Cool. Cool. okay, yeah. Let’s do this,” I said, hopping off the couch, starting to question what exactly I had signed up for.
I ran to my room to grab the pillows, towel, and blankets and brought them back to my roommate’s room.†
We made the Nest by placing a blanket on the floor, with a pillow beneath both my head and my knees. Sheng placed another pillow by my right side for him to sit on.
“Cool. Cool. We’re doing this,” I said giving myself a pep talk. I lay down hastily, fully dressed, on the blanket, waiting for him to start.
“You might want to take your pants off,” Sheng said with a hint of a smile, the first I had seen all day.
“Oh, duh, guess that’s necessary,” I said, standing up to remove my pants and underwear.
Sheng sat down on his pillow, setting the timer for fifteen minutes, the mandated time for the whole process.
Sheng followed the OM’ing rules by placing his left leg over my waist and his right leg under my knees to ensure that we both were in the most comfortable positions available.
He rubbed his hands together, warming them, before placing one firmly on my thigh. Using both hands, he massaged my bare legs, his muscles tensing and relaxing with each movement. This was the “Grounding” step.
He checked the timer.
“We’re going to move on to Noticing.”
“Noticing” meant that Sheng was going to describe the color, shape, and size of my labia and clitoris in detail. I had no idea what anything in or around that area actually looked like. The only times I had ever taken a mirror down t
here were the few times I thought I might have an ingrown hair.
I thought of adjectives people used to describe a vagina and came up with a short list of “flower-like,” “roast beef,” and “juicy,” so basically the same list as a fifteen-year-old boy.
As for a clitoris? I had no idea how someone described it. Was mine long and oval? Pleasantly plump like a blueberry? Was it salmon pink or dirty-brown pink or not pink at all?
How did I not know what any of this looked like? Was I that out of touch with my own body? Would other women have an entire list of adjectives ready to go or was everyone as confused as I was?
I was so distracted by my own internal dialogue about the possibilities for describing a vulva that I missed Sheng’s actual description of mine.
After “Noticing” came “Stroking,” the part where Sheng actually touched my clitoris.
He put on a pair of milky latex gloves and opened a container of lube, placing some on his index finger.
As described earlier, he placed a finger at the opening of my vagina (turns out that’s the vaginal introitus) and stroked upward before arriving at my clitoris.
He pulled back my clitoral hood, which I didn’t even know was a thing before he told me, and placed his finger on the left side of the clitoris. The rules had been very clear that stroking happened on the LEFT SIDE ONLY. I had written it in my notebook in all caps. Apparently, there were more nerve endings on the left side.
He rubbed my clitoris unhurriedly, up and down.
Up and down.
Up and down.
Repeating the same motion over and over again.
Despite the fact that I was naked and a man was touching my clitoris, I wasn’t aroused. He was a stranger and my body wasn’t responding, so despite the lube, the friction felt painful.
My mind was racing with distracting thoughts, wondering how my vagina compared to other vaginas.‡
I should have shaved, I thought. Because even though it “wasn’t an intimate experience,” I still wanted to have an impressive vagina. This guy had seen a lot of vaginas and I wanted mine to be at least in the top five, even though I had no idea what would make a vagina “impressive.”
Once I was done shaming my hairy vagina, my mind wandered to the voices of the Spanish-speaking ladies next door watching a telenovela. I could hear their conversation clear as day through the thin New York City walls and wondered what they would think if they knew what was going on next door.
As if reading my mind, Sheng said, “Where are your thoughts? Focus on what’s going on in your body. Bring your attention to the sensation in your clitoris.”
It was a much-needed reminder because I had been thinking about everything but that.
Focus on the sensation. Don’t let your mind wander. This is meditative, I said to myself. I tried to bring my attention fully on my clitoris.
As I focused on heat flooding my body, it started feeling pleasurable. The sounds of my neighbor’s soap opera were drowned out by my own soft whimpers, which were partially authentic and partially to convince Sheng that I was enjoying the experience.
I still couldn’t totally focus on the sensations because I knew the timer was ticking. Even though the goal wasn’t cumming I wanted to get off. I was racing the clock. No matter where my body was, Sheng was going to stop after fifteen minutes.
“Hurry up. Hurry Up,” I urged my body. “You got this. Relax. Focus on the sensations and then you’ll cum.”
It reminded me of countless times in college when I’d feel guilty about a man going down of me for “too long.” I’d worry about his jaw hurting or his tongue going numb so I’d urge my body to reach climax ASAP, which usually resulted in a mediocre orgasm.
I imagined the army of women he’d OM’ed with before me, all beautifully orgasming at the exact right time from their perfectly groomed vaginas. I wanted to cum not just for me but also because there was a sense of pride in orgasming, like an orgasm meant that my body worked “right” and that was somehow “good.”§ It was a fucked-up way of thinking about it but I still wanted to prove something to him (myself?).
The moans, although still soft, became more frequent.
I estimated that I had two minutes left until the clock went off.
Cum or bust.
I shifted my body upward until finally, with an estimated thirty seconds on the clock, I orgasmed, softly. It wasn’t a great orgasm but I didn’t care; I had beaten the clock.
As I was silently patting myself on the back, the alarm buzzed a minute later and Sheng began the Grounding process. He used his palms to put subtle pressure on my labia and thighs.
We then had to describe the experience by saying things like, “When you _____________, I felt _____________.” This was called “Framing.” Sheng had no trouble with this part of the exercise.
“When you orgasmed, I felt a sensation of heat and electricity shoot up my arm,” he said.
I wasn’t as smooth. “Um. When you . . . did that . . . I felt . . . good.”
He encouraged me to come up with a better description, but I couldn’t so I just plagiarized his and slightly rephrased it. “When I orgasmed, I felt a . . . umm . . . pulsating and a rise in temperature.”
It was total bullshit but I couldn’t come up with anything else, so he let me off the hook.
I stood up and put on my pants.
I felt like we should hug or something but instead we headed back to my living room and sat on the couch.
“So, that’s OM’ing. Do you have any questions?” Sheng said.
“How very interesting,” I said, laughing at the fact that we were still being elaborately formal. We had just shared this intimately “non-intimate” experience and I wasn’t sure how to process that.
I made more tea and sat down on the couch next to him, fiddling with the string from my tea bag.
Part of me wanted him to leave.
Part of me felt like I hadn’t gotten the full experience because I was too nervous and too in my head.
Before I could chicken out I said, “Wanna do that again?”
Asking to OM was encouraged and supported in the OM’ing community so I knew I was being appropriate . . . and also a total greedy guts.
“Sure, you mean like another time?”
“I mean right now. I mean, we don’t have to. I just think I need more research. I was too nervous the last time to really be fully immersed in OM’ing.”
“Sure, happy to.”
We headed back into the bedroom where we had left the Nest still fully assembled. I smoothed out the blanket and took off my pants and underwear quickly.
This time I was more relaxed from the get-go. I had already practiced the art of focusing on the sensation in my clitoris. My thoughts were fixated on the warmth I felt every time Sheng stroked me.
This time around there was no pain, only pleasure as Sheng stroked his finger up and down, steadily and evenly.
I moaned, 100 percent authentically. Loudly.
Bucking my hips slightly, I urged him to go faster and increase the pressure.
“Don’t do that,” he said firmly. “If you want me to do something, verbally communicate it. That’s part of the exercise too. Say what you want.”
I hated being rebuked but could acknowledge that it was a logical exercise. Thus far, a lot of my sexual communication was non-verbal. If I wanted something, I’d move my body a certain way or just do it myself. I was trained by the school of “Everyone is a mind reader and should somehow be able to figure out what they’re doing.”
“Faster,” I mumbled.
He stayed steady and then increased both the pressure and the speed. He was a pro, I didn’t need to communicate anything else.
I moaned louder, the sensation unlike anything I had felt in a long time.
I was about to have an intense orgasm. The Spanish-speaking ladies next door stopped talking. I should have been quieter but I didn’t care. I was too engrossed in my own pleasure. In that way, I u
nderstood how it was meditative.
“Oh my God,” I screamed. Followed by a breathless series of “holy shits.”
My entire body spasmed and a flood of fluid gushed from my vagina. It was one of the most intense orgasms of my life.
Sheng went through the grounding and framing exercises before getting up and going into the living room. I lay there for a few minutes, panting and breathing heavily before putting my pants back on. I glanced at my reflection in the mirror in the hallway: my face was flushed and red.
Sheng was sitting on the couch casually sipping his tea.
“Wow,” I said.
We sat silently for a few minutes. I wasn’t sure where to go from there. That felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I wanted Sheng to leave so I could process and write about it.
Also, it was getting weird, pretending this wasn’t intimate. He had just witnessed one of the wildest orgasms of my life and now we were talking about the new shoes he wanted to buy.
Finally, I said, “I’m sorry but I gotta leave to meet a friend in a few minutes.”
Taking the cue, he said, “Okay, cool,” grabbed his bag, and headed for the door.
“Can . . . Um . . . do I pay you now for the lesson?” I asked.
“I can’t accept money or it becomes prostitution,” he said with his signature matter-of-fact tone.
“Oh. Right. That makes sense,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about that.
I wasn’t sure how to say goodbye, so I kept it simple and Midwestern: “Thank you so much.”
“Anytime,” he said, waving on his way out.
I walked back to my roommate’s room and cleaned up the Nest, throwing the blanket over my shoulder.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been with a partner and had focused all my energy on the sensations in my body. All I had to do to elevate my orgasms was to bring consciousness to how my body felt. It was such a simple thing and yet it felt like a secret barely anyone knew about.
The OneTaste website boasted about the dramatic, life-changing power of the female orgasm. Renee had insisted that it was exactly what I needed to unblock my sexual energy.
The Coitus Chronicles Page 3