Perhaps you know the expression from the movie Hustle and Flow, “It’s hard out here for a Pimp”? Well, let’s just say, it’s not so easy out here for a non-monogamous woman either. You run into difficulties untold. There is no “you are here” map- everything is on the fly. I mean, The Rules -don’t call him or kiss him and just basically make him think that you hate him and then hook him and know that you will live happily ever after- don’t quite apply. It’s an unfamiliar nakedness, the nakedness of being stripped of any role, be it boyfriend or girlfriend or even booty call (because this isn’t that either) or even mine or yours which has a lot of built in auto-responders. There is a whole set of “his and hers” conversational etiquette that gets a big N/A stamp when you hit that category. Even the word “baby” as in “ooh baby” or even “I want to have your baby” sounds garbled in scripted at the same time. Yes, this is my most recent challenge of the non-monogamy road, recognizing the artifice that overlays sex-the ways that I have, unbeknownst to me, secretly injected future concepts (not the least of which is I will love you tomorrow or something of that nature) in an effort to pump up the sex. I had no idea that my sex was being constantly injected with a love steroid until I started stripping away all of the additives and let it roam the full expanse of my bed noticing what it migrated to, what it ingested naturally. View full article »
Category: 15-Minute Orgasm
It struck me that there are certain beliefs that are normative that I simply don’t hold. And others that are not, that are primary in my life. I found myself trying to contort myself into all of these very uncomfortable positions, trying to look like I was operating by the standard rules of play – while all the while, in back rooms, I was playing an altogether different game.
I felt like Valjean in Les Miserables who, realizing that he could not feed his family, made the conscious choice to steal a loaf of bread. In the moment the act had clean intent, but doubt and second-guessing seep in in hindsight, nibbling at his belief in his own rightness.
In other words, his interior compass, upon contact with the magnetizing force of the status quo, went haywire and he lost his sense of due north.
It happened without expectation. On a quiet afternoon, the image flooded in before I could dismiss it. There it was. A Center.
I was lying in my esthetician’s chair, clay mask on my face, hands tucked in the fuzzy warmers, hair tucked into a terry wrap as if it were the 1940s, when I heard the voice:
“NOW IS THE TIME TO OPEN THE CENTER”.
I live by two key principles in my life: 1) stay connected no matter what. 2) Ask for 100% of what you want 100% of the time, and stick around to negotiate the difference. When I introduce these two simple principles to couples, they look at me a bit askew. I usually hear some version of the following: “Ask for EVERYTHING I want?” “Stay connected when s/he treats me like _________?” “Stick around to negotiate even when it seems impossible?”
A new movie is coming out, Hysteria, which chronicles the invention of the first vibrator by a medical doctor. There was a time in American history when doctors cured what they described as hysteria with pelvic massage. Believe it or not, it was a medical treatment. In our current culture, women don’t experience “hysteria” quite the same way anymore. In fact, these days we’re dealing with female hypoactive sexual desire disorder. A lack of desire for sexual pleasure, not a hysteria from having too much of it.
The truth is, I don’t think either extreme is actually true for women, then or now. I think that women want sex just as much as men do, just not the sex that they’ve seen on the menu. I know this was true for me. So when the OM practice found me, it was profound in so many ways, not least of which because it fed a hunger I’d never been able to feed before, ever. Not with food, alcohol, career success or any other crazy thing I tried.
“Turn-on lives at the edge of what you think is possible. It is ignited when you dare to dream, act, create, and operate outside the bounds of the status quo.” -The Turned-On Woman’s Manifesto
I tell this to women frequently, as it became the truth that set me on this path to become the woman I am today. My particular line of work seems like something one would deliberately choose, given its obviously intense, pleasurable and sometimes shocking nature. But the truth is, at the time I discovered OM, my life in all practical ways was really good. I was part of the academic world, headed toward living in the Zen Center. I had a “good” sex life, but at the time the practice was introduced to me, I was celibate. Sex was good in the traditional “good” manner, and yet I sensed there was something else available.
Conventional wisdom has no place for people who spend, say, four months a year in orgasm. To even suggest that such a thing is possible—much less desirable—shatters myriad taboos. Four months a year in orgasm is a lot—especially considering that we already spend four months a year sleeping. What would the world look like? People in business meetings suddenly beginning to vibrate. Political leaders interrupting their speeches with interludes of autonomic breathing. Leaders of all traditional faiths would unite in opposition. Materialists would decry the decline in productivity and efficiency. Fundamentalists abroad would decry Western degeneracy.
In short, it would be a lot of fun.
Welcome to my world.
Orgasmic Meditation featured on TIME.COM. Hear from founder Nicole Daedone as well as students sharing their experience of the effects of OM.
When I say “orgasm,” I don’t mean it in the conventional sense, that fleeting moment when the body “goes over,” the sensation that pre-orgasmic women insist is mythical, the escape that even orgasmic women describe as earth-shattering, or the point at which men ejaculate before rolling over and falling asleep. Those orgasms are all fine, and I would be the last ones to disparage them.
But when I say, “let’s talk about orgasm,” they’re not what I have in mind.
I Am A Turned On Woman
[a guest post by Kimberly Riggins]
As a child my energy was fruitful, boundless. My creativity flowed through every vain, always yearning and wanting more. I wanted to understand the world we lived in…I wanted to live within the experience; not just participate but to see, touch, smell, taste, and hear every nuance. I was determined to forge my own path and I knew, even back then, that I was destined to be a leader, not a follower.
Fast forward nearly a decade, no longer that child, plagued with the aftermath of a date rape (my first real sexual experience) and my method of overcoming that rape, an eating disorder (anorexia), my world looked dark. My senses dulled. My energy…muted. I felt frozen.
But don’t count me out yet.
Because what was brewing in my sadness was my truth…I had to climb the walls of what felt like hell to be set free.
