few days later, she turned to me and said, I can’t believe I let that man touch my vagina.
Somehow, I also managed to convince my butch, hipster DJ girlfriend to come take a Tantra workshop with me. I can’t tell you that I know what Tantra is, even after working at Electric Yoni for a year. But I can tell you what it isn’t.
On the pink rug at Judy Moon’s Belvedere mansion, ten forty-something single women and five horny men—all Caucasian, and many wearing harem pants—ushered in the new age of sexuality by gazing into each other’s eyes and chanting what sounded like vrom vrom vrom vrom over and over. Everyone there was seeking. The women, I think, were using sex as a gateway for the love they were seeking. The men, I think, were using love as a gateway for the sex they were seeking. My girlfriend, wearing a newsboy cap and large transparent-framed glasses, was seeking to get out of there. She did the vromming but refused to look me in the eye. I accused her of being unable to try anything new. She accused me of dragging her into a cesspool of hippie filth. We broke up a few weeks later, because I wasn’t cool enough for her.
According to Wikipedia, “Neotantra or tantric sex is the modern, western variation of tantra often associated with new religious movements. This includes both New Age and modern Western interpretations of traditional Indian and Buddhist tantra. Some of its proponents refer to ancient and traditional texts and principles [vromming?], and many others use tantra as a catch-all phrase for ‘sacred sexuality,’ and may incorporate unorthodox practices…
“As tantric practice became known in western culture, which has escalated since the 1960s, it has become identified with its sexual methods in the West. Consequently, its essential nature as a spiritual practice is often overlooked. The roles of sexuality in tantra and in neotantra, while related, are actually quite different.”
The trouble with sublimating the desire for love and sex into a watered-down, reappropriated version of ancient wisdom is that sometimes shit goes down.
I was both proud and ashamed of my job at Electric Yoni. On the one hand, it felt good to be supporting myself. At the same time, when I told my parents where I worked, my father googled it from his office and asked me why the website was blocked for sexual content.
I met a man named Mamadou while looking for bigger spaces in which to hold our yearly roundup of teachers—a buffet of Tantra, if you will—which always drew the biggest crowd. Mamadou was a soft-spoken man in his sixties who ran a local religious center at the top of a beautiful mountain. We talked of the poets Hafiz and Rumi. He told me that he really liked being with me and asked if I would come visit him at the center again, perhaps on the weekend for lunch. I said okay. Then he asked if I could bring weed and coke.
Mamadou said that not only would he pay for the coke and weed, but he would also pay just to spend time with me. He said a girl like me deserved to be earning more than I was earning at Electric Yoni. Despite the request for drugs, Mamadou seemed so centered, so spiritual, so into my thoughts on Rumi, that I didn’t imagine there was anything sexual about the request.
That Saturday I went bearing the coke and weed. Mamadou gave me $700 up front—$200 for the drugs and $500 for my time. Then he poured big glasses of red wine and served a series of beautiful Persian dishes: some kind of lamb, a vegetable dish, a sweet casserole. We ate and got drunk. Mamadou showed me pictures of himself from his youth. He had actually been handsome. He told me that he was bored of his life now. His spirit sought more fun. He asked if it would be possible that I come back weekly. He would give me $500 each time, plus money for drugs. Now I would really be financially self-sufficient.
The next time I came back it was more of the same: the weed, the wine, the coke, the delicious Persian dishes. But then he put his hands on my waist. Then his face came in for my mouth. I was like, No fucking way. Mamadou was like, Darling. You didn’t think I enjoyed your company that much, did you? I left with my $700 and never went back.
Why