Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (42 page)

Margaret had carefully orchestrated the ritual to fulfill as many of Robin’s desires and fantasies as possible. We began in the bedroom, stroking Robin with some soft and some not-so-soft floggers. We played her body like a percussion instrument, which she very much appreciated. Robin is a world-class drummer. We used every imaginable sensation-producing device we could find: hard, thuddy things and sharp, stingy things; soft, fuzzy things and cool, smooth things. We played her fast and hard, then soft and slow, then slow and hard. In between, we teased her with nibbles of tiny champagne grapes and chocolate.

After this act of our birthday ritual had reached its climax, we let her rest, giving her body time to integrate and appreciate all the delicious sensations with which we had bombarded her. Then we untied her and carried her into a big sunken tub. Her lover held her like a baby as we all bathed and caressed her. Slowly, we removed her blindfold. The dark marble bathroom was the showpiece of this loft. It looked like a cave temple, decorated with candles placed judiciously around the room. Robin looked as though she had been reborn.

After Robin’s long, luxurious bath, we all wrapped her in a warm soft towel and brought her into the main room for a snack of delicious gourmet treats. Robin was in bliss. She thanked us all profusely, obviously thinking that her surprise was over. “Oh no,” we informed her. “We were just giving you a little break before the big finale: an Erotic Awakening Massage given by all five of us!”

An Erotic Rite

I delight in designing and facilitating a group erotic ritual for someone I love. One of my lovers, Diana, had long admired my labia piercings and decided she wanted one. She wanted to receive the piercing, not at a traditional piercing parlor, but as part of a
ritual in a workshop setting. The Erotic Rites workshop was perfect. In it, each woman designed a ritual or rite for herself. The intention of the rite was to receive support and assistance from the group in a ritual that would honor the woman’s sexual past as it prepared her to step into her erotic future. Roughly half the group assisted each woman in her ritual; the rest witnessed the rite.

Diana and I had just begun our relationship. She had been married to a man for twenty-five years and was now, with her husband’s encouragement, exploring both polyamory and sex with a woman. Needless to say, Diana was at the doorway to a hugely significant new phase of her sexual evolution.

Diana and I began her ritual seated and facing each other on a massage table in the Yab Yum position. We breathed together, gazed into each other’s eyes, and shared how much we loved each other and what we wanted for each other. Diana stated her intention of what she wanted to receive from her ritual. I stated what I hoped to give her. We breathed ourselves into a seated, open-eyed Clench and Hold. I gently laid her back onto the massage table, removed her bra and panties, and kissed her over her heart chakra. When Diana told me she was ready, I called over the professional piercer, who was standing by. As the needle pierced her labia, Diana let out a low, guttural sound, then opened her eyes in amazement as the warm rush of endorphins flowed up her body. After the piercer put in the jeweled ring Diana had selected, Diana sat up and looked at it, beaming with pride and pleasure. Having raised all her yummy endorphins, we were now about to put them to good use.

As Tina Turner’s “Never in Your Wildest Dreams” played in the background, six women massaged Diana, alternating elegant, sensual strokes using hands and feathers with hard, slapping strokes using wooden spoons and light floggers. They stroked her everywhere but between her legs where the fresh piercing was. As the music changed to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” we began vibrating her chakras with two huge electric vibrators. We skipped the root chakra, which was too close to the fresh piercing. We breathed with her and danced beside the table, sending her all the love and juice and energy we could. Meanwhile, the women who were witnessing the ritual surrounded us, dancing and generating more energy.

Caught in the tsunami of energy we were all creating, Diana was breathing rapidly. Suddenly she took a huge, deep breath and held it in a Clench and Hold. We screamed “Go for it! Reach right into the next part of your life!” Diana let go. Her spine arched like a bow. As it curled back down to the table, her legs arched. Then, as they came back down, she sat up and curled up over her legs. She looked like a sea serpent riding a wave. She hugged herself; she stroked herself; she cried. She appeared to pass seamlessly through veils of emotions as though she were traveling through the past, present,
and future of her life. Finally she lay still and peaceful on the table. She opened her eyes and reached for me. I fell into her arms, crying.

You do not need to wait for a workshop to create an experience like this for yourself or your lover. You can gather a group of friends together and create an erotic ritual in your own home. If being sexual around friends who you do not consider lovers is unfamiliar to you, it may seem strange or uncomfortable. Our culture saturates itself with sex. At the same time, it makes rules to keep sex confined to one primary relationship. Silly, huh? Why should we not play sexually with our dearest friends? Sure, perhaps not all your friends would be interested in that kind of play, but it’s not hard to make friends who would be. “Fuck buddies” are friends who get together to enjoy sex the way other friends may get together to see movies or play sports.

A Weekend in the Country

One of my favorite sex parties with friends was a celebration of the completion of a project we had all worked on together. On Earth Day in 1990, I got together with nine other graduates of Betty Dodson’s Bodysex workshops to make a video documenting Betty’s twenty-five years of legendary masturbation workshops for women. The result was
Selfloving: Portrait of a Women’s Sexuality Seminar
. (See the resources section at the end of the book for information about how to order a copy.) The video shoot was a smashing success, and all the women who participated became good friends. A few weeks after the shoot, one of the women asked us all to a slumber party at her new home in a suburban town in New England. Six of us were available and eagerly accepted. When we asked if we could bring anything, our hostess, Julie, said, “Yes. Your vibrators, a sexy outfit, and whichever dildo you’re the fondest of this week.”

We arrived in the late afternoon of a warm spring Saturday. Our visit started suburbanly enough. Julie took us on a tour of her beautiful old colonial house and served us iced tea, and we all sat down to catch up with each other’s news. As the afternoon turned into evening, our hostess invited us to gather around the dining room table for hors d’oeuvres and entertainment. We proceeded to suck down huge, salty, raw oysters as our hostess climbed onto the table, smiling down at us seductively. She performed an extremely athletic and explicit striptease, giving each of us a tasty little show right in front of our plate!

After a gorgeous dinner with all the trimmings, we knew a party would follow. I was feeling overfed from such a big meal, and tired, and not particularly interested in sex. Besides, I had no idea what the game plan was. It was hard to get excited with no expectation
of what might happen. We went upstairs to change clothes. “Into what?” I wondered. What was the theme? I’d always heard that the costume makes the character, so I dived into my costume and toy bag. I needed a serious jolt of energy; nothing soft and flowing would do it for me tonight. I strapped on my dildo harness, into which I had inserted a large, bright purple dildo. Then I shook my breasts into a leather cupless bra and picked up a riding crop. I had begun to wake up a little. I would fake it till I felt sexy. Then I gave myself permission to sit back and watch if that was all I wanted to do. The minute I did so, I felt energized. I set off in search of some action to match my hard-edged mood.

Still not all that sure of myself, I cruised down the stairs to the living room, following the sound of Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” Betty, dressed in leather chaps, stood behind Patricia, teasing her with a huge strap-on dildo. Patricia was also dressed in leather, though her outfit wasn’t much more than a few straps. Before I could ask if I could join them, they said, “
Ooo
, you look hot; come on over here.” Encouraged, I made my way over to Betty and stood behind her. I did to her whatever she did to Patricia. The scene melted its way into a three-way fuck, suck, bite, and wrestlefest that lasted considerably longer than the Joplin album.

When the three of us had recovered, I was dispatched to find out what everyone else was up to. I made my way upstairs, where I heard giggling from the bathroom off the master bedroom. Lost in the pleasures of a bathtub filled with rose-smelling bubbles and sweet, wet flesh, our three friends caressed, licked, and fingered each other. When they saw me—still sporting my leather and dildo—they decided it was time for the water goddesses to join the leather goddesses on the living room floor.

Downstairs, we all formed a circle, lying on our backs with knees up and vibrators in hand. Someone put a Springsteen album on the stereo. Using the conscious rhythmic breathing, the Kegels, and the vibrator techniques we had all mastered in Betty’s workshops, we wove the hard and soft energies with which we had been playing into the most powerful jill-off I have ever been a part of. I came over and over again for
twenty-five minutes—until
I finally
managed to stagger outside
. I
threw
myself
down
on the cool, wet grass. I had left my vibrator inside the house and I was just lying on my back, but I was still coming. The earth rose up to meet me and the stars danced on my breasts and belly. I felt like an invincible bridge between the earthly and the mystical, filled with pure divine power.

The next morning we met in our circle with our coffee, sharing what had happened for us, each of us grateful and amazed at how powerful and life-changing sex could be among the right friends.

The Dark Heart

Chester Mainard and I created the Dark Heart ritual for the Great Australian Bliss Out and Love In. It was an evening in the middle of an intensive five-day residential workshop. The evening was called Dark Heart in reference to the many dark emotions and hurt feelings that had arisen out of a previous workshop exercise, during which some participants found themselves recreating old, destructive patterns of sexual behavior. The Dark Heart was designed to be a play space in which participants had the freedom to create the sexual experience they wanted and also to provide an environment with rules that supported conscious behavior. It was a space in which the dark and wounded heart could be embraced, honored, and healed with attention, love, and consciousness.

Chester transformed our usually light, airy, sun-filled workshop room into a cushioned, womblike, tomblike space. He had placed a few candles around the room, and a ray of soft moonlight filtered in through one window. That was the only light. The room was divided into four areas. Each area was set aside for a specific activity, and only for that activity.

The first area was for communicating. If you wanted to talk with someone and you were not being sexual at that time, you sat in the communication area. There you could negotiate what you and your partner wanted to do or share something about what you had done. You could also sit in this area if you were waiting to talk to someone. The only talking permitted in the other areas was necessary communication directly relating to the activity at hand.

The second area was for selfloving. Here you could masturbate alone or with others. You could also sit in this space if you simply wanted to be alone or meditate.

The other two spaces were for sexual or sensual interactions. Both had massage tables. One area was for people working in pairs, the other for people working in groups of more than two. At different times during the evening, one area was used for sensual massage while the other was used for erotic massage and actual lovemaking.

In order to move from, say, selfloving to a partner or group activity, you had to leave the selfloving area and move to the communication area to discuss what you wanted to do. Then you would move to the appropriate play space. If anyone attempted a conversation outside the communication area, they were gently escorted there. Similarly, if you wanted to join someone in the selfloving area for erotic touch, you had to leave the selfloving area and move to the appropriate space.

We were all a bit worried that this would end up as a whole lot of regimentation with no purpose or pleasure in it. In fact, the ritual was as hot as it was fascinating. We
all learned how easy it is to slip into unconsciousness, and how equally easy it is to go back into being conscious. The Dark Heart was a ritual with consciousness built into its design and its rules. It allowed for our changes of moods, minds, and hearts; it only asked that we be aware of those changes. Because we could see and hear what was happening in the other areas of the room, the energy from each area fed into the others, which was intensely erotic. Each of us could be alone while feeling that we could come together easily. Dark Heart followed a day in which we had gone from pleasure to pleasure to way over the pleasure line into the unpleasant realization that we had recreated the sexual excesses of our past. It was a perfect way to deal with the stresses we were feeling. We came together erotically in spite of them.