A Stranger Touched My Clit and I Liked It

Over the past few years, OneTaste, the orgasmic meditation organization, has been gaining popularity. So when OneTaste decided to throw their 2014 OMX Conference in Oakland, Calif., journalist Krissy Eliot set out to provide a first person account of what it’s like to experience three days of orgasmic meditation (OM).

DAY ONE

It was a sunny March afternoon and the line was out the door at The Oakland Scottish Rite Center, so I took my place in line next to a woman with light blue veins tattooed on her forehead. As I introduced myself to her, a bunch of males turned to locate the source of my voice, and I felt their eyes scan the length of my body as they checked me out. I pulled my jacket tightly around myself out of shyness, because I knew that they had one thing on their minds: these men wanted to stroke my clit — and the clits of many other women, if they could manage it.

I was at the 2014 OMXperience, a three day conference thrown by the orgasmic meditation organization, OneTaste. The company was founded in 2001 by Nicole Daedone — a clever businesswoman who found out how to make serious bank on the female orgasm. The conference was to feature talks from the likes of feminist author Naomi Wolf and biophysicist Reese Jones, while offering massages, raffles, dances parties, and of course — orgasmic meditation or “OM” sessions.

When I walked into the lobby, I was handed a lanyard with a name tag and was immediately herded up the stairs with a bunch of other people to what they called “The Safety Room” — where two women in blue OMX v-necks explained how we could simplify our emotions by defining our feelings as green, yellow, and red (any other emotions would not compute). They told us to be present in our bodies and try to stay in the green zone, but if ever we were to enter the yellow or red zone, we should immediately talk to the staff, who are trained to take care of us (whatever that meant). We were then handed a red card that we were supposed to keep behind our name tag, so if we were feeling “red” we could hold it up for help.

We were dismissed from the room and guided toward the stairs to wait in a line for the “How to OM” demonstration. I was rethinking the choice to wear my incredibly tiny dress when a hipster Dave Navarro look alike sauntered up to me and introduced himself as Monty Williams. We talked for a little bit about our jobs, recited Wayne’s World quotes, and attempted to feign apathy to our magnetic attraction before walking into the center’s massive auditorium — complete with white pillars and wall-to-wall red carpeting.

Monty and I took seats in the front row and watched OneTaste’s president, Joanna Van Vleck, soar past us to stand in front of the audience and begin her speech.

“The funny thing [about OM-ing] is that people are like: ‘Oh, uh, orgasmic meditation? Interesting. I don’t think I need to learn how to OM. I know everything there is to know about a woman’s pussy,’” Van Vleck said.

And how does one become a pussy master? By shelling out some cold hard cash for OM-ing classes, of course.

“Buy our stuff! Buy our stuff!” some woman whispered sarcastically.

Then came the music.

DMX’s “X Gon Give it To Ya” blasted from the speakers as senior faculty members and OM teachers Rachel Cherwitz and Eli Block danced up the aisle together. I got the joke: it was the OMXperience and “X was gonna give it to us” — but I thought it was an odd choice to play a misogynistic and homophobic song at the start of a supposedly feminist conference. I also couldn’t help but raise a brow at their decision to play Jay Z’s “99 Problems” and Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back” during the course of the weekend. You go, girls?

Cherwitz and Block exchanged pleasantries with the audience, and then the class began. One of the female staff members walked across the stage and lied down in what OM-ers call a nest (a collection of pillows). She kept her pants on while Block put on a pair of gloves and sat down so one of his legs was over her belly and the other one was under her right knee. She butterflied her legs open. He put on a pair of gloves, mimed putting lube on his hands, and then began to fake stroke her pussy.

OM-ing basically works like this:

The stroker sits next to the strokee and massages her thighs and legs with what the OneTasters call grounding pressure. The stroker then describes the appearance of the strokee’s pussy in neutral language (i.e. “your inner labia are soft and pink”). The stroker safeports the strokee, telling her that he’s going to put gloves on and touch her pussy. After this, he puts one finger down at the base of the strokee’s introitis (the entrance to the vagina), then pulls the clitoral hood back to see the clit, and places his left pointer finger in the upper left hand quadrant of the clitoris. The stroker strokes with the intensity that you’d stroke an eyelid, and does so for 15 minutes. The stroker then wipes the strokee’s crotch with a towel, sits her up, and then both the stroker and the strokee share frames — moments of sensation that occurred during the OM.

Cherwitz said the stroker is supposed to feel as if he’s putting his finger into an electrical socket, and the strokee is supposed to feel electricity surge through her. Once this is achieved, they’ve both connected. The woman has experienced orgasm and they’re both turned on people.

(Note: the OneTaste definition of orgasm gets a little tricky; society thinks orgasm is climax or ejaculation, but OM-ers think the orgasm is the buildup of energy in your body before you climax.)

While Block continued to mime crotch strokes, Cherwitz emphasized the importance of following the rules of OM-ing. She said the strokers should never try anything fancy to surprise and/or impress the strokee. “This is not sex,” Cherwitz insisted. “It’s a practice.”

The demonstration ended, and I noticed I was beginning to enter the yellow zone. I noticed a bunch of male eyes searing into me like lasers and the heat of all the bodies in the theater was making me sweaty.

Since I had been to the class, I got an orange sticker on my name tag. If I had a sticker, that meant I was trained to OM.

Monty asked me if I’d like to try it.

Despite my sticker, I didn’t feel very trained.

“Not tonight,” I said.

So he gave me his phone number and set off in search of a willing strokee.

I was alone — for a total of two seconds.

“Would you like to OM?” asked some 40-year-old man with hair down to his butt. The directness of the question caused my mouth to fall open a little, then close. Then open. Then close.

“Uh, no. Thank you,” I croaked. He then bowed his head, stepped backward, and took a series of tiny steps away from me. “Bye?” I said. He didn’t hear me. He was gone.

Then I was asked again. And again. And again. By all kinds of men.

Men with short hair. No hair. Hair everywhere. Fat men. Thin men. Stinky men. Sexy men. It was always the same question, and when they were rejected, they’d just back away. I felt like I was in a sea of C3PO’s on a quest for quim.

I swallowed some nervous puke in the back of my throat and hurried down the stairs to the OMX Bazaar — which was a gym full of OneTaste propaganda and some other random vendors. I checked the time: 5:00pm. “Dinner” was written on the OneTaste schedule. It turns out, “dinner” meant you could buy yourself a $9.00 crepe or go find food for yourself outside the center’s walls. These people were paying roughly $200 – $400 to go to this conference and there was no free food. My stomach roared and I felt dizzy.

Pretty soon I was sitting alone on a couch in the Rite Center’s decadent lady’s lounge, eating my overpriced mushroom crepe with too much garlic. Some girl with thick dreadlocks was sobbing hard on the couch next to me and I tried not to make eye contact with her. A member of the OneTaste staff walked up to her, whispered something in her ear, and took her away. But where? She must have been in the red zone.

A petite brunette who had also chosen not to OM that night sat down where Dreadlocks had been. She introduced herself as Megan Paige, an intimacy coach from San Francisco. Apparently, she’d been just as overwhelmed as I’d been and sought refuge in the lounge.

“Some guy actually interrupted me and this other gentleman talking and sort of yelled: ‘WOULD YOU LIKE TO OM?’” Paige said with a laugh. “Weird.”

I found my way back to the auditorium where the “How to OM” class had taken place, and took a seat next to a dark eyed chick with a great complexion. I looked up and noticed an enormous, flying saucer shaped ceiling ornament with ornate carvings. The sides of it glowed gold and it extended downward from the ceiling, making it seem like it was drifting toward me. I kept an eye on it to make sure it wasn’t.

Dark Eyes pointed to some Asian chick that had frantically gotten up and scrambled out of the theater. “See that girl?” she said. “She’s been to a bunch of OMs, and every time she sees the demonstrations, she has to leave.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She couldn’t tell me,” Dark Eyes said ominously.

I shifted in my seat.

Chicago playwright Barrie Cole took the floor and did her best to lube the audience up for the debut of Daedone (OneTaste’s founder), reading a somewhat entertaining piece about achieving an “alphagasm.” Then Daedone graced us with her presence, walking out in a form fitting, salmon colored dress that made her figure pop against the dull red color of the rug.

Daedone told the audience that she was going to let them dictate the topics, and said they should yell out questions. One guy asked, “Why is OM good for the world?!” Then another voice said, “When you feel the color of Oz — of orgasm — how do you handle going back to Kansas in the rest of the world?!

Daedone laughed and said, “You don’t.”

I wasn’t surprised by the positive questions, and assumed they’d just been planted by the OneTaste staff. But then shit got strange… er.

“When you don’t get what you want!” a woman screamed. I raised an eyebrow. Was that supposed to be a question? Another female shouted the word, “Courage!” and ended her inquiry there. I glanced around derisively, but was getting no response from the people around me. And then a dude in my row yelled: “Winning the game by not playing it!”

Silence.

“What do you mean?” Daedone asked.

And the guy said, “You tell me.”

The atmosphere was thick with anticipation.

“It’s a paradox,” the man shouted matter-of-factly.

Daedone paused, looking thoughtful, and not the least bit annoyed.

“I understand paradox,” Daedone said. “But winning the game by not playing it? I can’t imagine why you’d want to. I think the whole thing is playing. And that’s the winning. The winning is playing.”

Silence.

Wait, what?

No one moved. And then the crowd started clapping — hard. I blinked a few times and looked around.

People were nodding in approval and a few others kept repeating, “Wow. Just… wow. Wow!” More clapping.

Wow, indeed.

It was time for the live OM demonstration.

The staff rolled a massage table out to the auditorium, and this blonde chick who could have been Daedone’s twin took off her pants and lied down. Daedone got ready by putting on a black apron and latex gloves. (Were we going to watch an OM session or an examination at the morgue?)

She told the audience to yell out whatever sensations they were feeling during the demonstration, and said she was going to play this woman like an instrument. She put her fingers between the strokee’s legs, and as soon as she began, the audience started sharing their feelings — and literally shouting them to the entire theater.

“A flush in my forehead,” someone said to my left. “A pulsating in my stomach,” said another. “A dryness in my throat!” a woman cooed. “A heat in my chest!” a man called out. And then, from behind me, a deep, raspy voice with not a shred of shame said: “I FEEL A TINGLING IN MY BALLS.”

I nearly died laughing.

Daedone continued to diddle this chick in front of the audience, all the while making crazy contorted faces and moving around as if she was possessed. At one point she even did what appeared to be a head bang when the woman had an orgasm. She must have been getting electrocuted by her clitoral socket.

Finally, it ended, and Daedone had a look on her face like she’d just climbed Everest. My mouth hung half open as the crowd cheered her on, and I wiped some tears of laughter from my eyes.

As I stepped out of the Rite Center’s doors into the night, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into that weekend. The OM-ers were like no other group of people I’d ever encountered — and as a journalist, it was my job to get into their heads and understand them. There was no way I could do that without putting the X in my OMXperience.

So I picked up my phone, found Monty’s name, and sent him a text that read:

“Would you like to OM?”

Less than a minute later, I got a response:

“Yes.”

 

DAY TWO

Saturday was supposed to start at 8:00am with a yoga class and a gigantic group OM session, but I found it difficult to get out of the house. I was nervous to have my crotch touched by a stranger, and my whole body felt sore and shaky. I met up with Monty at the conference to watch Dr. Jenny Wade talk about how connected sexual encounters can cause hallucinations where you see animals, demons, and other evil creatures — and then it was time to OM.

If I didn’t do it then, I never would. “Bring on the demons,” I thought.

The OM room had an unlimited supply of gloves, lube, and towels, as well as 135 “nests” lined up within inches of each other on the floor. Monty grabbed all the OM-ing supplies and followed me to the pillow pile I had selected in the back of the room.

Earlier at the conference, I’d conversed with an OM-er named Ron who thought the word nest was comforting, and it provided people with the illusion of a safe container. For me, it only evoked memories of the cocoon nests in the Alien movies, and I felt like I wouldn’t want to be in one of those if shit went down.

Monty helped me pull off my leggings and get me situated on the pillows. He then put one of his legs over my abdomen, scooted close, spread my legs open and safeported me by saying, “I’m gonna put my hands on you now. Is that okay?”

I nodded yes.

An older couple lied down next to us as Monty massaged my legs. The older woman next to me couldn’t seem to get comfortable, so she threw her pillows around, smacking me in the shoulder and face multiple times until she finally relaxed. Monty didn’t notice, as he was so invested in staring at my vulva.

The room was full of OMX staff who were there to instruct and adjust the strokers and strokees. One of the instructors shouted: “Okay, we will begin the noticing. Tell your partner two things you notice about her pussy using neutral language.”

Monty cocked his head to one side and looked at my crotch, then he looked right in my eyes and said, “Your outer labia look full and your inner labia are closed together. And your inner labia are a light, rose color.”

I felt a surge of heat move down into my stomach. Okay. So that was kind of hot.

“I’m gonna take my hands off you now,” he said, and proceeded to put on his gloves; he dabbed a little bit of lube on his fingers, then said, “I’m gonna touch your pussy now, is that okay?”

I nodded yes.

“Relax,” he said. (That’s easy for the person wearing the pants to say.)

I sucked in a quick breath, bit my lip, and prepared to have my pussy probed.

I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe — Oh. OH. Yeah.

Ordinarily, the idea of someone directly touching my clit makes me cringe, but the soft stroking felt okay — almost like a tickle. And then it started to feel less like a tickle and more like a surge that moved through my whole crotch. And then the women around the room started to feel it too, and they started moaning. And then I started moaning. And then everyone was moaning. Only it wasn’t really sexy moaning — it sounded more like a bunch of ghosts mourning lost souls.

As he stroked, I felt my entire body start to sweat and shake. It felt pretty damn awesome, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t usually feel during foreplay.

“Ask the strokee if she would like an adjustment,” the OM instructor commanded.

Monty looked down at my flushed face. “Do you want a shorter stroke?” he said.

I shut my eyes and tilted my head back and said, “Nuh-uh.”

He was holding me close, and I was clinging to his leg. I dug my fingers into his thigh, tried to ignore the others around me, wiggled my toes, and finally relaxed. Suddenly, a warmth moved up and over me like a force field, and a rush of breath escaped my lips. For a second, I experienced a kind of unification with him, where every other nest in the room ceased to exist. And then…

“Uhhhhhhhh, Godddddddddd, nnnhhhhhhh, yessssssss.”

I had an orgasm. And not the OneTaste kind — but the kind where I climaxed. And then I had another, and then another. The whole time, Monty was setting ‘em up to knock ‘em down.

“Do your best not look at the strokee’s face,” the OM coach said. “Focus all of your energy on her pussy. If you look at her face, you might find yourself a little… ” the coach paused. “Distracted.”

During the last two minutes of the OM, the coaches told the strokers to give the clitoris downstrokes to calm us and pull us back into reality. I did my best to chill out, and Monty took off his gloves. He wiped my crotch with a towel and pulled me upward to sit in his arms.

My whole body felt like it was vibrating. Monty leaned in and smelled the sweat on my neck. It was time to share frames (aka feelings).

“There was a moment,” he said. “When I felt your pussy suck my finger inside of you.”

I did my best to fight my orgasm-induced giggles and said: “There was a moment when I wanted to have sex.”

I proceeded to do the OM three more times that day — with each instance presenting its own set of challenges. At one point, a couple lying next to us had such horrendous B.O. that I couldn’t focus at all, and during other OMs, several coaches came over to interrupt my climaxes to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to move my hips and needed to relax. What can I say? I’m a wiggler.

After OM-ing four times that day, I had to stop. My clit felt like it was going to explode. Perhaps it was because we didn’t use enough lube, or because the strokes weren’t gentle enough — or maybe my crotch was freaking out because I’ve never had that much clitoral stimulation in a day before. Whatever it was, it left my crotch feeling tight and tense. Maybe I shouldn’t have moved my hips?

After my last session for the day, I raced to the bathroom to take a piss, only to be stopped by security and sent to another bathroom. Some guests had been sucked so far into the vaginal vacuum of OM-ing that they were getting frisky in the stalls. I couldn’t blame them.

The rest of the night felt like I was floating in space due to my orgasm high — and it certainly wasn’t easy to come back to Earth with speakers like internationally recognized sexologist Jaiya giving talks.

“When you find yourself in that crazy place where you’re fighting with your partner, just start making a monkey face,” Jaiya said, pulling back her lips to show her teeth to the audience. She insisted that couples won’t be able to fight if they’re making ridiculous faces. So she had the entire audience wiggling their mouths, shaking their faces and breathing hard at the same time, like monkeys.  It looked like a scene from Planet of the Apes. 

Later on in the night, OMX held a dance party for the remaining guests, but apparently, it wasn’t as mind blowing as the OM sessions themselves.

“Just as soon as the dance started getting sexy, they had to close the doors,” said Jaquie Van Wagner of Quiddity ‘n Foster.

Because that’s just what these people needed: more of a tease.

 

DAY THREE

During one of my non-OMing moments, I met Travis Sigley, founder of the intimacy service, Cuddle Therapy. I usually have more self control, but I found myself shamelessly flirting with this long haired hippy/cuddle extraordinare. In fact, I was feeling so outwardly and uncharacteristically slutty that I found myself sandwiched between Sigley and Monty on a couch, snuggling them and receiving a ridiculously great massage.

I was a turned on woman, I guess.

Earlier that morning, an announcement was made that there would only be one OM for the day — when people had been promised multiple OMs every hour on the hour all weekend. Concerned whispers rippled through crowds of people. Why were they doing this to us?

Apparently, some man had OM-ed so many times on Saturday that he hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink the entire time. Cutting the sessions down to one OM was the staff’s way of keeping people from collapsing. Also, the guests weren’t attending the speeches because they were OM-ing so much, and it was looking bad for the speakers.

The restriction really did make sense. My horniness had hit an all time high and I would have been OM-ing for the rest of the day had there not been some regulation. I was experiencing what the OneTasters call “tumescence” — arousal beyond my comfortable range. I was so damn tumescent that before the day was through, I found myself offering to have sex on camera for an educational film. No, really.

Award winning actress Catherine Oxenberg had given a talk on her upcoming project, and in her speech, she asked if anyone was willing to have sex on camera for science. I wanted to fuck so badly that I would do it anywhere, anytime. So I found myself backstage saying, “Pick me! Pick me!”

(Note: I have come back to reality and am not actually going to do the film.)

Because Monty was with me the whole time, the amount of OM requests from strangers declined, but didn’t cease. I couldn’t help but notice that even though the OM-ers tried to use gender neutral language for strokers and strokees, the OM-ing rituals remained heterocentric — with men primarily approaching women and only a few females stroking females. Some women toyed with the idea of partnering up with me, but none went through with it.

Towards the end of the conference, I approached two male members of the OneTaste staff. One of them was a short, muscular dude named Joe and the other was a tall, pretty guy named Hamza.

I asked the two of them how many times they’ve OM-ed, and they said they’ve lost count. I then inquired about what they do about their boners, and they said that erections are just not a big deal. OM-ing is not about the sex, it’s about the connection. They’ve OM-ed with all kinds of women who they aren’t physically attracted to.

There exist males who can stroke women all day long and just not care about their boners? Was I still on Earth?

Curious about this, I asked Rosa McGill, OneTaste’s PR and social media expert, about the idea behind letting someone touch your crotch when there’s no physical attraction.

“At OneTaste, we want to divorce from the idea that intimacy can only be available in a particular set of circumstances,” McGill said. “In society, there’s this notion that you have to be in a romantic relationship, it has to be between a man and a woman, you have to look into each others’ eyes, or go on a certain amount of dates.”

McGill said OM-ing has allowed her to find a deep level of intimacy with people she never would have considered being with. OM-ing is a practice, separate from sex, that allows her to give her body and mind fully to connection.

At 1:00 pm, I joined hundreds of people who were waiting in line for the very last OM, and tensions were running high. The guest gripes included comments such as: “I can’t believe they cut it down to one session,” “I’m not really interested in the speeches, I just want to OM,” and “Oh my God — do they wash the pillows?”

Did they? The entire room had taken on an unbearable odor. One man mused on the cause of the stench.

“I’m guessing that three out of every 10 women don’t freshen up before they go into the OM room,” he said. “If there’s 270 women with their legs open, that means 81 of them haven’t kept it fresh. You know what I’m saying?”

He was saying that 81 stinky vaginas, when properly motivated, can leak noxious and perhaps deadly fumes. I didn’t want them to wash the pillows — I wanted them to be destroyed.

So, Monty and I OM-ed for the last time, and I still didn’t have a totally electrified, connective experience — mostly because halfway through the session some woman let out multiple, sharp screams that sounded like a deranged rendition of the opera song from The Fifth Element. Monty said he couldn’t even hear my breathing over her shouts, and described the sound as “ear shattering.”

At the end of the conference, the people who hadn’t already left the building to go have sex piled into the bottom of the theater. The lights went out and choir music started to play. The OneTaste staff ran out with balloons that had glowing lights bouncing around inside them. Before I knew it, I was listening to the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir singing while watching a sex crazed crowd bop balloons around until they popped. Daedone and the rest of the staff walked out on the stage during the celebration and proceeded to show off the best white girl dancing the world has ever seen. Then, at the end of the performance, everyone in the auditorium held up their left index fingers in a salute to OM.

“It’s like the Hunger Games,” some chick whispered. I nodded.

After I left the conference, I felt so turned on that I thought I was going to burn out. My tumescence had reached an unbearable point, I was exhausted from all the pussy stroking, and all I wanted to do was have sex. I’m still not sure how I feel about a bunch of strangers asking to touch my clit, and I haven’t decided if I believe in electric orgasmsic connections. But even though the OneTasters behaved as if they were from another planet, that’s not necessarily bad. Since when are memorable sexual encounters NOT out of this world, right? I’m still open to finding vaginal zen.

And if someone felt so inclined as to ask me to OM some more, well — heck yeah, I’d do it again.

 

 

Would you ever try orgasmic meditation? Why/why not?