Any young heterosexual man who's serious about becoming a good lover must early in the game confront a demoralizing truth about the difference between the male and female orgasms.

If there were no other evidence that the Goddess is a trickster, this fact alone would suffice for proof: Most human males are prone to ejaculate within two minutes of the time they insert their jade stalk into the silk furrow. To not perform this stupid abracadabra, in fact, typically requires diligent practice.

For those dudes who perfect the art of not splurging so fast, however, there is an even more Olympian challenge: gaining control of the splurge, so that it happens only when consciously willed. The men who reach this winner's circle are truly an elite group.

On the other hand, most human females cannot under even the most favorable ambiance ascend to the state of orgasmic grace in less than 15 minutes. Half an hour is not unusual, and I've known ripe and fully emancipated women who rarely need less than 45 minutes.

It's true that some men, especially those that have only recently started growing a beard, can reload in a short time. A 10-minute wait between erections should not, theoretically, be an insurmountable obstacle to picking up where you left off.

From my private polls, however, I conclude that even though many 19-year-old studs can get it up again after a relatively brief waiting period, few are actually still in a mood sexy enough to press on with the same attentiveness, let alone artistry, that led up to the first engagement.

And of those, only a tiny percentage have the expertise or the inclination, while marking time till resurrection, to attend to the female pleasure zones with the non-genital parts of their bodies.

Which leads to the next cruel joke: A majority of women can't even achieve the flutter-magic through the unsupplemented in-and-out anyway: In many positions, the sliding action of the diamond pumper barely misses the clitoris, heart-source of female pleasure.

(Not that most men even realize this. At this late date a significant minority have at least discovered the existence of the clitoris, but few have figured out how to address it in its native language.)

This is not to say that most women would, if forced to make the choice, opt for pure clitoral stimulation over copulation. Lots of them do relish the evolutionarily-necessary penis-vagina friction; they'd just like it a lot better if their total bliss was addressed, not just one facet.

On the whole, I'm inclined to believe that the pool of male fuckmasters—those who can consciously decree the moment of ejaculation and who understand the intricacies of the female orgasm—barely exceeds the number of those who garner the Nobel Prize each year.

In the early years of my apprenticeship, I used the crudest method to avoid early detonation: condoms, sometimes even two or three at once. This usually numbed me sufficiently to last indefinitely. For emergencies, I also carried with me a desensitizing chemical spray I'd bought via mail order from an ad in the back of Penthouse magazine.

But most of my lovers used IUDs or diaphragms or birth control pills, and were not at all fond of the sterile sensation of a rubber sheath caressing their intimate parts. Nor were they enamored of my "Sta-Hard" aerosol, which exuded a smell one of my lovers said made her think of "a football player in a barn."

Condoms and anesthetics, I decided, were not ultimately part of the game plan that would make me a fuckmaster. Painstakingly, I began to accumulate a more natural bag of tricks.

The earliest technique, which I acquired by blind instinct, was a little less crude than condoms. I'd struggle to divert my attention away from the pleasure at hand by fantasizing about baseball games.

I found I could deaden a measure of the supernal bliss driving me towards climax by seeing in my inner eye, for instance, the events leading up to Philadelphia Phillies' third baseman smacking a grand slam home run to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 13th inning. In some love-making sessions, I narrated entire ball games in my mind.

A second aid, also discovered early in my quest, was to inflict pain elsewhere on my body. Slapping my thighs worked well in distracting myself from the overabundant joy buzzing in my genitals, as did pinching and twisting my belly or digging my fingernails into my face.

A more professional approach came to me via the Marriage and Sex Manual I found in a used bookstore. A man who was on the verge of splurging was advised to squeeze the base of his jade stalk or apply firm pressure to the perineum. The first action would mechanically suppress the ejaculatory urge. The second would blockade the spasmodic flow of semen from scrotum to penis.

These last two strategies were repugnant. I didn't want to rely on last-ditch interventions that required emergency brute force. I wanted poised power. I longed to wield command over my inconvenient biological programming every step of the way.

Eventually I discovered there were ancient traditions that had exhaustively explored the art of sexuality, including the problem of ejaculatory control. In India and Nepal and Tibet, these teachings were grouped under a branch of yoga known as tantra. In China, certain schools of Taoism dealt extensively with the same subjects.

Unfortunately, many of these teachings were so bound up with the esoteric spirituality, bad translations, and hoary terminology of their respective traditions that they were only marginally useful to a horny dude who wasn't willing to immerse himself in a 10-year plan to master the discipline.

Eventually, a smattering of American authors began packaging the venerable secrets in modern vernacular. Even then, though, many of the techniques were elusive and subtle to the point of being useless.

Try imagining, for instance, a stream of golden light percolating from your perineum up your spine, then through your brain and back down the front of your body to the perineum again. While breathing rhythmically through your nose and from your lower abdomen only, counting to eight for each inhale and exhale, circulate the light continuously until it achieves a momentum of its own and drones on autonomously in the background of your awareness.

In the meantime, gnash your teeth gently and touch a point one inch above your right nipple with your left index finger and middle finger, all the while opening your eyes as wide as they'll go and jamming your tongue against the roof of your mouth. "These actions will definitely cause the semen to be retained," the text asserts.

Oh yeah? Maybe when you're sitting alone and relaxed in your temperature-controlled room with a sleep mask over your eyes. But try the same meditation while you're sweat-to-sweat with a gorgeous aromatic creature who thrills every cell in your body. The difficulty of the task increases exponentially, at least during the first decade of trying to master it.

Which is not to say it's impossible. And besides, if you can be sufficiently candid with the gorgeous aromatic creature (and why would you be making love with a woman you can't be honest with?), you might enlist her aggressive cooperation in your attempts to distribute your kundalini to your whole body rather than have it congregate in one bloated, ready-to-pop area of congestion.

You can ask her to not wiggle so seductively. You can beg her not to kiss you with so much exultant abandon. You can plead with her not to emanate so many tangy succulent smells and not utter so many of the bewitching groans that make you want to gush your entire soul into her.

But on the other hand, what lover in his righteous heart wants to ask that of the gorgeous aromatic creature with whom he's entwined?



I stumbled along with my conglomeration of baseball visualizations, self-mortifications, and tantric mumbo-jumbo. I was a good enough lover, usually a long-lasting lover, but not a fuckmaster.

Wasn't there a philosopher's stone? Wasn't there a technique that could provide consistent and ultimate control? Or would I forever have to make do with my jury-rigged system?

At last, hallelujah, in a New Age bookstore in Santa Cruz I found the treasure: a dusty hand-bound book titled Sexx Magixx. The obviously pseudonymous author was Jack N. Off, and I couldn't have been more surprised by his precious secret.

When you urinate, he said, interrupt the flow in midstream. The muscles by which you accomplish this unnatural act are the same muscles engaged in ejaculation.

By gaining control over this mechanism through strenuous daily exercises, you'll grow strong enough to forcibly restrain the semen from gushing out—even, if necessary, after the ejaculatory spasm has begun.

You can do this again and again in any single lovemaking session, thereby staying hard as long as you desire.

I threw myself into this work, and within a few weeks I mostly conquered the previously involuntary reflex of ejaculation. It wasn't 100 percent foolproof—I still made use of my old standby methods—and it was never easy.

I had to do the exercises every day to stay fit, and while making love I had to maintain a high level of concentration that sometimes detracted from the surrender I wanted to feel.

But I was pleased with my new technique; I felt as if a Golden Age had begun. Nineteen times out of 20 I came only when I willed it, only when I was sure my woman had had her fill.

Now and then my ardent efforts at retention weren't totally successful, but the mini-eruptions relieved a small amount of the pressure to spill without bringing an end to the hard-on.

With the arrival of this blessing in my life, I was finally able to confront a mystery I had doggedly turned away from. All the tantric and Taoist texts agreed, though I skeptically resisted it, that a man's sexual experience was far better in every way if he did not ejaculate at all, even after his partner has been satisfied.

This assertion was based in part on the fact (not a theory, they said) that a regular loss of semen is detrimental to male vitality and health. It also assumed that sex yields up much more of its mind-expanding, life-transforming magic if the erotic energy is "steamed up" to the heart and brain rather than wastefully ejected.

There, in the higher chakras, lust is liberated from its enslavement to the reproductive instinct. Transformed into a supercharged nourishment, it feeds one's aspirations to unite with the Divine Wow. As a method of expanding one's consciousness, it's both safer and more efficacious than psychedelic drugs.

I was willing to entertain the latter notion. Erotic play had always put me in a deliciously altered state, and I longed to harness its transcendent energy to accomplish something beyond merely feeling good. Unfortunately, I could not help but hedge my bets. I convinced myself I could somehow both steam the sex energy up up up and also indulge in a good old-fashioned ejaculation.

The real tantrics would have laughed at me.

I did not even go through the motions of trying to accept the other rationale for not coming, though—that losing your seed too often made you weak and stupid. I felt it had too much in common with the old superstition that women use sex to steal men's energy. It seemed patriarchal and misogynist.

Steadfastly, like a scientist obsessed with proving a bogus hypothesis, I ignored and repressed all data that contradicted my fixation.

There was yet another good reason the tantric and Taoist texts gave for phasing out the old habit entirely. Several books hinted at the shocking secret, but Mantak Chia and Michael Winn spelled it out at length in their book Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy.

Ejaculation and orgasm are not the same thing, they asserted. In fact, the two functions can and should be separated. Why? Because the orgasm that's affixed to ejaculation is a mediocre form of pleasure. It's limited to a few intense seconds which exhaust the capacity for further delight.

There is a higher orgasm that is available only after the addiction to ejaculation has been renounced. It's at least as vivid as the first kind, usually more so, but lasts longer and can be repeated indefinitely—similar to a woman's.

"How would you like to be in a continual state of climax for an hour or more?" the esoteric experts hinted. Moreover, this higher orgasm alone creates the conditions necessary to steam the semen up to the heart and brain.

For a while I stubbornly rebelled against this claim. I argued with it in my own mind, accusing it of being perverse and effete. It did not jibe with my experience. I found nothing pleasurable about waging my brave struggle against evolution's primordial pressure.

Yes, it was for a good cause. I bought the importance of it. But I wanted my reward in the end—the reward that nature had worked millions of years to perfect.



The problem of so-called “premature ejaculation”—men’s inability to postpone their ejaculatory orgasm until their partners enjoyed their orgasms—was a maddening riddle. I was very glad I had discovered the tricks necessary to avoid that fate but remained deeply curious about the problem.

Eventually, a radical theory dawned in me. What if men are not solely responsible for evolution's conspiracy to coax them into delivering DNA's payload in two minutes flat?

What if women play at least a small role in perpetuating the bad habit that is the most likely factor to undermine mutually gratifying heterosexual sex? And what if I could find lovers who somehow turned off the part of their programming that contributes to the bad habit?

This was a taboo thought to expose to the frowning radical feminist that sometimes patrolled my superego, but I had to let myself acknowledge the possibility: that some women on some occasions—maybe only in their unconscious minds—actually don't want their male partners to have control over the timing of their climax.

I speculated that there are four types of women who might sabotage the long-lasting male lover:

1. Some women regard a fast squirt as testimony to their overpowering irresistibility. "He found me so alluring that he couldn't contain himself." Many of this type are throwbacks to an age when a wife regarded her man's pleasure as more important than hers; when a female measured her success in love more by her ability to give gratification than to get it.

2. Some women may not want a rush to judgment but are nevertheless strongly attached to having a smoking gun: concrete proof that they've done their job of satisfying their men. No ejaculationless orgasm for these women, thank you; it's too ambiguous.

3. Some women conspire to induce a quick and seemingly accidental orgasm because they want to use it to humble their partner, berate him for his inadequacy, and have a bargaining chip to use in winning other, nonsexual concessions.

4. Some women are possessed by their DNA with the same demonic fervor as any man is by his. The 30-year-old ego may be crying out, "Give me deep pleasure," while the 10 million-year-old reproductive machinery is hissing, "Give me a baby." The mandate to propagate the species wants the ejaculation now, not in two hours. Why else would evolution have made it so absurdly easy for a man to come?

I reiterate that these four motivations are not necessarily blazing in the conscious awareness of women who are in the throes of making love. They may be unconscious programs that covertly shape the way their body functions.

+

Then I met River Rapunzel Magdalen Medusa Blavatsky, know as Rapunzel when I met her and River later in her life.

She fit into none of the four categories. I suspected that at some point before she met me, she had forged herself into a lover who would not collude with the hair-trigger release that evolution had bequeathed to men.

By what mechanism had she accomplished this? Was it a regimen of physical exercises comparable to those I had done in order to become a control artist?

A secret of meditation that allowed her to transmute the subtle structure of the muscles and electrochemical environment in her silk furrow?

An esoteric yogic technique by which she imprinted her very flesh with the affirmation that she was "complete unto herself" (the ancient meaning of the word "virgin"), and did not, therefore, need to play a part in propagating the species?

The radical shift in my love-making life didn’t fully kick until two months after I met my future Freaky Consort. We officially met each other in April (there had been previous close brushes), but it wasn't till June, eight dates into our relationship, that I was ready to broach the subject that had been brewing in me: my heroic fight to avoid cumming. The culmination came on a Saturday night as we celebrated the summer solstice.

I had read about a survey in which couples reported they often had great sex after seeing scary movies or going to a rifle range. Though I couldn't imagine the erotic glee between me and Rapunzel being any better than it already was, I told her about the survey and suggested we try our own experiments.

She liked the idea but said that instead of watching violence or shooting guns, she'd prefer going on the thrill rides at the boardwalk. This was in alignment with her core values. If given the choice, River Rapunzel has always chosen play over pain as the catalyst for altered consciousness. It’s her rebellion against the cultural suspicion of joy.

We impulsively dressed up as an extraterrestrial pirate and dragon geisha for the occasion, which was easy to do thanks to a local costume rental shop open year-round. After a picnic dinner of take-out sushi on a bluff overlooking the sea, we arrived at the boardwalk.

For the next three hours, we rode the roller coaster twice, as well as the Cliff Hanger, the Hurricane, the Whirlwind, the Tsunami, the Ferris wheel, the bumper cars, and the Crazy Surf. By the time we came back to Rapunzel's house, we had whipped ourselves into a state of jovial vertigo.

Soon, as we snuggled on her couch, we were expanding the batty frame of mind we had been thrust into by our synapse-boggling joyrides.

We adopted funny accents as we pretended to be drunk Italian tourists arguing about whether it was safe to stand up on a roller coaster. We were stoned French graduate students in a dispute about whether Pynchon or Joyce was the greater genius. We were Pakistani explorers marooned in the Arctic wastes quarreling about which of our dead comrades we should eat first.

After a while, Rapunzel skipped off to the kitchen to make us hot chocolate. I closed my eyes and did a meditation in which I prayed that the love I was feeling for her would remain as pure and generous as it was in that perfect moment. I prayed that my effect on her would always promote her greater good and inspire her to seek out interesting adventures. I visualized us continuing to be able to be both kind and wild with each other.

In a few minutes, River Rapunzel Magdalen Medusa Blavatsky glided back into the room with two steamy cups, her slapstick urges unquenched: On her head she was wearing a "crown" composed of a purple balloon sculpture of a vulture. Where had that come from?

Setting the cups down, she charged at my midsection, squawking and pecking me again and again with the inflated rubber beak. Between squawks and pecks, she recited a pastiche of Emily Dickinson poems that featured the recurring line, "Dare you see a soul at the white heat?"

With the flourish of a flamenco dancer, she then led me into her bedroom. During the next few eternities, we doffed our clothes and unfurled a slow-motion swirl and sway of exuberant sliding and gliding, sometimes lying on her bed and sometimes standing and crouching or spinning and dancing. At one point, her vulture crown fell off. I was giddy with joy that neither of us was in a rush to accomplish anything.



Eventually there came a majestic interlude when I lay on her down comforter and pulled her on top of me, then slipped my jade stalk into her honeyed grotto. As she gazed into my eyes with amused tenderness, her yoni began to play luxuriously, gripping and letting go with artistry, engulfing me from diverse angles and to a variety of depths. I let her control the rhythm, which was leisurely and adoring.

For a long time, we swam like this, singing each other songs with unhurried intensity. "You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing," I crooned, quoting Bob Dylan's "Jokerman." I also did covers of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" and Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World."

She treated me to Billie Holiday's “Swing! Brother, Swing!” Eartha Kitt’s “I Want to Be Evil,” Vanity’s “Nasty Girl,” and Patti Smith's "Ask the Angels."

She finished “Ask the Angels” with a flourish, her smooth alto turning raspy and elemental:

It's wild, wild, wild, wild
Wild, wild, wild, wild
Wild, wild, wild, wild
Wild, wild, wild, wild

Then she cleared her throat and delivered a monumental declaration: "And now I am pleased to make a long-awaited announcement. After many eons of hard work rebelling against pure instinct, I have graduated from the instinctual need for the melodramatic spurt from male creatures.”

“Hooray!” I exclaimed. “Hallelujah, so mote it be, and sadhu, sadhu!”

My love continued: “I have kicked my addiction to the ejaculation aspect of the old-fashioned petite mort. And so, as a gleeful result, you are now free, my dearest Suave and Swanky Swirler, to keep your vital fluids to yourself. I don't need you to spew in order to know how greedily and desperately you want me."

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. She was addressing and answering the pressing question I had never spoken. Her prescient permission for me to refrain from the Big Gush prompted me to indulge in a fantasy that had been growing in recent weeks: that our connection was evolving into a telepathic union.

And the raw fact of the matter was that during tonight’s 70+ minutes (so far!) of free-form fucking, I had not had to call on my usual laborious meditations. My typical obsession with refraining from ejaculation had been irrelevant.

What?! Why?! How?! Whence came this welcome miracle?

I had to believe the only possible explanation was that she had performed some magick.

"You're a genius," I said. "You're a flaming genius. How are you doing what you’re doing? Normally I’ve got to summon a will of steel and seven primeval tantric sorcery tricks to keep from cumming. And now, tonight, in your warm embrace on the summer solstice, it’s as easy for me as rolling down a soft grassy hill.”

Rapunzel's green eyes sparkled with prankful wisdom as she continued her artful sex dance on top of me. "My darling dear deep-diving devotee, I am happy to tell you that I cast a full-blown thaumaturgical spell on your jade stalk exactly 101 hours and 13 minutes ago, while you were sleeping next to me as dawn broke,” she purred.

“I knew it!” I said.

“At exactly 5:12 am, I sidled my luscious lips right up close to that divine tool of yours, which happened to be thrumming a delicious throb of morning wood at the time, and I whisper-sung to it the ultimate feral fuck emancipation prayer: ‘GRAHHHRR! RAHHR! GRAGHHRR! RAHR! RAHRIRAHHR! GRAHHHR! GAHHR! HRAHR! Free at least! Free at least! Thank Goddess almighty, you are free at last from the irrevocable urge to cum!’”

“Your spell worked!” I said before bursting into a surge of grateful, shocked, celebratory laughter.

She joined my laughter with a stream of her own chortles that I swear harmonized with mine. Then she leaned down to join her mouth with mine as we somehow both continued to emit steady streams of amused vocal sounds.

In a new display of unprecedented tantric adroitness, she chose these long moments to clench and unclench her silk furrow around my jade stalk in a rapid series of pulsing über-caresses. If that exotic fondling didn’t threaten me with sudden disgorgement, I marveled—and it didn’t!—then nothing would.

"Plus, ever since destiny flung you and me together in the graveyard two months ago,” she said as she pulled her mouth away from mine, “my fluttering phoenix and I have been practicing our very own brand of chaos magick: feasting rather than demanding tribute. Expansively exulting, not greedily sucking. Reverent reveling instead of desperately guzzling. Very different energetic transaction, wouldn’t you agree?”

“How did you get so smart and wild and kind?” I said, though of course I knew the answer. “What unlikely turn of events forged you into a witch wizard wondermonger?”

“As you know, beloved friend, I was raised since babyhood by seven mothers and a team of geniuses under the auspices of an ancient mystery school. Couldn’t help but emerge from that beautiful mess with an excess of joyful wisdom.”

“My conversion to your way of life is now officially complete,” I said, loving how the sweat from her face and shoulders was dripping on me. “If I have in any way been unreceptive to your sublime teachings up until now, I hereby banish my resistance. I am now prepared to drink in the full dose of your revelations.”

“OK, then! I thought you’d never ask! Here’s an idea: Is there any chance you want to discover what it's like to have orgasms like mine? Implosive prayer wheel-spinning jubilations instead of those crash-and-burn-¬style evacuations you've gotten dependent on? I'd love you to love me in a way that helped you love yourself better. How about it?"

The room somehow smelled of the ocean we'd picnicked beside hours before, as if brine had followed us home and settled into our skin. There was the faint velvety bittersweet ghost of chocolate from our earlier cups, and beneath it all, a resinous undertone like crushed leaves or sunlit hay, as if summer had leaned in through an open window to witness us.

And the sex smell? Silken saltiness mingled with amber and pomegranate and smoldering sage and carved pumpkins and the wood of a violin and the leathery sweetness of the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose fragments I once sniffed in a museum.

My lover had just asked me if I wanted to learn how to have orgasms like hers. I’m not bragging or shamefully confessing, but before Rapunzel I had enjoyed the intimate affections of 52 women, and not one of them had ever made such a proposal.

Until this moment, my training as a fuckmaster had rarely been devoted to expanding my own sexual pleasure. Even after I'd learned of the esoteric teachings about alternate forms of male orgasm, I withheld my ejaculations for other reasons: to ensure that my partners were thoroughly fulfilled and to pump up my image of myself as a good lover.

And the truth was I had never felt I could afford to explore the far frontiers of my own sexual pleasure. To do so might sabotage my arduously cultivated art of control, causing me to cum too soon and fail as a lover.

Tears surged from my eyes and a blend of moan and chuckle spilled from my mouth. I felt a subtle but distinct pop in my pelvis, as if a blockage had been forcibly cleared or a knot cut. The hot coil of pleasure I had always identified as the essence of my sexual treasure began to spread out through my interior.

As I followed it for the next few minutes, I realized with a mix of dismay and delight that for all these years it had been trapped in a tightly contained area in and around my cock and balls.

"You lifted the curse," I muttered to Rapunzel with a smoky cheerfulness. "You broke the dam. You freed the genie. You liberated the slave. You tricked the guardian on the threshold into revealing the magick password."

"And I did it all with love, sweet love, not force, brute force," she murmured as she kissed my forehead.

Spiral waves of nectar rippled out from the epicenter of my bliss. My heart was first to receive the blessing, then my throat and thighs. Gradually the entire inside of my body was awash with the bliss that had previously been confined to one small part of me.

And as Rapunzel continued to twirl me around inside her, I claimed the birthright I'd always denied myself: long, billowing orgasms, one following another. They were whirlpools of sweetness congealing in an ocean of delight.

And unlike the expulsive, spasmodic burst I'd always regarded as the One True Orgasm, this new improved model kept expanding my capacity for more pleasure. My hard-on stayed hard even as the pulsing spirals kept on coming.

But how could that be? It didn't make sense. I'd long believed in the limiting power of satiation: A man could only experience so much rapture, right? After a set of nerve endings reaches a saturation point, the same stimulation that initially induced pleasure there begins to evoke apathy or even annoyance.

And yet that didn't apply in this case. The gratifications swarming through me were increasing, as if my ability to feel pleasure in three dimensions were expanding into four, and then into five and beyond.

"I'm cumming in the eighth dimension right now," I whispered to Rapunzel.

"I not only see your third eye right now," she replied softly. "I can hear your third ear and smell your second nose, too."

"I'm afraid I'm becoming an eight¬-dimensional freak monster."

"You're an eight¬-dimensional freaky Goddess-fuck monster with a beauty that's so scary big and kaleidoscopic that you don't know what to do with it all."

"Uh¬-oh."

"Luckily, I'm also an eight-dimensional freaky Goddess-fuck monster with a beauty that's so scary big and kaleidoscopic that I don't know what to do with it all."

"We might have to go down to the crisis shelter,” I whispered, “and give away our gigantic, scary, kaleidoscopic beauty to all the marginalized people."

"And go down to the country club and give away our gigantic, scary, kaleidoscopic beauty to all the needy rich people."

Were we still actually moving our bodies? The friction of genitals had become irrelevant. My longing was utterly satisfied and yet was somehow also growing. I was very happy about how much love I felt for her but wanted to love her even more.

My pleasure overflowed into the room. It was as if I were turning inside out. At first that spooked me. As I got used to it, I surrendered. I began to fantasize that I—whatever "I" might be—was now located outside my body as much as inside. "I" was having orgasms in an expanding sphere that spread into the space around me.

They really couldn't be called "orgasms" anymore, though. That term implies a sudden, forceful contraction and release centered around a focal point. But I was experiencing a multitude of repeating pulses, like multiple beating hearts, unleashing ripples of pleasure over and over again.

"This is what Goddess feels all the time," I murmured.

"Yes. This is what God and Goddess feel for all eternity," River Rapunzel Magdalen Medusa Blavatsky answered. “This exactly.”

"So we're imitating the Creators of the Universe right now?" I said.

"Well," she said, "in a sense we are imitating them. In another sense, we are them."

"I'm having a million orgasms every second."

"Me too. Let's shoot for three billion."

"OK. How?"

"Turn the orgasms into prayers."

"What do we pray for?"

"We pray for what God and Goddess pray for. Which is different from what most humans pray for."

"I seem to be having a divine memory lapse, Goddess. Remind me what we pray for?"

"Our prayers are the engine of creation. They're how we reanimate the universe fresh every nanosecond—orgasmic bursts of divine love that keep everything growing and changing forever."

"So if we want to imitate God and Goddess—I mean, if we want to be God and Goddess—we should act as if our orgasms are actually prayers with which we beget the universe anew over and over again."

I felt another pop, like the one that had earlier freed my sexual energy from its logjam in my pelvis. Only this was nonlocal, a pervasive burst that shook the entire bubble of orgasmic vibration I now inhabited. As in the previous experience, I felt as if a blockage had been forcibly cleared.

Images and emotions began streaming into my imagination. They had a life of their own, were independent of my will. They came in bursts, each of which bore the imprint of a person I knew and cared for.

There was my friend Fred, the entomologist, with whom I traveled in Europe; Regina, the old girlfriend with whom I had three abortions; Maddy, the woman I sang in a band with for five years; Sunyata, the professional ballet dancer who taught me how to do a pirouette; Mr. Riley, my high school French teacher, the only older male who ever gave me a blessing.

In each case, their lives seemed to pass in a flash before my eyes, downloading into my psyche all the memories of everything they had ever done and thought and felt, the pain mixed with the pleasure, the rot with the splendor.

It was all happening impossibly fast, as if the dusty 5 gigahertz chip in my head had been hot swapped for something running a few million times faster.

To be so intimately attuned with these friends and loved ones provoked a flood of empathy and compassion that blended seamlessly with my ongoing orgasms. A touch of amusement brushed through me briefly as I noted the unfamiliarity of having sexual associations with Fred and Mr. Riley, but it soon passed, and I surrendered to the undifferentiated delight.

More life stories surged into me with even greater speed, and they included those of people with whom I'd had more complicated relationships: ex-band member Armand, who had both stunted and fed my growth as a musician; ex-girlfriend Sharon, whose confounding betrayal taught me so much about myself that in effect I earned a PhD in self-knowledge under her tutelage; and the businessperson who had helped substantially raise my earnings but also ripped me off for tens of thousands of dollars.

I received them all gratefully and with relish, both the difficult souls and those for whom I had more unconditional love. The lushness of their intimate otherness was intoxicating. I loved being stuffed with so many thousands of foreign emotions and secrets and contradictions.

The more I filled up, the more I wanted, and the more I could hold. Soon I lost count of how many mythic imprints I had absorbed. Finally, Rapunzel spoke, breaking a long silence.

"We could probably keep going, but I think that's enough for now," she said. I opened my eyes and brought my attention back to her, returning from my inner orgy. I was confused. Did she want us to stop making love?

"I'm not ready to split us apart yet, Goddess," I complained. "In fact, I think I'm just getting started."

"I don't mean we should uncouple," she said, kissing me on both cheeks. "I mean we should stop filling ourselves up with the lives of ever-new people who need our prayers. Let's decide what to do with this batch before we welcome another one."

"Did you just have the same experience I did?" I asked, hoping for more evidence of our growing telepathic rapport.

"I should hope so, dear. See what happens when you play God and Goddess?"

She playfully rolled over, pulling me with her so that now I was on top.

"Now fuck me with your prayers for all those souls who leaped into you," she commanded. "And I'll fuck you with mine."

I shoved a pillow under her ass to change the angle at which I entered her and raised her legs a little by lifting from behind her knees.

"I visualize and pray that my old friend Fred will come to a supple new accommodation with his ex-wife so that they create more harmony in the life of their daughter," I said as I moved inside Rapunzel. "May this unfold in ways that send benevolent consequences out in all directions, diminishing the suffering and enhancing the joy of every sentient being."

"I declare and desire that my cousin Ruth will find the key to supporting herself as an acupuncturist so she can quit her gig as a grocery clerk," asserted Rapunzel. "And I pray that in doing this she will become a more potent force for beauty and truth and goodness, lifting up everyone whose life she touches."

"I foresee and demand that Regina will summon the power to cut back on her work doing hospital murals so she can write that children's book she wants to do. May this in turn redound to the benefit of all creatures."

"I envision and confirm that Jared will get the help necessary to heal from the death of his wife. As he receives what he needs, I further envision and confirm that all of creation will gather inspiration from the changes he sets in motion."

Many other friends, acquaintances, and loved ones made appearances in our ritual. My heart broke open again and again, ripped sweetly apart by a yearning to help them thrive, to love them as they needed to be loved, to enhance them and enliven them and share with them the blessings Rapunzel and I had conjured.

Sometimes our invocations took the form of loud singing and chants; other times we emitted fantastic cackles and churned out rhythms with guttural grunts.

We spoke in horse language and tried to recreate the original tongue from which Sanskrit and Hebrew originated. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre paid a visit, channeled through us mediumistically, bestowing their unique love on several lucky beneficiaries.

Nine hundred trillion orgasms later, I meandered through a prayer for Maddy. "I predict and guarantee that she will compose a bunch of great songs about her struggle to be a half-¬decent single mother while playing low-paying gigs at funky San Francisco nightclubs in hopes of bringing her incredible singing talent to the attention of some nonexploitative hustler who'll help her get a recording contract."

"Hey God?" Rapunzel rumbled from out of her trance state. We were lying side by side, still linked.

"Yes, Goddess," I said.

"I hate to interrupt you. You're still amazingly eloquent for someone who's been fucking nonstop for 14.3 billion years. Or is it 14.6?"

"That's OK. I can't think of anyone else I love being interrupted by more than you."

"I'm thinking maybe we should do a prayer for Rob and Rapunzel and then put the universe to sleep for a while."

"Good idea," I said.

"They've been quite kind to let us commandeer their bodies for so long. Let's show our gratitude."

"I'll start."

"Take your time."

"I decree and imagine,” I began, “that my extra special good buddy Rapunzel will become a master of the art of bestowing blessings. As brilliant and generous as she is in giving gifts, she will never become addicted to giving gifts; nor will she try to control people with her gifts; nor will she let her joy in giving gifts interfere with her capacity to attract and receive gifts herself."

"And when Rapunzel gives gifts," the Goddess in Rapunzel added, "they will always be precisely what the recipients need rather than what she needs to give. She will have a knack for choosing people who make the best use of her gifts. No pearls-before-swine mistakes for her."

"Aho!" I exclaimed, invoking the Northern Californian pagan version of "amen."

"I have one more prayer for Rapunzel," I said. "I pray that my most beloved and adored sorceress genius will collaborate and synergize with me in conjuring up a vast array of radical raucous renegade versions of enlightenment that will shock us with such brazen blissful blessings that we will be inspired to teach our breakthrough awakenings to as many billions of soulful seekers who aspire to also be shocked.”

A long celebratory howling shriek flew out of my companion’s mouth like a hurricane of healing jubilation. How could I have not joined in? We continued until the glass on her bedstand literally shattered, whereupon we collapsed into a chorus of belly laughs.

"Now I have a prayer for Rob," she said once we had recovered from our expostulation. "I pray that he will popularize the slogan 'I am totally opposed to all duality.'''

"Good old Rob will become a socialist libertarian, macho feminist, tantric Qabalist, militant pacifist," I added.

"He will embrace his destiny as a prophet of the ejaculationless male orgasm,” Rapunzel glided onward, “and thus as a revolutionary agent against the binary tyranny that has infected human consciousness. He will triumph over the primal on-off switch that has been the biological linchpin of the male psyche's addiction to us¬-versus-them fundamentalism.”

“Bravo!” I whisper-shouted. “Viva! Aloha! Whoopee! Hallelujah! Abracadabra!”

"I pray that he will write books,” she continued, “that are crammed with inspirational philosophies rooted in the oceanic prayer orgasms he has achieved this night.

“He will help forge a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that people of all genders are created with an equal birthright to experience floods of intelligence-boosting rapture that supercharges their drive to bestow beauty, truth, goodness, and love on their fellow humans.”

“So mote it be! It is done! Thus do we command!”


"I pray that Rob will become a paranoid in reverse. He will know for a fact that all of reality is always conspiring to guide and inspire him, and he will strive to prove to everyone everywhere that the same is true for them: Life is totally scheming and dreaming to liberate them from their suffering and bring them exactly what they need to become their one-and-only-unique-genius soul.”

“Yes, I will! Yes, I swear I will do just that!”

“And good old Rob will understand that this conspiracy of fascinating benevolence is not to be swiped at through the denial of desire or meditation on emptiness, but by diving deep deeper deepest into the joyful, excruciating, thrilling, confusing, wildly entertaining riddle of being a human soul living on the earth.”