Sex and Sensuality

Life in a sensuality community can get complicated. Like when a resident in one of the large communal bedrooms ends up sharing a room with a former research partner and hearing that person with a new partner, um, researching together. Yes, even in a "transformational" community, jealousy still happens.

It seemed he was living out many males' fantasies until he mentioned a previous conversation from earlier that morning, when he told somebody, "There are three women angry at me today and it's only like 7 a.m.!"

Gower has had three research partners, and says he remains close to all of them, although, well, sometimes there's jealous tension among exes.

Ogin (who says two of her former research partners have "physically left the premises") said that she always gets attached to partners even though she tries to tell herself they're just friends. "My nervous system has been so entangled with them, and then when they're gone I feel like something's gone in my life," Ogin said. "And then I keep getting a reminder that there are so many other people in the community who are here for you."

Despite the support network, she admitted to jealousy — or what they call "scarcity" — especially recently, when a group of new women moved into the community. "All these bitches, man!" Ogin said with a smile, glancing around the cafe where an inordinate amount of attractive women were eating Indian food. "We have so many beautiful women in the community!"

She's had fears that other women will "get off better" during OM sessions, but tries to tell herself that nobody will win when she falls into seeing other women as the competition.

Jealousy and competitiveness come up a lot at One Taste, largely because they try to stay open and honest with each other to avoid pent-up anger or seething resentment, which has hurt other communal living situations. Ganas community in New York was shaken last summer, for example, when a female former commune member who claimed she was pressured to have sex by others there ambushed and shot one of its co-founders, Jeff Gross.

Ted McIlvenna, president of the San Francisco-based Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, said women getting along with each other has been a challenge in other intentional communities. McIlvenna, 75, said he's never heard of another sensuality community founded by a woman, adding that many communal living situations centered on women have been about denying sexuality — convents, for example — or selling it — like at brothels.

Marissa Bollong, a teacher at One Taste, is definitely not denying her sexuality. A beautifully curvaceous massage therapist with a perfect button nose, she admits to having had hangups around sensuality. That began to change after she attended a naked yoga class at One Taste about a year ago. "Right now I feel like I'm in this crossroad," the 27-year-old said. "I feel like I have a lot of desire, raw desire. I have this desire to have sex, raw sex, and it's burning and it's hot."

In a typical orgasmic meditation session, a woman (the strokee) lies down and the stroker (we'll describe the stroker as a man, but it may be a woman instead) will place his right hand under her buttocks and rest his right thumb at her introitus, or the vaginal hole. The stroker will then take lubricant — One Taste recommends its all-natural One Stroke lube — and place it on the forefinger and middle finger of his left hand. Then with a stroke (also known as a lube stroke) he applies it to her clitoris. He then puts his left forefinger on the upper left-hand quadrant of the strokee's clitoris — which they believe is a spot where thousands of nerve endings are bundled. For the strokee, the upper left-hand quadrant is at about the 1:30 p.m. position on a clock.

Now, not everyone buys this whole upper-left hand quadrant theory. Barry Komisaruk, the senior author of The Science of Orgasm, who's also a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said he hasn't seen scientific studies proving that one side of the clitoris is more responsive than the other. After researching the One Taste Web site, he said he wasn't sure what science would be relevant to their practice. "It was very New Agey," Komisaruk said.

One Taste is considering a science-of-orgasm class to explore the topic — and may satisfy nay-sayers along the way. In the meantime, they're eager to press on with their research.