In his last posting, the author wrote about his dinner at a vegan restaurant with the Goddess Vindaloo Lieberman, one of the Goddesses he had met at a Starbucks on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Over the course of the meal, Vindaloo educated him further on the Goddess Movement and spoke of its impact on her life. Specifically, she talked about the transformative effect of the Extended Massive Orgasm. She had taken a number of workshops on and demonstrations of EMO and was now an ardent proselyte. Struck by the author's sensitivity, and support for her desire to have extended massive orgasms, Vindaloo invites him to her yoga class:
Advice to any man who gets involved with a Goddess: you have to do yoga. If you don't, you'll be completely out of touch with your body and its seven sacred centers, and as a result be considered too much of a reclamation project in bed. In large part, we have Sting to thank for this. Among the Goddesses at Starbucks, Sting's name was intoned with the same hushed reverence usually reserved for Vishnu, the protector and preserver of creation, and the guy from Will and Grace. This was because some time ago Sting had boasted to a reporter that by doing Tantric yoga, he and his wife could have constant sex for up to eight hours. Never mind that he later temporized this statement, and that his wife seemed to imply that after a few hours of ecstasy she was practically begging him to rush back into the studio and come up with more words to rhyme with "clover" and "bumbershoot." No, the damage already had been done. Sting was voted into the Goddess Hall of Fame, and any man who was unable or unwilling to maintain a constant state of arousal over eight time zones needed to switch off the game, get off the sofa, and spend the entire weekend in the Downward Facing Dog pose.
With that in mind, I joined Vindaloo the following weekend for the first of what would be many hours of Tantric yoga. We met at a studio on the Upper West Side. I had arrived early and caught the tail end of the Spiritual Belly Dance class. I must admit that it was disconcerting to watch a roomful of impossibly skinny upper-middle-class white women shaking their booties to Oojami's "Chicky" and Shereen's "Ah Ya Leil." I tried to imagine Calista Flockhart or Mary-Kate Olsen doing the Dance of the Seven Veils in my bedroom and concluded that belly dancing doesn't really work if your head is bigger than your hips. But, in fairness, this is a guy perspective, and according to the posting on the studio bulletin board, belly dancing has nothing to do with arousing the male animal and everything to do with "releasing and illuminating the shadowy pelvic cavity, the seat of a woman's power."
At the end of Spiritual Belly Dance, while the class was busy stuffing their hip scarves and veils into gym bags, Vindaloo and a clutch of sister Goddesses arrived for what was, thankfully, just yoga. I had the impression that my presence as an invited guest of Vindaloo already had been the subject of much clucking among the Goddesses. And although my approval rating might have suffered by my choice of yogic attire - baggy grey gym-rat sweats and a T-shirt from the Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction tour - I was met with waves of support for my decision to recharge my spiritual battery.
Not that I hadn't done yoga on and off for years. But I'd always looked at it as another form of physical culture, like jogging or swimming. Up to this point I hadn't noticed any profound and lasting change in my core being simply because I could touch my toes. This time though it was different. I felt as if I were in Kundalini boot camp, preparing for the invasion of Vindaloo Lieberman. Any pose not held long enough or done incorrectly - a foot turned in rather than out, the butt not kept tight and curled up - eventually could leave me stranded on the beach, unable to scale the heights and storm Vindaloo's well-defended redoubt. Fortunately, over the ensuing weeks of yoga, I showed marked progress. A well-executed Mountain or Warrior pose would elicit an encouraging nod from Vindaloo, sitting on the mat next to me, small beads of sweat glistening on her brow, literally radiating Tantric heat.
For some reason Vindaloo got very excited when I demonstrated a natural facility for the Breath of Fire. This is a breathing exercise in which you purse your lips while inhaling and exhaling rapidly through the nose; I can only describe the sound as that made by the jet of a powerful Jacuzzi. The longer I would pant out the Breath of Fire, the longer Vindaloo would unblinkingly stare at me, until the whites of her eyes had expanded to the size of hard-boiled eggs. After one session, in which I had far outstripped the class in this technique, Vindaloo leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Would you like to come up to my place for some herbal tea?" It was clear that the Breath of Fire had sealed the deal. I had rounded third base and was heading for Om.
In the next installment, the author details....well.....you know.
