"You teach...WHAT!?"

I was at an audition the other day and they were asking me questions about who I was: my volunteer work, yoga teaching, what types of theatre/film I enjoy doing, etc. Eventually we got around to the question, “Do you do anything other than acting?” So, I took a deep breath and with a slight smile said, “Well, yes. I am also a Slow Sex coach and Orgasmic Meditation teacher.” It was like a thickness came into the room. No one dared to breathe. The auditors (3 women and one guy) stared at me as if I were this fascinating and terrifying mutant that about to unleash its power. I relaxed into the moment. Finally the guy said, “Ok, and, um, do you plan to continue teaching yoga?” In that moment, the thickness exploded into effervescent bubbles, like champagne uncorking, and the three women went, “Wait, wait, wait!!! What is that??!!” I just had to laugh and say, “Wow, that’s interesting how he just slid right over that one, didn’t he?!”

Later, I was outside the audition room and the woman monitoring the audition saw me with Nicole Daedone’s book, Slow Sex. She had this little hesitation, then asked, “Um, is that fiction or non-fiction?” When I told her that the author was my teacher, she was so eager to hear what I had to say. A few moments later, the audition door re-opened and one of the female auditors looked at me and said, “Oh good, you’re still here! We have more questions,” and pulled me back into the room.

The bottom line? People are HUNGRY for a deep, intimate, pleasurable experience. They want MORE, they just don’t know what “more” means or have been taught that sex is wrong, bad, only to be shared with “the one”, has to come with romance, expectations, blah, blah, blah. It’s like we’ve got this exquisite set of sterling silver flatware chucked in a box in the corner of our locked, flooded, roach-infested basements and we are scared to death to go down and get it.

In Slow Sex, Nicole talks about she’s at dinner parties and at the table, she will mention that she is a sex teacher. People will drop their spoons, politely wave it off, or say, “Oh that sounds nice for my friend, but me? Everything’s great!” But afterwards, on her way to the bathroom, people will flag her down and tell her their innermost secrets, hoping for some sort of answer. And that’s where we’ve relegated the topic of sex—the hurried whispers near the bathroom rather than in the frank openness of intelligent discourse.

I mean, we can’t deny that we have a cultural obsession with sex. Every song the radio is about trying to sleep with someone, getting angry at someone who slept with someone else, feeling sad because aren’t sleeping with the person we used to sleep with. Commercials and billboards display scantily-clad, pre-pubescent women (and men). And porn is a whopping $14 billion industry in the US alone. But when I ask someone to speak a simple desire, everything from deflecting, shame and giggling to feigned nonchalance and anger arises. It is one of the biggest shadows we have as a society. Only when we can cultivate a deep relationship and reclaim our OWN sexuality can we begin a healing process to integrate all of ourselves and live the life we so desperately desire.

So really, let’s bust down the basement door and start cleaning. Get out the Raid, grab a water bucket and some silver polish and reclaim our birthright to pleasure. A magnificent feast awaits, if we only dare to re-discover the tools to enjoy it.

Then maybe in the future, my auditor can freely and openly say, “Wow, a Slow Sex coach and Orgasmic Meditation teacher? Fascinating. Tell me more…”