Celebration of Sacred Sexuality
Harbin Hot Springs, California, 1996
This was originally written as a tribute to the life of Deborah Taj Anapol (1951-2015), co-founder of Loving More.
My first experience with Deb Anapol was on Radio Woodstock in September of 1996. I was the newly-minted host of an astrology-related discussion program broadcast at 11 pm each Sunday night. She was based in San Francisco, connected by phone. This was very nearly big-time radio, simulcast live on two FM frequencies through a large region of New York City’s northern suburbs known as the Hudson Valley.
I’d heard of Deb, who later adopted the name Taj, a few weeks earlier at my first-ever Loving More conference. There I met a guy named Jerry, one of her boyfriends. He told me about the Celebration of Sacred Sexuality that would be coming up in a few weeks, at Harbin Hot Springs. There would be 40 tantra teachers (as he put it) and lots of other people.
Jerry said the word Harbin almost religiously, as if it were the name of a saint. I said I wanted to be a presenter, and he assured me that would not happen; I should just come and feel it out. The teachers would be very advanced.
After the Loving More conference where I had met Jerry, I reached out to Deb using the just catching on new thing, email. I invited her onto my program to talk about the conference and polyamory generally; I was my community’s ambassador on this particular topic. She accepted the invitation without hesitation and I had her on the very next program.
The conversation was electrifying; she was finally being interviewed by someone open-minded. During the interview, I read the chart for the conference.
The next day, she called me and invited me to be her keynote speaker, asking specifically for an astrological theme. I could attend free, including food, lodging and access to the whole conference — and I would get to be the speaker-of-honor at my first rodeo.
I happily accepted, and booked a flight to San Francisco. I don’t remember how I got up to Harbin, but I did indeed arrive, for my initiation experience of that place, and of Taj, and of being a keynote speaker, and a few other things. Harbin is a clothing-optional hot springs resort in Lake County, north of Sonoma.
It hosts both visitors (in little hotels) and conferences (in lodges), and the staff lives on premises. A lot of skunks and funny little deer seem to run the place from the background. (One of the skunks got into my pack, helped himself to half a chocolate bar, and left a little hint of his scent behind so I knew who it was.)
The conference was basically erotic summer camp with open sleeping arrangements. The various lodges at Harbin have that feeling, though at that moment I just knew anything could happen that weekend. I remember seeing Jerry, who gave me that ‘good going, kid’ look.
It was early autumn and the weather was fresh and inviting. The conference was just fun — tantra and polyamory in that easygoing California style of the mid-1990s. After a few hours and dinner, the conference gathered in the main lodge for the opening bit, which consisted of Taj welcoming everyone, a kind of puja ritual with some of her goddess girls, and then, inviting me up to the microphone.
There, I basically gave a free-verse channeling of Chiron square Uranus called “Leaping Across the Sky.” The astrology fit the event beautifully — Chiron, the planet of healing, in Scorpio, the sign of sex and death; aspecting Uranus in Aquarius, which felt like some kind of revolutionary gathering.
The keynote seemed to take a minute or so (probably more like ten minutes), and I can still feel the energy of my presentation. The visuals are a blur. Thankfully I commemorated it in an article, saved for posterity now, many years later.
People loved my talk, I was suddenly friends with everyone, and I plunged into the conference with its many very pretty creatures, who were all emanating a kind of magnetism that I had never felt before. Momentary eye contact with each or any of them was a sexual experience of a different flavor.
The next day, on Saturday afternoon, were various workshops. I can never stay in one for long, so I roamed around, catching parts of each one. Toward the end of one session I walked into the main lodge, where there was a workshop called Extended Female Orgasm, featuring one woman having the experience, and a dense little bowl-shaped audience of people sitting around her, with Taj and the subject’s partner right there, sitting on the floor holding her.
With Taj guiding the process, I watched the woman demonstrating experience a seemingly endless state of ecstasy, being guided to maneuver in her body various ways as she swam in a continuous space of release. It was the most attentive audience I’d ever seen or felt. Wave after wave of sustained orgasm washed through her as she moaned out gloriously for all to see and hear.
Gradually Taj brought the demonstration subject back to Earth. That event set the feeling tone of the evening — which was the big night at the conference.
Evening activity was being called a marimba party. There was a 10-piece band and a lot of people dancing. However, this was not your ordinary dance party, as it had an orgy going on simultaneously.
The two events were overlaid by some quantum phenomenon — dancing and music and group sex arranged somewhat randomly in a nice large space. At some point I became friends with a woman who was wearing a sarong and nothing else except a large silver pendant emanating the gaze of Isis. Some time during the day I had given up ordinary clothing for a sarong and tee shirt.
I could tell she liked me, in part by how much I liked her.
She had the most easygoing beauty, like afternoon sunlight, a deep tan, adorable little tits and a delicious mouth, which I was tasting as we knelt in front of one another somewhere on the dance floor. The party swirled around us.
She explained that she was bisexual, which she looked in that distinct way that I can sometimes see; a certain way of carrying her gender that was feminine and androgynous and open to experience.
We were soon exploring one another, smelling and tasting and feeling. At some point we paused and she explained that she was married but had a hall pass to come to the conference and do some sexual things within certain boundaries, which included us kneeling facing one another masturbating.
And we did so in this stunning moment of transcendent freedom — face-to-face, as the marimba band played during a lavish banquet, all in the midst of about 100 people dancing and having sex in various configurations. (One thing I can say about Taj is she knew how to throw a party.)
In the mist of this, we made out delightfully, hugging, as I got to smell her hair, and her breasts, and licking her sweat, and tasting her mouth…lots of fun.
At one end of the room was a low platform; like a small, carpeted stage. On it was a kind plush lounge chair.
Two women and a man were up there, giving people pleasure treatments to people, one by one. There was a little line to the side of the stage. Anyone could take a turn and go up, relax and be treated to whatever fantasy they wanted. We both watched this, enraptured. Eventually, there was no line. There was an opening. I knew that was my invitation. I took a breath and stood up and walked to the elevated pleasure space. I was met with soft eyes.
Somehow I had been carrying around a dildo, one that Betty Dodson had given me in exchange for an astrology reading a few months earlier. It was one of those heavy clear plastic ones called the Venus. I was very new to astrological work but I seemed to be blending in with the sexpositive movement nicely.
My desire was to be fucked with that dildo on that stage. Which is exactly what happened. The party swirled in the rhythms of music, dancing and sex play.
I was shorn of my sarong and tee shirt, and asked to lay back on some pillows. My yummy bisexual lady friend was about to watch me have this experience, and she sat with her feet tucked under her a bit back from the stage. I have no idea who else was watching. My knees were drawn back and apart, and someone, I’m not sure who, slipped the lube-soaked dildo into my body. I relaxed around it, and breathed into the experience. I looked up and my friend was still there watching, feeling, being present and attentive. Then she smiled at me, slowly, first with her eyes. I let out a breath and lay back and breathed again.
Oh, by the way — a while earlier, Jerry had handed me half a hash brownie, the slow acting type, which was now taking effect at full strength. The effect was to put me in a lucid dreamlike state.
As they touched me, I moaned and melted and received the gifts of these three tantrikas, their offering to me, stroking my hair and encouraging me to relax evermore. I was dimly aware of the many people in the room, and of the music and the dancing, and of being entirely out in the open. This was a public ritual.
I felt truly naked, stretched wide and was gradually fucked more intently, expertly, lovingly, as I moaned out my feelings and experienced the most vivid lack of inhibition I had ever felt. They knew how to make this feel endless.
My cock was hard and now someone, I don’t know which of the three people with me, was massaging me, fucking my cock with her or was it his hand, drawing me out, as one of the women held me and gazed into my eyes. I was gradually guided, ever so intentionally, to release emotionally and experiende ejaculation. I felt like I was going to orgasm from being fucked, then felt that some more, and then I realized that was what was happening — the bulbs of the dildo were playing against my prostate and I submitted myself into a gush of submission to my own existence, spouting and vocalizing my dreamlike ecstasy for anyone to see and hear.
My chest was covered in my semen. The woman who was eye-gazing me gathered some on her fingers and put it in my mouth. Then she did it again, and again, until she had fed me most of my ejaculation. I sucked myself in and melted into affirmation of life.
When my awareness came back into the room, the party had settled down some. My bisexual friend had disappeared. My guides on the little stage sat me up, and wrapped me in my sarong, and I stepped back into the party with wet streaks on my belly and chest, and my mouth wet with myself.
That evening I had discovered many things, including Deborah Anapol’s talent for putting on an orgy. She was like Lady Galadriel with her ring, working the elven group-sex magic from behind the scenes. Of all her many talents, the Saturday night sex party at any of her workshops was one of her most fun.
I propose a Saturday night orgy in her honor.*
*Check that – a masturbation orgy, in honor of the ‘turn the love around onto yourself’ teaching she would offer…East Coast, Left Coast, Boulder.
