Zoe had been instructed to sit in the window and look pretty to attract foot traffic, which suited her inner exhibitionist well. Despite this robust marketing plan, the store was often empty for hours at a time, leaving her free to practice her lines uninhibited. And, since it remained closed between her shifts, Zoe decided that she was free to borrow the clothes with impunity, as long as she was careful not to spill on them, a plan that nipped her own nascent shopping habit in the bud. Best of all, she was paid under the table in cash, which meant she had even been managing to save a tiny bit of money for the first time in her life.
But then she got the medical bill. She’d opened the envelope from Beth Israel carelessly enough, not anticipating that it contained the financial equivalent of a dick slap. Within it she found outlined in clinical detail the substantial costs of the brain scan she’d had at the hospital with Cleo and Frank. She had health insurance (paid for by Frank, of course), but that only brought the remaining payment down to just over $1,000. Her options for getting funds fast were limited. Since the wedding, Frank had made it clear that the Brother Bank was officially closed. Going to her parents would require telling them that she’d had the seizure in the first place. She had no choice but to pay the bill, and in doing so wiped out her entire measly savings in one go.
And so, her Friday-night plans had been reduced from dinner at Indochine with her Tisch friends to attending a free sex-positive meetup with her slightly unhinged roommate. At nineteen, Zoe was substantially younger than most of the men and women settling into a semicircle on the wooden floor when she arrived. She thought that, if asked to describe the group afterward, she would sum it up by saying there were two people present wearing, for no functional purpose, leg warmers. One pair belonged to the man who was now standing in front of them, slapping his large palms together and asking everyone to take a comfortable cross-legged position.
Zoe sat down next to Tali and studied the group more carefully. She counted two tie-dyed T-shirts (one emblazoned with the slogan “The Motion Is the Lotion”), a handful of newsboy caps and fedoras, one white woman wearing a bindi, and an assortment of crystal pendants. The only other person near Zoe’s age was a girl sitting directly across from her in a deep V-neck T-shirt that barely contained her pushed-up cleavage. She had a pretty, slightly sulky face that reminded Zoe of a French bulldog.
“Welcome, guys,” said Leg Warmers. “As most of you know, I’m Kyle. And how are we all feeling tonight?”
“Fucking fantastic, Kyle!” yelled one woman—the bindi wearer—and the group whooped in agreement.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, beaming. “Now before we get started, do we have any new members tonight?”
Several people tentatively raised their hands, including Zoe and the busty girl across from her. Zoe felt the group’s attention shift to her, and the warm sensation of being witnessed, and inevitably admired, rushed through her.
“Welcome,” said Kyle. “No need to be nervous. We’re all a bunch of weirdos in here, but the good kind, I promise. Now, hopefully you already know a little bit about Climaxing to Consciousness and what we do here.”
Nevertheless, Kyle launched into a detailed explanation of the practice. Zoe felt her face grow hot as he described how a “stimulator” would stroke the clitoris of the receiver in an attempt to bring her to a higher plane of consciousness. According to Kyle, there were three physical stages: the caressing of the receiver’s inner thighs, the application of pressure to the upper left quadrant of her clitoris, and the grounding of the groin area with a flat palm after orgasm had been achieved.
“Upper left, guys!” repeated Kyle. “That’s the sweet spot. Now, any questions?”
He smiled enthusiastically around the room. Zoe, who felt she was grounded enough already, looked toward the door longingly.
“Nope? Well, tonight’s group is just about getting to know each other,” said Kyle. “We’ll be re-creating the stages of the physical meditation verbally through some fun word games and exercises.” He winked at the group. “So sorry, none of you will be taking off your pants tonight.”
Several people mock-groaned or whooped, followed by a smattering of applause. Zoe checked her phone; she had been there less than ten minutes. For the first exercise, Kyle asked the group to go around the semicircle, each person shouting out how they felt in that moment. Excited! Nervous! Horny! Ready to do this! Grateful! Loved up! Motivated! Sexy as hell!
“Broke,” said Zoe when it came to her turn.
“Sorry, was that ‘broken’?” asked Kyle.
She repeated her word.
“That’s great, Zoe,” said Kyle. “Although I think we’d call that more of a state than an emotion.”
“It’s a pretty emotional state when you’re in it,” said Zoe.
Tali glanced sideways at her disapprovingly, but the other girl, the pretty bulldog, met her eyes and smirked. Zoe had always been good at connecting with one other person in a group this way. “Connection through rejection” or “bad-behavior bonding” was what her counselor at the therapeutic boarding school she’d been sent to called it.
“All right.” Kyle rubbed his hands nervously. “Onwards and inwards.”
For the next game, individuals could volunteer to sit on a stool at the center of the room known as the “hot seat” while the group called out personal questions to them. Zoe learned that Sandra the bindi wearer was a life coach who enjoyed masturbation in the bath, newcomer Ralph’s biggest turn-on in a woman was kindness and a willingness to try anal, and that Kyle—who abashedly agreed to take a turn in the hot seat at the group’s request—was a polyamorous vegan who loved cooking for his mother. Zoe caught Tali’s eye and mouthed I hate you to her before turning back to the group with a tight-lipped smile.
Next, Kyle asked them to lie on the floor and relax their bodies as much as possible. Zoe checked her phone again; some friends were meeting for drinks at the opening of a new bar in the East Village. All of life, it seemed, was happening outside that room.
“I want you all to close your eyes and imagine a moment in which you were really vulnerable,” said Kyle, dimming the lights.
Zoe would do nothing of the sort. She stared at the ceiling and tried to think, instead, of how she could make money quickly and without effort. But the thought, the one she’d been so carefully not thinking about, bullied its way to the front of her mind. She was fifteen years old, and she was in love. He was in the grade above her at her first boarding school, a guitarist in the school jazz band. He kissed her at the Halloween party—he was dressed as a strip of bacon, she a sexy mouse—then took her to a grassy knoll behind the science building. They had sex in the wet grass with their costumes scrunched to their waists. And that was it. He became the hook upon which she hung her whole self.
“How did that moment make you feel?” whispered Kyle. “Scared? Exhilarated? Angry? Really sink into that feeling.”