Nicole Daedone had a problem, and to solve it, she needed some willing and able women.
It was 2011, and Nicole was the co-founder and C.E.O. of OneTaste, a San Francisco–based sexual wellness start-up that sold courses on orgasmic meditation. O.M., pronounced “ohm,” was a mindfulness practice in which a man strokes a woman’s clitoris in a prescribed manner for 15 minutes exactly while both meditate on the sensations in their bodies. Nicole and OneTaste promised that O.M. would revolutionize its practitioners’ relationships and sex lives.
In addition to being a business, OneTaste was also a community in which its members—a mix of employees, O.M. practitioners, and customers—often lived together in group residences, immersed in a world of sexual experimentation.
Nicole was in her mid-40s and had been riding the swell of the wellness industry. OneTaste established offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and London. O.M. had been endorsed by lifestyle guru Tim Ferriss (“This should be required education for every man on the planet,” he wrote) and would in the coming years collect stamps of approval from Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloé Kardashian.
Despite the accolades, the company was still losing money each year. To keep her business afloat, Nicole had turned to venture capital, but in an unusual deal. Years earlier, in 2006, she’d met a Silicon Valley investor named Reese Jones, and the two began dating. He loaned the company money and paid for business expenses; without his support, OneTaste would have had to close its doors.
Reese had a big sexual appetite, especially for kinky scenarios that included whips, leashes, and anal play, according to court testimony. (My reporting draws on years of research, including documents, video, audio recordings, interviews with more than 125 people, and witness testimony at a 2025 criminal trial.)
Instead of giving Reese shares in OneTaste, Nicole promised him he would always be taken care of sexually. For years, she had supplemented her own body with a string of “handlers”—female OneTaste employees who satisfied those needs. (Jones told the New Yorker that the allegations have been “mischaracterized,” and confirmed that OneTaste repaid the loan.)
Several of Nicole’s closest female lieutenants had each spent months as Reese’s handler. The arrangement was a loosely kept secret within OneTaste, and a deeply exploitative pattern, but the women considered it a position of honor to be able to help Nicole and the company; one of these women remained among Nicole’s most devoted supporters long after that experience.
Now, in 2011, Nicole was hunting for new handlers. She and Reese had broken up, and to get some space, she left his place in San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles. Nicole needed women who could step in and live with Reese in his Russian Hill mansion while she was gone.
She couldn’t ask just anyone, and certainly not newcomers to OneTaste. It would have to be someone who had become so enmeshed in OneTaste’s world that the request wouldn’t seem like an abuse of power—but a spiritual opportunity.
A Special Place
Back in 2010, Jamie had started hanging out with some OneTaste people through her girlfriend, Caitlyn. (Jamie and Caitlyn asked not to be named for fear of reprisals; both are pseudonyms.) Jamie was fresh out of college, and she and Caitlyn had spent some time floating around California in a yellow Econoline van, doing odd jobs. Jamie had studied Ayurvedic cooking and occasionally found work as a private chef. She clung tightly to her girlfriend. Together, they made a striking pair: both blond, freckled, and radiating surf and sunshine.
As the young couple befriended more OneTaste employees, Caitlyn wanted to learn how to O.M. Jamie was hesitant, but the pair attended one of OneTaste’s regular introductory evening gatherings. After the class ended, OneTaste staff members approached Jamie directly. They held eye contact with her and asked her questions that made her feel special and seen. It was hard for her to describe exactly what was different about the OneTaste people. The best word she could think of was “awake.”
Soon after that, Caitlyn moved into OneTaste’s main communal residence in San Francisco, a former single-room occupancy hotel at 1080 Folsom Street, referred to simply as “1080.” Jamie was unsure, but went along with the plan so she wouldn’t be left behind. Once the two of them arrived, they were quickly swept up in the patterns of daily life.
Inside 1080’s walls, Jamie’s life thrummed with relentless energy. Each day, she took her pants off and a rotating cast of friends and quasi-strangers touched her clitoris as often as four or five times a day. It felt like a drug. After two 7:30 a.m. O.M. sessions, Jamie worked in the kitchen as one of several cooks, feeding residents communal meals. During downtime, residents often paired up for more O.M.’s or for “makeouts,” their term for sexual encounters. At 5 p.m., they gathered for another two O.M. sessions. After dark, they would hang out in the lobby area of 1080, listening to someone strum an acoustic guitar, or they’d set up chairs in the studio for that evening’s public event—communication games, or a workshop.
1080 felt like a sixty-person family, made of friends and lovers. The magic came from living together: group dinners each night, and sex happening everywhere, all the time. Most nights had a college feel to them—long, aimless, hilarious hangouts with no goal in particular.
In the residents’ eyes, Nicole was a celebrity. She didn’t live at 1080 and spent most of her nights away at Reese’s hilltop mansion. Whenever a visit from Nicole was announced, the residents would clean frantically, get dressed up, and fetch her favorite fruit and green tea. It was like a gaggle of cycling fans waiting for the Tour de France peloton to whizz past: frenzied anticipation, a whirlwind of activity, then, after her exit, an endless dissection of what had happened.
OneTaste operated like an ashram: a home where you devoted yourself to a spiritual practice and gave your time, energy, and labor to help run the community. Residents were told they were doing their karmic service to the place when they cleaned and scrubbed the bathrooms or ran errands for the business. Handing over your resources meant you were a good member of the community, and you were helping spread O.M. to the planet.
That rationale extended to Nicole’s desires as well: She needed to be kept as comfortable as possible because she was shouldering the emotional weight of running the company. If Nicole wanted a certain kind of ice cream or plantain chips of a particular brand, you could help the mission by procuring the treat for her.
The more you were a yes to Nicole’s needs, the more you would grow your capital-O Orgasm—a catch-all term within OneTaste for erotic energy and life force. “[Nicole] is the person who knows everything and who has all the power,” Jamie remembered being told. “The way to climb to that level of power is to always be a yes.”
Little was said explicitly, but the social pressure to follow was still effective. “You got in line with it, because it was terrifying to not be in line with it,” Jamie said. “The bus was moving so fast, and if you didn’t go with the bus, you would definitely get left behind. It would be lonely, and it would not be fun.”
During the first few months of Jamie’s time at OneTaste, it might have been easier to break away, but eventually leaving began to feel unimaginable. The more you got involved, the harder it was to leave, because OneTaste had become a bigger and bigger part of your life. OneTaste was your community of friends, your employer, your home—and your calling.
This is a special place, Jamie remembered being told. Nobody has what we have here.
The world outside gradually became unrecognizable to Jamie. It didn’t seem free—it seemed sad. Most people outside were choosing an easy, lulling slumber. A “normal life”—watching TV, going for walks, taking weekends off, happy-hour drinking with your coworkers, occasional vacations—was pure sleep, pure indulgence, a waste of power.
Whenever someone left OneTaste, they were viewed with sincere and heartfelt pity. “Oh my God, that’s so terrible,” Jamie and her roommates would say to each other. “What an awful existence that must be.”
The OneTaste Way
Every day, Jamie O.M.’ed twice at morning O.M. circles, twice in the evening, plus more one-off pairings during the day. She spent hours a week in that position: reclined, semi-nude, eyes closed, legs butterflied open, concentrating. Slowly, she learned to train her attention on every faint flutter of sensation in her body.
As she lay there feeling a finger softly stroking her genitals, she was learning to listen to her body without judgment. She stopped asking herself, Am I doing it right?Should I make a sound? Instead, she wondered, What am I actually feeling? After each O.M., she and her partner would share “frames”—describing aloud to each other the sensation of a particular moment during the O.M. The language was neutral, which allowed sensations to be neutral. They weren’t “good” or “bad”—sensation was just sensation.
At OneTaste, people were urged to approach their emotions from a similar stance, with curiosity but not judgment. It was a teaching that could have been copied and pasted from a book about Vipassana meditation. Feeling jealous about a romantic partner, for example, wasn’t necessarily good or bad. Instead, OneTaste residents asked themselves, What does that jealousy feel like? Burning in the chest? Ice in the stomach? The next question would be: Can you sit with that sensation and feel present?
Sometimes the dispassionate approach was helpful. But it could also lead to self-doubt. When Jamie felt jealous, hurt, or wronged, she was taught to second-guess herself—to ask Why do I feel that way? and to consider how she could be wrong. She quickly became practiced in rationalizing away negative emotions. I’m limited here, she told herself. I’m functioning based on how I was raised. Within OneTaste, Jamie said she was also encouraged to reconsider her sexual preference for women, and to instead explore her sexuality by O.M.-ing or having sex with men.
When faced with a tough feeling, it was preferable—more evolved, more spiritual—to find fulfillment in that feeling, even if she didn’t like it. At OneTaste, this is how that question was ultimately phrased:
Can you find some version of that sensation that you can get off on?
Get off on any stroke.
The command was a way to flip a situation on its head. If someone made you feel uncomfortable, or hurt, or sad, or angry, you had two choices. You could wallow in your victim mentality, or you could get off on the stroke.
Within a year of living at OneTaste, Jamie had been molded into a devoted employee, with increasing business responsibilities. She was often tapped to go out to events in the city and invite promising recruits to the next OneTaste event. She started leading those introductory events, and she also began giving clients private O.M. coaching. Jamie felt honored to be revolutionizing the sex lives of thousands of people. Her newfound leadership status gave her an intoxicating sense of power. She thought, I’m a really worthy, valuable person, because I’m a part of this thing that’s so meaningful.
The higher she rose, the scarier a fall looked. It became more and more critical for Jamie to hold on to her new life at OneTaste. If she lost it, she’d lose the most powerful version of herself she’d ever known. She had to stay connected—no matter the cost.
This Is a Practice
One day in 2012, Nicole called Caitlyn and Jamie into a room with her. By then, the two young women had spent about two years in OneTaste; they were no longer a couple, but they remained close.
Nicole had a proposal for them. She was moving to Los Angeles, which meant she wouldn’t be living with Reese anymore. Nicole had made a promise to Reese that he would always have a “handler” to take care of him.
She turned to Caitlyn and Jamie. “Will you be Reese’s handlers?” she asked.
Being Reese’s handler was a vague job title, but OneTaste insiders knew what it meant: taking care of Reese’s needs, including servicing him sexually.
Jamie paused. Everything she had learned up until this point had primed her to say yes to the position, and to do so willingly: Idolizing Nicole. Becoming accustomed to having sex with men, and to having sex with any kind of man. Getting off on any stroke. Being told that she should provide anything to help the company. Plus, being asked to be Reese’s handler felt like an honor. Jamie knew that only a few women in OneTaste’s history had held the same position. They were often Nicole’s confidantes—an admired group.
She also knew the unspoken threat. “The consequence of saying no is that you would be ostracized, ignored, and stripped of all your power in that world,” Jamie said.
OneTaste’s leaders often reminded people that they were responsible for their choices. When employees or customers complained about feeling pressured or manipulated, Nicole liked to quip that OneTaste was “a place for adults.”
Cult experts use the term “bounded choice” to describe this facade of agency. “Whatever they asked you to do—it appeared to be a choice, but it wasn’t,” Jamie added. “It just never was.”
Jamie said yes to being Reese’s handler; Caitlyn did, too.
The two women began their new role. Jamie and Caitlyn started living part-time in Reese’s three-story mansion with views of the Bay Bridge. One of Reese’s former handlers explained to them what they’d have to do: Every night, one or both of them would bring him dinner, and they might eat together. He might ask them to put away groceries or tidy up the house. He had a little dog named Baxter, who needed walking and feeding. And every day, they would be expected to give him a hand job. Sometimes he’d want to O.M. with them, but usually it was some kind of penis stroking, and Caitlyn and Jamie were taught what particular techniques and toys he preferred.
Nothing about the actual job appealed to Jamie, including the sexual exchanges with Reese. But she knew the role carried a lot of respect. It was a “mindfuck,” she recalled. She felt honored to have the job, which promoted her to an inner circle. At the same time, “deeply buried emotionally … I was prostituting myself,” she said.
Since joining OneTaste, the water around her had been heating up gradually, but each time the temperature rose a notch, Jamie had adjusted to the intensity. It wasn’t the first time since joining OneTaste that she’d agreed to have sex when she didn’t want to. She recalled all the other times that someone had said to her, “We need to sell this course—go fuck this guy,” or she’d been told, “God, you’re so grumpy and irritable—go suck so-and-so’s dick, or go have an O.M.” It felt bizarre, but she also believed that being able to have sex in this way was admirable—that if you were able to sexually manipulate someone, and they bought a big course as a result, it reflected well on you. Your Orgasm was strong.
With this new responsibility, the water reached a rolling boil. Jamie was being asked to perform regular sexual acts as a favor to Nicole’s financial backer. In her discomfort, she scrounged around for a rationalization. O.M.-ing, she had been taught, was a meditative practice, not a sexual act, and the same applied to the less-common O.M. for men, in which women stroked men’s genitals.
On nights when Jamie was stroking Reese, she could think to herself, This is a practice. When it was over, she’d walk down the hallway, climb into bed with Caitlyn, and fall asleep.
Mixed into the tumult of it all were moments of deep sweetness. Sometimes Nicole would spend the night at Reese’s place, and she would bring a few of her closest assistants. Together with Caitlyn and Jamie, they would eat dinner around a table, playing games and telling stories. From Jamie’s warped perspective, it felt cozy and special—even like a family. In exchange for their jobs as handlers, Jamie and Caitlyn received things they hungered for: guidance, belonging, and safety.
The two women tended to Reese for about four months. Then Jamie was assigned to leave San Francisco and move to Las Vegas to establish a OneTaste outpost there—with the goal of winning over Zappos.com founder Tony Hsieh, who had showed some interest in O.M. After about a year, the effort fizzled out without success, and Jamie was informed she should move back to San Francisco. (Jones told The New Yorker that the allegations had been “mischaracterized,” and confirmed that OneTaste repaid the loan.)
In the meantime, Caitlyn had left OneTaste. When Jamie landed back in the Bay Area, Nicole reached out to her. She had a request: Will you go take care of Reese again?
After some deliberation, Jamie texted Nicole: I don’t think I can do that. She told Nicole that the experience had traumatized her and Caitlyn. In response, according to Jamie’s recollection later in court testimony, Nicole sent her a volley of furious texts, including vitriol aimed at Caitlyn: If I ever see that little cunt again, I’ll smash her head against the sidewalk.
Jamie was bewildered and stung. Caitlyn had been so loyal to Nicole; she had given her body to further Nicole’s vision. Jamie trembled as she tapped out her response. She told Nicole that she loved Caitlyn, and that she knew in her heart she was a good person. “I feel like that was maybe the one moment in my whole history there that I actually stood up for something I genuinely believed in,” she recalled.
In that moment, Jamie was able to say no to Nicole and protect herself from further exploitation. But the cycle didn’t end there, because a newer, more compliant participant would always be ready to say yes. By then, OneTaste had developed a systemic culture in which its philosophy and its social pressures steered people to sleep with others in ways that benefited the company—with no regard for their own comfort. Jamie would be far from the last.
Ellen Huet is a features reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek
