“Figure out internal orgasms” has been on my to-do list for as long as I can remember. Right above “move eyes farther apart” and “become chill.” I’ve never had a problem orgasming externally. But when it comes to actual intercourse, I’ve struggled to get out of my own head long enough to purely enjoy it. In other words, if I have a G-spot, no man has found it. So when I heard about an “orgasm coach and climax consultant” who lived 15 minutes away from my Los Angeles home, I leaned in, despite not knowing exactly what a session with “the O-Man” might entail. It couldn’t be actual sex work, could it? My editor didn’t think so, either. “I’m sure he doesn’t actually touch you,” she said. Right. That would be crazy. I booked a session (for $800—he usually charges twice that, but even orgasm coaches run holiday specials).
The next day, I received an e-mail from him: “For internal orgasms, I’d be aligning your body and getting you off clitorally to warm you up for some specialized dildos/my hands. The whole process is about 2-3 hours (you’ll be cumming for most of that time), and as I’m releasing your muscles, the orgasms will get faster or deeper or more salient in some way because your phasic muscle[s] make a web that goes all the way down to your pelvic floor.” I gasped and slammed my computer shut.
See, I grew up in a southern mega-church where all the cool kids sang Jars of Clay songs and wore promise rings, so I’m still unraveling some internalized shame surrounding sex. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 20, and I didn’t even masturbate until I was 19. I’ve since closed most of the ghastly metaphorical wounds Youth Pastor Robby left on my soul, but I’m still far from feeling “whatevs!” about hiring a sex worker. But … was the O-Man a sex worker? Aside from the words “getting you off clitorally” and “specialized dildos,” the tone of his e-mail was almost clinical. Like ones I’ve exchanged with physical therapists. It sounded like I’d walk into the O-Man with a body problem, and walk out with a body solution. Nothing sinful about that.
One week later, I stood at the back entrance of the O-Man’s North Hollywood apartment complex, waiting to be let inside. There’s no picture of him on his Web site, so naturally I expected a 60-year-old Deadhead with a gray ponytail. Instead, I was greeted by a 38-year-old barefoot man in sweatpants and an ASK ME ABOUT MY ENORMOUS SCHWANZSTUCKER T-shirt. About five feet eight, with light brown hair, a scruffy beard, and a warm smile, the O-Man is, dare I say, kinda cute. “Are you Abbey Richards?” he asked. I’m not, because I’m writing under a pseudonym. But he said the right name, so I followed him inside.
The O-Man’s apartment is not dissimilar to most single-dude apartments many a woman has woken up thirsty in: cluttered and beige, with professional wrestling playing on a too-big TV. “You can sit there,” he says, gesturing to a charcoal-gray love seat covered with what he would later tell me was a “squirt-proof blanket.” This informal setup should have made me uncomfortable. But it didn’t. Because after a few minutes of chatting I realize that the man who purports to make women come upwards of 40 times in one session is … a real nerd. He talks enthusiastically about playing Dungeons & Dragons and reading Tolkien, and, per his T-shirt, watches old Mel Brooks movies. He also watches The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Vanderpump Rules. (“How bad do you want to make Ariana come?,” I ask him. “So bad.”) I feel safe.
He starts our session by massaging my feet with a Theragun. (This, he says, will give me stronger arches, which will help align my hips, which, in turn, will help me come more.) “I feel very angry a lot of times about the purposeful obfuscation or misinformation that women are fed from a young age to adulthood about their bodies,” he tells me. “People don’t believe that women are built to come for minutes straight. That’s something they can do all the time.”
The O-Man is the first to admit he’s self-taught. He hasn’t consulted with medical professionals about his methods, and he doesn’t want to. “I don’t think they give a shit about people recovering,” he said. “Because then you can’t grind them to death.” Before starting his current business, he worked as a trainer for about 10 years, where he built a reputation for identifying and solving alignment issues. Combining those skills with a lifetime of being “really good at making women come,” the O-Man was born.
After 30 minutes of nonsexual massage and adjustments, he asks me to take off my jeans and underwear. (He doesn’t say anything about my T-shirt, so visually, picture Pooh Bear.) He brings out a small, hot-pink vibrator and presses it against my clit. I come in about 30 seconds. My head tips back and I moan at the ceiling. He gently tells me I don’t have to look at him (can you imagine?), but I do need to angle my chin down so he can see if I’m in pain or not. Also, in case I look like I’m about to involuntarily kick him in the face and knock his tooth out, which a client once did.
He then asks if I would consent to moving to his bedroom so he could make me come internally. Or, as he would phrase it several times in the next 90 minutes, “play with my pussy.” (Why am I not afraid? I’ve never felt safer.) I follow him to the bedroom.
Within minutes, I am lying on his crumpled blue duvet with my right foot on the floor and my left leg bent into my chest, as he presents to me what can only be described as a Vantablack dildo. He makes sure I’m O.K. with the size (looks good, Coach), then attaches it to a low-speed Theragun and puts it in me. At first, it feels strange. Huh, I think. This is an internal orgasm? It mostly just feels like I have to pee. But then he brings out a small wand vibrator and starts simultaneously using it on my clit. Almost immediately, I come so hard, so many times, I think I might go blind. My entire body involuntarily shakes. I make sounds I have never made in bed or anywhere else. He later describes the type of orgasm(s) I had as “transcendental.” He’s right. I went somewhere else. I met the color yellow. I think I petted a seal. I know I spoke to the Welsh farmers from whom I am descended. One called me a slut. I had no concept of time, but it was either the best 90 seconds or the best six hours of my life.
In a funny, arguably Mel Brooksian way, the day occasionally felt like a run-of-the-mill physical-therapy session. In between positions (next was bent over the bed with my left leg out like a frog’s and my right leg standing on a vibrating platform), I rested while he used massagers and stretching tools to release tension in my upper body. He treated me like I’d just jogged off the field at halftime rather than come 12 times in as many minutes. I was sweating, weak, lying there in just a T-shirt (cannot emphasize this detail enough) with a near stranger, as he nonchalantly explained why I’d just roared like a grizzly startled out of hibernation by a gunshot.
But the main thing I wanted to know: How do I replicate this at home? Can I replicate this at home?
He showed me how lying on my right side with my left leg straight up in the air would relax my tighter hip during sex. How pressing a vibrator against my forehead during sex would release lesser-known muscles in my body. He sent me a PDF of creative, female-pleasure-oriented sex positions that he sells on his Web site. I have to be honest, though: unless I go back to the O-Man with a partner (he does work with couples, but not with men alone), I didn’t know if I would be capable of re-creating the metaphysical orgasms I’d just experienced.
But what I did walk out of that North Hollywood one-bedroom knowing for sure is what my body is truly, physically capable of. Before visiting the O-Man, I thought I was to blame when I couldn’t come with a partner. You’re thinking about it too much. Women need an emotional connection. The female body is finicky. Our society drills these messages into women’s heads over and over, rarely calling upon men to do something about it. Heartbreakingly, some women are made to believe they can’t have orgasms at all. I’ve had great and meaningful sex with men I’ve loved, but never the intense pleasure that I experienced with this Elden Ring enthusiast for whom I felt absolutely nothing.
Viewed through this lens, the session was not only a triumph over the true-love-waits culture of my youth but a triumph over the patriarchy itself. My body did that. And now, my body was sitting on the O-Man’s couch (still Pooh) with my legs in a Shiatsu foot-and-calf massager, eating strawberry ice cream he made from scratch with protein powder, honey (fitting), and beet sugar. It was delicious. And I was satisfied.
Before I leave, the O-Man reads me a quote that’s meaningful to him: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know.” That’s beautiful, I tell him. Who said that?
“Gandalf.”
Abbey Richards is the name the author is using so her employers don’t read about her orgasms