Kramer's spiritual sex may or may not involve ejaculation, orgasm or penetration. It most certainly should end in some kind of enlightenment or mind-altered state, perhaps a tingling sensation or tears. In other words, not what most of us think of as sex.

I ask Kramer whether most people just want fucking to be fucking. Why does it have to be spiritual as well?

"Spirituality is just a way of valuing. It's what we value that is important in our lives and integrates us and makes us whole and feel good. For some people it's money. For me, it's sex that brings me together. It's also a gateway out of the ordinary."

Kramer explains that according to Taoist thought, genitals are generators of energy, like miniature Grand Coulee Dams. When stimulated, the energy spreads to the rest of the body. He juxtaposes this against the traditional sex model, where the goal is to build and build to a climax -- balloon sex, he calls it. "There's the idea of building up a balloon to pop the balloon. If the goal is the end process, then you want to get there as fast as possible. But with a massage, there's really no end. You can go on and on." He tells me that a single hour of controlled, or ecstasy, breathing, where you take fast, deep breaths, can bring women to orgasm without any stimulation. After witnessing this in workshops, he started incorporating breath work into his genital massages. "I started doing this on people and there were such breakthroughs."

Kramer's sandwich is mostly uneaten. He's too polite to talk with a full mouth. I ask if he wants to take a break and just enjoy his food; he tells me he'd rather keep talking.

"When you say breakthrough, what do you mean?" I ask.

"It's almost like a gateway out of ordinary consciousness. Time can stop. Some people lie still on my table for an hour. I stop and they can't move. They're in an altered state, a trance. Some people just feel like a oneness, a breakthrough. Some people go into connections with other folks. William James wrote a book on all different types of altered experiences called 'The Varieties of Religious Experience,' and a lot of them have happened on my massage table and in my classes."

"In your perfect world, would everybody experience this?" I ask.

"You know, one of the reasons I do this is about choice. This is a world full of choice, but in the area of sex, we've not been educated. We're educated in all kinds of other areas, but not about our own fire, our own eroticism, what's possible. I'm doing this because most people don't know about it. It's another option. And some people go, 'That was great.' Others say, 'That's not for me.' I have a thriving practice of men and women who come to me wanting this experience. But I'm a soft sell: Here it is; take it or leave it."

Kramer attributes America's squeamishness about sex to its Puritanical foundations. "The key to Puritans is there is a battle between good and evil. There's always the devil or evil in some form. With Reagan it was the evil empire, then the Soviet Union fell. Even television has taken this up: Almost every news show has to have two people at war. But I think sex has always been demonized."

And it's not just folks like Jesse Helms who are doing all the demonizing, either, Kramer says. "What I think is sad is men who say, 'I'm gay. I've never been around women. I don't want to watch 'Zen Pussy.' It's not just about being gay; it's a repulsion, an aversion toward these sexual things, or women: 'I don't want to see that; I don't want to do that.'"

As he finishes his meal, I tell him about the sex ed. class in my sophomore year of high school. "My teacher ended every class with the mandate, 'Pet your dog not your date.' Most of the class was already sexually active and this was supposed to be our introduction. But here we are, a whole generation who were taught in sex ed. not to do it or our lives would be ruined."

"I was on HBO's 'Real Sex' series about three years ago," Kramer tells me, "And I got a call from a kid that I taught high school English to at the age of 13 in Catholic school. He said, 'I'm really angry. Here you are on this show, Mr. Liberated, and all I got out of high school was inhibition and I'm still a fucked-up dude. You could have given us some of that, or some information. Instead, you passed on the party line. You were part of the whole administration.' It was difficult to hear from somebody who was so upset and angry. People recognize freedom when they see it."

Kramer says his response to seeing people who are more liberated than he, if you can imagine such a thing, isn't anger. "One of my favorite movie scenes is the orgasm-screaming scene in 'When Harry Met Sally' when the woman looks over and says, 'I'll have what she's having.' I always look at people who are wild and go, 'I'll have what she's having, or what he's having.'"
salon.com | May 28, 1999

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