As one woman after another received her verdict, those who’d finished or were waiting chatted about dates they’d had or were about to have, which positions brought the most pleasure, how to achieve the elusive Big O—orgasm from intercourse. I marveled at their ease: with words like “cock” and “box” and “fuck”; with their own and others’ nudity; with sharing tips about sex. I still felt a jolt each time a woman dropped her pants—if she was going to bare one half of her body, shouldn’t it be the top half?—but after the first few rounds I began to relax about where to rest my eyes. No one seemed to care.
When most of the women had taken their turns—and some, including Shure, had left the loft to go on dates or go to bed—Eile asked if I’d like to try. “No pressure,” she said. “You totally don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable. But it can be pretty wild to get a look at your os for the first time.”
My bladder clenched, warning me I wasn’t ready. I’d never even seen a gynecologist, never received this sort of exam before. In the next beat, I dismissed the warning as a drag on my ascent. “Why not?” I said, stepping toward the bed.
Eile fished a spare speculum out of the green basket. As I removed my pants and underpants and lay back on the bed, my bladder clenched again. But I couldn’t pull out now, I told myself; I’d already chosen. I ignored the second warning.
I crooked my knees up and slid the clear plastic dolphin nose into my vagina. (At the time, I avoided naming this part of myself; soon I, too, would adopt the word “box.”) Eile peered inside me, pointing her Mini Maglite down the tunnel opened by the dolphin nose. “You’re not there,” she said. “Aim up and to the left.”
“There you are!” she said, after a few more stabs. “Do you wanna see yourself?”
“Okay.”
She set a small mirror and the Maglite between my legs. I saw a glistening pink bump, pierced by a tiny slit. Not “wild,” as Eile had promised—but new. A fresh item to add to my list of Things I Would Have Missed Had I Not Come to Zendik. A list that helped crowd out doubts—I should have kept the money; I should have explored more before deciding to stay.
Eile withdrew the light and mirror and inserted a Q-tip, which emerged with a touch of spongy mucus clinging to it. “Closed and slightly wet!” she said. A split verdict, in other words.
“Don’t worry,” she added. “Once you’ve charted a few cycles, we’ll have more to go on.” She smiled. “That’s gonna matter a lot more once you start having dates.”
Karma was lying on her stomach on the next bed over, head propped in her hands. She rolled onto her side and gave me a mischievous grin. “Speaking of dates!” she said. “Who are you attracted to?”
I ducked down to retrieve my clothing. A blush crept over my cheeks. My shoulder tingled with the imprint of Estero’s awakening touch, my first morning at the Farm. His face—his mysterious smile, his serious gaze—shimmered in my mind’s eye. I hesitated to say his name, for fear that Karma would scoff at me, confirm that he was out of my league.
I said it anyway: “Estero.” Despite the strangeness of the scene, I felt warmth from Eile and Karma, their wish to see me blossom. “There are plenty of hot guys here, but he…” I paused, seeking a word or phrase to do his beauty justice. Finding none, I finished the sentence as best I could: “He is absolutely gorgeous.”
Karma laughed, her eyes alight with sly encouragement. “Go ahead and hit him up for a walk! All work and no play makes Helen a dull girl! Why not have a little fun, right? What have you got to lose?” Eile nodded. “Yeah, go for it.”
“Maybe I will,” I said. A seed of what might be settled within me.
I knew a few details of Estero’s background from a letter published in the Zendik magazine before his 1997 move to the Farm. About quitting his $36,000-a-year job as an engineer for a multinational telecom giant, he’d written, “I didn’t feel people needed more cellular phones, towers marking up the landscape, and more radio frequencies floating around… . I got sick of working, coming home to smoke pot and relax, going to sleep, and doing it all over again. It was going nowhere quick.” At Zendik, he adopted the role of village electrician.
Now I recognize Estero’s letter as the germ of his creation myth. Every Zendik had one, running something like this: My world was brutish and dull. I had to numb myself to survive. At the Farm I found friendship and purpose. Finally I feel fully alive.
After less than a month’s exposure to this story line, I was already drafting my own version: I graduated from Harvard with a grant to tour communal homesteads. For months I wandered, growing weary of groups that seemed bohemian but hadn’t committed to cooperation and honesty. At Zendik I found a family, a tribe. Here I could develop not only skill and understanding but also an exceptional degree of intimacy, especially with men. (Surely all this was worth more than $13,000—right?)
Into my myth, I’d scripted a role for Estero: His kiss would transform me from shy, croaking frog to bold, lilting princess. He would rouse me to sensual pleasure, then guide me through sex. We’d cultivate a lasting love, rooted in our common devotion to Zendik.
But first I had to “hit him up.” And even though Karma and Eile had been encouraging, I doubted he’d say yes.
Estero, I would learn, had been a child model. At twenty-five, he could have swung a Calvin Klein shoot—for a spread in Mother Earth News. He paired starved elegance and a soulful gaze with a homesteader’s take on shabby chic: worn jeans, weathered cowboy boots, vintage olive drab vest screen-printed on the back with a faded logo for a faded Zendik project, the Ecolibrium Alliance. He was, simply, far hotter than I. The same was true of most every other woman within his mating circuit. I doubted my own voltage would be high enough to excite him.
But how could I know for sure, unless I took a chance? Telling myself I’d be foolish not to take advantage of access to go-betweens, I asked Loria, shortly after breakfast one day in late November, to hit up Estero for a walk on my behalf.
Then I waited. For the rest of the morning and the entire afternoon, I pulsed with a buzz both luscious and cruel—a cross between the caress of a vibrator and the zing of a weak electric fence. The day’s work—shoveling horseshit, making salad, building a rock wall—morphed into a medium for the buzz, which dulled the pangs I sometimes felt for times in the past when I’d conducted my own orchestra, composed my own score. When I’d been free to read books, or sculpt with balloons, or walk twenty miles, or ride the F train in loops between Jamaica and Coney Island. Now, an unseen hand waved the baton. It could wave forever—I would follow—if I could sway in this buzz every once in a while.
I was at the kitchen counter, scooping rice into my dinner bowl, when Loria leaned in to ask if she might have a word with me in the freezer room. (Loria, an English heiress, could carry off phrases like “have a word with.”) My heart gave a jolt. I stowed my bowl in a nook under a cupboard and followed her into the poorly lit alcove. Under a flickering bulb, her Marilyn Monroe lips stretched into a conspiratorial grin. “Estero is into it. You’re to meet him at his shop around nine. Just knock on the door. He’ll be there.”