A thin woman with frizzy hair raised her hand. “I am curious about being hypnotized in order to forget … like to erase things from the past?” she asked. It’s possible, he said, but it’s more in the realm of therapeutic hypnosis.
“How about coming on command!” someone shouted.
Mr. Harrington said he knew a woman who orgasms whenever her secret word is uttered. “This sounds fun,” he added, “but it proved troublesome when her friends found out and called her to say it.” We laughed. “Which still sounds fun,” he continued, “but when she answers at a grocery store standing next to her coworkers it is, shall we say, socially awkward.”
After class, I still had questions. For instance: were there really women out there who would fall over, convulsing with pleasure in grocery stores, after hearing the phrase “banana bread”? And how could I become one of them?
I decided to see if Emily would help me. She said she usually hypnotizes only her sex partners but agreed to make an exception in my case. Sitting in the living room of her Sunset Park apartment we went over the details of what was about to happen. I tried to act nonchalant, my voice cheery, as she went over the standard questions.
“Is it O.K. if I touch you?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said.
“What about light spanking?”
“Uhmm. Maybe? Yes?”
She led me into the bedroom and dimmed the lights as I took a seat on the bed, which had purple linens and felt huge beneath me. I closed my eyes and exhaled. I was nervous.
“I am going to count down from 10 with the number one being a state of ultimate relaxation,” she said. “Now relax your body down to number nine …” At first we did a few nonsexual guided imagery exercises—she walked me through a forest, and then I floated into the sky. It wasn’t much different from a counseling session with a crystal-y, crunchy therapist. Until it was.
“Now you may notice,” Emily said, “that although it is cold outside, this room is suddenly very hot. You are starting to feel uncomfortable. Your cheeks turn pink, your clothes feel too warm against your body.”
Then Emily told me to imagine how nice and cool the air would feel against my naked skin. “Now, if you want to, take off your shirt,” she said. I went ahead and peeled off my top. It was hot. “If you want to take off your pants, take off your pants,” she said.
Oh, why not? I wriggled out of my jeans.
Earlier, I had asked Emily whether the technique worked equally well with men. “It’s easier with women,” she said, to my surprise. “With men if you say orgasm they expect to ejaculate, and sometimes they do, but often they don’t.”
I’d asked her about the dangers they mentioned in class. “No one will do anything they absolutely don’t want to do while under hypnosis,” she insisted. It is about imagination and stretching the limits of what the mind can do, she added. “If someone tells you to do something you don’t want to, you will just open your eyes and say, ‘You asshole.’” Even so, she admitted there are gray areas. “You might wake up and say, I am not sure I wanted to do that.” One the Hypno-club members I’d spoken to bragged about turning women into cows, getting them to “moo” on all fours—his tone hinting they should have felt embarrassed later.
“Now,” Emily said, taking my palm in hers, “as I rub your palm, feel a ball of energy building. It feels like the best feeling you’ve ever experienced. And the more I rub, the more you feel it building.” I arched my back, exhaling.
I understood that she was describing an orgasm, and I started to feel it. Sort of. It was how I’ve heard people characterize body memories, or phantom-limb syndrome. Emily said the feeling was getting bigger and bigger and I flexed my thigh muscles and curled my toes the way I do when I climax. “Now … release!” she said, and I arched my back, moaning.
It wasn’t a real orgasm, but a pretend one, a hallucination of an orgasm, a memory of what an orgasm feels like. Still, it felt pretty good.
When Emily brought me back to the room, everything looked brighter. I felt lighter. I sat up, feeling drunk. “It’s the posttrance state,” Emily said.
I laughed, shaking my head not sure I really believed it. I did, however, have a distinct craving for banana bread.
