Despite what you might gather from my photograph, I wasn’t always a great ladies man.

I’ve never possessed that raw sexual energy once described in an advertisement for a Tom Cruise film: Every girl wants to be with him; every guy wants to be like him. But I’ve known guys like that, and most were not nearly as good looking as Cruise. I never understood what it was they had going for them – there was just something about them that nobody could explain. Now, in the 47th year of my life, I have discovered their secret. Whether they knew it or not, they were tantra men.

It will be helpful for those who have not yet completed the tantra rites to think of the male and female bodies as batteries. (Bear with me; this is how it was explained to me.) Women have the positive channel up top (breasts) where they, if you could see it, shoot out energy. Below their waists is their negative terminal where they receive energy. Men’s positive pole is below our waists. So join our positive pole with the female’s negative pole, move the energy in that circle, and a tantra orgasm can be obtained simply by breathing, without any exchange of fluids or removal of clothing.

How do I know all this? I recently became a tantra man.

In my university days, I tried everything to get the girls. I lifted weights, wore name-brand clothing, even attempted fashionable haircuts. It was all in vain. But since even a blind dog sometimes finds a bone, I had the occasional girlfriend. But it was not until I met Liina that the secret of those who had just something about them was revealed to me.

My journey to tantra began in the usual fashion. I was the typical husband who did spent weekends doing weird shit to please his wife: yoga, walking across hot coals, drinking ayahuasca, meditation, riding an elephant, and wearing an electric-blue Egyptian gallibaya around the house on weekends.

I found none of these activities to be a waste of time, though I would admit on certain occasions I would have preferred to be fishing. But doing things of interest to your wife is the role of a husband, even though most husbands find themselves subjected to more mundane tortures, such as attending the Nutcracker ballet or a classical organ concert.

But it was not until Liina insisted I attend a weekend tantra class that I understood the ramifications of my problem: My seven main chakras had been blocked for the past 47 years! Proper maintenance of these chakras is essential, but little different than keeping your Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine in shape. While the lawnmower may require merely an oil change, your chakras demand regular yoga, chanting, or an ice-cold enema to keep them in proper working order.

The benefits of clean chakras are known to many. The most famous tantra man, Sting, is said to have the ability to pleasure his wife with five-hour bouts of sex. Richard Gere, who is known to have levitated on American national television (the government removed the footage from the internet!), is popularly thought to be the secret owner of the world’s largest online tantra yoga academy.

In our weekend course in Estonia, Liina and I did not learn five-hour sex or levitation techniques on the very first day, and I would caution everyone not to enter the course with this expectation. I can say that it took a full three days after the course before I mastered the five-hour duration, though you may master it in only a couple of hours.

Of course tantra is more than just sex. It is a way to master one’s energy and live life to the fullest. A banker who clears his chakras will find he is capable of foreclosing on twice as many homes as before. An advertising man will discover that perfect headline to double the sales of hemorrhoid cream. Clean your chakras and your primal energy will emerge allowing you to transfer orgasmic levels of energy in a variety of settings without the need for sexual intercourse.

And though tantra is not just sex, the novice newly in touch with channels of energy may find the need for new sexual partners irresistible. “If your body demands that exchange of energy, then by denying yourself you are not being true to your own truth,” our yogi told us. And what reasonable wife would deny her husband the pursuit of his own truth?

One cautionary note: I have found that the open-minded tantra life is not one always best lived publicly. Driving to Tartu last week, I picked up a hitchhiker, having absentmindedly left my tantra diagrams on the floor in front of the passenger-side seat. After no more than ten kilometers the young female hitchhiker began to look around and noticed the diagram of a penis, with arrows denoting the seminal vesicle, prostate, and penis’ third eye. I could see the gears turning in her head, and so I was quick to offer: “It’s okay. I’m a doctor.”

She squinted at me skeptically, and while I was not wearing a khaki raincoat, she surely saw me, at the very least, as a pervert, and more likely even an axe murderer. After a few seconds she asked me calmly: “Why would a doctor need such simple diagrams?”

Which was a very good question, I thought. And before I could think of a good answer she had insisted I stop the car.

The car was still moving when she opened the door, and before I knew it she was bolting back toward Tallinn. “Okay, I’m a tantra man!” I shouted after her, but it was too little too late.

If there is one useful thing that every attendee of a tantra course learns, it is how to give his partner a deep orgasm with only a two-minute foot massage. A bit of a parlor trick, perhaps, but who among us is above wanting to amaze his friends at parties?

Thanks to that little trick I’ve started to earn a bit of a reputation around the neighborhood. So much so that a little hippie settlement has sprung up in my garden. Someone erects a new teepee just about every other day, and I have increasing reason to move about wearing my gallibaya.

It will eventually become a bother, I know. But if all they want is a foot massage can I really throw them out? Liina doesn’t seem to mind as long as I’m following my own truth (and as long as they stay out of the kitchen). Some of my business-minded friends think I should monetize the thing and start an ashram, but I’ve never been much for commerce. So I’ve decided it’s just part and parcel of being a tantra man. Keep your chakras clean; be in touch with your energy; take life as it comes. Namaste.

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