My first experience with Deb Anapol was live on Radio Woodstock in September of 1996. I was the host of an astrology-related discussion program broadcast at 11 pm each Sunday night. She was based in San Francisco, connected by phone. It was very nearly big-time radio, broadcast through a large region of New York City’s northern suburbs known as the Hudson Valley.

Deborah Taj Anapol and one of her friendly Buddhas.

I’d heard of Deb a few weeks earlier at my first-ever Loving More conference. There I met a guy named Jerry, one of her boyfriends. He told me about the Celebration of Sacred Sexuality that would be coming up in a few weeks, at Harbin Hot Springs. There would be 40 tantra teachers (as he put it) and lots of other people. He said the word Harbin almost religiously, as if it were the name of a saint.

I said I wanted to be a presenter and he assured me that would not happen; I should just come and feel it out.

After Loving More, I reached out to Deb by the then just catching on new thing, email. I invited her onto Radio Woodstock. That’s my idea of an astrology program. Our first conversation was being broadcast to thousands of people — about sex, polyamory, the upcoming conference, and my reading of the astrology of that conference, that is, the aspects of that weekend and what themes they raised.

The next day she called me and invited me to be her keynote speaker, asking specifically for an astrological theme. I happily accepted, and booked a flight to San Francisco. I don’t remember how I got up to Harbin, but I did indeed arrive, for my initiation experience of that place, and of Taj and of being a keynote speaker and a few other things.

The conference was erotic summer camp with open sleeping arrangements. The various lodges at Harbin have that feeling, though at that moment I just knew anything could happen that weekend. I remember seeing Jerry, who gave me that ‘good going, kid’ look.

It was very early autumn and the weather was fresh and inviting. The conference was just fun — tantra and polyamory in that easygoing California style of the mid-1990s. After a few hours and dinner, the conference gathered in the main lodge for the opening bit, which consisted of Taj welcoming everyone, a kind of puja ritual with some of her goddess girls, and then, inviting me up to the microphone.

There, I basically gave a free-verse channeling of Chiron square Uranus called “Leaping Across the Sky.” The astrology fit the event beautifully — Chiron, the planet of healing, in Scorpio, the sign of sex and death; aspecting Uranus in Aquarius, which felt like some kind of revolutionary gathering.

The talk seemed to take a minute, and can still feel the energy of my presentation. The visuals are a blur. Thankfully I commemorated it in an article, saved for posterity now 19 years later. People loved my talk, I was suddenly friends with everyone, and I plunged into the conference with its many very pretty creatures, who were all emanating a kind of magnetism that I had never felt before. Momentary eye contact with each or any of them was a sexual experience of a different flavor.

The next day were various workshops. I can never stay in one for long, so I roamed around, catching parts of each one. Toward the end of one session I walked into the main lodge, where there was a workshop called Extended Female Orgasm, featuring one woman having the experience, and a dense little bowl-shaped audience of people sitting around her, with Taj and the subject’s partner right there, sitting on the floor holding her.

I watched her experience a seemingly endless state of ecstasy, being guided to maneuver in her body various ways as she swam in a continuous space of release. It was the most attentive audience I’d ever seen or felt. Gradually they brought the demonstration subject back to Earth.

That event set the feeling tone of the evening.

The Saturday night activity was being called a marimba party. There was a 10-piece band and a lot of people dancing. However, this was not your ordinary dance party, as it had an orgy going on simultaneously. The two events were overlaid by some quantum phenomenon — dancing and music and group sex arranged somewhat randomly in a nice large space. At some point I became friends with a woman who was wearing a sarong and nothing else except a large silver pendant emanating the gaze of Isis. Some time during the day I had given up ordinary clothing for a sarong and tee shirt.

I could tell she liked me, in part by how much I liked her. She had the most easygoing beauty, like afternoon sunlight, a deep tan, beautiful little tits and a delicious mouth, which I was tasting as we knelt in front of one another somewhere on the dance floor as the party swirled around us. She explained that she was bisexual, which she looked in that distinct way that I can sometimes see; a certain way of carrying her gender that was feminine and androgynous and open to experience.

We were soon exploring one another, smelling and tasting and feeling. At some point we paused and she explained that she was married but had a hall pass to come to the conference and do some sexual things within certain boundaries, which included us kneeling facing one another masturbating, in this stunning moment of transcendent freedom — face to face with her in the midst of about 100 people dancing and having sex in various configurations, and the marimba band playing to one side of the room. This was mingled with making out with her some more, hugging, smelling her hair, and her breasts, and licking her sweat, and tasting her mouth again…lots of fun.

At one end of the room was a low platform; like a small, carpeted stage. There were two women and a man up there, giving people pleasure treatments one by one. Anyone could go up there, relax and be treated to whatever fantasy they wanted. We watched this enraptured. Eventually there was no line. There was an opening. I knew that was my invitation. I took a breath and stood up and walked to the elevated pleasure space. I was met with soft eyes.

Somehow I had been carrying around a dildo, one that Betty Dodson had given me in exchange for an astrology reading a few months earlier. It was one of those heavy clear plastic ones called the Venus. I was very new to astrological work but I seemed to be blending in with the sexpositive movement nicely.

My desire was to be fucked with that dildo on that stage. Which is exactly what happened. The party swirled in the rhythms of music, dancing and sex play. I was shorn of my sarong and tee shirt, and asked to lay back on some pillows. My yummy bisexual lady friend was about to watch me have an experience, and she sat with her feet tucked under her a bit back from the stage. I have no idea who else was watching. My knees were drawn back and apart, and someone, I’m not sure who, slipped the lube-soaked dildo into my body. I relaxed around it, and breathed into the experience. I looked up and my friend was still there watching, feeling, being present and attentive. Then she smiled at me, slowly, first with her eyes. I let out a breath and lay back and breathed again.

A while earlier Jerry had handed me half a hash brownie, the slow acting type, which was now taking effect at full strength. I moaned and melted and received as these three tantrikas worked with me, on me, offering to me, stroking my hair and encouraging me to relax evermore. I was dimly aware of the many people in the room, and of being entirely out in the open. I felt truly naked, stretched wide and gradually fucked more intently, expertly, lovingly, as I moaned out my feelings and experienced the most vivid lack of inhibition I had ever felt. They how to make this feel endless.

My cock was hard and now someone, I don’t know which of the three people with me, was massaging me, fucking my cock with her or was it his hand, drawing me out, as one of the women held me and gazed into my eyes. I was gradually guided, ever so intentionally, to ejaculation. I felt like I was going to orgasm from being fucked, then felt that some more, and then I realized that was what was happening — the bulbs of the dildo were playing against my prostate and I released myself into a gush of submission to my own existence, spouting and vocalizing my dreamlike ecstasy.

My chest was covered in my semen. The woman who was eye-gazing me gathered some on her fingers and put it in my mouth. Then she did it again, and again, until she had fed me most of my ejaculation. I sucked myself in and melted into affirmation of life.

When my awareness came back into the room, the party had settled down some. My bisexual friend had disappeared. My guides on the little stage sat me up, and wrapped me in my sarong, and I stepped back into the party with wet streaks on my belly and chest, and my mouth wet with myself.

I had discovered many things, including Deborah Anapol’s talent for putting on an orgy. She was like Lady Galadriel with her ring, working the elf group sex magic from behind the scenes. Of all her many talents, the Saturday night sex party at any of her workshops was one of her most fun.

I propose a Saturday night orgy in her honor.*

* Check that – a masturbation orgy, in honor of the ‘turn the love around onto yourself’ teaching she would offer…East Coast, Left Coast, Boulder.