PART I

CRIME, 1987

Sex is natural, but not if it’s done right.

                                                            —Anonymous

1

COMPLICITY

O

n Saturday evening March 21, 1987 seven people watched rain accumulate in a hastily dug grave. These seven souls, mostly strangers a mere forty hours earlier, had toiled seamlessly for the previous two hours: digging and scraping and hauling clods of clay and rock from their dead fellow’s final resting place. Refreshments, necessary due to the arduous nature of the task at hand, were consumed in silence, and, as if by agreement with their backs turned toward the soon-to-be-interred-corpse.

The body to be buried had been wrapped loosely in a rain moistened, tangerine-and-magenta paint splattered  canvas cover-all. When the grave, by tacit and silent agreement, had reached the requisite depth the surviving, culpable seven took hold of the canvas and wrestled the remains into the grave. Ceremoniously and silently, they each dropped a handful of earth onto the canvas shrouded cadaver. And then, unceremoniously and frantically, they buried the deceased. They left the grave slightly concave and unmarked. 

Perhaps a prayer for the departed was mumbled or silently intended, but not a word was said aloud. The survivors had hidden a shared secret and a common convoluted future had been embarked upon.

2

TANTRICITY HILL RETREAT

O

n Friday morning March 20, 1987 two couples arrived simultaneously at the Tantricity Hill Retreat. This coincident arrival is a feat which is almost impossible to accomplish. Tantricity Hill, situated on the cusp between northern Sonoma and southern Mendocino counties is at the end of a rutted and dusty two-track that twisted and bumped through vineyards, orchards, sheep pastures, oak woodlands, and finally a gated single-lane bridge. Couples who journeyed to Tantricity Hill for their three day sex seminar flew into SFO or Oakland International, then perambulated by car northward to Cloverdale—three hours, depending upon traffic—then west on U.S. 128 through the redwoods to Mountain House Road and, eventually, the rustic dirt road leading to the camp. There was no sign announcing Tantricity Hill’s existence and most soon-to-be-tantric-sex-students missed the side road and drove to Hopland where the postman, or the bartender at GUNTHER’S DEW DROP INN, would offer precise directions then snicker at the “perverts” as they exited, wondering and secretly envious about exactly what transpired on top of that there hill.

And how much it might cost.

So for the first time in the retreat’s seven year history Apple and Altair could perform their solemn and silly indoctrination ceremony for two couples at once: “Welcome,” said Altair as he draped leis around the guests’ necks. The leis were shipped to Tantricity Hill once a month by a gay couple from Kauai who had attended the retreat nearly four years ago.  The wreaths were kept in a freezer, then thawed gently in a refrigerator until draped around the necks of newly arrived guests.

“Welcome, welcome,” said Apple.

The four campers were embraced and kissed by Apple and Altair.  The foursome stood, freshly garlanded, in the cozy spring sunshine. A slight morning breeze, mildly infused with skunk, ruffled the leis and Altair and Apple’s flowing saffron robes. 

“Welcome,” said Altair.

“Welcome, welcome,” repeated Apple. She lit four sticks of sandalwood and handed one stick to each of Tantricity Hill’s initiates, bowing. “Follow us, please.”

The guests had been warned that only a purse for the women and a shaving kit for the men were allowed into the compound. One couple swung their accessory sacks like circa 1920’s Flappers’ beaded bags; the other clutched theirs like life preservers.

“We ask,” said Altair, “that you bring no suitcases.  The first service we bestow upon you is to enter our retreat, our home, with no baggage.”

“Please follow us,” said Apple.

The couples followed: again, one duo eager, the other apprehensive.

“This,” said Altair, with a theatrical, encompassing gesture to his left, “is the sacred pool, Lake Pomo. It is where, on the morrow, we shall all partake of the Water Ritual.”

Lake Pomo was, in actual fact, a kidney-shaped, stucco swimming pool fed by a warm underground spring that the land’s original tenants, the Pomo Indians, truly deemed sacred. But the Pomos were long gone, relocated to the dusty, wind-blown Stewart reservation east of Carson City, Nevada. The Pomos’ sacred, ancestral valley was now an appellation in California’s wine industry. 

Today, in southern Mendocino County, it’s Pinots instead of Pomos.

A clever bit of landscaping and a submerged Sears Best pump circulated the warm spring’s water into a pond, and then returned it down an artificial creek bed constructed of native stone that had been removed when the pool was constructed. The water trickled and dribbled down the stones in soothing counterpoint to the sighing, skunky wind. Sleeping in the shade of a chaise lounge alongside the leaf-littered pool reclined a fourteen-year-old, blind Irish Setter named Mary Francis Mulvaney.

“It’s beautiful,” said Helena. 

Her escort, Blake, gazed across the compound at a bench press and a stack of rusting barbells. 

The other couple, Arnold and Missy Roach, nodded in agreement clutching still tighter at their hand baggage.

Apple and Altair bowed profoundly and continued the tour past a glass geodesic dome adorned with handpainted symbols and curlicues, a garden, the kitchen/dining facility, and the low dark windowless building, called the Omphalos. This bunker of a building, once inside, created a near total darkness and is where every group met for the culmination of the second day’s activities.

Altair led the entourage up to a row of four army surplus Quonset huts. He pointed to the first, painted in alternating panels of magenta and Adriatic blue, and said, “Arnold and Missy, your residence. The Sunset, named for the neighborhood in San Francisco where I was raised.” The couple waved meekly and entered The Sunset trailing sandalwood and skepticism into the morning air.

Altair pointed to an adjacent Quonset hut:  glossy tangerine and Post-it-Note yellow, wreathed in bougainvillea and grape vines: “Blake and Helena. Your  weekend’s residence, Golden Gate Park.” The two couples embraced, slapped backs, and cheek-kissed. 

“We are honored and overjoyed,” said Helena, “to be here at Tantricity Hill.”

“The pleasure will be ours,” said Apple with no hint of irony, insincerity, or double entendre.

The couples clinched again.

Blake and Helena entered the Quonset hut dubbed Golden Gate Park.

Apple and Altair, robes flowing, strode toward their mauve-and-cream painted Quonset. Their hut was named Homedale, for the Idaho town where Apple was born and raised. Apple rattled the beads aside and said, “The other guests are probably lost. Should I call Gunther’s Dew Drop Inn?”

“Probably just,” said Altair, as he lit a Thai stick and inhaled, “a couple of fifty-ninth minute no-shows.” Altair exhaled and coughed. He inhaled again and, red-faced, passed the smoldering ember to his wife. Apple nodded and accepted the proffered joint. While waiting anxiously for the joint to return Altair said, “Mainstays of the business, my Darling.”

Tantric Sex Workshops ($1500 per couple weekend sanctioned pretext for partner swapping, voyeurism, exhibitionism, group sex, and forays into bisexuality) were considered, by the IRS and therefore officially, to be a Self-Help Industry. And in those Self-Help Industries twenty-five percent of the take was in the form of non-refundable deposits. Gung-ho and turned-on go-getters, so excited that they spilled their twelfth gin-and-tonic of the evening when they saw the professionally produced Infomercial on channel 42 at 3:47AM will call that 800 number, recite their credit card number and COMMIT TO IMPROVING THEIR LIVES by signing up for that fire-walking or real-estate-seminar next weekend at the local Ramada Inn. 

But when next weekend rolls around, the Raiders are playing the Broncos, it’s Susie’s baby shower, or you’re just too embarrassed to show up at a cattle-call-for-late-night-insomniac/alcoholic-channel-surfing-losers. So you shine it on, and, with luck, they keep just your non-refundable deposit; sometimes they keep the entire amount. These last moment cancellations are, in the industry, called “Fifty-Ninth Minute No-Shows” and every self-help speaker in the world overbooks by 20-25%, counting on the no-shows to make this month’s payment on his newest mistress’s latest car. Apple and Altair’s Tantric Sex Workshop worked precisely the same way. But you had to enroll via registered mail: group sex just doesn’t fly as a late night infomercial. Too many self-appointed watchdogs of Morality and Public Decency were TV-addicted insomniacs/alcoholics and Altair’s attempted cable spots advertising the sex camp were panned and banned. And, too many spot shadows on the naked campers made, quite frankly, for poor production values.

So he advertised, print-only no pictures, in several popular adult magazines: 

TANTRICITY HILL RETREAT

SEXUAL THERAPY AND EXPLORATION 1-800-777-8989

The first ad ran in September, 1981 and less than a year later they were booked solid Spring through late Summer. Altair and Apple didn’t print brochures, seek endorsements, or explain precisely what they actually did during the workshops. They planted the four simple words: Sexual Therapy and Exploration in the minds of prospective clients, let the vague but potent phrase sprout and fester, and March through September, cashed a heck-of-a-lot of checks for $1500.

Proving, once again, that the most important and potent sexual organ is, indeed, the imagination.