What if I told you there was a woman who believed all women could orgasm for 15 minutes straight? That that orgasm could make the woman, her partner, and even the people around her transcend their fears, their lethargy, and their indecision? That due to this power, women were actually in control of the universe, while men simply behaved in accordance to their female counterparts’ subconscious dictates? 

Now, what if I told you that this woman convinced over 35,000 people across nine cities on both sides of the Atlantic—men and women, gay and straight, John Doe to Gweneth Paltrow—that all of the above was fundamentally, radically, even benevolently true, and that based on that truth, adherents would go into credit card debt, move out of their apartments, quit their jobs, and cut off their family and friends? 

You might not believe me. But this woman—a real woman—is Nicole Deadone, a 58-year-old, tall but otherwise normal-looking aunt-like figure with an endearing lisp and the enthusiastic gestures of an elementary school teacher. It’s her story, from childhood to final prison sentence, that the journalist Ellen Huet tells in her 432 page, deeply-researched and engrossing book Empire of Orgasm. Deadone’s story, which is indistinguishable from the story of the company she founded, is not an easy one to get right. This is not because the details aren’t out there—over the past decade, the businesswoman and her company OneTaste have been the subject of sympathetic and skeptical journalism, a chapter of a book by a New Yorker writer, and a Netflix documentary made by Lena Dunham’s production company. Rather, it’s hard to pin down because Deadone is a shapeshifter, and it’s difficult to know who she is or what she believes. While at first she was wounded by her father’s sexual assault, later she suggested she courted his desire. During OneTaste’s ascent, centering female orgasm was considered a rallying call/cry for #MeToo, and Deadone parrotted liberal talking points. By the time her company went down, Deadone sounded more like Tucker Carlson, positioning OneTaste’s collapse as one more casualty of cancel culture. 

In Empire of Orgasm, Huet makes the case that Deadone’s chameleonic nature was more than a serendipitous quirk that made her a good saleswoman; it was the superpower she sold to her followers. Part of her regular sermon was that women should never look at themselves as victims: that because their energy was so powerful, they had the ability to manifest their destinies, while men would simply respond to their “call.” In explaining how Deadone’s vision and that of OneTaste became inextricable, the story Huet offers is not just that of a persuasive woman, a potential sociopath, a multi-level marketing scheme, or even a sex cult—though Huet discusses all those things—but also of the steadfast power of spinning a narrative: the idea, however aspirational, that you can make reality whatever you want it to be. 

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But on its face, what OneTaste sold was simpler. Namely, classes to watch demonstrations of and participate in “Orgasmic Meditation,” a ritual whereby a “stroker” (usually a man) strokes a “strokee” (usually a woman) up and down the upper-left quadrant of her clitoris—“no firmer than you would stroke your eyelid”—for 15 unending minutes. At the outset, Orgasmic Meditation or “OM,” was a desexualized experience. Strokers would “practice” the propriety method involving latex gloves, lube, and pillows, fully clothed, while strokees would only disrobe from the waist down. After the 15 minute session ended, the two participants, who were often paired up after just meeting one another, could walk away expecting nothing more than they would from their bank teller—“not a date, a phone number, or even a handshake.” As the writer Emily Witt coldly described the experience in her 2016 book Future Sex, her third time OMing, “I climaxed…as I stared at a coffee urn on a table.” 

Deadone—who, in her Ted Talk, which has more than 2 million views on YouTube, acknowledges that the practice might at first sound strange—brought OMing into the mainstream under the guise of female empowerment. But she actually co-opted the idea from two men. Victor Baranco, a former used car salesman, started “deliberate orgasm” in the 1960s and preached it in a Bay Area commune called Morehouse. A former student of his, RJ Testerman, then split off his own program called Welcome Consensus, which Deadone joined until she decided she could create her own similar enterprise. But the spin doctor that she is, Deadone didn’t like talking about this history: Curious San Franciscans who walked through Daedone’s doors saw a practice built by, designed for, and run by women.

• • • 

Huet became acquainted with OneTaste in 2017, when a publicist tried to pitch her a positive positioning on the company; what Huet assumed was “a fast-growing, woman-led wellness startup, rooted in Silicon Valley’s optimization ethos.” But she wasn’t so credulous, and the investigative piece she ended up publishing would lead to Deadone’s conviction for conspiracy to commit forced labor. For Empire of Orgasm, Huet expanded on that work, speaking at length to people who had once been part of OneTaste. But before she could explain why they jumped ship, she first had to understand why they had even boarded. 

For most people, it was about trying to fill a void. As with any cult-like group, OneTaste’s easiest catches were those recovering from other all-consuming alienating traumas or isolated communities: sexual abuse, alcoholism, Orthodox Judaism. (Later on in OneTaste’s development, participating in AA or other twelve-step programs would become a requirement.) Deadone promised these lost souls that OM could aid them physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but most importantly, she offered them community. Female orgasm, she claimed, had “the same fundamental goal” as the internet—“human connection.” For women who had felt like their sexual needs had been ignored by men for centuries, OM was, understandably, an appealing concept, and gained particular traction among women who had never experienced an orgasm or had been raped. And while the women-focused company emphasized it had little to do with the male experience, much of its paying clientele was made up of nerdy or introverted male techies looking to improve their understanding of female anatomy. 

Like yogis who do Ashtanga or meditate with monks, OM practitioners saw themselves as practicing a kind of spiritual discipline, aspiring for the highest state of post-nut clarity. But one could not really reach this altitude from OM classes alone. The most dedicated OneTasters, who, in addition to participating in classes, spent tens of thousands of dollars becoming teachers, employees, and even “priests” of the practice, were having a lot of sex. A fundamental part of OneTaste was living alongside peers in a warehouse, where inhabitants would be assigned random bedmates and directions to fuck whomever Deadone suggested might benefit from their energy. (Often, “energy” was code for “money.” If someone seemed like they might be open to buying more classes, some free sex might help win them over.)

Deadone browbeat her clients, giving them her approval when they obeyed her and bullying them when they didn’t, and, as part of her carefree, so-called liberated ethos, she encouraged OMers to do what scared them most: something she called “aversion practice.” In many cases, this advice chafed against conventional wisdom, but in this self-selecting group of wanderers directed by a negging queen, anything could look like the right decision. This became particularly troublesome when “aversion practice” collided with Deadone’s conception that women were always in control. As Huet puts it, the “belief that celebrates the power of women…also assigns all responsibility to women and none to men.” If a woman was finger fucked in the ass against her will (as she was at OneTaste), that was because her aura emitted this desire. If she was pressured to have sex with men even though she identified as a lesbian (as a woman was in OneTaste), she would simply overcome her insecurities. And if she was assigned to give a handjob to a venture capitalist OneTaste member nightly in order to ensure he kept funding the company (as she was in OneTaste), that was her ordinance. But one doesn’t even need to hear these stories to understand Deadone’s unlogic. As she framed it in a lecture in 2013: “If you want to know the real way to deflect rape, it’s to turn on 100 percent. Because then there’s nothing to rape.” 

• • •

As I was reading Empire of Orgasm I frequently asked myself: Is this actually good, or is it just fun to read about sex? It’s easy to assume the latter. In addition to the story being low-hanging fruit for a journalist, women, specifically, enjoy reading about sex more than watching it. Plenty of research has found that women get more aroused by a written story than the visual stimulation of pornography. Hence one reason, as other writers have noted, that “romantasy,” or  the fairy-fucking books like the Court of Thorns franchise, fly off the shelves. But Empire of Orgasm is not a novel; it’s a story of a real-life woman whose real-life multimillion-dollar international wellness business only sounds like a fiction. And Ellen Huet has brought tremendous chaos to order in telling that story.  

“Huet succeeds at analyzing OneTaste from multiple angles: as a cult-like operation that preyed on impressionable people; as a dirty business that consciously pulled money out of the hands of those without any to spare; and as a pseudofeminist organization that warped women’s understanding of autonomy.”

Huet succeeds at analyzing OneTaste from multiple angles: as a cult-like operation that preyed on impressionable people; as a dirty business that consciously pulled money out of the hands of those without any to spare; and as a pseudofeminist organization that warped women’s understanding of autonomy. In one of her final chapters, she cites a source referred to as “Audrey,” who, after leaving OneTaste penniless, tried to steal her car out of a tow lot, rammed it into a fence, and ended up in jail. Audrey “had internalized a belief that she and her fellow members were warriors of Orgasm, pursuing an enlightened mission,” Huet writes, “living in an alternate reality in which the normal limitations of life didn’t apply to them.” Audrey, like many of Deadone’s disciples, had been so caught up in OneTaste’s thrill-seeking mission, that, even after departing the group, she couldn’t shake off the narrative direction it had given her life. I have no proof that Nicole Daedone has ever read a book by the late Joan Didion, but after reading Empire of Orgasm, it became hard to believe that she hadn’t internalized that one famous cliché: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Deadone and her convictions are alive and well somewhere in a prison cell. But without her to guide it, OneTaste, which electrified, enlightened, and ravaged its members, is officially dead.