Tantric Sex for Dilettantes: My new story in Perceptive Travel

For the second time in under a month, I have an experimental-voice travel story appearing in an online travel magazine. A few weeks ago, it was “The Art of Writing a Story About Walking Across Andorra“, which appeared in World Hum (and was linked by venues such as Arts & Letters Daily, MetaFilter, and About.com).

Now, I’m happy to announce the debut of “Tantric Sex For Dilettantes“, which appears in this month’s issue of Perceptive Travel.

The story is a second-person recounting of my trip to a Tantra class in Rishikesh, India some years ago (which Jen Leo earlier alluded to in her story from Sand in My Bra). In it, I examine the sometimes superficial pursuits that come with travel. “You did not initially come here to learn Tantric sex,” I write early in the story. “Rather, you stopped here en route to the Himalayas, on the recommendation of a yoga-obsessed friend. You are not much into yoga, but one charm of travel is that it frees you to be a dilettante. Just as you tried scuba diving in Thailand and windsurfing in Galilee, you intend to try yoga in Rishikesh and decide later if you really want to make it an active part of your life.”

To find out how I fare in the Tantric ashram, read the full story here.

As for Perceptive Travel, it’s a new online travel magazine started this year by Worlds Cheapest Destinations author Tim Leffel. Other stories in the current issue include Bruce Northam’s Think Outside the Fence, Peter Moore’s Secret Men’s Monkey Business, Harold Stephens’s Cruising with Admiral Zheng He, and Jen Leo’s Lure of the Cards.