THE GROUP HAD CONTINUED TO CHANGE SHAPE OVER THE winter, and into spring. At one point we had three new members, but then Pierce—the bald architect who came to one session, and said next to nothing—never came back. The other two newcomers stayed. The first was Shawn—a witty, loud, and effete man in his early thirties, with something of an equine face: big nose, big eyes, big teeth. The second was Mia, also in her early thirties—a self-described ‘antifa’ who worked with autistic teenagers and spent winters living and working at an ‘eco farm and wellness retreat’ in Oaxaca, Mexico. She had been arrested the year prior for blocking the construction of a new natural gas pipeline. I can’t recall how either of them found out about the group. It’s possible it was through Damian’s post on Reddit. Either way, both of them had heard The Hum for months, and suffered in isolation. Like most of us, they were initially reticent to adopt Howard’s theories wholesale, but gradually became some of the most active participants in our exchanges.
Shawn, in particular, was wickedly funny and really livened up our sessions, which, if you ask me, risked getting a little self-serious at times. He was an incredible baker, and had actually won a reality television show for amateur cooks a couple of years earlier. I never watched it, but Leslie did, and was evidently a bit starstruck. He was constantly bringing in homemade confections like gluten-free carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese icing, and vegan white chocolate fudge brownies. His true gift, though, was the exacting comic dissection of everyone and everything. Nothing eluded his notice. He would pick up on people’s little habits and foibles and tease them about it, though always in a way that made them laugh hardest of all, and always in a way that somehow highlighted his own shortcomings and neuroses. I also noticed that he had the ability to seem incredibly forthcoming, and yet somehow he never ended up revealing that much about himself. I never worked out, for instance, if he had a partner. I was never even particularly clear what he did for a living, other than ‘work in retail.’ And yet I always knew, in hilarious and intricate detail, the story of his last, ill-fated haircut, or visit to the dentist.
Mia, on the other hand, had a millennial righteousness that I found both admirable and intimidating. At her first meeting, she introduced herself and her gender pronouns—My name is Mia. I go by she, her, her. Emily and Nora had no idea what she was talking about, so she explained. And then everyone else, I suppose feeling a bit put on the spot, went around and introduced themselves the same way—Howard. He, him, his, and so on. Everyone except Damian. And to be honest, I was a little indignant at first too. I thought: take a look at this group, is this really necessary? But then I caught myself and thought—is this what it is to grow old? To become defensive and resentful when confronted by my own assumptions and biases? By new modes, new sensitivities? I couldn’t help but wonder what Ashley would make of this exercise. She and Mia would probably get on very well. Either way, Mia’s presence engendered a new self-consciousness around language and conduct within the group; which, for men as prone to micro-aggressions as Damian and Howard, was probably no bad thing. That’s not to say she stilted our dynamic, though. She made it more thoughtful and humane.
Damian continued to say very little during meetings. Sometimes his silence felt like a black hole sucking energy and light out of the room. But he was never disengaged. His eyes would flit from face to face, as if sizing up everyone’s comments against his own internal value system. He also did this thing where, while keeping his mouth closed, he seemed to clean his teeth with his tongue. I couldn’t tell if it was some kind of macho affect, like a cowboy with a toothpick, or a nervous tick, but either way I had to avoid looking at him while he did it. That said, he was always very gentlemanly, he would make a specific point of saying hello and goodbye to me, and nodding when he agreed with something I said. I could tell on some level he respected me. And I have to say, a part of me was slowly warming to him.
We had a covenant of privacy within the group, in which deeply personal details could be shared with the full knowledge that nothing would leave the room. Trust and honest communication were essential. While Howard and Jo led our meetings, we agreed to make decisions by consensus, and tried to share speaking time as much as possible. We knew we were stronger together than any of us would have been individually in seeking the truth about The Hum, and that our success would hinge on our ability to stick together and overcome our differences. And so we each pledged to do so.
By June of that year, we were meeting five times a week. On nights we weren’t, I would miss the others so much I would spend most of the night messaging them on our group chat. I couldn’t bear rambling around the house alone. Some nights Ashley would reply to my WhatsApp messages, but mostly all I could hope for were the two blue ticks indicating she’d read them. Kyle and I used to message most often, sometimes twenty or thirty times a night, mostly processing things that had come up in the meetings, or sending each other dumb memes—but that all stopped abruptly after the prom after-party. The only messages Paul sent me were angry missives about my living off our joint savings, but what choice did I have? I was still fighting the teachers’ union about severance pay, and considering my options for an unlawful dismissal case, all the while carrying the bills for the house.
I found myself calling Jo a lot, when I was lonely. I never used to be a phone person. But I found I began to rely on her guidance and insights—about Ashley and Paul, about feeling like a pariah among my friends and colleagues, about feeling adrift without purpose, about my fears around future employment, and what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. She sometimes just led me through breathing exercises. Kyle once joked that she had become my spiritual guru. He said that to irritate me, as he knew my aversion to anything New Agey.
He then told me that I had something of a secular Western arrogance about me. That I was too closed off to the possibility of wonder. He kept sending me Simone Weil quotes about making space inside myself for the divine to enter. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. I told him that I found Weil’s mystic Christian koans slightly insufferable. I preferred my voids empty, thank you; I didn’t need God cramming himself in there. I was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, a pragmatist, and I took pride in that. I felt it was actually an important position to defend in an age when reason, logic, and facts felt so assailed and devalued. That said, when Jo led us through guided meditations, and said that we were approaching a great mystery, I could tangibly feel this, even if I might not have fully understood it. It did feel as if we were collectively scaling a mountain towards something. Perhaps a shared catharsis, or some greater understanding of The Hum and its potential.
Because Jo seemed to rise with such grace above the daily drudgeries and degradations of life, she could sometimes feel a little remote, particularly when presiding over our meetings. As if she had ascended to a higher plane, just out of reach. But in those phone calls, she made herself completely open and available to me. We spoke very candidly about my situation with Kyle. Her early relationship with Howard was also a fraught educator-student scenario, though of course quite different than ours. It meant a lot to me that we were able to open up to one another about it, and sort of fascinating that we were coming at it from opposite sides of the dynamic. Jo said she had been dazzled by Howard when she first met him. He commanded a great deal of respect at the university at the time, and in their field.
He looked a lot younger back then too, she said to me one night over the phone, with an apologetic laugh. I pictured her sitting somewhere secluded in their house, perhaps upstairs in their bedroom, or maybe in her studio, perhaps wrapped in that turquoise Mexican blanket she sometimes draped over herself during meetings. She confided in me that Howard had had a bit of a reputation for sleeping with students.
Not necessarily his own, she clarified, but just . . . other students at the university.
I heard her take a sip of tea, from her favourite fired-clay mug. She said she was always aware of the power imbalance between them, and that bothered her. She also began to feel alienated and judged by the other graduate students.
Eventually it became a really oppressive working environment, really toxic, she said. And then Howard started getting all this flak from the school for his research. All kinds of people were trying to tear him down. And he just said you know what, I don’t need this, and he quit. And I sort of felt like I had to quit with him. We’d become a unit. The thought of staying there and completing my studies without him felt, just, impossible.
For some reason her voice, isolated on the phone, reminded me of that surrealist Méret Oppenheim sculpture of the teacup, saucer, and spoon wrapped in fur. A hard thing wrapped in unlikely softness. I couldn’t remember what the piece was called, but I made a note to find the image and send it to her. I was sure she’d get a kick out of my mental association. She always seemed interested in how the mind worked and drew connections, in slips of the tongue, and what our dreams revealed about us. I suppose rather like the surrealists, she was invested in the world of the subconscious. How, in an instant, the mundane could become extraordinary.
I heard her take another sip of tea and hold it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing. She admitted to struggling, for years, with living under Howard’s shadow. For years, their friends would be his colleagues, or doctoral students from other countries making pilgrimages to their home to meet with him.
I began to feel like his personal assistant, she said. Sorting out his calendar, booking his travel, even answering his emails sometimes. It really got to me.
Her voice was quiet on the other end of the line. She then said that for years she felt she was just a kind of appendage. I asked her if she regretted how things had unfolded, and she said no, she was much happier and fulfilled doing what she did now. She said she was not a fatalist, but believed, with regard to her career, that things had taken the course they did for a reason.
If you look at it one way, she said, what we’re exploring now with the group sort of combines both of my worlds. The scientific and the spiritual. Not that you want to call it that, I know.
As a group, we mostly avoided speaking about spiritual matters, as it was clear we were all coming at things with very different frames of reference. One afternoon, a week after the prom party, Nora mentioned how she felt God was communicating with her through The Hum.
I don’t mean like I’m Teresa of Ávila or anything, she said, with a self-conscious laugh.
Saint Nora! Shawn proclaimed.
I mean in the way He communicates with us all the time, she continued. Through sunlight, through the wind, through the smile of a stranger. I really do feel this.
Damian nodded, and said he felt the same way. I know this is something holy, he said, surveying the group as if challenging us to suggest otherwise. Howard said he thought it was important that we treat The Hum as a phenomenon to be explored, and not to try to fit it into our own preexisting belief systems.
But of course we’re going to try to, Nora countered. That’s like when some Christians tell me not to fit evolution into my belief system. Well I’m sorry, you don’t get to choose what you put in, and what you don’t.
Howard pointed out that this was, in fact, the exact opposite scenario. It’s not religion saying disregard science, he said, it’s saying let’s not turn this science, or whatever it is, into religion.
Well as someone with faith, everything is God’s doing, Nora said.
Usually I stayed quiet whenever the conversation veered in that direction. My feeling was: let people make of this what they will, as long as they don’t begin to circumscribe my ability to do the same. So it’s science for some, and divine for others. And industrial white noise for yet others. Whatever it was, it still kept me up at night. My migraines persisted, as did the nosebleeds, though much less frequently. That hadn’t deterred me, though, from welcoming the mystery of The Hum into my life. I had chosen to be the one in control of this new condition, this new awareness, and I wanted to understand it fully. Because if I was not in possession of it, then it was in possession of me.
I would say that I was about eighty-five percent certain that what we were doing on Sequoia Crescent didn’t constitute a cult. It didn’t have a dogma. No one was seeking to extract money from me, or force me to pledge myself to anything or anyone. There was no hierarchy, no talk of the end times, no mythology or holy book. But Ashley’s and Paul’s words lodged like splinters that I couldn’t quite pull out. In my dark hours, I sometimes wondered if what we were engaged in was more akin to a conspiracy theory. A theory that a group of us had bought into in isolation, and could no longer see the forest for the trees. Science seemed to be on our side, but maybe I was only paying attention to the articles that were. I was having profound encounters with The Hum, sensations that I knew beyond any doubt were real, but what if I was self-inducing them, or they were the result of some other phenomenon?
I began reflecting on this during a conversation one meeting, led primarily by Damian, Leslie, and Mia, about government surveillance and the Deep State. Damian had gradually become more and more fixated on the idea that the Deep State—which, when pressed, he loosely defined as the military, the government, and Wall Street—had been aware of the Resonance for some time and had intentionally kept it secret. During this conversation, which the others entertained for far longer than I expected, there were some very strongly held sentiments about the NSA and metadata and Facebook, but it didn’t seem like there was an awful lot of nuance or detail. It felt more like a kind of collective purging of anxiety. Their sources always seemed vague—something read on a blog, or in a tweet, or mentioned by a friend. I found Damian and Mia, in particular, connecting dots where there weren’t any necessarily to connect, and drawing conclusions which required more than a few leaps of logic. The few times I pointed this out, I was accused of thinking ‘what they want’ me to think—though whoever ‘they’ were was never quite defined. So eventually I just submitted myself to the chaotic flow of conversation, like a kayaker plunging through cataracts without a paddle.
What I found most amusing, though, was that it gradually emerged that Damian and the women were approaching their paranoias from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. For instance, Mia and Leslie both loathed Trump, whereas Damian refused to outright dismiss the QAnon conspiracy. I had heard about this QAnon stuff in the news but had only the vaguest understanding of what it was all about. As Damian explained it, the conspiracy (not that he called it that) alleged that numerous liberal Hollywood actors and high-ranking Democrats had been running an international child sex trafficking ring, and that Trump feigned collusion with the Russians in order to enlist special counsel Robert Mueller in an effort to expose the ring and thus prevent a coup led by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and liberal philanthropist George Soros. That’s the essence of it at least, as far as I understood it. I could barely keep a straight face as Damian explained all of the shadowy saga’s numerous subplots, twists, and pseudonymous online players. He suggested that parts of it had ‘maybe been blown out of proportion’ but seemed to otherwise believe it was true.
There were a few other points of conspiratorial divergence amongst the three of them. Leslie, for instance, believed the measles vaccine led to autism, whereas Mia said the anti-vaxxer movement ‘melted her face off,’ especially given her line of work. All three of them, however, agreed that September 11 was an inside job, as did Nora. Damian arrived at this belief only after his two tours in Iraq. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their backgrounds in science, Howard and Jo both seemed wholly unconvinced by these alt-narratives. Shawn, being Jewish, also had no time for conspiracy theories, as he found most of them anti-Semitic at their root, in some form or another. He had a gorgeous way of sort of staccato hissing with laughter to himself, not quite loud enough to interrupt, but just enough to register his complete disdain for what was being theorized. Emily, meanwhile, remained mostly silent; though I couldn’t tell whether out of polite opposition, because she was being gradually persuaded, or because, frankly, she just couldn’t follow the conversation.
When, in my adult life, in my own free time, of my own free will, had I sat in a room talking with someone like Damian or Emily? When had any of us, for that matter, spent time making friends on the other side of the ideological chasm of our country in the last four years? Though it shouldn’t have come as any surprise, I was nevertheless struck, when looking at Emily, with her immaculate white-blond bob, and collared blouse under her country club cardigan, and her talk of garden parties and canasta clubs, that she and Damian—who seemed to me to be the personification of a comments-thread troll, with tinted aviators, tinted pickup-truck windows, a sum total of ten minutes a week spent on personal hygiene—shared an identical vision of who should be leading our country.
The old me would have cut anti-vaxxers and truthers out of my life like Kevin Spacey was cut from that Ridley Scott movie. I think it says a lot about the patience and compassion I was cultivating through the sessions that I could still feel a kinship with people with whom I so fundamentally disagreed. Howard and Jo had created a space where that was possible; where radically divergent ideas could be shared without anyone feeling assailed or invalid. That said, despite the tangents, Howard invariably steered the conversation back towards the sensible and productive, which was critical. I would never have stuck with the meetings otherwise.
I would bet that you could have assembled, at random, ten Americans in 2019, and found the same level of conspiratorial thinking as existed in our discussions on Sequoia Crescent. I sincerely believe that it wasn’t anything unique to this particular group of individuals. It was simply the new register society was operating in. I told Kyle one night, after the meeting where the QAnon stuff first came up, that I remembered a time when conspiracy theories were niche and a little shameful, like kinky porn, not public camps of identification like religions or political parties, to respectfully ‘agree to disagree’ with. As we walked to my car, I said that it felt like the result of a society losing trust in itself and its institutions. Kyle didn’t seem nearly as unsettled by it as I was. He pointed out that there were insidious cabals and secret societies of elite, privileged men in this country that exerted untold influence over government and global finance.
I don’t blame the Damians of this world for feeling like they’re being conned, he once said. Why should someone like him trust the government or Wall Street or Silicon Valley?
I had to admit that I couldn’t disagree. Kyle said a part of him actually admired anti–status quo thinking.
Yeah, but there’s no truth anymore, I said. Just opinions.
He pointed out that it had ever been thus. Even the idea of objective truth, as proved by science or law, was a recent invention.
All we’ve known for millennia has been hunches and impulses and opinion, he said. Who’s to say that isn’t our true nature?
I should make clear that this kind of conspiratorial thinking only ever reared its head a few times in our many meetings, and I’m probably letting future events colour my recollection of things by spending so much time writing about it here. I was deeply invested in the group, and had a genuine affection for each and every member, even if there were elements that occasionally unsettled me. Sometimes, the elements that unsettled me unlocked the most profound revelations. The most obvious example of this was the first time that all of us tuned.
We were sitting in a circle in the middle of Howard and Jo’s living room. Our eyes were closed. The older among us were sitting on decorative cushions from the couches. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and the coffee table had been moved into another room to give us space. The ten of us sat quietly, but not in silence, for there was no such thing as silence, as I had come to learn. We were listening to the infinitely complex aural tapestry unfolding around us, and we were giving ourselves over to it. As we became aware of a sound we named it so as to isolate it, examine it, and incorporate it into our being.
The neighbours’ wind chime, I said.
I could hear its soft, random tinkling through the bay window. It reminded me of clinking glasses being carried by a waiter. My grandmother’s garden, filled with tiger lilies. The hot summer wind.
After a long moment, Leslie murmured—Wind through the trees in the backyard.
And yes, I could hear it too. Its hushing, like the waves on a beach.
There was another long pause, in which the air was thick with concentration.
There’s a bird, Mia said.
Two birds, I think, Nora said, a few seconds later.
A dog began to bark in a distant backyard, and Emily and Kyle both noted it at the same time. After another minute or so, Damian remarked on the car that could be heard driving slowly past us, down the crescent.
It’s braking at the stop sign now, he said. And it’s turning—
Which direction? Jo asked.
Left, towards Sanderson.
We continued this for the better part of an hour, listening with exhausting intensity, until Jo said—And now I’m going to ask everyone to slowly bring their awareness inside the room. Paying attention only to the sounds they hear within these four walls.
I could feel a shift in our collective consciousness, as we began to tune ourselves to the intimate sounds immediately around us. It was as if someone was turning the manual zoom on the camera lenses of the room, and we were being pulled deeper into it.
The air conditioning, Leslie said, after some time.
Emily mentioned the clock, ticking on the mantel.
My breath, I said, and Nora echoed it back—My breath.
The cracking of my ribs, Leslie said.
We fell quiet again for a while, until Howard said—There’s a . . . faint whistle in my nose, when I breathe in.
My socks on the carpet, Emily said.
Shawn remarked that he could hear Kyle rubbing his hands on his pants.
I can hear that too, Kyle said, prompting some laughter from the group. They’re sweaty.
My heart, Mia said, after a moment.
Yes, Emily replied.
My heartbeat, several others murmured.
The crack of my back, Jo said.
The sound of my swallowing, I said. My saliva. My teeth in my head . . . clacking together when I close my mouth.
Emily’s stomach, gurgling, Damian said.
Emily laughed—I was going to say!
Several more sounds were identified, but gradually we fell quiet. Once it seemed we had exhausted the possibilities of the room, Jo guided us to listen deeper.
Go further. Can you hear your blood? Circulating inside of you? She paused. What about your nervous system? Can you hear the high-pitched whine of your own nervous system?
I tried to listen for it. I felt the others in the circle doing the same.
What else? Jo asked. Listen deeper. The Hum is there. Louder than ever. Inside the deepest part of you. I want you to focus the entirety of your awareness on it.
I was straining with every fibre of my being.
Frame out every other sound until only The Hum exists, she continued. Let it grow louder. Let it fill your body. Let it fill every space between your cells. Between the molecules and the atoms that make up your cells. Between the infinite, vibrating space between the electrons and protons. This is the only sound. The original sound. The sound that predates life on Earth. The sound that made us. The sound that will unmake us and remake us an infinite number of times. As The Hum fills all of the empty space inside you, you become more Hum than human. You become nothing but sound. Vibrating as one frequency, across the entire surface of the Earth. Infinite, expansive, resonant. Until any trace of you is obliterated and you become boundless, until there is no distinction between our bodies. Release yourself into this boundlessness. Release yourself. Release yourself from the confines of your bodies and let the sound erase you, erase you, erase you, erase you, release you, release you—
Jo incanted like this for some time, and I began to hear people breathing deeply around me. After a while, I could hear my own breath deepening. A feeling began to overtake me that I can best describe as a kind of ecstatic wholeness. It seemed to emerge from somewhere deep within my pelvis and expanded infinitely outward into a glowing warmth.
Oh my god, Leslie gasped.
What? Emily asked.
Oh god.
I can feel it, Mia said.
Damian said he could too. Jo encouraged us to keep focused.
Holy shit, Kyle muttered.
It’s happening, Mia said.
Yes, I said.
Welcome it in, Jo said.
We’re tuning.
I don’t feel it, Emily said.
Me neither, said Nora.
Once again, Jo instructed us to focus.
And then—my god—I felt it intensify even further, that ecstatic warm expansion.
It’s surging, Howard said.
Oh momma, Shawn groaned.
Yes, Damian said.
The power of all of us here combined is extraordinary, Howard said.
The Hum was getting louder but not just growing in volume but growing in every possible manner. It seemed to be penetrating every part of the room, my body, filling every available space, between every molecule, every atom. And just when it seemed to have saturated everything, it intensified further, and the space between spaces, between bodies, seemed to collapse.
Ugh my god.
The heat.
Yes.
Oh wow.
Holy shit—I can feel it now.
Good.
I think me too.
Do you feel it?
Yes.
Expanding inside you?
Yes, I think so.
I’m getting hot.
Uh-huh.
Me too.
Yeah.
Like a lot.
Ughhhhhhh, someone moaned.
Yes.
Like—
—burning, like—
Ugggghhhhhhhhhh my god.
Let it fill your stomachs now. Let it fill your lungs. Let it fill your throats and out through your mouths ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh—
And then a low, guttural hum emerged from within us, from within the circle. I wasn’t even conscious of producing the sound, but it produced itself from within me, moved through me, and through various registers, shifting like a murmuration of starlings, like resplendent light, who knew the body—bodies together—could make such a sound. Sounds erupted from us, unleashed and orgasmic sounds, unrecognizable and inhuman sounds until I was moving, we were moving, standing now, moving through space, space moving through us, thrashing our bodies, swaying in ecstatic transport, The Hum expanding infinitely within us until it was a scorching white heat—until there was a smash, and we were ripped from our deep-state back into the room. Everyone fell silent and blinked open. Looking around, I realized that Leslie had knocked a lamp over. It lay in several pieces on the floor.
I am . . . so . . . sorry, she said, not quite fully returned.
Howard waved it away—It’s fine.
Everyone collapsed back into chairs, and onto the floor, exhausted, collecting themselves. I felt momentarily gripped by the most intense embarrassment. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye.
Okay, everyone, Jo said, let’s just take a deep breath.
Large exhales from around the room. I glanced over and Leslie seemed to be hyperventilating. Emily put her arm on her shoulder—Les?
Jo came over and sat down beside them—Deep breaths, love, deep breaths.
Leslie nodded. Gradually, she began to calm.
Wow, Mia said, as if not yet fully emerged from a dream. Her face had a sheen of sweat, and there were strands of hair in her mouth, which she gently pulled away.
That was—Shawn looked for the word.
Insane, Kyle said, in wonder.
It wasn’t insane, it was beautiful, Emily said.
I know, that’s what I mean.
It’s not insane.
Felt absolutely amazing, Leslie said, still catching her breath.
Mia motioned over her stomach—That heat.
It got super intense, Kyle said. I thought my chest was going to explode.
I felt like I was going to orgasm, Leslie said, deadpan. The group burst into laughter. I’m serious, she insisted.
No, honestly, Shawn said. For real.
Me too, Damian said, laughing. It was the first time I had seen Damian laugh. It made him look softer and younger.
Well I sure must have been doing something wrong, Nora said, crestfallen. Jo asked her what she felt and Nora shrugged.
Did you feel anything?
I wish. From the sounds of it.
But you heard The Hum?
Yes of course, I hear it always.
Did you feel it expand inside of you? Jo asked. Nora shook her head. Did it get louder?
A little, maybe. Maybe I focused on it more clearly.
It got so loud for me I almost couldn’t take it, Mia said.
Howard gave Nora a sympathetic smile—Give it time. There’s no rush.
Leslie gestured to the mess on the floor—I really am sorry about the lamp.
Honestly, don’t worry, Jo said, it was a gift from his old boss.
I still feel like I’m burning up, Kyle said. Like—here. He reached over, took my hand, and placed it on his forehead. His skin was hot to the touch.
I’m still hot too, Mia said, and Damian said he was as well.
I’m hot . . . and I’m wet, Leslie said, matter-of-factly, prompting more laughter.
Good god, Emily said, looking playfully mortified.
Just saying!
Amen, Shawn replied, with solemnity.
Was that the tuning? I asked, looking to Jo, and then to Howard.
It was, just for a moment, he replied.
But what exactly happened?
You just felt it.
I told him I didn’t know what I felt.
How did you do that? Mia asked Jo.
I didn’t do a thing. That was all The Hum. You just opened yourself up to it. It can give you migraines and nosebleeds or it can, well—
Make you cum, Shawn said.
Yes.
Kyle looked both bemused and slightly repulsed—Seriously?
If you let it.
Have you? he asked Jo.
I shot him a look.
I have, actually, she replied, nonchalant. Shawn burst into a braying laugh.
Just from the sound? Emily asked, astounded.
It’s more than sound, Howard said.
Shawn was absolutely delighting in all of this—You’ve honestly had an orgasm, just from The Hum? And you’re only telling us this now?
Despite all the levity, Jo remained stony-faced. To be honest, Howard and I really struggled with whether to share this—deeper aspect of The Hum with you at all.
It’s very powerful, Howard said. And very easily misunderstood.
Right, well don’t hold back on us, Shawn replied, splaying his hands. We can take it.
Well that’s our hope, Jo said, still not conceding to the general giddiness of the room. Hopefully we’ve established enough trust.
Everyone quietly exchanged glances. The group appeared a great deal more certain and enthusiastic about what had just happened than I felt, even Nora and Emily and the ever-serious Damian, which surprised me, being the more conservative three among us.
I hope I don’t freak you out when I say this, Jo began, but a few times, not often, but a few times when I’ve been able to tune, and stay in tune . . . I’ve had a ten-minute orgasm.
Shawn’s jaw dropped. Get the fuck out.
Hands-free.
Leslie seemed to almost choke on a laugh.
Emily shook her head in awe like a daytime talk-show audience member. I found myself wondering when Emily, buttoned-up and pushing seventy, might have last experienced an orgasm of any sort. I got the feeling there wasn’t much happening in that department between her and Tom anymore, and somehow, I struggled to picture her working magic with a suction dildo in the shower.
There was one afternoon I came eight times, Jo said. And I honestly could’ve kept going too.
You must’ve gotten nothing else done, Mia said, with a mixture of knowing and reverence.
It was a Saturday.
Clear the calendar! Shawn was laughing, full teeth and gums.
I think when you figure out how to have eight hands-free orgasms you just make the time, Mia said, sliding back in her armchair and putting her leg up over the side.
And how about you, Leslie asked Howard. Have you been able to?
I have, yes.
Hands-free?
Howard nodded, as if being asked if he flossed.
I knew we had been working towards this for some time now, towards this ‘ecstatic interconnectedness’ that Howard and Jo had been referring to, but somehow this aspect of pleasure, of tantric-like transcendence unsettled me, or at least took me by surprise. I asked them how any of this was even possible.
The Hum makes it possible, Howard replied. It suffuses everything. And it can affect us on a fundamental level.
Yes, but I just don’t understand how—
Stop trying to understand, he said, moving his hand slowly through the air as if wiping a fogged mirror. It’s about experiencing. Did you feel it or not?
Yes. Very much.
So just let yourself feel it.
For me it almost got too intense, Damian said.
Mia nodded—Same.
Damian said he didn’t think he could keep going—The sound kept expanding, I thought my rib cage was going to burst.
Goodness, Emily said.
Or my skull.
It almost hurt, Mia said, but it was also, I mean—
Incredibly pleasurable, Kyle said.
There was something about Kyle experiencing ‘incredible pleasure’ in my company that, frankly, freaked me out. Perhaps because it risked rupturing some threshold between us. The threshold that still maintained the acceptability of our continued association.
It’s very strange but I could taste iron in my mouth, Shawn said.
Nora looked confused—Iron?
Yes. At one point I thought I’d maybe bit my tongue and was bleeding but I wasn’t.
It affects everybody differently, Howard said. It’s working on a cellular level. For me, near the end, I had the feeling of being on the verge of something. And I don’t mean an orgasm or anything, but on the verge of—of manifesting something.
I think I know what you mean, Mia said, and I noticed both Kyle and Damian nodding.
It’s hard to explain, Howard continued. But all of us together—I felt myself pushed closer towards this . . . thing . . . whatever it is . . . that will come. And I don’t mean—
Everyone laughed, except me. It has nothing to do with that, Howard added, with a smile.
Jo turned to me, and frowned—Claire, what’s wrong, love?
Everyone looked in my direction. I opened my mouth and closed it again, trying to find the words. I just feel a little . . . shook, I finally said.
That is totally understandable, she replied, which caused something in me to seize.
No, it’s not, I don’t understand, and Howard telling me not to overthink it doesn’t help me, that just frustrates me more. I digest things through logic, okay? I’m a logical person. I believe in science.
But this is science, Jo said.
It’s also more than science, Howard said.
I held up my hands—I’m not interested in more.
Because more scares you, he said.
Because I don’t need more.
But what if it’s there anyway? Whether you need it or not?
He paused and studied my face—Science is the frame, Claire, it’s not the whole picture and it’s because of that attitude, because of the worshipping of science to the exclusion of every other kind of human experience, that nobody else knows about what we’ve just experienced. There’s a reason this isn’t global news, and it’s because I don’t have a job or a platform or any credibility anymore, and that’s because I didn’t play by the rules of science. But if you must know right now, in this exact second, instead of just letting us process this with our bodies, the science, the all-important science behind this has to do with the caudate nucleus in our brain stems, okay, which controls various states of arousal. At 7.83 hertz frequency the caudate nucleus becomes hyper-stimulated. In brain scans, it just boom, ignites like a fireball.
It’s the most incredible thing to watch, actually, Jo said.
Most of us can only hit this frequency for a few moments during the peak of orgasm, Howard continued, without breaking eye contact with me. But what if we could train our brains to operate at this frequency every moment of the day?
Leslie said that sounded absolutely exhausting.
Oh no, quite the opposite, he replied.
Cumming twenty-four seven? I’d be wrung out. To which Shawn let out a single, percussive laugh.
Jo smiled, patiently—You won’t be cumming. You’ll be on another plateau of consciousness. A consciousness that continually activates the ninety percent of your brain that’s usually dormant.
It would still be stimulation overload, though, wouldn’t it? Leslie asked.
You think that but only because you’re used to sleepwalking, Howard said. We spend our lives mostly brain-dead when we could be awake.
Wouldn’t you prefer to be awake? Jo asked.
Of course, Leslie said, but …
But what?
It’s intimidating.
Shawn nodded—Terrifying.
Doesn’t that sound liberating? Jo asked. To be alive like that?
But to have something re-pattern the way you think, I don’t know, Shawn said. It just feels very major.
What about talking for the first time? Jo asked. Or walking, or swimming, or riding a bike. Or sex. But thank god you pushed yourself to do them.
I can’t swim actually, Shawn said, but yes, I take your point.
Have you reached this state? Leslie asked Jo. This—other plateau?
Maybe for a few moments, Jo replied, looking at Howard. But we’ve never been able to sustain it for very long.
But is it all in the brain? I asked. I mean my body . . . I felt the heat and pressure and the sound.
Howard gestured to me—You see?
What is that?
Science can’t explain it.
But I felt it.
So is it real?
Yes of course it is.
Because science would tell you it isn’t. Science has no explanation for any of The Hum’s physical manifestations. The heat, the pressure, the tingling, the pleasure, the pain, the nosebleeds, the headaches. But you have felt it.
Yes.
Did you? he asked Kyle. Kyle nodded. He asked the rest of the circle, and they all replied yes. Except Nora. She was poured into her chair, looking disconsolate.
I want to, she said.
You will, Jo said, placing her hand on Nora’s thigh.
I really do.
Just give it time.
It’s nuts the whole world doesn’t know about this, Damian said, sitting forward on his chair.
In time, hopefully they will, Howard replied.
It’s because it’s been kept from us, Howard. There’s no way this is the first time anyone’s ever felt this. This is a phenomenon of the Earth, right? Others must have felt this at some point.
Howard made to answer but Damian continued—Like how come everyone isn’t doing this all the fucking time?
No one has shown them, Mia said, pulling out her scrunchie and raking her hair with her fingers.
It doesn’t make sense unless it’s been kept from us. Systematically.
Damian, around the time I met Howard, I was really struggling, Jo said, using her calming voice on him. A whole number of reasons. Anxiety. Depression. I was on this regime of meditation and trance as a way of centring myself. And then when Howard became my supervisor, and the work we began doing with the Resonance, it all kind of clicked into place. Discovering we could tune to it—
It changed everything, Howard said, looking at everyone except Jo.
But then a researcher tells the university we’re running a sex lab and that Howard’s using mind control on them and the whole thing gets shut down.
Emily looked horrified—What?
It terrified people. If there are two things that terrify WASPy bourgeois academics it’s sex and spirituality, Jo said.
So they just turfed you out? Shawn asked.
Howard sighed. It was clearly still painful for him to talk about.
We found ourselves outcasts, he said. And anytime we did try to talk to someone about it we were shunned. People had all these wild stories about us.
Oh god, Leslie said, and on campuses these things take on a life of their own, right?
Jo nodded—Which is why Howard and I have been so trigger-shy to go to that place with you all. We’re both still scarred from what happened at Virginia Tech.
It just became our own little private revelation, Howard said. But of course you want to share a revelation, right? The more people know and can access it, the more its beauty and power is magnified. I’m not saying we’re Copernicus here or anything, but can you imagine if he discovered the Earth revolved around the Sun and then couldn’t tell anyone about it? It would be absolutely maddening. We’ve been sitting on this thing that we know can change people’s lives.
Nora, what’s wrong? Emily asked. I turned to see that Nora had teared up. In fact she seemed to be rocking herself ever so slightly in her chair.
Nothing, it’s fine.
Come here, Jo said, extending her arms.
I’m just so frustrated with myself. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Nothing is wrong with you.
I want to feel it so much.
And then Nora broke down, her face contorting—I’m a good person. I work hard. I deserve to feel it.
I know, Jo said, stroking Nora’s hair.
I hear it so strongly.
I know.
What am I doing wrong?
It will come in time, Howard said.
The way Howard said those words made me think of my father teaching me how to ride a bike when I was five, and then my teaching Ashley to do the same. The iridescent tassels on her handlebars. Her pink training wheels.
When? Nora asked Howard.
When your body is ready.
Is it because I’m stupid or something?
No, of course not, Jo said, soothingly.
Then what?
Here. Jo stood up and moved to the centre of the room. I want you to kneel in the middle of the floor, right here. She knelt down on the floor to demonstrate.
Kneel?
Yes, right there.
Nora stood and joined Jo down on the floor, with some audible bone cracks as she knelt. And now, Jo continued, I want everyone to kneel around Nora.
One by one we got to our knees and formed a circle around Nora.
Full circle, that’s it, Jo said, like a kindergarten teacher, before finding her own place within it. We’re going to tune ourselves, once again, to the Resonance and we’re going to channel its full intensity at Nora.
Oh wow, Nora murmured.
And how exactly are we going to do that? Shawn asked.
Trust me, you’ll know, Jo replied. Just allow it to work through you. And love—she leaned in towards Nora—you will feel it this time, I can assure you. I can’t promise you something earth-shattering—
Eight orgasms?
No.
I’ll settle for six, she joked. We laughed encouragingly, as a little smile danced across her face.
But you will feel something, Jo reassured. I want you to focus your full intensity on the sound of The Hum. I want you to feel it swell inside you and, as it does, I want you to picture the sound like a warm glow filling your body with light, okay?
Nora nodded.
Don’t be nervous, Jo said. There’s nothing to be nervous about.
Okay.
We’re all here supporting and lifting you.
Thank you.
Okay. I want everyone to find their breath.
I watched as everyone closed their eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do it again, and so soon. I had barely reckoned with what had happened the first time. But I closed my eyes, and tried to slow my heartbeat. After a long moment, I could hear Damian to my left and Mia to my right beginning to breathe deeply. One by one, I heard others do so as well, even Nora, though it was hard to distinguish one breath from another. We gradually forged a single breath. Breaths turned to gasps, which turned to groans, which gradually transformed into a kind of aural emission, a sustained, almost ritualistic humming, unconscious and libidinal, which grew in intensity, grew in heat, grew ever more expansive until we were swaying, frenzied, until my body was not my body, my breath, my voice, until nothing belonged to me, and I was just a portal of sound, until everything came undone, ruptured, and culminated in a thunderous climax, channelled through the vessel of Nora’s convulsing body.