Tuesday, August 24, 2010 – The day before the Jacks event
Tomorrow night is an event night. Somewhere between 40 and 80 men will gather expectantly at the playspace at 7:00, to strip down and masturbate together for three hours. For me, that means I just finished a couple of hours of updating the club database with all the new and renewing members from the last event, the memberships that will be expired by tomorrow, sending out expiration notices, reminding the volunteers to show up on time, making sure we have adequate stocks of membership cards and enrollment forms, make a list of supplies that need replenishing, and as I do every day, replying to emails and phone calls asking about the impending event…
For myself, I observe a ritual of no sex the day before an event (as I also do before sex with my husband) and all the rest of my schedule, the gym, work, errands, meals, all are planned around the event tomorrow night. It’s showtime, folks!
As I finish up the paperwork, I get a call on the toll-free line. It’s a man I’ve spoken to before. He has an Asian accent, and speak falteringly, not because of the language, but because he is nervous, and a little desperate…
He’s not asking anything unreasonable. The schedule of our events conflicts directly with his work schedule and “other commitments.” I recall that he said he “wasn’t sure” if he might be gay or bi, and he is very, very clearly hurting to experience something he is very nervous to admit he wants so much it has become a need. He then says, “And… I’m married…”
His voice goes a little quiet and I can tell he is trying to conceal how much this means to him. He wants to know if we ever hold smaller events on different days. I mention that some members, on very rare occasions, hold private gatherings, but I was not aware of any. He very graciously and nervously asks if I myself ever host “private events” and I wonder if he has seen pictures of me in my online profiles, pictures which I do not conceal myself, and which I reference directly to the club… I am very out, after all.
At this point, I am feeling a lot of compassion for this guy. He’s either closeted gay or bi and on the brink of desperation to explore this, to experience intimacy with a man. I have heard this many times before, and I’m just not a cold guy. I really wish I could do something for these guys. It is so incredibly universal among the closeted, this intense hunger for what they deny themselves. It is something our heterosexual brothers just can’t get, how visceral and emotional and painful the denial of sexual expression can be.
For bi-curious men, who are primarily oriented toward sex with women, their interest in same-sex play is rarely a need. It’s an interesting option just a few shades above the indifference of the baseline heterosexual. They can’t appreciate how much the denial of this essential human need feels like deep torture of the soul.
And this is not about masturbation. Whether the guy in question is genuinely into the JO scene is doubtful and really irrelevant. In this instance, it is just an opportunity, a place for anonymous exploration with very minimal health risk. It is probably not going to be their scene, their kink, but it will serve to crack open the door to their next baby step toward becoming more true. I do not require my members to be hard-core, compulsive group baters. I like to leave the opening there for these other men, these same-sex tourists looking for much less and much more than the Jacks can provide.
I really like making friends with these men, specifically because I know that I model a pretty calm, centered and sexually self-possessed way of being gay. I don’t intend them to become like me, but I want them to see that it is possible to be good to others in the process of exploring what feeling good means to your body when it experiences the long-denied sensation of male contact. I have no investment in how any member identifies sexually, but I love seeing these men of all stripes adjust to the JO club culture.
And holy crap, this entry is incredibly non-erotic. I’m glad I’m getting it out of the way before assuming the mantle of JackDaddy another night. I really am looking forward to it, as I always do, my steamy, spermy, honorable brothers appreciate much about me and the feeling is mutual… just like the masturbation.