Month: December 2010

It makes sense to me that any particular guy would want to make sure that the person he might have sex with is the “type” of person he will find attractive. I don’t consider that a prejudice. It’s about understanding your own turn-ons and turn-offs and drawing upon experience to choose what works…

I appreciate the way some of my online members will react with disdain when another guy posts images of really buff, young, sexmodel kinds of twinks, but I think it’s just fine (as long as they don’t fuck or suck… because, hello! it’s a jackers’ group).

If a man is really into 20 year-old white guys with no hair on their bodies, or 60 year-old bears or middle-eastern men or Arab men or redheads with uncut, 4-inch cocks that curve downward… I think it’s all awesome. Of course, the more specific the type, the less abundant the opportunities, but each man has his body and it is wired the way it is wired.

Which is the primary reason I am a firm believer in strict non-discrimination policies for jack-off clubs. It’s not that I think that any group that vets and filters every member for any laundry list of criteria is doomed to failure, it’s just that I can not know in advance, nor can I dictate for someone else, what is hot and what is not.

So the club I run has very simple qualifications for membership:

1. You have to be a natural-born male with a fully-functioning penis of your very own.
2. You have to be of legal age (18 and over in Washington State).
3. You have to agree to play by our rules.

And that’s it. Our members can have any kind of body, be any legal age, have any sort of endowment, be of any race, have any religion, identify with whatever sexual orientation fits them… As long as they are an adult man and willing to play by the rules, they can join the club.

This non-discrimination thing can be a bone of contention for some men used to shopping for sex online, where you have a whole catalog of mantypes to choose from. It doesn’t take long to decide what your type is, what kind of contacts you desire, how you want to communicate, where you want to connect and what you want to do there… You get to apply all kinds of filters as a solitary cruiser on the Net.

A JO club is not in cyberspace, though. It is an old-fashioned, meat-space community. It’s a gathering of bodies and minds in the flesh, where your filtering mechanisms include simply declining a partner by saying, “no thanks." 

Any guy will probably want to see others like himself in the room so he doesn’t feel alone, but the guys he wants to play with may be a completely different kind of man than himself. No individual among us can guess what every other individual might want. Neither I nor anyone else can successfully determine what is hot for every other guy in the room. It’s impossible unless your club is really, really small. To maintain the likelihood that each man is likely to encounter compatible playmates, we have to keep it completely open and let the members decide for themselves.

It also means we treat our members like grown-ups, with the beneficial side-benefit of that encouraging them to act like grown-ups, albeit grown-ups with enthusiastic, unleashed libidos…

The common fear of this community experience of sex is understandably intimidating for people who are used to protocols of common rudeness rather than common courtesy. When you cum in front of someone and the bottom falls out of your intense desire in seconds, you can’t just get up and walk away from the computer or hang up a phone without saying good-bye. You are seen gathering your post-orgasmic energy and wobbling off to get a drink of water and wash up. 

And that is completely okay in a JO club. We all experience that sudden wave of deep relaxation, that moment after you were babbling and gasping like a demented bonobo and you cum and squirt and gasp and scream… and a few seconds later, suddenly see how ridiculous we all are at the height of an orgasm, and you get to be okay with that, because everyone else is having that experience to some degree.

A non-discriminating, open and welcoming jack-off club is a social event almost as much as it is a sexual event, and in the process of finding connections that work for us, we sort of re-learn how to behave as interactive sexual beings, since we are, after all, interacting. You find out that it is possible to be in a sexual situation, excited and hungry for touch, and that it is okay to be there, okay to be around naked guys you don’t necessarily want to have sex with, okay to witness and appreciate the ways that different men express their different lust.

And yes, there are other socially sexual situations where this happens, but the specifics of the jack-off club are a recipe for socially civil sexual experience. It reframes things for a couple of hours and in some cases, awakens new understandings of what "hot” is to us. The opportunity to play safely with several different men who we may not have chosen at all had there been only one finalist to make the cut, means that we get to step beyond our invisible prejudices and learn more about ourselves—perhaps redefining hotness for ourselves in ways we never might have considered otherwise.

(This is an only slightly edited question I received from a prospective Jacks member, along with my only slightly edited response)

The underwear event is definitely up my boyfriend’s alley and could be the event that lets me convince him to try this out 🙂

However, as I’m sure has come up for many others, he’s afraid that there will only be “creepy” guys there. I took a look around the website for something to help allay his concerns, but came up empty…

There are guys of all kinds at RCJ events, and probably a couple that you or your boyfriend would consider “creepy.” Since there are over 50 attendees at every event, there will almost certainly be some guys who you each find very appealing, and some you will feel indifferent to. That’s how any diverse, interactive community group works.

Since we don’t filter our members for anything other than legal age, gender and willingness to abide by club rules, that means all kinds of men are welcome, including some who are not young, not buff, not hung, not white and not gay.We decided early on that we could not decide for anyone else what makes another person appealing. Older guys generally want to see other older guys there. Younger guys generally want to see other younger guys there, but that’s not necessarily who they want to play with.

It is a very different kind of sexual play environment, and difficult to describe, but it is very much a community. If someone is there who does not appeal to me, I don’t play with them. If they ask to grab my dick, I will often turn them down and that is that (although I personally tend to be generous, even with guys I don’t find actively appealing). The rule is, every guy has to ask before playing with any other guy. We assert that every dick is attached to the owner, and the owner gets to be in charge of that dick. Nobody gets to engage him without his consent.

What most of our members find is, the diversity itself is a turn-on. The commonality of our desire is affirming and positive, even if we never actually play with 98% of the guys in the room.

Additionally, JO Clubs are just not for everyone and it frequently takes some time to adjust to the reality of an actual event, even if a guy really likes it. This may not be a fun experience for you or your boyfriend. It is pretty much targeted to men who specifically desire and fantasize about jacking off with other guys and around other guys. Lots of men consider this to not be real sex at all, and unsatisfying. Others are looking for something else altogether.

I’m a guy who really likes it a whole lot, and after years of organizing this club, have drawn hundreds of other men who also like it a whole lot. That’s the whole reason for the group, and if someone drops it because it’s not right for them, it’s perfectly okay. We didn’t fail… It’s actually really good that they go, because we prefer that the men who are here are genuinely into group and buddy JO, not just curious, but ultimately really into it. We want the guys who are NOT into it to not waste their own time.

And part of the experience, because it is a group experience, is feeling okay and even really good about the presence of men who are different from us, and “not my type.”

Group JO is not a mainstream sexual expression. It’s a kink, even if solitary JO is the most common sex act in the human species. We don’t expect everyone to fit comfortably into our community. We always welcome people to try it out, but you should know that even if it really appeals to you, your boyfriend may never feel that way about it.

I hope this was helpful feedback, and I do hope your boyfriend gives it a try.

Cheers,
Paul

I get a lot queries about the club every week, often several times a day. There are generally just a handful of common questions that are asked in some form over and over, and that’s not so surprising. The club’s scope is pretty specific. We are a group of men who gather to jack off together. How complicated could it be?

So, I’ve been answering these questions for over five years now. I’ve gotten to the point where the most common questions are answered with one of a few pre-written responses I keep on hand, although I often just write a response from scratch.

One of the most common questions I get goes something like this: “I’m interested in joining your club next week, but I’m 57 years old and have a bit of a spare tire. Will I feel out of place?”

There’s a lot in this brief query. Usually, it’s that clear an expression of interest: “I’m interested in joining” or, “I plan to join.” They want to do this, obviously, even though they may feel a little insecure about their age or their body or their ethnicity or whatever… 

I do my best to assuage their fears. I assure them (truthfully) that the club is “diverse” and “very friendly” and that we “never discriminate” and that “some guys are buff, some are fat and some are skinny, but most are just average guys. I tell them the average age of active members is around 43, and that our 300+ active members range from 21 to 85. I tell them that every event is an unpredictable mix of men, always a little surprising but also pretty consistently fun…

I tell them what I can, and then I let it go. Most of the time, they don’t write back. They just show up or they don’t. I don’t count how many follow-throughs I receive, although I often hear new guys tell me, "Yeah, you answered my email when I wrote to you a few days ago.” They generally seem to appreciate it and I enjoy hearing the feedback.

What I know is, some guys are just self-conscious. That includes men of all stripes including really beautiful men who nobody might suspect would doubt their own attractiveness. I can only deal gently with these guys and encourage them to take their time with the club, cut themselves some slack and just see how they like it. I’ve definitely learned not to take it personally if somebody has a hard time. I know I need to let the guy work it out at his own pace. Sometimes he settles his issues adequately in just an hour or two, and sometimes it takes a few events, or months or years. We each have our own individual puzzle to solve…

It can be a challenging situation, coming to a jack-off club for the first time. You strip naked and walk into a room with four or five dozen naked, masturbating strangers and not everyone is fully comfortable with that scenario. Lots of guys have trouble getting hard and/or orgasming when they first experience the club. I know one guy who attended regularly for over a year before he had one orgasm. He couldn’t wait to tell me about it.

For some guys, it’s a hot experience from the get-go. It was like that for me, in fact. I’m (obviously) wired for this kind of play, but not everyone is.

Having taken time to chat with many of the members over the years, it seems the one big common problem guys have is some sort of self-consciousness, some personal insecurity they want to conquer. A few guys seem to think that the experience of the event will instantly cure them, but some are just triggered into deeper states of shame. When I ask established members, “What kept you from joining at first?” or, “What did you have a hard time with,” it’s usually a fear of being rejected for being too fat, too old or not hung well enough.

And the jack-off club is not a miracle cure for insecurity. A lot of times, the situation alone seems to bring the problem painfully to the surface. The raw, open sexual play can trigger all kinds of uncomfortable baggage. We do, after all, live in a notoriously sexually-repressed society, full of moralizing and condemnation. Open, positive celebration of cock, erection and orgasm can be quite a shock coming from that 24/7 reality.

And of course, whenever uncomfortable personal stuff gets triggered, there’s an opportunity to deal with it and get some relief, find out what it’s trying to teach you and emerge with fewer barriers and a more open, more positive experience of self. Again, I’ve seen that happen enough to know it happens.

I do think that jack-off clubs can be sexually healing, but so can solitary masturbation and so can a one-to-one sexual relationship. We all find our solutions and our satisfaction where we find them. Ultimately, I believe group JO is far more positive than negative, and worth a try for almost any man who’s even a little interested in the experience. Even so, it’s up to each of us to feel good about ourselves in any context, and nobody can make that shift for us.

There’s a saying, attributed to Mormons, regarding the way they reveal the secret knowledge of the church to new elders: “Milk before meat." 

It’s sort of like, "You’ve got to crawl before you can walk,” but it’s more about communication than achievement. “Milk” is the easy stuff, the part that’s safe to tell children, for instance, or the naïve. “Meat” is the difficult truth, the deeper, more complex knowledge underneath the easy stuff.

In the case of Mormon (and I apologize in advance for insulting you if you’re a sheep in that particular flock) the “meat” is all the bat-shit stuff about the planet Kolob, and the whole interplanetary fantasy reeking of Scientology… At least the Muslims put all the crazy out there from the start. The Mormons hide their most outrageous beliefs until one is ostensibly ready to believe it…

What the hell does this have to do with sex? Well, you know I’m getting to that… I always do.

Guys who go to jack-off clubs regularly get it when I say that it’s not just jacking off. I don’t have to tell anyone what it’s about if they’ve embraced it. Instead, I ask them. “Why do you come back?” “What do you get out of the Jacks?” Of my volunteers, I ask, “Why do you serve the club?” or, “What does the club mean to you?”

Although I do hear it, the least common responses are about getting off, hot guys, loving penis or even loving the jacking off. By far, the majority of responses are about feeling connected, understanding themselves, understanding men, accepting their bodies, accepting aging, feeling compassion, feeling a spiritual connection, a sense of holiness, of mental expansion, of personal growth and healing. One guy calls the club “temple.”

Not everyone experiences that, but I do hear it a whole hell of a lot from the guys who return and attend events regularly over time. They are getting a lot more from the club than just an orgasm and an emptied nutsack. They are feeling fed personally. There is a whole lot there that is incidental to the mansex.

Or is it actually the true substance of group JO itself? They come in the first time for a variety of reasons, almost all of them about sexual hunger, horniness, fascination with cock, cum, men, and particularly with beating off with other men. We don’t indoctrinate them along the way with some social dogma about brotherhood. That stuff comes from the group itself. I believe it is a natural product of men being positively and socially sexual. It’s a different kind of dynamic than solo sex or partner sex, which have their own unique rewards beyond the sexual experience itself. 

And as the guy who runs it, I don’t generally stress the meat of the matter. I do mention it, but I know that what brings a new member to the club at first is horniness, fascination with cock and probably a long-denied desire for this particular kind of play. I mention brotherhood, but it’s the penis that brings in the new guys. I trumpet the connections of the club, but it’s the erections that are the focus for the prospective member. I know something about how you guys think… How the sex craziness takes you over and motivates you, even in subtle ways, and how you love that feeling of being driven.

So I will always put the sex first in the general club communication, but once you’ve been around a while, you know there’s more to it. A lot more.

I would love to hear from you about your experience of finding greater value at a JO club, or if you think I’m full of shit and it’s all about the dick…

My actual brothers, my genetic siblings, are pretty much not in my life, except for the occasional bits of news from mom, or the exceedingly rare phone call out of the blue. They’re not terribly interested in my life nor am I in theirs. As an adult, it’s my husband and my extended family that seems to naturally fill my need for connection and belonging. 

I actively like all of them, in different ways, of course, being different people. I also love most of them (yeah, I said “most”). Each has some idiosyncrasies that irritate me to some point, but I really do like them… all four of their unique selves. I’ll always be connected to them, just not as actively and consistently as my local, extended family.

That includes the guys I regularly play with at the JO club—men I masturbate with in an organized, social way. I call them “Jacks,” “bate brothers” or “brothers of the bate” just because I like how that sounds… It fits, even if it sounds a little silly, even to me. I really do feel like the guys I jack off with are my compatriots, my fellows, my fraternity.

These men are open to recreational masturbation most of the time, and though there are no strings attached, what makes the Jacks relationship significantly distinct from either romantic love or sex-only hookups is that friendship is clearly not off the table. Friendship is, in fact, a natural option for Jacks. We are free to explore whatever relationships work for us among a network of men forming a community based on safe parameters and trust.

Every now and then when I’m at a Jacks event, I’ll encounter a guy I know from somewhere else, either from work or socially or some other non-sexual context. It is usually a lot more okay than I suspected it might be. That used to surprise me. Now it surprises me when guys are not okay with it. The great majority of the time, it’s a really fun thing, discovering this person you know from somewhere else and getting to know them in this new context. When it’s not okay, it’s almost always because they are afraid of exposure—of being outed—but most of the time, the space is safe enough that it allows us to relax and enjoy that sexual connection regardless of preexisting non-sexual connections.

I do notice that if I encounter someone I know really well, someone I am close friends with or work closely with, we will probably not actually play with each other, although there may be friendly touch, a hand on the shoulder or arm for instance, but we won’t engage physically. It’s more likely we will either ignore each other in the playspace or we will just make friendly eye contact, staying out of directly sexual contact while enjoying the fact of them having a good time and them seeing me have a good time. There is usually a sense that playing sexually with a close friend is comehow incestuous, although on occasion that proscription doesn’t operate at all. As always, chemistry rules the day, but I think that an anti-incestuous instinct is generally part of our chemistry… Generally.

I really like who I am in a sexual space, and I don’t feel embarassed sharing that. When I get to bring that energy to an existing relationship, it feels integrative, like showing them another aspect of me which is just as genuinely “me” as the nonsexual me. It’s a new dimension to that understanding of each other and neither a distraction or threat of any kind, at least that’s true for me.

And I’ve noticed a specifically fraternal feeling—not just in myself but widespread among the Jacks—a sense of brotherhood and community as we continue to recognize each other over time, to feel intimately safe together and to openly enjoy a raw, genuine, sexual experience either with or around each other. It seems to foster a sense of extended family or clan.

It’s an aspect of JO club membership that we don’t discuss much openly, since the thing that leads us in is the urging of our insistent penises. We know that staying focused on the primary purpose of our gathering together—on simply jacking off together—makes the additional benefits possible, and that a new guy will ultimately be likely to experience that deeper value if the experience clicks for him, but that it’s just being horny, just craving that sexual experience that gets him in the door. And while that basic libido will urge him (and us) back to the Jacks again and again, I think it’s more than just horniness.

We all seem to express it in different terms, but when asked why a regular member comes back again and again, the answers are predominantly not about cock, cum or masturbation. They are social, personal, spiritual and psychological, and particularly point to a connection with a community. Our dicks lead us in but our desire to belong, to be a part of something greater than ourselves, keeps us coming back.