Not that I need an excuse for slacking on my blog, but I’ve got a good one. For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on my wedding. In just nine days from the date of this post, I’ll be getting legally hitched to the guy I’ve been calling my husband for 19 years.

…and we’ve been a couple for 22 years. This has been a long engagement.

So I beg your forgiveness while I put all my energy there. The project this wedding has become is almost complete and if you know me or have read my blog for any amount of time, you should know that I will be just as much of a happy slut after we “tie the knot.”

Being sexually open and emotionally honest has not hampered my ability to have an amazing and loving and completely committed relationship with this brilliant guy who is so perfect for me. I can not express how lucky I feel to have my life. I’m so grateful to have survived my stupider years.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back after the wedding.

Paul (not Jack)

Hi Jerry,

I love my club and I love my members of all ages. I’ve also seen a number of guys connect with others at the club and become partners, some disappearing from the events for months or years. It is possible to make more meaningful connections there, as it is anywhere, but I really believe it is up to each of us. When a man is not finding meaningful relationships, it’s most likely because he is somehow not available for them. That is one of my core beliefs.

And… relationships are difficult. That goes for friends as well as lovers. Finding a good relationship—except in vanishingly rare circumstances—requires working through a lot of bad ones first. The main problem with getting older is not that we are older, but that our tastes and tolerances often narrow. We get more “set in our ways.” We generally need fewer friends and have decreasing energy over time to put out the effort required to take risks, get to know others and be vulnerable.

Sex, which is the purpose of all JO clubs, is actually easy. Virtually anyone can have sex, contrary to the fears of adolescence. Some kinds of sex are harder to negotiate than others, but by and large, sex has never been more available than it is now.

In the context of RCJ, I suggest you try volunteering. Put yourself in a cooperative activity separate from the sex and get to know some of the other guys who volunteer. Also, I suggest taking frequent breaks during the events and stepping into the locker area. Relax for a bit. Have some refreshments or a drink of water and strike up some casual conversations in there.

Also, try other activities where guys are: join a chorus or a bowling league or a church. Seek out groups of guys doing stuff you’re already interested in even a little. Just be yourself and start making more contact with people.

In my 40 years of gay sex and relationships, only one boyfriend came from a bar, and he only lasted a couple of months before we went our separate ways. Every meaningful relationship I’ve ever had started in a workplace, avocational or non-gay-specific social situation. If you’re out of the closet and okay with yourself as a gay man, you don’t need to go to gay bars.

But you do need to network, and by that I mean you need to be out where people are. A jack-off club, as much as I love them, is not necessarily the best place to find a boyfriend. It may be a more positive and more social situation than a bathhouse, but it is still a private club that exists for the ascendant purpose of helping men be sexual together.

We occasionally do have non-sexual events, but with the day jobs and hobbies and relationships and life that all the volunteers have, we can comfortably host jackoff parties but not a whole lot more. If we had more time, we’d probably host more JO events.

I love that you love the club, but it sounds like you may be looking in the wrong place for what you need. Regardless of the kind of “connecting with guys” that you’re talking about, I urge you to let go of the “grays” concern and consider that it may be a distraction. There are other options for connecting in a meaningful way than in a JO club.

And yes, it could happen at the Jacks. It does happen there from time to time… I just don’t think you should limit yourself.

Your penis is with you all day. Forgotten, waiting, stuffed inside your pants while you go about the business of daily life and important matters. If you find some time for yourself, you might remember your penis and how much you like it. You might spend anywhere from 30 seconds to several hours giving it your focused attention.

But those of us with “normal” lives in the covered-up world of clothes and commerce and public decency and propriety go about our daily routines as if the penis were only a convenient appendage to piss with, and then only briefly before you put it away and get back to work. The framework of puritan culture that we bury our sexual vitality beneath is so pervasive, so common to our lives, we almost never perceive consciously just how stifled, how desexualized our lives have become.

Sure, you jack off… You love jacking off! But how often do you spend more than 20 or 30 minutes giving your full attention to your penis? And when you do, how often are you not hidden away somewhere? Even in those moments of self-connection we are steeped in the repression that dims the natural light of our sexual souls.

What you need, what we all need, regardless of the nature of our sex lives, is Quality Penis Time (QPT)…

QPT is that rare stretch of timeless time when you have nowhere better to be than fully with your penis, be it in solitude, with a friend or partner or with multiple companions. While solosex is the easiest way to have QPT, the presence of others adds other dimensions to the experience and can actually deepen it.

QPT is time when you are undistracted, with nothing more important to do than be in the moment, and you consciously invest that time in experiencing the vibrant life of your own cock, all the physical, emotional and mental intensity it can generate and all the life it connects to.

“Jacks” is the community of men grounded by QPT. We understand the innate value of sharing QPT with our fellow men, the multiplier effect of experiencing and exploring the penis in the presence of others, affirming its fundamental goodness by the very act of exposing it openly instead of hiding it in any way. We allow ourselves to sink into sexual ecstasy together while looking openly into our brothers’ eyes, witnessing and being witnessed in this deep, natural and primordial human practice.

Be fully human, fully primate, fully in your body and with your penis.