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.