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Wednesday, September 8, 2010

I may have over-promised when I committed to a blog entry a day… just a tad.

But I am loving this process of developing a blog, learning what writing regularly feels like, finding an honest voice as a writer.

So in the face of high-volume demands from the many realms of my existence, I’m letting myself off the hook for slipping to every two or three days for the blog.

This week’s itinerary:

• Today is work, then managing the opening crew for tonight’s Jacks event. 
• Tomorrow is work and then seeing preview night for my husband’s new play. 
• Friday is work and then opening night for that play. 
• Saturday is my JACKS seminar at Gay City University, where I’ll be teaching a 75-minute class about JO clubs. 
• Sunday is the TeamRCJ Meetup, a gathering of the Jacks’ volunteer force to socialize, organize and talk business.

I know an itinerary isn’t a blog entry (for me) and it’s not intended as an excuse for not writing anything juicy… Among all that busy-ness is plenty of inspiration for writing and I plan to do that. 

Promise.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

I looked up from the fog of penis pleasure at one point during today’s event, during one of the few moments I was actually playing and not working, and I just saw these two loosely-connected groups of men about 20 feet away, about ten men altogether, and they were in various stages of orgasm, one after another. I think four or five of them came over the course of a few minutes, mostly standing… I saw a lot of smiles, heard a lot of sighing, gasping, moaning and I thought to myself, “I just love this club.”

I was in something of an altered state at the time, as Jim was giving some very devoted and expert attention to my cock, which was very slick with lube and very much pulsating at the sixth or seventh edge of the day…

I have a bit of a routine at the club, which can happen when one does something frequently. I vary the routine a lot from event to event (I’ve never felt I was in a rut) but my usual M.O. is to play with various members, almost always playing with the newest members if they’re interested (I really want them to want to come back) and I will spend significant, dedicated time focusing on each guy fully for a while, and edge my dick over and over, taking breaks when my knees or feet start to ache or I need a drink of water. I’ll play with a few guys at each event in this way and after a period of riding the delayed-orgasm roller coaster, I will let loose with a big, edge-worthy volley of semen and then either go rest, or stick around for a while to help my friends get off, if that’s what’s happening…

And sometimes, I get caught in a trap my body started springing on me some eight or nine years ago. I call it “edging gone wrong.”

I believe the clinical name is “retarded ejaculation” (which inspires me to giggle like a 4th grader). It happens on occasion… I will take myself from zero to nine over and over again, barely forestalling the ten of full-on orgasm and ejaculation. But after a few times, I realize I’m just not going to cum… I think it’s one of those fucking shitty things about getting older I’m supposed to just accept.

It’s just that once I really want to cum, I won’t. I will get maddeningly close, be feeling myself sliding up to the precipice and then it’s as if someone nailed my shoes to the edge because no matter what, I just don’t go over.

This has happened several times over the past decade. Sometimes I go through a stretch of time where I will repeatedly have these “ejaculatus interruptus” experiences, and it’s really frustrating. It can happen in a Jacks event or at home with my own hand, or with my husband, which is the most difficult circumstance… But none of them are really terrible… It’s frustrating, but only briefly so. I do get over it quite soon.

So today, I facilitated several emphatic culminations, but was stuck at nine at precisely the wrong moment… When I was the last one in the room, with just a small cadre of men nearby, warm pools of their bodily fluids glistening on their torsos… I had a blast witnessing and participating in the lead-up to that spunky afterglow, but I hadn’t made my own liquid contribution… 

And I really wanted to. Really.

It was still very big fun. One of the cadre had exhibited a vocal enthusiasm that I don’t think I have ever quite heard echoing through a Jacks event before. I was so impressed… It was not in the least bit manufactured for our benefit, but seemed primal, genuine. I love it when men feel free to let themselves experience intense pleasure with others, especially when I’m one of the others taking it in.

I feel a genuine heart-warmth so frequently with the Jacks, and often when I’m just observing the members playing and enjoying themselves. It really makes me want to go to a JO club that I’m not running, so I can just appreciate what someone else made possible, so I can be one of these happy men and not imagine that it is somehow a reflection on me, even a positive one.

So I loved the event as much as any other, regardless of never reaching “ten.” While I usually cum like a fountain at the club, I know that it’s not why I’m there… not just to get off. My deepest satisfaction comes from giving pleasure, not taking it myself. And if guys really love seeing me cum, it’s their pleasure that satisfies me, not my own.

Even so, I really need to cum right now. I have a touch of the blueballs right now, and I don’t think I want to wait until Wednesday’s event… This shouldn’t take too long…

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Frequent Question Number 19: How many guys are usually at one of your parties?

Answer: Usually somewhere between 50 and 75. The average these days is about 65 guys per event.

Reaction: 65?! That’s a lot of guys!

Typical Followup Question for Number 19: “Um… do you ever hold smaller events??”

I understand how we all get trapped in our expectations, fantasies, nightmares, daydreams, delusions and prejudices. We have this incredible parade of scenes running at full-bore all day. The time we spend obsessively focusing on mindless tasks can be something of a relief because it is mindless. It takes us out of this diarrhea of the mind we all have…

It’s a universal human habit to form these thoughts into stories and believe in some of them. I think most of our lives are in our heads, especially our relationships. We are mired in stinking thinking 24/7 and… it seems that is just the way we are. It’s perfectly normal, perfectly human to believe in the stuff we think up, even if it generates fear and superstition and wrong ideas that provoke bad judgment…

The Tibetan Wheel of Life is a representation of the condition of humanity, the Karmic Wheel of birth, death and rebirth. It’s an awesome set of ideas set in pictures and one of them is a monkey swinging from branch to branch, which is understood to represent (among other things) the restless nature of the mind, our tendency to grasp one idea and swing on to the next to grasp another and another and another…

I set myself up long ago as the go-to guy for questions about the club and group JO in general. I mainly did it because when I first started out, it was easiest to just answer questions myself and I never got a volunteer to take it on for me. I mostly get asked where events are held, how to join, what to bring, if it’s anonymous, what are the guys like, will I be too fat? WIll I feel too out of place? Is my dick too small? Am I too old? 

The questions people ask are always clues to who they are. I do my best to be positive, calm, clear, matter-of-fact, and not rushed when I take a phone call for the club, and the “how many guys" question is absolutely reasonable. Of course it is.

The shock at how many guys attend a typical event tells me a lot about a guy. He’s probably nervous, so I do my best to just be relaxed and let him know that he doesn’t have to touch or be touched by anyone unless he chooses to be. I can also tell he’s probably never been to a bathhouse, because most bathhouses get more naked bodies than we do any night of the week. He may also not end up comfortable in a large group, so it may be an indicator that he will not like the club…

Of course, you don’t play with all 65 men at a typical event any more than you eat everything at a smörgåsbord. Most members, new and experienced alike, play with somewhere between one and four guys per event, although some of us to sample more variety (I tend to average a little more than four, but I’m usually there for most of the event) but we also gravitate to specific partners who have the right chemistry for us, and are likely to orgasm with just one guy (although group orgasms happen all the time, it seems like a personal connection is naturally preferred for many Jacks. Not all of course, but many). So it’s not surprising that guys often ask about smaller events. I just tell them that we don’t. We don’t have the resources to host small events, but also, it is not what the club is about, which is a social sexual experience.

Also, many men will park themselves somewhere and not move around a lot. They stick to one sofa, or lean against one wall, or lie back on a bed for an hour or more, waiting for the appropriate playmates to find them. We also have the red band system (a signal that means, "Don’t touch my cock”) so a few men are strictly watching and enjoying the view during solitary play.

I would say the only real problem with the number of men is the natural tendency to get distracted by all the variety of naked, masturbating men. Most of us get off by our own hand or that of one buddy, maybe two, but it can be a real challenge to focus on the matter at hand when your eyes are being pulled this way and that, and when it’s so easy to move on when your penis needs a break. If you’re with a buddy who can stay focused in the moment, and on one partner, he can be turned off by the constant darting of eyes as we get distracted by every shiny knob that passes into our field of vision…

I advise newbies, generally after their first event, to not try to pig out at the smorgasbord, but to take their time until they find someone who pushes their buttons, and then ignore the parade and let themselves get lost in the moment of timeless focus with one or maybe two fellow members, either accepting or giving pleasure. The presence of the other men in the room can actually become an erotic background to intimate one-on-one connections… which may sound strange in the context of a sex party with five or six dozen horny men…

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Every time I’ve asked, “How do you identify your sexuality?” I get roughly the same answer from the members of my jack-off club:

• 65% identify as gay
• 25% identify as bi
• 10% identify as straight

I’ve asked this question many, many times over the past five years and the percentages always come in right around there. It’s remarkable in its consistency and it raises a lot of questions for me—questions about that 10% of men who identify as straight…

I’m not a sex researcher, although I have the same access to sex research that you do. I am a 52 year-old man who runs a jack-off club in an unusually progressive community in the USA. I’m someone who jacks off with hundreds of men a year, someone with an open mind and a lot of opinions… just like you, probably, at least on that last point…

In any case, I have a certain broad body of personal experience. You might call it clinical evidence. You’d be wrong to call it that, but you could…

Do I personally accept that these guys are, in fact, straight? That’s not an easy question and I have an uncontrollable urge to nuance the answer (in other words, avoid answering). I really want to try and be honest here, so I’ll just say again, that this is just my opinion and I am completely open to being proven wrong…

I accept that these men have a right to identify as they choose, but I don’t always trust the perceptions of anyone, particularly about themselves. Humans are remarkably adept at self-deception. We don’t see each other or ourselves clearly, except, on occasion, when we really fall in love with each other, and not always then either.

I have lived peacefully with the identity of “gay” for almost 35 years now, but I know I would be open for sex with a woman if conditions were right, and I even occasionally desire a woman sexually. It’s rare but it happens, so you could say I am bi or perhaps a Kinsey 5.8… I don’t believe that sex with a woman would alter my innate craving for intimate male contact, but I know I could enjoy sex with a woman, as I did when I was 15, 16 and 17, before I gave it up for cock. To be fair, I have to cut straight guys the same right to explore, to have diverse tastes, to be curious…

Guys are a lot easier to have sex with, a lot easier for a fellow man to understand, and I personally love cock. My response to women’s breasts and vaginas and the shapes and smells of women is pretty much indifference… particularly since I don’t have much curiosity left to satisfy there. I did that and I feel pretty satisfied that I’m not really interested. I know I crave men, so it’s easy to identify as gay.

But we gay guys know that straight guys don’t have to “come out.” They don’t ever have to hide that they want sex with women. That’s the key experience that ties all the disperate queers together, the common thread of having had to hide, having started from that condition of shame, and having to ultimately accept what we have suppressed. We have a lot more that divides us than unites us, but this is The Major Biggie in the world of common-experience for The Gay. We know the closet, and ultimately, we know it as the enemy of happiness.

I believe that a “straight” guy who craves cock is either closeted gay or at least “has a touch of the bi,” as Dan Savage puts it. Bi men get to be excited by men and women. They get to crave who they crave. For a closeted man, the problem is expressing the suppressed side of his desire. He is then invariably filled with fear, paranoia and then shame. They start out with lust just barely winning out against terror long enough to get off, and then, as lust inevitably retreats in its characteristically fleet fashion, they are left with remorse… and watching that cycle playing out again and again drives me fucking crazy…

Because I have this private club, with strict rules about confidentiality and discretion, specifically because I want members to feel safe—safe to play, safe to enjoy, safe to express a specific desire, safe from disease… well, safer—but it is also a perfect opportunity for a closeted man on the down-low to cheat. I don’t support that, but I’m not going to take any action to stop someone from what I suspect may be cheating, because these things have a way of inflicting their own punishment on a man. 

I have this club, and if a guy who has identified as straight all his life is exploring his attraction to men, or his attraction to masturbation with other men (which works better in a JO club) I am happy that the Jacks offer an opportunity to see what it is like, but I know perfectly well that if he is hiding this activity from someone he is in an “intimate” relationship with, it’s actually better for him if he doesn’t like it, if the experiment fails, at least, it’s better for his relationship…

I know that there are many men in my club who have wives, children and secrets. It’s not my job to make them honorable men, but I wish I knew better how to encourage honor in the context of our sexual experiences. There are a few men in the club, I know of six personally, who have wives who know about and even support their husbands’ same-sex attraction and exploration. There have been two members I’m aware of who’s wives actually pick them up on occasion from the events. Something in their relationships allows that honesty to thrive and inform their own relationship. I admire these women a hell of a lot.

When I first encounter a self-identified straight man at an event, I support him individually as a man, neither straight nor gay, but just as a guy exploring himself, which I believe is a good thing. What I wish for all the members, and really for everyone, is to be willing to move steadily toward a truer, more honorable existence. Just try to be more true and keep trying because you’ll never get all the way there…

Do I believe a guy can want to jack off with another guy and still be straight? Really? I guess it depends on how much he wants it. If it’s an interesting idea and he easily gets distracted by other ideas, maybe never follows through or follows through and doesn’t return. yeah. He’s a straight guy. If a guy feels like he’s missing something without another man to masturbate with, no. He just doesn’t really know what gay or bi mean.

And if he has fought with himself or negotiated all kinds of justifications and subterfuges to do this, well… I have a hard time seeing this as a passing fancy. To go through all that a man goes through to touch and be touched another man sexually, that looks like evidence of “need” as opposed to “want.”

But… I respect everyone’s right to identify however they do until they identify another way, and then it is still their right. I think there really are a couple of actual straight guys in my club, but most of the guys who identify that way, just haven’t recognized yet that they’re experiencing the only closet that really matters: the one in which you hide from yourself… 

All just my opinion, and I could be wrong (as the clever but total asshole Dennis Miller said) but fair warning: I’m not done chewing on this bone by a long shot…

Saturday, August 28, 2010

I had an interesting day this fine, cool, late-August Saturday in Seattle. I got up at 6:30 to caffeinate, wash and shave in time to arrive at Seattle University by 9:00, fresh as a daisy and ready for my makeup call. The following three hours, I was the recipient of the gentle ministrations of Harmony and Annie, makeup and costume sorceresses weaving their dark magic upon me and three hours later, I emerged reborn… as The Devil.

I was privileged to be asked to play the Prince of Darkness by the miraculous Waxie Moon and by Wes Hurley, the director of Waxie’s new film, Fallen Jewel which, I think, is scheduled to premiere next Spring.

This past June, I got to play Sweeney Todd for five minutes when Captain Smartypants and Sensible Shoes presented… Sweeney Todd in Five Minutes as part of Seattle Men’s Chorus’ 30th Anniversary production, Glitter and Be Gay.

While both parts had a rather high tongue-in-cheek factor, there’s no escaping that I may be emerging as a “type,” namely, “evil.”

I’m actually kind of honored to be considered theatrically evil, particularly since I’m reportedly a rather pleasant person, albeit occasionally peevish—curmudgeonly perhaps—but essentially a good guy… I hope.

I don’t care if a lot of people like me or not—I don’t need that kind of attention—but I don’t feel uncomfortable in the spotlight. I generally feel more at home on stage than off, and I want to do a good job and I want the audience to enjoy what I do, but I really don’t like notoriety, recognition on the street, people looking at me through the lens of a character they saw me play…

Also, I don’t believe in a supernatural force of evil. People all have the potential to do bad, even horrible things, and you could say that some people get into a rut of doing bad things, and you could call them “evildoers” (a word I like which also, regrettably, reminds me of George W. Bush) but there is no such thing as an evil force like a devil or monster.

People do evil things, but evil doesn’t exist beyond them… brutality in nature is plentiful, but evil, IMHO, is a human construct… and hella fun to play on stage…

For instance, here’s the Devil’s enormous penis…

Friday, August 27, 2010

There used to be a cable access TV show on Seattle called Sex Life Live, hosted by Dane Ballard. It was actually a pretty cool, DIY production, pretty decent and watchable as public access goes (which is not saying a lot) and they had lots of the local kink community there to talk about… kink. And sex in general. I’d give detail but I didn’t really watch the show. I’m one of those homos who’s not terribly interested in sexually empowered women, at least not as an entertainment, and Dane’s show was full of them, being a very balanced show.

I appeared on SLL a few years ago in my “official” capacity as the JackDaddy of Rain City Jacks, to talk about JO clubs, our club, and the general phenomenon of safe sex as a preferred choice of play. I ran into a few people I knew, both from the club and outside the club. Seattle does indeed have a community around its kink.

A few minutes into the conversation, Dane said, “It’s a… kink, isn’t it?”

That actually took me a little by surprise. I’d never thought of group JO as a kink. I’d always thought of it as really hot vanilla group sex. I think I answered. “Yes, I guess it is, but it has to be the most vanilla kink in the world.”

I’ve thought about his question many times since then. I now think that JO clubs are indeed a kink, though definitely less prop-heavy than leather or uniforms or a lot of fetish-based kink. I don’t think of group JO as a fetish, but it is definitely not the norm in the carnal world. Indeed, it seems to stand somewhere between whatever “normal” is and explicit “kink.”

Some of the things that make it a little kinky are the exhibitionism and voyeurism elements, the group sex element, and the all-orientations, all-men makeup of the group. JO clubs seem to invite a lot of straight and bi-curious guys because of the romance-free promise of a masturbation-only orgy. They can step into a realm of utter familiarity (masturbation) mixed with some very unfamiliar factors (company) to make progress on a suppressed desire to have sex with other men.

For the gay guys, they get to deal with actual straight guys beating hard dicks alongside them, and all the men get to interact intimately with different generations. RCJ has members ranging from 23 to 83 years of age. We all tend to get into a familiar groove so it shakes things up a bit…

In my core, I don’t feel “kinky.” That doesn’t really fit for me. I do feel sexually alive and participating in life with my whole body, dick included, but it just feels normal for me.

I know that there are lots of people who won’t feel comfortable explicitly talking about the reality of groups of men masturbating together on a regular basis. I have to watch that, since to me it’s not a novelty anymore, although I do enjoy it every single time My inclination to mention it is checked in most professional situations, even though it has been a problem for almost nobody I’ve discussed it with. Mostly, people congratulate me and say it sounds really cool.

I definitely live in a progressive place and my friends seem pretty unshakable if this is no big deal… and it supports my own feeling that it’s no big deal. I hope it never becomes an issue for someone, the mere fact that a club like the Jacks exists, because it feels like this is something some people value and in some instances, actually need.

I guess I’m still conflicted on the kink question. Is a JO club a kink? Is kink in the mind of the beholder?

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 – RCJ Event #146

As I write this, I’m that odd guy on the bus, gazing at his iPhone with a Bluetooth keyboard in front of it, clacking away… Being able to carry a compact keyboard that works with my phone has been life-changing. I can now write virtually anywhere (I know, I know… “pen and paper” blah blah blah…. I just have terrible handwriting).

I’m spent. I just boarded the bus a few minutes ago for the hour-long ride from the playspace to home. It’s wonderfully convenient that I get this door to door service but the guys sitting in front of me smells like the dumpster behind a Vietnamese seafood restaurant during a garbage collection strike. Not an exaggeration… that is exactly what he smells like…

No, I won’t explain how I know what that smells like. I moved to another seat, farther from the remarkable stench. I want to write about tonight’s event…

It was a little lightly attended tonight. 51 fine gentlemen braved the heat to come and be naked and generate even more heat together. As always, I played with a number of men, spending ample time with each until each break time hit, and made a point of playing with some of the new members. I would have been happy to have shared an orgasm with any or all of them but alas, I pretty much come once a day and that’s it for me.

I wasn’t even particularly horny tonight, so I concentrated on giving pleasure. This is pretty much what works best for me anyway in any sexual circumstance. Even when I am receiving pleasure, it is my buddy’s enjoyment of my pleasure that gets me off, not the action of fingers on genitals, although that’s definitely an essential element of the deal…

I saw this hot marine again, a tall, hung, very hunky, very masculine… He’s also a generous and egalitarian member, playing with all kinds of guys although he obviously has his preferences. He’s no elitist. I played near him, watching him and another beautiful, tattooed man make out and mash their greased up cocks together. I really enjoy watching men up close during these moments, and I’m very sensitive to not being a distraction. It can be an erotic plus or minus to have witnesses literally inches away while you’re having sex.

Yes, “sex.” Sex is what we have at the jack-off club. I just hate the game of calling sex something other than what it is—the idea that this act or that isn’t “real sex.” I remember President Clinton’s famous, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and how it was spun with an explanation that where he comes from, “sexual relations” means intercourse. A blow job doesn’t count as sex, so he wasn’t lying!

Which is why we now have lots of “good Christian girls” with their virginity pledges somehow intact, getting all kinds of STDs from cocksucking and butt sex, because if it’s not one penis in one vagina, it’s not sex. For some, not making a baby means it’s not sex.

I am of the view that this is the purest horseshit. “Sex” is a grossly general term, like “food.” There is a wide, wide world of experiences that all qualify as sex, each with its different gradations of intimacy and health risk. Jacking off is sex as much as oral, anal or vaginal sex. It is sex regardless of how many people are in the room with you, if any!

My body knows what sex feels like. It’s like art or obscenity. “I know it when I see it” or, more likely, when my body chemistry does its magic sex thing. Ultimately, that’s what sex is for everyone: Chemistry, not methodology…

So I had sex with multiple guys tonight, as I do a few times every month. All of it was on the far end of the safety spectrum, and I strove as I always do to be as as authentic and as present as I could be in every case.

I spent a long time sitting opposite a young, lean fellow with long hair and a gorgeous and very erect penis, gawking at each other showing off our “technique” and just getting off on the sight.

I did more side-by-side bating, this time standing beside a man wearing the red wrist band that signals “don’t touch my dick.” I noticed he also had a gold band on his left ring finger. It was not stylish and decidedly straight-married looking. He had another gorgeous cock, very swollen. We did not touch each other, but stroked and chatted a little as we did, just getting into the sight of mirroring each other. This was his first time doing anything like this and he was clearly ready for the experience…

I licked some nipples, spent about 20 minutes just giving another longhair bater some very specific attention as he stood in front of where I sat. I made him keep his hands behind his back and allow me to do the work. So much fun…

About an hour and a half into the event, I watched as a guy I’d been appreciating from afar started cleaning up after consummating a session with a man he’d been sitting beside on one of the couches. He smiled and laughed, as I’ve found many guys in an early refractory period do. His partner stood up, wiped himself down and immediately made clear that he was not done yet, and was interested in me.

We stroked ourselves for a while and he paused to put a lot of lube on himself. I asked if I could have some of it and made no move to use my own hands, indicating that I wanted him to lube me up, which he did. I returned the favor and very soon we discovered that we liked each other’s touch quite a lot.

We played like that for a while, alternately stroking ourselves and each other, pretty much unaware of anyone else, although when I looked to my side at one point, the red-banded newcomer from earlier was orgasming as he watched us… which we found inspirational…

After about 20 minutes of edging I spouted semen onto his stomach, as he requested, and we both stood there for a minute with my liquid running down both our bodies in slow motion. I decided to stay with him and fight the animal reflex to rest and stop after orgasm.

I caressed his scrotum as he stroked himself and I played back and forth between his nipples with my mouth, occasionally licking down his stomach to tease his cock (both of us knowing full well I was never going to taste it, but it’s a delicious tease). I stayed with it, looking into his face and feeling his body tense as he arrived at his destination with a gasp, returning the favor of anointing me with his warm fluid on my stomach.

Again, we lingered for a couple of minutes, just savoring the abatement of the moment, still feeling warm and friendly, and without a trace of a desire to fly. No shame and no regret, just a powerful afterglow for a fleeting few minutes.

I showered, dressed and ran to catch my bus, where I wrote most of this and finished just now at home.

I enjoy virtually every event. I love the connection sex allows. I love the spent feeling afterward. I even love how it makes me hunger for my husband, as it always does. I’ll write about him sometime… For now, it’s time for bed and sleep. Next event is in eleven days.