SEXIS WRONG

kinds in public or semi-public has appealed to lots of folks
by offering casual, no-strings sex, orgasms to the max, plus
opportunities to show off and also to watch—whether at ritualistic
or recreational affairs. Alas, we can’t go back and ask
our ancestors about it! But a bawdy song about a famous
and supposedly real-life 1880s orgy, “The Ball of Kirriemuir,”
has at least three verses referring to observers masturbating
together or separately while watching the other guys and gals
merrily banging away. For example:
The elders of the church
They were too old to firk [fuck],
So they sat around the table
And had a circle jerk.
We can’t prove that this sex party really occurred and, if so,
if any of the verses were more or less true. But we do know
that the person who created the verses took it for granted
that playing with yourself together was appropriate behavior
under the circumstances.
~
When I was in my 40s, I joined a group of men who
would get together two times a month. For a few
hours, we would trade stories about our sexual experiences
with our wives. Then we would put in
a sex movie and get out the magazines and just
start masturbating ourselves. (Men’s Confidential,
1996)
Like boys’ circle jerks, these experiences sometimes happened
spontaneously and never again, and some continued
regularly among an informal peer group. As reported by Paul
McCartney biographer Barry Miles, McCartney and co-Beatle
John Lennon were part of such a group in their teens. Lennon
later recast the experience into a playlet about a men’s group.
His “Four in Hand,” part of the 1960s Off Broadway review
Oh! Calcutta, drops in on a long-term trio joined by a new
member—who is unexpectedly and hilariously turned on not
by standard porn images but by the Lone Ranger!
Similarly, I thought that all-men groups—and perhaps allwomen
groups—probably had shared masturbation together
with other kinds of sex in bathhouses and elsewhere, back to
the Greeks and Romans and before. Certainly today, masturbation
has been a part of the public sex scene for men in the
backrooms of gay bars.
Now with the Jacks, masturbation became the centerpiece
of an adult sexual occasion. And, as I had discovered, not
just the Jacks—I remembered those “close
encounters.” In Celebrate the Self and a few
other places, I found stories about solo sex
together among grown men unrelated to the
formally organized clubs:
I and six other guys ages 54 to 72 get together for
a mutual J/O time…. Three guys are married and
four are single. (CTS, 1994)
~
I’m 67, bi, married and…visited a gentleman in the
Midwest. For 36 hours, there were four of us having
all kinds of celebrations. I count to 10 the salutes.
(CTS, 1998)
~
I was at the West Side YMCA in New York City one
night…about 1:30 in the morning, and I turned a
lamp on right next to a window, threw open the
window and stood naked in the light. In just a few
seconds, across the courtyard of the U-shaped
building, another light went on, and another. Two
men stood at their windows nude, masturbating
while watching me [masturbate]. (CTS, 1998)
Jacking Things Up
With larger groups of men and more infrastructure, the organized
“jacks” or “JO” clubs have taken the adult concept to
an, ahem, more elevated level. I went to the Web and found
that at least 40 jacks clubs meet worldwide: San Francisco,
New York, Philadelphia, Orlando, Cleveland, Paris, Melbourne,
Mexico, even Finland…. Who knew? This was really
under the radar!
Girls’ stories described jilling off in
pairs more often than groups.
The New York Jacks is reputed to be the first modern club of
this kind, starting as an informal group and morphing officially
into a club in 1980, before the AIDS epidemic. Dr. Woof’s
San Francisco Jacks, another early club, has described itself
as “a service organization whose purpose is pleasure,” and a
1996 article in the Bay Area Reporter compared it to the Elks
Club. JO clubs have typically stressed joy, fellowship, and
acceptance of diversity in backgrounds and bodies—but not
hearts and flowers. As the New York Jacks stated, “We’re
looking for recreation, not romance.” Another club has announced,
“We are not here as a ‘hook-up’ for guys to meet
other guys.”
The Elks Club is a good comparison. JO clubs may have membership
cards, newsletters, songs, rituals, yearbooks, theme
parties, weekend retreats, even charity fund-raisers. Bonhomie,
enthusiasm—and engagingly bad puns!—are everywhere.
The clubs have their own quirky individualism: One
quotes the Talmud in its newsletter. Another uses grape-seed
THE CIRCLE GAME 93