‘I Run a Jackoff Club’: 3 American Club Owners Tell Their Story
In a previous story, I told the tale of my very first time visiting a jackoff club, which happened during a trip to Philadelphia. Before you go any further with this story, you can read all the lurid (NSFW) details of my first time here.
After that experience, I became obsessed with setting up a jackoff club in Dallas, which is what led me to interview three men who each founded a jackoff club in their own towns. I interviewed Jax, founder of the jackoff club Philly Jacks since 1993; Steve Thomas, coordinator and self-described “Jack Officer” of NY Jacks since 2010; and Sean, who co-founded the Orlando Jacks in 2002 with his husband.
I wanted to learn more about how their respective jerk-off club came to be, how they’re operated and how they continue to thrive in this age of mobile apps and online hookups.
Here’s what these 3 jackoff club owners had to say:
HORNET: What got you interested in setting up a jackoff club?
Jax (Philly Jacks): When I was 16 and I started to take the train into the city every day to go to college, I very quickly discovered that the men’s room at the train station had this long line of urinals, and pretty much anytime I went in there, there were some friendly men playing with their dicks. And I was a fucking horny 16-year-old, so I just loved it. It was kind of just because of that circumstance that I ended up just enjoying jerking off with other men.
And then, you know, I hit my early 20s and all of a sudden HIV and AIDS came along. So all of a sudden it was a thing of “Well, ha, it’s really lucky that this is something I’m really into, because it’s the best thing to be doing right now.” And I had a lot of involvement with AIDS stuff from early on, and I was one of the founding members or one of the original members of ACT UP Philadelphia, and I was doing that. I was also occasionally going up to the New York Jacks, which started pre-HIV and AIDS. And by the time I started going (around 1986 or 1987), it was actually still a membership club where you had to be sponsored by somebody. I was lucky that I had friends who were in it, and I went up there and it was just this insane paradise. It was just 60 men playing together; it was just such a beautiful thing.
And I kept on thinking that somebody else would do it in Philadelphia because it was so needed. When I started going to a jackoff club, and when I started our club here, there were no effective treatments for AIDS at all. And providing a place for men to get together and be sexual together where it was totally safe was really, really vital. So I kept thinking someone else is going to do it, and finally I just reached a day where I said, “OK, I guess I gotta do it.”
I talked to some friends who encouraged me and were somewhat involved in getting it going. It’s always been mostly me here in Philly. I put the word out, and we had our first party and we had more than 80 guys show up. So it was amazing, it was just an unqualified success. We immediately lost the space we did our first party in and didn’t have anymore parties for a little bit, and amazingly one of the board members of our gay community center — which at that point was called Penguin Place — got in touch with me and said, “Hey I know that you’ve been looking for a place to do your parties. I wonder if you’d think about doing it at the community center.” And I said, “Well, no. [Laughs] I never did think about that, because I didn’t think I’d be able to.” And he said, “Sure, we’d love to have you.”
So we were there for five or six months, I think. Then, unfortunately, some more conservative people got on the board at the center and freaked out and said, “Oh my god! We can’t have this! Won’t somebody think of the children? Blah, blah, blah, blah.” So we got kicked out of there, and then my friend Natty and I spent a long-ass time — months and months and months — trying to find a new space, with the idea that I would find a space that was big enough to host the parties and to pay for all of the rent and also big enough to have an office space so that we could give free office space to ACT UP. Finding that kind of space was not easy. It took many, many, many months. I even put ads in the gay papers saying, “We’re forming this club, but we can’t find a space.”
We were trying to find something [disabled] accessible, which we eventually gave up on, unfortunately, because we just couldn’t find anything. And then I found this space, and it was just so astonishing — such an amazing, perfect space. And I just said, “OK, well, it’s a shame. I feel bad about having to give up on the accessibility thing, but this is what we’re gonna do.”
So we moved in, and that was almost 24 years ago [around 1993]. Crazily enough we’re still in a safe space and we’re still doing great.
Steve Thomas (NY Jacks): The jackoff club started in 1980 and I started going to the parties back in the mid-‘80s. It was before AIDS, really; before the health crisis had really broken out, and so that wasn’t really the reason I started going. I started going because I find masturbation more satisfying than a lot of other activities. My experience with fucking was not that great; I wasn’t really that crazy about it. I spent a lot of time doing pretty much everything and being fairly promiscuous and picking up all kinds of STDs along the way. So, finding the Jacks — a friend brought me with him one day — and it was really the perfect fit for me. Not only that, but partly because it kept me healthy, kept me negative for all these years, probably because I kinda transferred my activity to mostly safe sex. But also, I met my best friends there, I got my day job through someone who was a friend at the Jacks and I found my partner through the Jacks, so it’s been extremely important to me.
So what happened was they were pretty much consistent through the ’80s and ’90s and into the 2000s. But then New York had changed so much. It just transformed. Most of the sex clubs open to the public were shut down, and the steam baths were all shut down. Most of the public sex venues — which were all over the place in the ‘70s and ‘80s — just shut down. Giuliani came in, and New York’s Times Square went from a red light district to Disney World. Now Times Square and most of New York is transformed. It’s a sparkling, safe, kid-friendly city; most of the sex clubs have gone underground and private. And the real estate changed so much. It got so expensive. Everything got so expensive. So we eventually lost our space.
We went through many, many different spaces, and they kept getting shut down, not because of our club but because the people who managed the spaces were shut down by the health department or whatever for various reasons. So we got kinda kicked around a lot until about six or seven years ago, when we got an offer to take over Tuesday nights at Paddles Club, which is an S&M club that’s been around for 20 years. The people who had been running the club had basically either faded away or moved away or died or just got too old and didn’t want to do it anymore. One of my best friends was one of the original founders [of the New York Jacks], and he was the one who was kind of the contact person and who got the space, but he didn’t want to run the club.
So we kinda found somebody to run the club, and we opened up the space at Paddles. Me and a couple of friends were there helping out, and they said, “Well, what’re you gonna do for next week?” and we didn’t know. And I said, “I’ll be there. I’ll take care of it,” and that was the beginning and I eventually ended up taking over the space and running the club. I didn’t intend on it, but there was nobody else to do it, and I felt that it was important.
I feel it’s a kind of public service for people who have an interest in public sex. So I did it, and it’s quite healthy right now. We do quite well. I updated the website and got people to take care of it for me and make sure everything is running smoothly because, of course, nowadays that’s where people find their sex — online. So anybody who’s interested in masturbation finds us one way or the other. We’ve got people coming in also from Bateworld; it’s a website devoted to men who prefer masturbation who want to meet each other and chat online and post things and whatnot, and so we post our meetings there and we get a lot of people from Bateworld. So we have a good membership and a lot of visitors; a lot of tourists. We get guys from all over the world. It’s kind of nice — from South America and from Europe and even a couple of guys from Russia, from the Middle East and Africa. It’s quite interesting now, the way it’s run. So it’s evolved.
Sean (Orlando Jacks): My husband and I have been together 21 years this year, and this is about as open as our relationship has gotten, because we don’t play out on the side or anything like that, like some other couples do. But when we expressed interest in masturbating with friends, we both started talking about it. It was something we felt was a turn-on in terms of we’re both really masturbation enthusiasts. There’s something really erotic and very hot about watching a man pleasure himself. Whether I’m participating in it or not, that doesn’t matter. I can sit across the room and watch a guy stroking his dick, and that gets me off. And my husband is the same way. Not to mention the fact that he does amazing things with his hands. We’ve been told time and time again. So, out of our own selfishness of us wanting to try this and do this, we thought, “What better way than starting to ask our friends?”
We actually just started talking to some friends out of curiosity. You know, like, “Hey! Have you ever thought about us getting together sometime, watching some porn and then masturbating?” You know, that’s how we do it anyway, so why not do it with some friends? Like, have an unusual movie night. And a couple of our friends expressed interest. So it really just started with a couple of us getting naked, watching porn and maybe playing with a couple of our friends. And then we decided maybe we create this as a public group thing. So I went on the internet, and the first group that I found, surprisingly, was the Melbourne Wankers out of Australia. I emailed the group, told him what we were looking to do and he offered some suggestions. And then from there it became strangers, and then from there it became a group and became even more organized, and then 15 years later, we’re still doing it.
When we started, we called the jackoff club the Orlando Wankers because we were using the Melbourne Wankers as a model. But then a couple of people said, “Wankers is kind of a derogatory term in some places.” So we went and looked into getting Orlando Jacks. The whole thing was free, we charged nothing. We used to put a tip jar out, and guys would tip. And then we had some people who wanted another way to offer support, so, foolishly, we linked our group to our PayPal account and, of course, it was a total terms of service violation right there. Somebody went and took a peek, saw what the Orlando Jacks was and was like, “Yeah, no. This is adult entertainment. You’re not allowed to do it — suspended account.”
So we lost our PayPal account. So we went back to just donations, and we started to realize that this is costing money. This is time, this is effort, there’s a lot of things going on, and we decided that we wanted to go model ourselves more so after the New York Jacks. We actually met with a lawyer who deals with adult entertainment — we fall under adult entertainment. I don’t really think we fall under adult entertainment, but that’s essentially what we categorize as — and he gave us some very useful pointers on what to do to protect ourselves. And that’s when we kind of went into the whole membership drive, and we figured if we’re going to do this, we might as well ask people to join and pay a fee, which some happily did and others were basically, “Yeah, nope,” and didn’t pay, and we were like, “Well, OK, then you’re not gonna be a member.”
Technically you can still be a member and never come to the jackoff club; it doesn’t cost you a dime. If you come to parties, we charge a nominal party fee for our events. Right now it’s $15, and that money goes to cover the fees related to all of our domains, our e-mail service, our internet service that we use for the business and lots of laundry detergent and towels — towels, towels, towels.
What can attendees expect when they arrive at your jackoff club?
Steve Thomas (New York): We have two spaces now. Paddles is an old S&M club. It’s set up like a bar — a mezzanine upstairs, and there’s sort of some back rooms. But S&M people — the straight people — really couldn’t support the club. So basically they turned it over to all these different gay clubs or gay organizations, so there are different organizations that hold parties every night there. Most of the parties are anything-goes parties. We’re the only safe-sex party, and we have Tuesday nights. It’s kinda a sleazy place with all kinds of S&M equipment scattered around — shackles, restraints, a tickle box, whips and masks and things, and pictures of people being spanked and tied up and all that.
Our other space [for the Sunday parties] is more like an apartment. It’s like two rooms and a foyer where people check in. And the guy who manages the space keeps it up pretty well. He just remodeled the bathroom and has a lot of furniture, couches for people to sit and sort of nice low-lighting. So they’re very different, and some people like the Sunday space, some people like the Tuesday space. The Sunday space is smaller, although it gets a bigger crowd. We had from 60 to 80 on Sundays. We had our anniversary party last week, and we got 105 guys, which is a lot for that small space. It was pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder. [Laughs] But people had fun.
The other Tuesday nights we are usually smaller. We get 45 to 55, or 65 maybe on a Tuesday. But it’s pretty consistent then given that the weather isn’t too horrible. We get really good crowds, a lot of responsible people, a lot of professional people. A lot of people in the arts and whatnot as opposed to other sex clubs, particularly the late-night sex clubs, which have a lot more trouble with drinking and drugs and whatnot. That doesn’t really effect us. Our parties are early — 4 p.m. on Sundays and 7 p.m. on Tuesdays — and they last about two and a half hours pretty much consistently, so it’s people who prefer that kind of thing rather than the late-night crowds.
In the early days you had to be a member or sponsored by a member. You needed two signatures to get in the door, and so it was much more of an insular group of club members. But then things changed with the internet. We dropped that. It’s basically an open-door policy, so anyone can come in. And for quite a while it was more of an older crowd. But since we’ve opened it up, we get a lot more younger guys. It’s a really eclectic crowd. I don’t think you can be too specific about the kind of guys who come. We get all ages, all races, all body types, guys who are out of shape and guys who have really great bodies. Most of the guys, I would say, are between 35 and 55, but then there will be half a dozen guys in their 20s and half a dozen guys older than that, although the older guys are fading away somewhat.
Sean (Orlando): We can accommodate about 20 to 22 people comfortably. Our play area is essentially a living room. Sometimes we bring out folding chairs. There’s a sofa, a TV with porn, and we usually throw down some comforters so people can sit out on the floor. Sometimes we’ll bring out some folding chairs, and we have the TV set up for porn. We provide lube for the members in case they don’t want to bring their own, or in case they forget.
We [cover the couches in] small comforters. We had a member donate 2,000 hand towels so we would have extra hand towels to hand out. We cover everything with comforters and towels and sheets. We make sure that it’s an easy clean up.
Once a month, usually the third weekend of the month, is when we’ll host. The average crowd is 15 guys a party, sometimes greater. Sometimes they’re small. Sometimes it’s eight or nine guys. We have had 22 guys in the room before. As long as everyone does a literal circle jerk and masturbates in the vertical position rather than the horizontal position, it all works out. Some guys like to lie down — that’s fine, but you just have to be careful that you don’t step on them.
We get all shapes and sizes. Most of our men have what I would call a dad bod. We do get some buff guys sometimes, all shapes and sizes as far as penises are concerned (and there’s yet again no requirement for that — we don’t care). Race is never an issue. We don’t care about that, either. It’s really, if you wanna get naked and masturbate with some men, that’s really all that we focus on.
Someone rings the doorbell, my husband greets them and brings them to our dining area, where we have the laptop set up, and he checks them in. They have to submit a Google form to be allowed in. He collects the party fee, then hands them off to me. I’m usually in the family room at that point. “Hey, this is so and so, this is my husband.” And there’s usually some other guests here.
We have a 30-minute window before the party starts, so if we have an 8 p.m. start time, we tell people to show up between 7:30 and 8. You will never walk into a party with people already naked and masturbating. We found that to be very disruptive, and a lot of guys gave us some feedback of “That’s kinda weird, you know.” And yeah, that is kind of weird. So we have always started our parties at the same time so that everybody gets naked at the same time and starts playing at the same time.
Usually, if there’s a member, someone who has been here before, they’ll help. If someone says, “Oh, I’m really nervous, I don’t know what to expect,” they’ll maybe put them at ease. The guys feel very comfortable when they are here; they feel welcome, they enjoy the experience. They like the intimacy of it; they like the fact that it’s not bullshit, like we’re not lying, we’re not saying that we’re throwing jackoff parties and we’re actually having full-blown orgies, because apparently that’s a problem in our area. I’ve heard that some of our members talk about other parties they’ve gone to in the Orlando area and they say, “Yeah, there was a special knock at the door. I had to slide a $20 bill under the door, I got into the room and this guy is fucking on the bed bareback and it’s just like, “Whoa, what?!” And of course, they posted on Craigslist, “JO party at Hotel Downtown” or whatever.
So we don’t do any of that stuff. We don’t advertise on Craigslist or anything.
Jax (Philadelphia): Everything has been cleaned. I mop the floors and I get all the sheets out and cover up all the couches with multiple layers of sheets to try and keep them from getting too damaged with all the lube. And then I buy water-based lube by the gallon, literally. And I have squirt bottles in the back for that, and I fill them up. I put out spray bottles full of water to help with clean-up around the back, and we do have hand sanitizer spread around in various places. And I get the videos set up and a sound system, so I put on music, filtered water, snacks and that’s pretty much it; it’s pretty simple.
I buy a new gallon every two months. We go through half a gallon a month, which is a lot of lube. [Laughs] We only provide water-based lube. Pretty much every other club provides Albolene. We tried that, and the clean-up is just so, so, so, so difficult for us and for the guys. It’s so hard to get off of yourself, and it’s really really hard to get off of furniture and walls and floors. So our thing is we provide water-based lube. If you want to use different kind of lube, bring it with you.
How do you regulate the space to make sure nothing bad happens?
Jax (Philadelphia): One thing I can tell you is it is really kinda bizarre how few problems we’ve had. In 24 years there was only one guy who I finally — after months and months and months of working with him in trying to understand why people were finding him really hard to deal with — I finally just said, “I’m really sorry. I’ve tried, I know you’ve tried, but this really isn’t working. I’m going to ask you if you would agree just not to come back anymore.” He was a very socially awkward person who could just not get that he was really annoying and freaking people out with his behavior.
Other than that, I mean, we occasionally get somebody who is really drunk, and for me, there’s always that judgement call of “Is this guy too drunk to let in?” But even then there never really have been any major problems. It really is astonishing. I’m not sure whether it’s the atmosphere we create or what, but there’s not really an issue. And we don’t have any official monitors in the playrooms during the parties, and I’m sure behind the curtain or whatever there’s occasionally a guy putting a dick in his mouth, briefly. And you know, it’s whatever. I am not the police. I do not want to be the police.
But everybody acts as monitors, which is one of the things I love about it. We have a lot of guys who can come to a lot of the parties, who have been coming for years, and they have no problems at all moving towards someone who’s doing something they’re not supposed to be doing and going, “Hey, buddy. You can’t do that here.”
Steve Thomas (New York): We tell people, we pretty much make it explicit the behavior we expect. We don’t police. People are pretty much self-policing. If somebody is crossing the line — occasionally people will sit down and try to give a blowjob or something — but usually the other people will stop them or one of us will stop them, but that happens very infrequently, because people pretty much know what they’re here for. If they’re interested in harder sex, they don’t come back. It runs itself pretty well. The rules are basically no insertion, oral or anal, and no fluid exchange. But there are usually combinations of guys who are jacking off, mutual masturbation, circle jerks and guys who are just in the corner watching. There’s definitely a good crowd for this sort of thing.
Sean (Orlando): We basically just mingle. Since we’re the hosts, we do this informal “Hey! Welcome to our party” and we shake their dicks, and since they’re hard, we stroke a little bit, we play with their balls. We say, “OK! Hey, well, looks like you’re having fun. OK, be right back,” and go to the next guy. We circulate.
Rule-breaking behavior has happened on occasion. Sometimes it’s noticeable. When it’s very obvious you can see, and we put a stop to it immediately. Other times we get feedback from a member. For example, we had several members e-mail us saying there was a guy at one of the parties who kept trying to shove his finger up their ass, and of course that’s not allowed. But we couldn’t necessarily tell, because he was being very discreet about it, and the guys weren’t bringing it to our attention until after the fact. But then after the first time we heard about it, we thought, “OK, we gotta keep note. We gotta pay attention. Gotta look around.” That guy actually got banned. We removed him from the list and told him not to come back. We warned him several times, and we continued to get complaints from guys that he was trying to finger them.
In this age of hook-up apps, why do we still need jackoff clubs?
Sean (Orlando): There’s still a whole audience of guys who just want to play it safe, or that is their fetish, just straight-up masturbation. I think masturbation itself is a fetish, and I know that edging is something. We have a profile on Bateworld, and I read story after story after story about guys who just edge their dicks for five, six, seven hours a day, and I’m like, “What do you do for a living? I need that job!” And that’s all they want.
Some love the opportunity to be an exhibitionist and do it in front of other people, and it’s like, “Well, come on over!” and we’ve had that happen. So I kinda group it in as a fetish in our community and also an alternative if you’re even the least bit concerned about any type of STD, because it’s safe and guys know that. I mean, there are things you can catch from a hand job, but it’s definitely safe. It’s very discreet. Some of our members are married to women or have girlfriends, and they just enjoy the male companionship of getting naked and pleasing. Usually those guys will be more of an exhibitionist, they’re not so much into being touched as they just want to be in the room masturbating while everyone else is masturbating.
Steve Thomas (New York): We appeal to the type of guy who likes public sex, who likes to be around a bunch of guys but is not comfortable with more hardcore stuff. Personally I feel very uncomfortable going to clubs even though I like oral sex, I don’t want to put something in my mouth if I don’t know where it’s been, y’know? And there are a lot of people who feel that way. So it’s a way of combining the erotic pull of public sex with safety. And those are the people we appeal to.
And I think it’s an important thing to offer, because I do think that even though the other sex clubs try to push condoms, people don’t use them consistently. Even in these days of PrEP and all of the prophylactics, I think those kinds of clubs are difficult to keep safe. The only thing that’s safer is a vow of celibacy, and we’re not all cut out for that. [Laughs]
Jax (Philadelphia): It’s important to different people for various reasons. We have men who are married to women who don’t want to take anything home. We have men who are married to men who may have agreements or not with their partners about what they’re doing outside the relationship. I’m sure there are guys who don’t have agreements, and they know if they come here and play, they don’t really have to worry about taking anything home, and so that makes it easier for them. So there’s that whole ball of wax there.
And then also, there are definitely guys who tell me that it is their only sexual outlet, and I think there are different reasons for different men for that. For some guys I think it’s just what they love; they don’t want to be doing anything else, and they found this amazing place where they can do the thing they love. There are, I think, guys who are not interested in being in a relationship, and this is just the perfect thing for them. There are guys who would like to be in relationships who aren’t. And then, again, this is really good for them.
Part of the reason I think it works so well for so many guys is that there’s something just really almost magical about jackoff club parties that is so different from any other kind of sex party. There’s just a very different vibe. It’s friendly and relaxed generally in a way that, in my experience, other sex events aren’t often. And I think a lot of that has to do with it being so simple and straightforward and low-commitment. You come the the party and there’s a bunch of guys, and they’re playing with their dicks and playing with each other’s dicks, and if you wanna play with someone you walk up and check-in, and if they’re interested, you do, and if they’re not, then you know, there’s probably another 40 or 50 or 60 guys to check in with.
And the level of commitment and the level of emotional risk I think is much lower. Again, if you go up to somebody and they say “No thanks,” well, then he just doesn’t wanna jackoff with you, it’s no big deal, and oh, look, there are three guys over there who I wanna play with. Also I think there’s something about the simplicity of it and the not having to go through all the mind games around “OK, so now we’re playing. Does he want me to suck his dick? Are we gonna fuck? Top? Bottom? Whatever?” None of that stuff matters. It’s not an issue. It’s all very simple and straightforward. I think for a lot of guys that’s just tremendously appealing; it makes it easy and tremendously fun.
What would you tell a person who feels nervous about attending a jackoff club for the first time?
Steve Thomas (New York): I get that a lot. People contact me all the time and say that they really want to come but they’re too nervous about it. And what I tell them is that we’re really a very friendly bunch of guys. The hardest part is just getting through the door. Once you get through the door, we’ve got people to greet you. Glenn (the co-host), he’s a really great host. He’s just so welcoming to everybody, and it doesn’t hurt that he has a huge cock, either. [Laughs] And the people who go there, we usually have an area for socializing, so it becomes a social club.
I also think the whole concept of nudity is kind of freeing once you get there. It can seem kind of intimidating, and people will say, “Can I wear my underwear?” and we let them. But usually, it comes off because everyone else is naked. The thing about being naked is you’ve taken away your masks. Who was it that says any clothes is basically drag? Clothes are something we do to protect ourselves and be who we wanna be. When you take away the clothes, that all disappears and you’re just you. And I’m sure that intimidates some people, but I think most people get into the spirit of the thing pretty quickly.
And there’s little attitude. It’s so unlike going into a bar. I won’t say there’s no attitude. Well, there really isn’t attitude. There are preferences, most people are very polite about it. We do emphasize the fact that if you don’t want to play with somebody, just smile and say “No thank you” rather than being rude to them, and that’s what most people do.
Jax (Philadelphia): We get guys who come to the jackoff club, and maybe they come with very fixed ideas about the kind of men they’re interested in, and then they’re playing with somebody, and then some other guy comes up who may not be the sort of guy they would play with in another situation, but you know, I mean, they’re just gonna touch each other’s dicks for three to eight minutes. So is it really that big a deal? So maybe I’ll play with that older, skinnier or fat, or light or dark guy or whatever that I might not normally play with. And if you keep coming back to the party, you start getting that sense within yourself of “Oh, actually, yeah, maybe they’re not my thing exactly, but it’s actually fun to play with these other guys who I wouldn’t ordinarily think of myself as being attracted to.
Sean (Orlando): The age thing seems to be a concern for young guys a lot. And I always get the question, “Am I gonna be jerking it in a room with a bunch of guys who can be my dad?” I usually respond back, “Well, unless you bring five of your friends, then yes, you may very well be masturbating in a room with a bunch of guys who are well into their 40s.” I can’t do anything about it.
I had one member question whether we were actually setting it up that way on purpose, like we were just a bunch of 40-somethings who are just doing a bait-and-switch to get some twinks over. No, that’s not the way it operates. We have no control over the ages that ring our doorbell, so if you want younger people showing up at the parties, then I suggest you get your friends to join and come to the party.
We did indicate on our website that if you’re 55 and older, you might want to contact us to get some feedback because we have had some older gentlemen come to our parties, some who are in their 70s and probably even older, and they can be a little aggressive. We don’t want to ban anyone from the party, but they would be a little handsy, a little too aggressive and kind of latch on to some people, and guys would be uncomfortable. If they’re really interested, they will e-mail us. We actually changed the verbiage on the FAQ page to make it a little less harsh, not to say that you can’t be a member if you’re over 55, but just to say, hey why don’t your reach out and contact us so we can give you some feedback of what we’re not looking for.
But I always tell people, give it a try. Give it more than one try, because you never know what we can expect at a party. That’s the thing. When you’re open to everybody, some parties might be heavy on people who are maybe a little overweight or a little bit more of a dad bod. You might have a party where the age might be a little more in the 50s and 40s and no 30s or 20s. You might come to a party and there’s an adonis there with a six-pack and a 12-inch cock putting on a show for everybody. So try at least more than one time.
Finally, what advice would you give to anyone who wants to set up a jackoff club of their own?
Jax (Philadelphia): The biggest challenge setting up a jackoff club anywhere is space. It’s why the clubs have gone under in a lot of cities. It’s why Rain City Jacks, one of the other super-successful clubs in the states, has had to stop meeting for a while. Finding a space can be a real challenge. Before I started the Jacks, the one thing I did find that was happening in Philadelphia is that there were these guys who were hosting what they were calling a “jackoff club.” I don’t know why they were calling them “jackoff club” because there were also guys sucking and fucking. They were not jackoff parties. And they were just renting a suite in a hotel and then heavily tipping the maid staff afterward. And they got away with it for a bunch of years, maybe three years. It was an occasional thing; maybe every two or three months they would do one. I’ve known about similar things in other cities, but there’s something about the transience of that that makes it tend to not be a long-term thing.
So, yeah, having a good space, having a space that is big enough and is laid out the right way. And then what’s really, really important is having it in an area where you’re not going to have other people fucking with you if they find out what you’re doing — neighbors and other people in the building. And it’s one of the huge challenges that I’m facing psychologically around our jackoff club — that, assuming the gentrification continues as it has around my neighborhood, I will eventually lose this space, and I have no idea where we would go afterwards.
Sean (Orlando): One thing that I’ve told other groups that have tried to start up is, if you’re holding the jackoff club because you want to masturbate with a bunch of hairless twinks and that’s what gets you off, you will fail.
