On a Tuesday evening earlier this month, I was walking down First Avenue South in Pioneer Square, in the direction of the stadiums. The other pedestrians on the sidewalk included a cute bearded guy in slacks and leather shoes, a bald guy in a green T-shirt, and a hipster in all black.
Right before we got to a shop selling Seahawks and Sounders jerseys, all three of them ducked into a nondescript brick building with Gallery Erato written on the window. We were all going to Rain City Jacks, a men’s jack-off club that has been gathering in various spaces throughout Seattle since 2005. The very first meet-up was in a suite at the Silver Cloud Hotel on Capitol Hill, and only five men showed up. But on June 11 at Gallery Erato, 165 men showed up to celebrate the club’s 14th anniversary.
Because of the club’s strict rules—no oral sex, no anal sex, nothing going inside anyone’s anything—all kinds of guys show up, not just gay guys. “I ask every now and then,” the club’s founder, Paul Rosenberg, 60, told me. “It’s actually 10 percent straight, 25 percent bi, and 65 percent gay.”
Really? Is that 10 percent actually straight? “I’ve talked to some of those guys, and they are,” said Rosenberg, who in his professional life used to work for Starbucks corporate and long before that was a vocalist at a dinner theater in Aspen, Colorado. “I keep hearing the term ‘male bonding.’ It’s the best male bonding they’ve ever experienced. They feel a connection with other men that they didn’t imagine was possible.”
New members go through a brief orientation on their first visit, stressing the confidentiality of the club—if you see someone from the club out in the real world, you’re supposed to pretend you don’t know them—and then they stash their clothes in lockers downstairs. Up in the play space, the room is filled with various things to sit on: couches, chairs, chaises, beanbag chairs, benches, ottomans, a massage table. Everything is covered in canvas sheets. Membership dues—$20 for a 30-day trial, $40 for a year membership—pay for the club’s laundry service, venue rental, and liability insurance.
Guys sit around in a room of exposed brick walls jacking off and watching others jack off. You can help others jack off if they give you permission. There are jack-off videos projected onto a big screen. There are so many different ages, body types, and kinds of cocks, it’s hard to describe. There was also, at the anniversary party, “our first open trans man,” Rosenberg said. “I felt like a proud papa.”
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“I’ve learned not to label people so much,” Tim, one of the volunteers, told me.
“Sometimes on a Sunday, there’s a Seahawks game and there will be hundreds of people streaming past, and none of them have any idea what we’re doing on the other side of that door,” said Marty, another volunteer. “I joke with Paul: We need to start handing out flyers to all the hot straight dads.”
“The number of guys who are okay with getting together in this way with other guys has definitely increased,” said a third volunteer, Michael, who’s been attending meet-ups since 2006.
Being in the club is like stepping into another dimension, a place where Trump doesn’t exist, a place that feels almost sacred in its humanism. Labels like “gay” and “straight” are just as irrelevant here as labels like “Republican” and “Democrat.” Rosenberg told me: “It feels like a great escape from all those concerns. It’s an escape from everything else. I just have a connection in the moment.”
Where else can human beings exist in 2019 without being chopped up into political categories? Where else can you appreciate and celebrate men’s bodies without having to explain your identity? “In my life, I have a lot of biases and resentments about CEOs and conservatives,” Rosenberg said, taking the idea a step further, “and I’m sure we’ve had guys who are really rich or really conservative. But at our club, it just doesn’t matter. I really like how I connect with men and men’s sexuality here.”
Still, what would a straight guy get out of an all-male jack-off club? “Sometimes they want to check under the hood and show off. They know a woman doesn’t want to check out their big dick, but guys will!” Marty said. “They’re going to get more validation from other guys—gay or straight. I remember a big dude, six-foot-four, huge cock, and he just stood there in the middle of the room and let everyone worship him. And touch him. He just wanted to be admired. He looked like a Marine.”
It’s a new experience for gay guys, too, not being divided up into categories. “There are no tops and no bottoms,” Rosenberg said. “It doesn’t exist for this club. That’s irrelevant here. And I love that. Consent is all that matters, and everything else doesn’t.”
“And there’s a greater degree of comfort knowing that no one’s drinking,” Michael said. “This is a bit more of a safe space. It’s one of the few places people can get together socially and sexually and not have toxins present.”
As for the rule that you can only jack off, Marty pointed out: “Sometimes the restrictions of what you can or can’t do add to the tension and make it extra hot. And you never have to worry that a few days later, you’re going to get that phone call that someone at the party gave you something. You get to have that intense connection—”
“Without the anxiety,” said Michael, finishing his sentence.
“Knowing what the expectations are can be freeing in a whole new way,” said Tim, whereas a gay bathhouse “doesn’t have the same group camaraderie. If I go to a bathhouse, I just spend all this time walking around and not connecting and doing nothing.”
“In a bathhouse, there’s a certain desperation,” Marty agreed. “A desperation to get fucked or to fuck someone. But here you can just sit in the corner and watch if you want.”
I did a lot of watching at the 14th anniversary party, but I also had interactions with half a dozen guys. Purely for anthropological reasons, of course. And journalistic reasons. Also, I wanted to see what it was like letting someone come all over my chest in front of 163 other people. An old friend I ran into obliged. Before that happened, we were sitting side by side on a love seat watching a group of guys standing in a sports huddle, whispering to themselves and stroking. One of their elbows kept accidentally (gently) jostling a painting of a naked woman on Gallery Erato’s wall. The gallery is run by the Pan-Eros Foundation, which hosts and produces events around art, sex, and sexuality.
Rain City Jacks convenes on Tuesday nights and Sunday afternoons on alternating weeks—see raincityjacks.org for the calendar. The typical turnout for a party is about 70 people, and the Sunday afternoon parties are said to be slightly better attended than Tuesday nights.
“It’s wholesome, clean fun,” Marty said, with a gleam in his eye. “It’s like going to church for me on Sunday.”
