''The Phallos Must Be Seen''

Some of the letters I get from readers just make my want to whip my dick out and start masturbating. Letters like this one, for instance:

I came across your site a couple of days ago. I have spent my spare time reading and jacking. I wanted to let you know what a great site you have. I have forwarded it to a few of my buds. I have read about 1/10 of site and plan to spend the weekend reading and jacking with the rest. Sending a pic to show the results of about one hour of reading.

Thanks for the picture, buddy; I still haven't quite gotten my mind around the whole Prince Albert concept yet -- I mean, ouch -- but that stiff dick looks hot anyway, and you can bet that the sight of your hot sperm glistening on that hairy torso is going to make a lot of my readers very happy.

Other letters, though, hit me on a more intellectual level, which is just as gratifying, because these letters confirm that I'm not alone in my feelings about the relationship between penis worship and a personal sense of one's own masculinity. Here's a great example from a guy who claims he's ''not a writer'' -- I think he has a gift for vivid description, though:

Dear Jack,
I recently stumbled upon your Brooklyn Jack site through a link on Clubstrokes BBS. First,I really enjoy your writing! To find great sentences wrapped around my absolute favorite topic is very exciting. I think there aren't that many true masturbators in the world and amongst them even fewer good writers.
I am not a writer; I am an excellent masturbator though. Earlier today I was reading a paragraph of yours-- you were describing walking your dog, and thinking about masturbating, going on to describe how most men would be fantasizing about something as a prelude to masturbation,and that you were thinking about the act itself. This has always been true for me. My boner gives me a boner. Nothing Beats Beating Off. Men strokin' together is the best.

Buddy, I have been trying to come up with a good glossary definition for Masturbator -- i.e., the distinctive sub-species of the human male that can be contrasted to the bland majority of guys who merely like to jack off. I'm thinking that ''my boner gives me a boner'' is definitely a crucial part of the definition. Porn is a lot of fun, of course, but a real Masturbator is utterly awed by the magnificence of his own erect penis, and can push himself to new heights of ecstasy simply by reflecting on how wonderful it is to be a male, to see such a splendid shaft, beautiful, hard, and strong, emerging from his own hairy groin -- the penis that will reward you with the bliss of orgasm and the hot gift of male seed if you stroke it just right. The guy continues:

When I was 14, 15, 16, I managed to instigate many circle jerks with four other guys in my neighborhood in the woods behind our neighborhood. It was great.It all happened too fast. Our fists stroked our teenage hard-ons in swift frenzy. I think we were racing to see who could shoot first.

Damn... when I was in junior high school, I made several concerted efforts to start a circle jerk with some friends of mine who were also fellow members of Boy Scout Troop 104, which was chartered at the Kadena U.S. Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. Now, you might think: horny pubescent boys, campouts -- how could a circle jerk not happen? But plainly I just wasn't ballsy enough, or maybe my friends' mothers dosed their Cap'n Crunch® with saltpeter, because I tried steering the conversation towards masturbation on a number of occasions; I tried freakin' Truth or Dare and got all the way to actually flashing our willies at each other, I even sat around with these guys looking at stolen Hustler magazines (which had ''couples'' photo spreads with porn actresses just about to take a man's dong in their mouths) in this fort we made under the massive bough of a banyan tree, and still nothing ever happened, dammit! Anyway, back to the letter, and we're coming up on my favorite part:

The original concept of the N Y Jacks was that the human erection was too beautiful to hide in any orifice. The best circle jerk I ever participated in was New Years Eve 1999 at the N Y Jacks. There were considerably fewer guys there that night than usual. The room was much brighter. There were serious mastubators there. Guys who were really into strokin' their erections, watching other men masturbate, and being watched. It was amazing. It was so beautiful. It was different than most nights at the Jacks, in that there weren't any guys standing around cruising, judging, waiting to hook up with an appropriate partner. They came to celebrate Hard Penis. I once read "Phallos must be seen" in a small book entitled, what else, Phallos.

Wow. That first sentence bears repeating: The original concept of the N Y Jacks was that the human erection was too beautiful to hide in any orifice. I didn't become sexually active until the early '90s, and when I first heard the term ''J/O club,'' my assumption was that such, uh, institutions had come into existence as a response to AIDS. Of course, as I've gotten older and more experienced, I've come to see the inherent safeness of mutual masturbation as a side benefit -- my primary reason for making mutual masturbation and frot my overwhelmingly preferred forms of male/male sex is that I find these activities mindblowingly hot. So I find a satisfaction in knowing that NYJacks was started not chiefly with the goal of being ''anti-disease,'' but rather ''pro-PENIS.'' I do know what you mean when say that a typical night at NYJacks involves a lot of ''standing around, cruising, and judging.'' And I'm not surprised that the atmosphere was vastly better when only serious Masturbators were present. When every man there was completely focused on the Ritual -- and it is a Ritual -- of reciprocal penis display and worship.