According to a San Diego State University report shared by CNN, the development of technology and communications has meant that binging a sexy series has become more palatable than intercourse.īoth Nacho and Paul speak of the clubs as more romantic than sexual. It’s not just due to the pandemic: sex among young people has been on a downward trend since the middle of the last decade. Meanwhile the president of the World Association for Sexual Health confirms that there is more masturbation and less sex between couples than ever before. Masturbation is still described by the Catholic Church as “an intrinsically and gravely disordered act.” That is, physical contact between men, especially if they are heterosexual, is still taboo. Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images Painting depicting a Finnish sauna in the 19th century. No shame.”īreaking down shame is critical to both Nacho G. Nacho adds that “between orgasm and orgasm we always chat, as if we were old friends, without bad feelings. “He stays on to repeat as many times as he wants or can during the three hours that each event lasts.” “Usually, when a member finishes, he doesn’t leave,” explains Nacho. There is music, usually soft jazz, and dim, indirect lighting. Two giant screens broadcast videos of men masturbating. The club is decorated with graffiti and is equipped with two toilets, security lockers for valuables, clothes horses and large armchairs. The project Pajas Entre Colegas (or, Handjobs Between Friends) has been going on for years, but when private homes became too small for meetings, Nacho found a 100 square-meter former cocktail bar in the city of Alcorcón with capacity for 70 people. Nacho G, 43, has just created one more in the Madrid region in Spain.
So he decided to create one himself, called Rain City Jacks.Īccording to specialist website The Bator Blog, there are 18 clubs of this type in the United States, two in Australia, two in Canada and one in the United Kingdom. He and his partner had moved to Seattle and there was no such place like the one in Chicago. Ten years later, Paul sought a return to the clubs. Soon after, Paul got a boyfriend (now his husband) and left the club. No alcohol, no drugs, no fruitless searches, no power games, no negotiations of who would be active or passive, no fear of AIDS. Here adult men of all age ranges gathered to masturbate, either alone or with each other. He was in his early twenties when he first stumbled upon a “jack off club,” attending every event for the forthcoming year. George Wesley Bellows (coloreado de Blanca López)Īccording to the masturbation club’s creators, the men who attend are not seeking sex so much as a physical and spiritual connection between men that is inhibited by social norms.Ī gay man in his fifties, Paul Rosenberg is a product of a 1970s upbringing in a multicultural neighbourhood outside Chicago.
Illustration of men sharing conversation in a sauna in 1917.