A History of Love Among Strangers: 'Jerker' at Out Front Theatre

Arts

Jun 25

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Written and originally staged in Los Angeles in 1986, Robert Chesley’s one-act play Jerker bears a lengthy subtitle that evocatively suggests its themes and general structure; its full title is Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Phone Calls, Many of Them Dirty. Unlike other, more epically scaled dramatic depictions of the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis during the 1980s — including Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, and, more recently, Pose on FX — Jerker focuses on just two characters, a Vietnam veteran called “J.R.” and a San Francisco businessman named Bert, and the relationship that develops between them over the course of twenty phone calls. At first these calls mostly consist of verbal roleplay as each character masturbates while recounting his erotic fantasies and memories to the other, identifying each other (as many gay men do, explicitly or not) as “brothers.” As the play progresses, J.R. and Bert’s conversations become more personal and revealing, and their initial sexual connection becomes charged with a deeper intimacy. Only during the play’s final third or so does the viewer realize that Jerker is a double entendre: sure, it’s an obvious reference to jerking off, but it’s also, more subtly, an abbreviation of tearjerker.

The play’s tight dramatic focus and unabashed horniness are among the assets that translate best to the screen in Out Front Theatre’s production of Jerker, which is available to stream on-demand on the company’s website through the end of June. This particular production’s assets also undoubtedly include the often scantily clad, muscled physiques of actors Tyshawn Gooden (J.R.) and Greg Piccirilli (Bert), who appear to genuinely share vital chemistry as the play’s two central characters. Onstage, filmed in a dark theater, the two actors each occupied a bed on either side of the set, lit by spotlight. Onscreen, this broad view of J.R. and Bert is generally modified by split-screen presentation, a visual effect that feels remarkably unobtrusive given that the play is structured around a series of telephone calls. As can be reasonably expected, the sound effect for a ringing telephone and the transition music between scenes are conveyed less smoothly in virtual presentation, but the viewing experience remains satisfyingly coherent overall. It’s entirely possible to enjoy watching the play without being distracted by the fact that it was previously filmed and is not happening live in front of you.

In some ways, viewing Jerker at home — on a laptop, possibly in bed like J.R. and Bert — feels appropriate, perhaps even preferable to seeing it live. The word pornographic is not out of place in Jerker’s long subtitle: the explicit dirty talk that comprises most of the dialogue in the play’s first several scenes would be familiar not only to phone sex aficionados but also those who engage in such conversations using more recently developed digital forums such as online chat rooms and hookup apps. For all its usefulness as a document of a previous era of gay life, this relatable horny banter draws a comforting throughline across generations, offering a reminder that gay men have always found ways to say to each other, “Are you hard? Are you touching yourself?” While it remains worthwhile to consider how apps and the internet have affected gay sociality, it also feels important to remember the common experiences that have not changed, to remind ourselves that our queer desires — to kiss another man, to be tied up against a tree and edged, to coach a stranger to orgasm — are nothing new.

After half a dozen or so sessions of phone sex, a sobbing Bert reveals that a friend of his, David, is dying of AIDS in the hospital. This disclosure is a turning point in the characters’ relationship, creating an opportunity for them to tenderly reflect on the sense of sexual liberation and connection that is being viciously diminished by the onset of AIDS. “It was loving... even if you didn’t know whose cock it was in the dark, or whose asshole you were sucking,” Bert declares, “and I don’t regret a single moment of that. I’m not sorry.” This directly unapologetic attitude toward what some would reductively characterize as promiscuity distinguishes Jerker with a mark of artistic integrity, an unwillingness to sanitize or censor the lascivious details of gay men’s sex lives despite acknowledging the ravaging effects of risky sexual behavior. And yet, though it involves detailed sexual fantasies, the bond shared by J.R. and Bert is not exclusively physical. “Loving can’t be killed, it’s stronger,” J.R. says at one point. “That’s why, even though I can’t hold you, telling you I want to, it helps me.”

Near the play’s conclusion, Bert — coughing into his telephone receiver, saying he’s come down with the flu — asks J.R. to tell him a bedtime story. J.R. confesses what he says may have been his first fantasy, before he really understood what was possible sexually between two men. He weaves Bert into the story, imagining them as brothers, fairytale princes who fight their way through a dark forbidden forest to discover a castle where a beautiful man waits for them, a man “made out of magic and music” who lets them know they’re safe and holds them. During this story is the only time the physical separation between the two characters is closed, as Gooden’s J.R. crossed the stage to sit in bed with Piccirilli’s sickly Bert, in a moment tinged with magical realism. Behind them, the darkness that blankets other scenes is replaced by soft purple light. It’s the only moment I really wished I could have seen the play live. But, of course, had I seen Jerker in a theater, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to spend much of its duration, like its characters, with one hand under the covers.

Jerker is available to stream on the Out Front Theatre website until the end of June.

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Logan Lockner is a writer in Atlanta. His essays and criticism have appeared in publications including GAYLETTER, 032c, Art in America, and frieze. Previously, he was editor of Burnaway.

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