san_jose_guy started his first thread on TUSCL on July 1, 2014, and his last on September 30, 2022. In between he started 427 of them, and if you were on the board during those years you already know that a large share of them ended up in the same place: the organization he was building. He hasn't started a thread in three years now. I don't read the board much anymore, but something reminded me of him recently, and I went back through everything he posted to put together an account of the project he spent eight years describing. This is that account. It's offered in the spirit of a memorial to the idea, and with the hope that the man himself is well.
Who he was here
SJG wrote about strip clubs, but that was never the majority of what he wrote about. Of his 427 threads, about forty were tagged OT, and the real range was much wider: programmable logic devices, assembler and C++, radio astronomy, business law and taxation, municipal finance, Modern Monetary Theory, Yanis Varoufakis, Bernie Sanders, the Trump impeachments, book publishing, the philosophy of ontology, and, increasingly in the later years, Western esotericism: the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Eliphas Levi, chaos magick. He posted reading lists that ran to hundreds of titles. He linked jazz, Foreigner, Steppenwolf, and the School of Rock house band. He signed nearly every post "SJG."
On the clubs themselves, he had a consistent critique. In a 2017 thread titled "Saving The San Francisco Strip Club Scene" he argued that a single entity ran nearly every club in the city, had "figured out how strip clubs work," and had turned them into a "wanna dance" operation with "very little front room fraternizing," even though "experienced dancers make it absolutely clear that they make more money that way." His proposed remedy was not to fight for the existing clubs but "just be starting new ones." That instinct, to build the alternative rather than reform the thing in front of him, is the whole story of the organization.
2014-2015: The first mentions
The organization appears almost immediately. In November 2014, in a thread about Hong Kong-style hostess bars, he noted that its members' children "will not be treated well in normal schools," so "this organization will need to have its own schools." Through 2015 it was tied to the massage-parlor and escort women he wrote about knowing; he described "getting them involved with a larger organization I am building." There was no structure yet, only the stated intention and the word itself.
2016: The rules
In 2016 the outline hardened. "Membership is by invitation only and that is only after a careful screening." It would not be a pay-for-play arrangement: "In the organization I am building there won't be anything like P4P sex or mongering." It would not be a separatist community: "My organization is not going to be secessionist." Most members would keep outside jobs. "Our organization will be strong," he wrote, and "our organization will simplify people's lives." He also stated the promise that would anchor everything afterward: "every single guy in my organization will be able to get 365 days per year pussy saturation."
2017-2018: The full vision
These were his most prolific years, and the organization came up more than a hundred times. Whatever the subject of a thread, he would arrive at what the organization would do about it. It would run "a number of industries." It would keep "lawyers on board" and tax planners "in residence," and would "help those who want to build their own companies." It would provide "life long learning, supervised independent studies," including "accredited degrees," along with "all material needs and later life needs met." He summed it up in 2017 as "a pro-intellectual life long learning environment, and total sexual paradise."
The most durable detail was the libraries. He returned to them for years: "the kinds of libraries we are going to have in the organization I am building"; "huge buildings with acres and acres of floor space and shelving and automatic retrieval machines"; a collection a thousand times larger than the Theosophical Society's 20,000 volumes, assembled by buying used copies and taking donations. The books, he wrote, would be "another type of glue which binds the group together."
He was candid about its size. In July 2017: "it is still invitation only, and right now just a handful of local people." In August 2017: "we are at the very beginnings of building this for ourselves." In May 2019: "my organization is not incorporated yet."
Late 2018-2020: The initiatic order
Beginning in September 2018 the emphasis shifted from the commune to the ceremony. He wrote that when "a new woman member is ready for initiation, it will be much like the Castle Initiation in Story of O." By late 2019 he described the structure as "a think tank with many sections," with close associates "reading the necessary books, reporting on them to the group, and also taking on responsibilities for the planning and running of the organization." His reading moved to the history of sex-magic orders, and in February 2020 he wrote his fullest statement on the subject, tying the initiation to the 1930s Paris order of Maria de Naglowska while insisting his own version would not include her Satanic altar or Story of O's sadomasochism. "My group will be very low profile," he added. When another member asked that month how many members he had after six years, he answered: "Things happen in stages, not all at once." Three weeks later the clubs closed for COVID.
2021-2022: The last threads
In his final year of posting the organization was described almost entirely through its initiation rites, now written in the present and past tense as if underway, with priestesses, uniforms, and "four advocates" assigned to each member for education, housing, career, and philosophy. He claimed a lineage running through the Golden Dawn, the O.T.O., Fraternitas Saturni, and Naglowska's Order of the Golden Arrow. His last three threads, in September 2022, opened with accusations that several members were attacking the site. After September 30, 2022, he started no more. He continued to reply in older threads for a time, and then stopped.
What it was
Across eight years the organization never had a name, an address, a charter, or a single member he identified besides himself. It was always "the organization I am building," always "in stages." What it did have was a remarkably stable set of commitments: invitation only; no money changing hands for sex; outside employment; education for life; libraries; security in old age; and, for the men, unlimited sexual access to the women, who were to be transformed by initiation into willing partners in that arrangement. Readers can judge the last of those for themselves. What is not in doubt is that he believed in it, and that he kept building it, in words, every day he was here.
In July 2020 a member posted asking how to join an organization in California, what the membership requirements were, and whether there was an initiation ceremony. SJG answered him plainly: "Just a handful of people now. Nothing on paper, no incorporation. But it will always be just invitation only, and keeping underwraps for as long as possible. If interested, keep in touch."
Wherever he is, I hope he's still reading.
Comments