Jerker

Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of Them Dirty (commonly known simply as Jerker) is a 1986 one-act play by Robert Chesley. The two-character play traces the relationship that develops between a disabled Vietnam veteran, J. R., and a businessman, Bert, two gay men in the beginning years of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, when a diagnosis of AIDS meant an early death from complications of the disease. Although they "meet" only through a series of telephone calls, they grow from being phone sex buddies to caring friends. The play varies from the erotic to emotionally charged moments. "Jerker" can be seen as referring to masturbation and to "tear jerker". Chesley wrote the play because he believed it was "important to remove the stigma against sex that AIDS has created, and ... to remove the stigma against gay men". Jerker premiered at the Celebration Theatre on October 24, 1986, under the direction of Michael Kearns and starring David Stebbins and Joe Fraser. Jerker has subsequently been considered "one of the most important pieces of gay theater ever created".