Passings: Jok Church Remembered

He certainly was easy to spot at community events crowded with leathermen: he was the short dude in red...leather.  He was also active in the fisting community, and that is how I came actually to meet him, but in the past week reflecting upon Jok's life and death, I realize that he had been part of my life off and on for decades, although I didn't know it at the time.  Jok Church died of a heart attack last week and my days since have been filled with recollection and reflection.

I first heard Jok on the radio when I was growing up in Sacramento and where he worked to establish and drive KZAP which was about as weird as Sacramento allowed in those days.  That alternative radio station and its involvement in community affairs helped to shape Sacramento into what it has become since.  In the those days, Sacramento pretended to be a small farm town full of hicks.  KZAP was the breath of fresh air; first the air waves, then the kids who grew up there and changed the place.  In a way, Jok influenced my own life without my knowing it.  Even now I remember KZAP.  From there, he went to a radio station in San Rafael, and as I reflect on this information supplied by leather impresario Larry Shockey, I have come to realize that Jok and I tricked at the Post Street Baths in San Francisco, sometime in the early 80's back in the pre-condom era.  We had some real nice sex, and chatted a bit afterwards when he mentioned he worked at a San Rafael radio station, which I remembered after all these years because it was like...pretty esoteric...he didn't seem like the type.  But he was short, cute and with a great ass and as it follows, a vigorous bottom.  I'm getting a little hard as I write this.  Guys, he was a really nice guy.

The times were not only pre-condom; they were pre-internet and Jok's best years were ahead of him.
The layout at his house, a few steps east of Castro Street, is equipped with everything required for a sophisticated digital graphic studio of a man who probably bought the very first MAC.  I'm guessing that Jok could see the future in this innovation and all of its potential.  A pioneer of the Internet Age, he maintained close relationships forged from early associations with Apple, Lucasfilm, Adobe and Google.  Jok created cartoons for children's cable TV, and comic characters Beakman and Jax, this information brought to my attention by fellow mourners, for when I came to know Jok through the fisting community, he simply said he was a 'writer of children's books' and that is how I remember him.

I have blogged about our fisting adventures without actually naming him.  I'm doing so now: he was the original and literal Hardass, and one of the most challenging bottoms of my fisting career and certainly the most intense.  He had lived through some surgery which resulted in a very unusual asshole.  And as far as fisting went, imagine trying to fist a small space between two bricks and that is what it was like fisting Jok.  And we didn't care, although we had to prepare ourselves mentally.  Like I said, it was intense.  Jok accepted all of this and told me everything before I stuffed so much as a pinkie up there.  He knew what he wanted and how to get it done: with Jok I learned how to lube his ass with a caulking gun from Lowe's.

R.I.P., sweetie.  I'll never forget ya.

Billy Twee