California Men’s Gathering offers campers a chance to explore themselves—or someone else!

by Ed Baker

A real sleepaway camp with 16 men to a cabin and no-frills cuisine, the California Men’s Gathering (CMG) is no White Party. There are talent shows, sweat lodges and absolutely no door locks. Men swim, hike, relax and expand their consciousness by attending gatherings and workshops designed to strengthen the spirit. On Memorial Day Weekend, the CMG offers an opportunity for more than 300 guys to escape to Fraternity Mountain. We asked ongoing communal staffer and longtime participant Ben-Andy Hein to give us a better understanding of the activities of CMG.

What goes on in this introspective male-bonding bubble?

Everything. Volunteers put together a series of community gatherings which follow the theme of the weekend: [On Memorial Day], it’s “Expanding Circles.” Workshops are voluntarily provided by participants. They might be on father issues, they might be on “Healing the Basketball Wound”—being chosen last for basketball. Something we emphasized on our [Pride] float last year was naked body-painting. If [we do it at camp] again this year, [it will be] called “Shaving Cream Hairdos and Naked Twister.” First you do shaving cream hairdos on each other, and then there’s this naked Twister game on a huge [lubed] tarp. But there’s no sex. It’s not an orgy. It’s just so much fun. People are actually falling down because they’re laughing so hard.

CMG began in 1978 as a politically focused organization for pro-feminist and mostly heterosexual men. Why have the gatherings become predominantly homosexual?

Straight-man fear is the actual answer. Our understanding is, [CMG] was [originally] a group of guys who survived Vietnam. [They] had come home and found their wives involved in consciousness raising, and [said], “Well, they’re rethinking their roles in society, maybe we ought a do the same thing.” Eventually, when I got there in ’89, the gay men apparently found it easier to tell their friends about this. We tipped the scales. The way it was expressed by the old guard was, “Uh! It’s all about sex!” If you have that many guys in camp who are willing to have sex with other guys, well of course it can be at that point. And we’d always had fun things like “Ceremony of the Wands,” which is basically a circle jerk. There were straight guys in there, but they started feeling less comfortable. We had a drop in attendance. We had to think about who we were. We do not call ourselves a gay organization because we don’t believe that that will serve us.

Some workshops are conducted in a sensual, but not sexual environment. What’s the story with “pup tents”?

The infamous “pup tents” we had till just a few years ago. When you have 300 gay guys in the camp for a weekend, they look at each other and say, “Wow, he’s cute. He lives in Northern California and I might not see him again.” So he may not be Mr. Right, but he may be Mr. Right Now. You’re sleeping in a cabin with 15 other people and [there’s] no privacy. One of our solutions was acknowledging that this was going to happen. Let’s give them a place to do this. At the same time, we were also trying the idea of a “sex tent.” Because there are some guys who like to have a group thing going. We provided condoms and lube and guidelines for playing safe. But we found that the sex tent was used and the pup tents weren’t. So, we downgraded the pup tents. Interestingly enough, the camp for spring bought surplus stuff from M.A.S.H. And so [the sex tents] are green army tents that were in M.A.S.H.

Do people form real bonds?

Most of my friends are from the Men’s Gathering. It’s almost like we speak a slightly different language. It’s not a cult, but it’s a different way of thinking about life and about what’s important. A guy at one of the bonfires down at the beach said, “I’ve just spent some time with my biological family, and it’s so much nicer to be here with my logical family.” I love that! That’s who we are. We’re kind of like a group of guys who stand shoulder to shoulder and look out on the world a little less scared.

For more information on the California Men’s Gathering, go to www.thecmg.org.