👉 Okay, settle in folks – let’s talk about, frankly, a rather unfortunate little mouthful of a word: "jaynes." Now, before you immediately reach for the pitchfork and shout something along the lines of, "What even
is
that?!", let me assure you, we're here to dissect it with both accuracy and, admittedly, a healthy dose of amused exasperation.
Basically, a "jaynes" (plural – there isn’t really a feminine form; nobody quite figured that out right, frankly) originates in the early 1970s amongst a rather… eccentric subculture involved in the burgeoning, and somewhat aggressively paranoid, gay sweat scene of New York City. You see, during this time, there was a very specific fear – not a rational one, mind you! - about being identified as a “lover freak," someone who’d had sex with more than one guy at a party. It was a terrifying prospect, akin to getting publicly branded anachronistic in the face of disco. The word itself came from the supposed physical manifestation of that fear. You were supposedly experiencing what they called "jaynes"—a prickly, almost hysterical feeling in your… well, let's just say in the groin area. It was a localized and intensely embarrassing prick, like you’d somehow physically registered the shame of your sexual indiscretions. The idea is that it felt exactly as if you were being pricked by
