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 is a 1986 American 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".