Honour, Glory and Safe Sex in Durban

(This article was published in 1994 in Living Africa Magazine. It evoked a flood of letters. Many guys enjoyed it but a lot of women were offended and couldn't understand how my wife could continue to stay with me. I sometimes wonder about that as well -- we've been married for over 30 years -- but I've come to realise it's probably all due to my boyish good looks.)

"This is serious stuff," I said. My pep talks to the team always start like that. "No messing around. We've got one and only one objective: to come back covered in glory!"
A little background. There are four of us involved in a sport that takes us around the country to various provincial championships. I am nearer 40 than 30, write and do training for a living and am a reasonably big guy. For that matter we're all pretty big guys, in fact you could say we're under-tall - except Dudley, but more about him later. Then there is Andy, younger than me by a year or two but considerably heavier, with a big belly. Harry is the third of the disciples, an ex-policeman, with an old time apartheid cop's temper and disposition. Though not as big as Andy, he too is no jockey, with a third trimester tum.
And then we come to Dudley. Studley Dudley, the youngest of our crew, having just turned 27. He comes from an obscenely wealthy family and is the general manger of one of the family companies. His parents are conservative in their outlook so I guess it is possible the cradles could have been switched in the nursery all those years ago. By day Dudley is a hard worker in Dad's factory, slaving away diligently, but at night he is a male stripper with horny housewives rubbing oil on his body and pushing fistfuls of lolly and phone numbers into his G-string.

Tupperware parties

Dudley works the Tupperware party circuit. The "yes darling, Lynette and I are just going to another Tupperware party"..."Oh my Denise, who needs a man when you can have Danny the Dolphin!" scene.
By all accounts the women love Dudley. He gets to see and examine more married women than the local gynaecologist. He's built like a brick outhouse... a Chippendale. He can genuinely do 70 press-ups in a minute and like Sam Malone of Cheers, he does not drink.
So there we are, a strange team: three outta shape barflies with Penthouse-like fantasies that never come true and a Mr Universe who has to beat off women with a club.
And so the games began. We set off to take part in the Natal championships, a serious event with reputations and prestige at stake. Hell, we had good intentions: no mucking about, just serious competition. That lasted all of 15 minutes and then the war stories started and the hairier they got the hornier we got.
We were booked into a little hotel in the Natal midlands that the proprietor had assured me was very nice and cosy. It sounded idyllic, a little romantic getaway where we could mentally tune up for the challenges that lay ahead.
That is until we told others of our intended place of accommodation.
"You've gotta be out of your skulls!" was perhaps the gentlest of the warnings. "You'll be up all night trying to repel boarders!"
Of course we didn't believe any of that. Gee the guy on the phone told us it was nice and cosy and he wouldn't lie to us.

In search of adventure

And so with pure thoughts, resolve in our hearts and a boot-load of beers (mineral water for Dudley, "my body is a temple") we sallied forth in search of cosy accommodation and adventure.
Andy drove. It was his car and he wasn't taking any chances with us, while we (excluding Dudley) quietly got plastered and lied about how many women we'd laid.
"Wadda ya mean I can't drive?" belched Harry, enveloping us in beery fumes. "I drove when I was in the police.
He made a grab for the steering wheel but was pulled off by Dudley as the car veered across the road.
"Well screw you too," he mumbled and sat in the corner sulking and burping like a bullfrog that had OD'd on liver salts.
We ran out of beer just as we began the long, downhill swoop into Pietermaritzburg.
"I told you we should have packed in more," grumbled Harry. He was beginning to look ragged now. Five o'clock shadow beginning to look like night. "But does anybody listen to me? Nooo!" He laced the negative with heavy inflexion. "What do I know...I'm just an ex-cop."
"Stop the car!" I yelled.
Andy jammed the brakes and we slid sideways onto the verge of the highway, scoring rubber skidlines onto the asphalt.
"What the hell!" he shouted, struggling to keep control of the vehicle. "Don't tell me Harry's going to puke."
"No, I just have to pee," I said somewhat sheepishly. The sage spoke the truth when he said man does not buy beer he just rents it.
"Dammit man, you can't stop here," said Dudley, his voice a little anxious. He was new to the game and this was his first trip with the rest of us.
"It's either that or pee in the car," I said, already out and unzipping my fly.
"Just get done so we can get out of here and check in at the hotel," snapped Andy. Always the father figure and the voice of reason he was beginning to feel the heat from the crazies in the back.
"We've got to get more beer first," slurred Harry.
We had our first feelings of foreboding when we drove into the little town in the Natal midlands. (It shall remain nameless for fear of legal consequences and letters from an irate mayor.) There were only two other white faces to be seen. An old wrinkled crone with a face like an albino prune and the other, a guy on crutches. (Obviously too old and too crippled to get out.)
Now this isn't a racist thing. Let's put the time into perspective. It was four months before South Africa's first all-party general elections. The battle between the ANC and Inkatha was going full-tilt and a State of Emergency had been declared in Kwa Zulu/Natal. Having a white skin counted for beans. For that matter, having a black skin counted even less.
We took one look at the motel, turned our noses at the stale smell of urine in the lobby, made a quick stop at the off-sales and beat a track to Durban. It meant a round trip of about 140-km a day but what the hell? We were in civilization. We checked into the Holiday Inn and were allocated one of those one-room, two double beds, four-guys-in-a-room, rooms. But we didn't care. We were saving money and we were going to party until the blood vessels in our eyes popped.

Sleeping arrangements

I ordered up a couple of beers for supper and we discussed sleeping arrangements.
I don't care what anyone says; being in a double bed with another guy just doesn't feel natural. I guess we're all afraid that somewhere within us may lurk a little latent homosexuality.
"I don't care who I sleep with," said Harry. He'd hit his second wind and was well into party mode.
"Yaaaaah!" he screamed in a wild shriek as he dived across the bed onto Andy and began planting wet kisses on his cheeks. "I want to sleep with Andy baby!"
"Get away you pig!" screamed Andy, in a volume I was sure would bring the manager.
"Keep it down guys," I pleaded in a kind of half-whisper. "You'll get us thrown out of here!"
"Turn the TV up then," said Harry as he sat on top of Andy. "That way they won't hear us shout and they won't hear little Andy squeal."
He rubbed his rough, sandpapery cheeks against Andy then bit him on the butt.
Yep, no doubt about it, Harry was flying.
"Don't talk to me, talk to my lawyer," Harry sang as he wandered around in a pair of underpants, his hairy belly bulging over the waistband. "I gotta unload."
"Well close the bloody door this time," shouted Dudley. "I'm going to have eat just now."
I was restless that night. I suppose that's always the case when you sleep with a strange man for the first time. We tossed a coin and I got to sleep in the same bed as Dudley, who first had to do push-ups and sit-ups before we retired. I woke often, afraid to turn over normally in case I brushed up against him and he thought I was queer or something.
In the next bed Harry snored while Andy had gas. Eventually I must have fallen asleep for I woke with a start. An arm slipped around me and an unshaven face nuzzled up against my back. I lay there, too terrified to move. My worst nightmare had become a reality - Dudley was a fag! Every fibre in my body was taut as a banjo string and my mind whirled in confusion. What to do?
I lay there waiting for the hand to move or for the little kisses to be planted on the back of my neck. At least his breath wouldn't reek of booze, I thought. But nothing happened. He lay still, obviously dreaming he was back home.
"Dudley! It's me," I yelled as I leapt out of bed and switched on the lights. The others woke and stared at me bleary-eyed.
"What's going on?"
"Dudley's trying to fondle me."
"Ag no, never!" You're kidding. You must be dreaming. Turn the lights off and go back to sleep"
"Not before..." I said, as I ripped the top blanket off the bed and rolled it into a long, thin sausage, "I do this!"
With a flourish I laid it in the bed between us.
I pointed to his side: "That's yours and this is mine. Any bit of you that comes onto my side will be ripped off!"

Let's go whoring!

Over dinner the next evening we discussed our options.
"Competition starts early tomorrow so we'd better be fresh," said Andy as he tackled a monkey-gland steak with relish.
"Stuff that, I vote we go whoring," suggested Harry.
"Let's be democratic," I suggested. I wanted to get out of the restaurant. Harry was demanding a balloon from the waitress.
"All in favour of going to bed early to be fresh for the competition tomorrow, raise your hand."
Andy lifted his right hand and waved his fork in the air.
"Right, all in favour of whoring, raise your hand."
Four hands went up.
"I thought you wanted to go to bed early," Dudley accused Andy. We all stared at him.
"What can I say?" he asked sheepishly. "I guess I changed my mind."
"Yep," I said, "these are my principles and if you don't like them I have another set."

Sources

Harry knew all the places and a whole bunch of whores in Durban. "When you're a cop you've got to have sources," he explained. "I just kept mine.
To cut a long story short we ended up at a massage parlor sited on the way to the harbor. In the pile of slags standing at the bar, smiling at us and trying to look like Kim Basingers, were two that actually were not bad. We sidled over, gunslingers from outta town, ready to sow some serious wild oats. Our choice made, the other whores went back to watching a video playing at maximum decibels on a battered Blaupunkt television.
"So what do you boys do?" asked Bambi or Fifi (she had a name that had something to do with an animal).
"Er...um...well we're down here for...." before I could finish explaining about the provincial championships, Dudley jabbed me in the ribs with his elbow with such force it left me gasping for air like a beached mackerel.
"We're game farmers down for a tourism conference," he butted in.
The whores' eyes lit up, the smell of big money and horny hayseeds obviously intoxicating.
"Really? Well yes, now that I look at you, you do look kind of rugged." She paused as she took a swig of her drink, trying not altogether successfully to look seductive as she peered over a Klipdrift Brandy and Coke.
"Where are your farms and are they big?"
"In the northern Transvaal, up against the Limpopo (river), " said Dudley, "and no they're not all that big although one does take four days to drive across from edge to edge."
"Jeez," she said, her voice breathless. She put her hand onto his upper thigh. "You married?"
Dudley shook his head and you could almost see the possibilities as they flashed through her mind.

Be gentle

Harry pulled her into his lap, running his hands up under her skirt.
"It's very sad. Be gentle and kind to him," he whispered. He indicated to Dudley. "His wife recently died while giving birth to their first child - a son who was to take over the farms. Little Frikkie was stillborn so now there's no heir and he's vulnerable and looking for a wife.
"Ag shame," she said and I could have sworn I saw a tear in the corner of her eye, though I guess that could have been a trick of the ultra-violet light.
In the meantime Andy and I were in the process of seducing - if you consider haggling over a price as seducing - the other whore. She was small and girlish, through close scrutiny revealed she obviously had a few miles on the old odometer. Yet, like 65 Mustang she could still get your revs up. Jet-black hair stretched down her back to where it just kissed the tight little buns, wrapped in gold spandex ski-pants.
"You've got to be kidding," I said. "We don't want to buy you. We just want to rent you."
The massage rooms were upstairs, above the main lounge area. Entry was via a dingy passage with a heavy steel security gate, and a particularly large Zulu cradling a pick-handle acted as bastion.'
"To keep the police out," said Bambi or Fifi, but I could not help wondering if it was not also to keep the steamers in and prevent them from leaving without paying.

Cubicles

To call them rooms was generous. They were little cubicles with a single waist-high massage bed in the middle. You could touch both sidewalls while sitting on the bed. But then they weren't really walls either. Rather hardboard partitions that, if you stood on your tiptoes, could be peered over. You didn't even have to keep quiet to hear the guy next door.
"I've just had a lekker garlic steak," I heard some guy tell a girl next door.
"Well I'm definitely not going to kiss you then," replied a woman's voice. "But I'll do oral for a hundred."
Next to the bed was the customary Johnson's baby oil, talcum powder, tissues, towel and deodorant.
"Okay baby, what's it going to be?" Bambi or Fifi asked me. She'd undressed by now and though her body was beginning to show signs of wear from almost 10 years in the game she was still a handsome woman.
"I don't do anything kinky and I don't kiss on the mouth. You can't hit me but for an extra two hundred, I'll spank you."
"I'll take the chef's special," I replied, trying to act cool. It flashed over the top of her head.
"Huh?"
"The full-house, the Dagwood, balls to the wall, pedal to the metal, the big cahunah."
"Huh?"
"I want to..." I whispered so the guy next door would not hear me.
"Okay, well why didn't you say so?"
"What's that?"
"A condom."
I knew I was screwed. That was me. Blown out of the water, Gone. A has-been. I just have to hear the word 'condom' and the flag won't fly.
She was obviously a pro, but even with her best ministrations it was no use. Mr. Happy had died and it was going to take a crane to raise him from the dead. It's a real bummer when every time you close your eyes your wife and kids are standing in the room wagging accusing fingers at you while thousands of Pacman-like AIDS spores snap at your crotch.
"You're still going to have to pay," she said, finally giving up.
"That's okay, but please don't tell the other guys."
"For an extra hundred I'll walk out of here bow-legged and panting," she said.