Flirting with bondage is a global trend. And, with the advent of sex shops and porn mags, South Africa is following suit. FRED DE VRIES reports
IT is with a mixture of disdain, hostility and curiosity that passersby, on their way to a night of disco in nearby clubs, regard the weird tribal gathering outside The Fridge. It’s Saturday night in Pretorius Street, and a long queue has formed at the steps which lead down to Pretoria’s one and only underground club. Apart from the usual ashen-faced youngsters dressed in black, there’s lots of leather, PVC, chains and black lace around — even the odd pair of handcuffs and a whip.
Tonight the Fridge is hosting a bondage party, under the banner of “Happiness in Slavery”. The poster for the event has a drawing of a voluptuous woman in tight, black straps. The promise is sex, sweat and submission, accompanied by loud, industrial music.
Happiness in Slavery is the title of a banned Nine Inch Nails video, explains The Fridge’s Helgard de Barros inside the dark and smoky basement. This video — which is screened at The Fridge — features a performance artist who is torn apart by machines.
More pain than pleasure, perhaps, but this is part of the S&M/bondage cult that is attracting young trendies not seduced by “wave-your-arms-in-ecstasy” techno raves. “We’ve taken rave culture and linked it to other music and a different sub-culture,” explains De Barros, who got the idea from German and British videos about clubs where “they have people spanking each other and a barman chained to the bar”.
Compared to that, events in The Fridge tonight are quite innocent. De Barros says: “People here don’t really live the bondage lifestyle yet. They do it to upset their parents. And handcuffs are certain to annoy your old man.”
Bondage and rock music have always gone hand in hand — from the Sixties, when Lou Reed wrote Venus in Furs for the Velvet Underground, through early punk with Adam and the Ants dressed up in leather and singing Whip in My Valise, to Nineties industrial band Nine Inch Nails, which has made bondage almost mainstream.
Bondage is part of S&M. It’s about dominance and submission in sex, and usually involves tying up a partner and expressing humility, vulnerability or dominance through clothes and fetishes. It doesn’t necessarily involve pain.
Flirting with S&M and bondage is a global trend, particularly in Europe. And with the emergence of sex shops, porn magazines and bands like Nine Inch Nails, South Africa is following suit. Artist Belinda Blignaut successfully worked with the concept of sexual submission when she plastered posters all over Johannesburg showing her vulnerable, naked body, red tape around her breasts, hands tied behind her back, and her telephone number. “Physical experiments enhance the mental side,” she says, professing a strong fascination with S&M.
And about a year ago, Johannesburg got its first bondage shop. “For young people, it’s almost purely a fashion,” says the manager of Rockey Street’s Twin Peaks, where chains and straps decorate one side, porn mags, including the S&M-oriented Nugget, the other. “But real S&M is also on the increase. There’s a big demand for books, videos and clubs.”
Twin Peaks attracts mostly men, sometimes couples and a few single females, says the manager. A client once tried to get her to catch him masturbating, call him “a naughty boy” and whip him a bit. But this was an exception. As a customer explains: “People often get the wrong idea about S&M. It’s not something dirty. It’s basically a game.”
The man declines to give his name, saying “his clients wouldn’t be too pleased”. It turns out he’s a well- respected, Afrikaans-speaking professional.
This, says London-based S&M expert Sophie Walker, is typical Nineties stuff. “One of the phenomena (of the Nineties) is that people who work very hard and are stressed out get involved in submission games. For them, it’s a great feeling to throw themselves at someone’s mercy and do away with all responsibility. It’s a reversal of everyday life.”
But, in general, she attributes the growing Western interest in S&M to an interplay of fashionability (from fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier to singer Madonna) with an increase in leisure time. “Of course, it has existed for hundreds of years. But when people have more time and money to spend on leisure and playing games, sex comes in,” she says. In South Africa, the advent of non-racial democracy has opened our minds to things other than politics and racial violence.
But fear of Aids also plays an important role. Walker says: “S&M gives people in long-term relationships the chance to taste forbidden fruit and add a bit of naughtiness to their sex lives without committing adultery. Also, bondage parties are very sexual without involving actual sex.”
And this is exactly what makes the Pretoria party such a tantalising experience. There’s a perpetual promise of sex, a kinky kind of permissiveness, without anyone getting obnoxious. “It’s so cool here,” grins someone in black lace. “Everyone’s just doing what they want.”
And there’s lots to see, too. The barmen, in true Nine Inch Nails fashion, wear fishnet shirts and have pierced nipples. And in the middle of the club hangs a cage, with chains that rattle in a perverse way as the girls inside, dressed in torn stockings and skin-tight, black PVC gear, dance and touch each other to the sounds of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails.
Two of the three caged girls are students at Tukkies. “It’s great to get all the attention while acting out your dreams,” says Elaine (20), who has a pierced bellybutton and plenty of tattoos. She comes from Orkney and says her conservative parents don’t have a clue that she’s dancing here tonight dressed like a
Her blonde companion, Sandy (21), says she got into bondage three years ago through magazines. Asked if she practices “tie me up, tie me down” fantasies at home, her smile says it all.
Watching the dancers is Berlin-born, raven-haired Anna (23), who, in her lethal stilettos and patent-leather top, is by far the best dressed person in The Fridge tonight. She sells PVC clothes at fleamarkets. She admits to using bondage in her sex life. “It’s all about being a dominatrix and demonstrating you’re not scared. It’s great to show that you, as a woman, are in power. More girls should dress like us”
Used to Berlin parties, she finds the Pretoria club a bit disappointing. “The girls in the cage must wear high heels, tie each other up, touch each other much more, and take some of their clothes off,” she
And that, in a very light way, is more or less what happens as the evening develops. The girls get more and more carried away, and more and more sexual in their movements. “It’s improving,” smiles Anna later.
And it does not leave the audience indifferent either. As one of the girls watching the shaking cage confesses: “Do you want an honest answer? Yes, I do find it sexually stimulating.”
For the real thing, visit Spain
Jean-Pierre Rossouw MOVEABLE FEAST
VISITING a new restaurant always generates feelings of anticipation, particularly if you have had prior reports about the place. But it is always up to the restaurant and the occasion to transform one’s first reactions into real experience. In retrospect, these feelings of anticipation are cast in a good or bad light, depending on key aspects of the restaurant’s performance — like service and food quality.
So it was with Viva Espana, a Spanish restaurant in Midrand. The promise of this place is a complete Spanish experience: cuisine, music, dancing, decor. Many of these elements are not very difficult to get right. Spanish decor simply requires some posters of bullfights and a few wide hats on the walls; in this, they succeeded. The Spanish cabaret dancing was entertaining: a real cock of the roost did his strut with a number of Spanish maidens flurrying about him, castanets glittering.
Unfortunately, these are the only elements the restaurant got right. The Gypsy Kings do not rate as authentically Spanish, even though they may use Flamenco guitar. Besides, every second restaurant uses them to fill those awkward voids in the conversation, while the rest use Eros for the same purpose. Are all restauranteurs musically illiterate?
But it was with the food that Viva Espana took an extended siesta. We went as a group on a Saturday night and the place was full — it only has one sitting, so the restaurant hums when the crowds pack in. But this is no reason to be made to wait nearly two hours for the first course to arrive, and then have the main course pressed on you while others were still busy with the starters.
At its best, the food was forgettable. For starters, we tried the crumbed mussels, the black mushrooms in a garlic sauce and the Spanish snails (which meant they had a garlic sauce). Of these, the mussels weren’t bad.
For the main course, many of our group opted for the paella, which turned out to be the best choice — as inoffensive as a slice of bread and butter. Paella can form the basis for some great tastes, depending on what goes in it. But this time, it was a case of what you see is what you get. The other dishes were riskier. A zarzuela formed a mass of messy tastes, including some that weren’t supposed to be there. The calamari dish, tubes stuffed with spinach and feta, was unremarkable, unless you spoke about the fight that the calamari put up. Perhaps they should have left this dish to the
After the cabaret act, the dance floor erupts into a free-for-all, with everybody doing the tarantula as they try to expel the toxins from their systems. It’s a party until the early hours, and this is the way to enjoy the place. Go with a group, feel those romantic vibrations from the Spanish dancers fill you with blood-lust, drink enough retsina to make you forget about the food, get up and stomp your boots on the dancefloor until you feel alright.
But if you really want to feel the essence of Spain, visit your local travel agent with about R3 500 in your
Viva Espana: Constantia Park, 239 Old Pretoria Road, Halfway House. Tel: 805-2720 or 805-3260