In New York you get whipped, in Thailand it’s real sex, but in Zimbabwe you just stock up on fantasies. Mercedes Sayagues meets the Warriors
I don’t know what turns you on. But I know what turned on 500 Zimbabwean women last week: the muscular, sculpted bodies of six young South African hunks as they stripped down to their G-strings on stage at a Harare hotel.
An all-women audience paid Z$400 (R80) each to see the Johannesburg-based Warriors, a male strip show. As they strutted their pecs and quads, shook their pelvises, and acted coyly sexy, the audience went wild.
Women shrieked in mass hysteria, swooning when strippers sat on their laps or rubbed their groins against the women’s heads.
“Women get horny, horny, horny!” exclaims Tracy (32), a stylish modelling agent.
What do hubbies, boyfriends and fiancs think? Women married to Portuguese or Muslim men say they do not tell them they went to see the show. But most men do not object. “Husbands get laid tonight when we get home,” explains Tracy.
“Foreplay is done, we go straight into action,” adds raunchy Noreen. “I am naughty, aren’t I?” she giggles, and pinches a waiter on his young, firm buttocks.
And I thought Zimbabwe was conservative.
The evening started with waiters greeting women with a peck on the cheek and a half- withered rose, before leading us to our tables. Warren is my waiter for the night.
The waiters are bare-chested with black bow ties around their necks. They wear tight black trousers, but no bunny tails. Most are models in their early twenties, supplied by Tracy’s agency. Sweet, but unqualified as hunks: poorly developed chest muscles and low, flat bums.
The exception was one who was tall and big, though on the flabby side, tattoos on his love handles. His upper arms were as thick as his neck, and his brain was as thick as his upper arms. He had a redeeming punk streak, however: when asked about his favourite type of woman, he said the Queen of Farts.
Warren brings disgusting food: overcooked fish or beef with soggy chips and veggies that make an Air Zimbabwe economy class tray seem appetising. I go on a liquid diet.
The action blasts off. Tequila time. Choose a waiter. Select a position for him (kneeling, lying on a table or the floor, on your lap or on your girlfriend’s lap). Put a lemon wedge between his lips. Choose a section of his body.
Most women go for chests or shoulders, a few adventurous for nipples and thighs. One unzips trousers. The women lick a section of flesh and sprinkle salt on it. They lick again, voluptuously, while their girlfriends cheer. Then they gulp down tequila, bite a lemon slice wedged between their waiter’s lips and call for another one.
What is so appealing about licking a sweaty waiter? “It feels good doing it to a stranger,” says Magdalene (28), a travel agent. “Being on the edge, the adrenaline charge,” says Hazel (25).
I ask a waiter what it feels like after a dozen licks. He thinks hard: “It tickles.”
My jeweller, Scott, surprised me by metamorphosing into a playgirl waiter from his usual self in a suit and a tie. “The salt melts with the sweat and gets into my underpants,” he says. “Last night I must have had a packet of salt in my underwear when I got home. Tonight I buckled up real tight.”
Several rounds of tequila licks get the women going. The place gets louder, raunchier. Some undress to skimpy hot pants and lace stretch tops. Then the Warriors arrive and the women go wild.
The studs leap on to the stage to Michael Jackson’s Bad. Then Queen. They strip down to orange-and-white polka-dot G-strings. More disco music. “Do you think I’m sexy?” asks Rod Stewart. A Cuban rumba accompanies a solo stripper wearing a Frankenstein mask.
The most ridiculous number: an all-white troupe dressed as Zulu warriors, with shields, spears and leopard-skin skirts, prancing around to an Iphi Ntombi song as if in a high-school concert.
The sexiest number, measured by the number of roses thrown on stage and the intensity of the shrieks: a troupe (un)dressed as cowboys for a full monty – but, like in the movie, we only see their bums.
Throughout the show, we only see bums: toned, hard and polished. Genitals remain chastely clad in G-strings. Fingers remain at pubic hairlines. Caresses stop at nipples. Teasing is the name of the game.
The dancing is jagged, more aerobics than flamenco, jerky movements, not sinuous. Hyper-fit bodies; washboard abs; tight buns; shaved legs and chest; trimmed pubic and underarm hair; unpadded G-strings with sizable bulks inside; earrings and belly button jewelry; bat or butterfly tattoos on the small of the back and on shoulder blades.
The boys pull down the side of their G- string. Wiggle ass. Wiggle pecs. Wiggle dicks. The women go wild.
Who are these women? Middle-class of all ages, creeds and races. Several white- haired grannies, blushing when pulled on stage for a chaste kiss. One, an elegant widow (64), in a black dress and Princess Diana hairstyle, gives a terrific tequila lick.
“I’m too old to get turned on but I come for the thrills,” laughs Ellen (59), who doesn’t miss a show.
They are fat and thin, stylish and styleless, punk and conventional. There are Monica Lewinsky lookalikes, in bouffant hairdos and serious suits; fresh-skinned secretaries in slinky strapless gowns; travel agents in dainty dresses; safari consultants in lycra bodysuits. Some are dressed like sluts, in black miniskirts and glittering bras, ready to play like sluts if called on stage.
They are mostly white, with a sprinkle of black women. There is only one all-black table, with half-a-dozen young and lovely bank clerks, their tickets a present from their male boss on Secretaries Day.
The show gets raunchier. With each number, one or two women are pulled on to the stage to be part of the show for a brief moment of glory and desire.
One woman with Farrah Fawcett hair and ample thighs bursting out of black hot pants got a mock spanking on her bum.
Another, Karen, is made to lie the floor, straddled by a semi-naked Warrior, and teased by his body all over her body, practically touching. “Wow, he dangled his balls in front of my nose, a man has never done that to me before,” she shrieks afterwards, overwhelmed.
Karen (24) and her boss Ruth (38) drove 110km from Chinhoyi. They drove back after the show. Karen is fun, articulate and smart. She wears a nose ring, wild blond hair and a black miniskirt. Her boss’s ample frame is sheathed in shiny black trousers and a ruffled red polyester blouse showing generous cleavage. She too will get lucky. One dancer will wiggle on her lap and another will kiss her collarbones.
What brought them here? “Girls just want to have fun,” says Ruth. “And girls from Chinhoyi have the most fun of all.”
Other women are there because they want to spend a night among women only. “I can laugh without control instead of being prim and proper,” says Dagma (44), married for 13 years.
It is a safe space. They are playing with sex, without risks. The rules are clear: no real touching, just teasing; no fondling of private parts, no frontal nudity.
Some of the women have strangely melancholic expressions; sad, brooding faces. “Their husbands are fat and don’t know what a G-string is. They are bored with their lives, and this is the highlight of the year,” says Tracy.
“I will never have a man like this. He would never even look at me on the street,” says Dagma. “Here I have an illusion.”
The strippers operate under tight security. They use special lifts and have extra security on their floors to discourage both fans and jealous partners.
I made the mistake of interviewing the Warriors before seeing the show. At the hotel caf, I met a bunch of overgrown teenagers gulping down hamburgers and milkshakes. They wore baggy grey shorts, Warrior T-shirts, top-of-the-range sneakers and baseball caps.
The Warriors, who have toured the world, tell me Zimbabwean women respect the rules. In Australia and New Zealand audiences get really wild. One Warrior was chased by a woman who wanted to cut off his G-string with a pair of scissors.
In Brazil, G-strings would have been bitten off. In New York, you can get whipped if that is your choice. In Thailand, you can have sex on stage.
In Zimbabwe, you get the tip of a tongue on your lips. You sniff a sweaty T- shirt. You stock up on fantasies to enjoy later on, when you are panting over or under your husband’s imperfect body.