Mail & Guardian reporters
First-time visitors to the Summit Club in Hillbrow are invariably taken aback by the sign at the entrance indicating the “gun un-loading point”. Several months ago a drunk patron took the sign rather too seriously, and left three bullet holes in the crumbling plaster.
But venture beyond and up two flights of stairs, and there is no such irreverant madness. Instead there is ambience completely at odds with popular expectations, a dimly lit salon where the staff are excessively polite and the patrons are generally on their best behaviour.
But then perhaps last Tuesday night was a bit different: instead of the usual fare, it was the final round of an intensive eight-week series of elimination and qualifying contests to find the rainbow nation’s striptease queen for 1999.
The rules were simple: “The dancers is [sic] allowed to do what ever it takes to win the competition, however any live sex shows will be disqualified. Simulated sex welcome.”
This attracted a string of contestants with the unlikely names of Zenobia, Omega, Anastasia and Morgana – almost all of them, as it transpired, Pretoria meisies – but meisies with an eye for the bizarre.
Most people wouldn’t normally simulate sex with an oversized dildo mounted atop a radio-controlled toy Ferrari.
Tne majority of the audience observed such ribaldry with impassive, deadpan expressions.
Few of the mainly white audience cheered, except when prompted to do so by the compre; no one clamoured to fondle the various body parts regularly thrust at them. There were a few black faces at the back of the grotesquely stuffy room; the only black people who ventured near the stage were cleaners, clad in blue overalls, who washed down the set in-between performances.
One of Europe’s top female porn stars recently made the observation that South African men are second only to the Brazilians in hankering after sex; and second only to Americans in pretending that they don’t. She may have been right.
A moderately successful striptease dancer apparently takes home upwards of R10 000 a month. Zenobia, the 1999 queen, whose crown was accompanied with R10 000 prize money, can now look forward to considerably more.
“But it’s not really the money; the real attraction is the way this job puts you right in the limelight.” explained Zenobia, a former debtor’s clerk.
Despite Zenobia’s apparent candour on stage – it was she who opted for the radio- controlled car – she would have no raunchiness in the Mail & Guardian. “I don’t want any nipple shots”, she insisted.