My boyfriend and I checked into a love hotel for the hour. It was Friday night and we were on an errant mission in an erogenous zone.
”Love hotels are big in Japan,” said Jaco, the hotel owner to whom we introduced our legit selves. ”Your name is hot on the porn sites now — there’s a country and western chick called Shani,” he said with adulation.
”So, who comes here?” I asked, deflecting his drool.
”Oh, your average guy, dudes like him,” he said, pointing to my dude.
We stood in a threesome by the pebbled bar counter, which, according to Jaco, was ”the only handmade bar in Cape Town”.
”You can get her to strip for you on the bar, but she mustn’t fall off — ‘cos it’s a bit narrow hey!” Above Jaco’s head was a sign, apparently a family heirloom, with two red bulls locking horns that said: ”Pub out of control.”
”Guess which is the horniest suburb in Cape Town!” he said. We guessed wrong. ”Blouberg!” said Jaco so earnestly that he couldn’t have intended the pun.
The words ”Home Run” were printed on his vest, which I said was ironic considering we scored big time with a free room rated at R600 an hour. ”There’s a double meaning to almost everything here,” he told me, pointing to reeds in a vase on the bar. ”Those make your business grow, as long as they’re not dead, and you can spank her with them if she is naughty.”
On that note Jaco exited with his garrulity and left us to gawp at porn on TV to the blare of Abba’s How can I resist you? We decided to go all the way in emulating a Blouberg couple and ambushed full-strength liquor from the bar fridge. We assumed our conjugal roles as cocktail waitress and DJ. He replaced Abba with Supertramp and I poured a row of brandy and Coke shooters. But we were torn between the porn. We settled on Buttman and Rocco go to Montreal because it had a plot thicker than just deep-throat.
The love hotel was a lounge area with gaudy disco lighting. Tarty art — a morbid house burning, a naked maiden kneeling and a fat-faced chick holding a pussycat — hung above brown settees with herds of elephant pillows. One wall was covered with maroon mosaic as a backdrop to an oddly built Jacuzzi — ”the white elephant”. It was the tub that lured us there in the first place — seeing as it was in the lounge, which was on the ground level and visible, through chiffon curtains, to any serious observers or casual perverts passing by.
We avoided the bedroom because our state of affairs already felt tacky and I thought it smelt of stale sex.
A dingy clothing rack hid in the corner of the lounge with worn broekies, bras and boas. I felt too slutty in the white Elvis catsuit with fluff and studs so I slipped into a little red number, slung a purple boa around my neck and ran a bath.
For a moment things felt strangely domestic and, as Jaco had said, ”like a home away from home”. Then the Wellington VO kicked in and my attention was averted to the salient TV screen where two trigger-happy men were shooting a blithe grin on to the face of a woman clearly waving her white flag. ”Happy hour” had turned into ”horny hour”.
The Jacuzzi was bubbling. Jaco had said ”to massage your dude you must throw the Bergamot oil into the technical oil bottle”, which had the words ”light liquid paraffin” on it. I wanted to light his fire, not set him on fire.
Anyhow, our rudimentary, adulterated fun was cut short with a call on the cell from Jaco asking permission to pull in. Rush hour was over.
How did real clients cope with the paraphernalia of dressing up, stripping off and getting down to it all while trying to keep it up at the same time as getting wasted? Adultery sounded like a drag.
Jaco said the love hotel was soon to be demolished and would be relocating elsewhere. I knew we should have asked for a souvenir. But the choice was limited to a tub of Vaseline, a frayed whip or the Commodores CD. So we left empty-handed, heavy-headed and sozzled.
A huge estate agent’s sign on the building’s facade had bold gold words stamped across it: ”Everyone’s SOLD on us!” We hit the road and headed anywhere but Blouberg.
For more information about the love hotel, Tel: 084 780 3314