Stag Night

After a table dance in front of twenty people, having thrown the G-string I was wearing into the crowd, I climb down and think, “I could do this every weekend!”

Maybe an hour ago I was in the back of a minibus taxi, struggling fishnets up my legs, wondering just how confident I was with my sexuality.

It’s a common sight in Cape Town on a Saturday evening – men on the verge of marriage, dressed in women’s clothing, a beer mug handcuffed to their arm.

Strippers and strip clubs seem so 20th Century. Honestly, it’d feel like cheating to have some big-breasted Russian poking her nipples into my eyes – so it’s me dressed for success, deliberating over which bog-door to go through.

Some guys think it’s funny to grab my arse and ask for a blowjob. They get a bit freaked when I cup their nuts in my hand and tell them it’ll cost a tenner. There’s a flicker of doubt and they think maybe this is my ‘coming out’ night and not a bachelor’s party.

But after the fourth pint and a few Jagermeisters, appropriately having a Bavarian sausage platter for dinner, I forget about the pink wig and sexy nightie. Out the corner of my eye I see a table of German tourists staring at me and think, “What the fuck are they looking at?”

It’s kind of like being a moderately famous soap opera actor. Strangers ask to have their picture taken with me. Groups of girls buy me shots at the bar. It’s easy to see why some people get addicted to being the centre of attention.

At Quay Four in the Waterfront, a woman gets aggro with me for cutting in on her and some guy on the dancefloor. I think she’s just a bad sport until my mate informs me that the ‘woman’ is actually another guy in drag – the only difference being he’s not on his stag night.

Welcome to Cape Town.

Later in the night a bouncer won’t let us jump the queue at a club. I kick up a stink, and what normally would get me a black eye and maybe a broken rib gets us in.

We meet up with my fiancée, Lucy, on her hen night. She’s wearing angel wings and ‘cock-boppers’. We drunkenly relay tales from the last few hours.

I’m fat with a beard and just make a really ugly chick, but Lucy says the next morning she found me in the stockings and pink wig a strange turn-on.

Maybe I should do this every weekend.