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.

Does this Zimmer Frame come with Cup Holders?

Mike Gayle writes in his novel Turning Thirty that hitting your thirties means never going down the pub unless you know there’s somewhere to sit.

It’s the decade when you begin to rethink your ideas about Clint Eastwood being the icon to emulate, and start to browse the section in Clicks with male moisturiser and L’Oreal eye-wrinkle cream. You tell yourself the receding hair at your temples isn’t that bad, and hang on to the hope in that Nicolas Cage is still cool in spite of it.

Men drew the long end of the stick in this regard. We are often told that we get better looking or at least appear more distinguished as we get older. I can only thank the patriarchal, sexist Illuminati for organising this facet of our social psyche.

The thirties aren’t all bad, and I guess it’s got a lot to do with perspective.

Gone is the immature insecurity of one’s twenties. We’ve learned enough about the opposite sex to stop being such bumbling retards in their presence, replaced feigned confidence with acceptance or actual aplomb, and know enough about life to understand that wisdom is not measured by our successes but by the number of mistakes we’ve made.

You stop arguing with your parents about what you should be doing with your life, and realise that the only thing you should be doing is something that brings you some sense of purpose. As you edge closer to middle-age and eventually death, the fact that money and status are ridiculous endeavours is knowledge secreted from your soul.

But it’s not all shits and giggles. You start to make ‘that noise’ when you bend down to pick something off the floor, and it often takes more than one try to get off the couch. The years of beer culminate around your protesting belly, and the comfort of Crocs causes one to reconsider their trendiness.

Also, in the early stages of thirtyhood, a crushing despair of “what have I done with my life?” can set in.

All others fears are put on the back burner, and the terror of growing old alone starts to scratch at the door. It is the age when men discard the idea of being a player and strive to settle down.

As you hack your way through the years like a lost explorer in a confounding, ever-changing jungle, the direction of your life more often than not changes. This is scary and many will urge you to stay on course.

This biting, clawing feeling can be early onset mid-life crisis, or a reaction to a spiritual emptiness one might feel upon the realisation that so much of what they thought they knew turned out to be bollocks.

So just when you’ve thrown out so many childish insecurities, a set of nicely wrapped new ones is opened.

… now where’d I put that facial scrub.

I was a Middle-Aged Buddha

Whenever I sit down to enjoy a slice of pizza or a Mickey-D quarter pounder with cheese, my mother’s voice echoes in my ears, “You’re digging your grave with a knife and fork.”

Strange, as I tend to lean towards food that requires the least amount of cutlery – burgers, chicken pies, spaghetti bolognaise is tough, but I’ve found a thick drinking straw can just as easily do the trick.

My mom is a veritable volcano of clichés. One of her favourites is, “Don’t have a champagne taste on a beer bottle budget.”

Genius!

Some of them I took literally as a child – I thought one should “save your money for a rainy day” so when you couldn’t play outside you could at least go see a movie at Cavendish Square.

Not a bright kid, me.

She taught us that “wisdom comes with Winters” and to “always forgive your enemies because nothing annoys them so much.”

I’ve always wanted to pen a self-help book entitled, ‘Mother’s Book of Wisdom’ – I envision the sole copy of this handed down through the generations; yellow pages, leather-bound, notes in the margin.

Forget the propaganda of the global schooling systems – teach the kid how to read and let him get on with it.

My mom is one of those rare individuals who doesn’t like to sugar-coat reality. When I was sixteen and going through the obligatory boo-hoo-I-hate-the-world phase she asked me, “Do you think your friends are going to want to be around someone who’s miserable all the time?”

When, many moons ago, she arrived at her parents place to find my grandfather with an MX-6 parked outside and a car salesman on the crux of a big commission, she looked the young salesman up and down, turned to my grandfather and said, “You don’t want that, daddy, it’s a poor man’s Porsche.”

A tongue of sharpened steel, wielded as mercilessly as a shogun samurai’s sword.

In a round-about way she has taught me that while knowledge may come in the form of a university text book, wisdom is best passed along through proverbs and sayings.

Words: Nathan Casey
Pic: Lucy Yearling

Here Come the Sushi Sweats!

Sushi always reminds me of Jesus.

When I was a kid my dad would stick a tray of hot cross buns in the oven and toast them to perfection, whack a heart-palpitating amount of butter on top, and serve them crispy and warm on Easter morning.

I’d stuff my face and no matter how painfully bloated my stomach became I just couldn’t stop eating. I’d roll on the ground clutching my belly and moan, “Never again!”, the way I do now the morning after too much Jagermeister.

Sushi is much the same. I sit at the conveyer belt, grabbing two plates at a time, and not stopping until I hear the tear of my stomach lining.

It just tastes so good. The chopsticks used to slow me down, but I’ve mastered the art and these days I’m like Mr Miyagi – stick wings on the California roll and let it fly around the room, it won’t bother me.

The only problem I have is when it comes to paying the bill; I never know how much to tip the waiter.

Should you tip the waiter at a sushi bar? All he does is bring you a drink, and then the bill, and then he stands there with a sour face when you tip him ten percent of the Appletizer when you’ve spent R400 on sashimi.

To paraphrase Hank Moody, you’d think you’d just finger-banged his cat.

I asked the manager what he thought about tipping the sushi chef because I didn’t want to insult some ancient Asian cultural belief that I maybe knew nothing about, and all he said was that the chefs get a salary, while the waiter gets tips and a sjambokking if there’s a fingerprint on the glassware.

He wouldn’t tell me how much the chefs earned, but he said it’s okay to give them money and I shouldn’t be worried about the absurdly large cleavers they wield.

I did this and explained my actions to the waiter’s downturned maw, but he just grunted something in Hausa and snatched the notes from my hand.

The sushi chef, when I handed him his share of the gratuity, kind of looked at my outstretched hand, then up at the soy sauce dripping from my chin, and slowly took the money with an expression on his face like he thought I was Leon Shuster.

So now I’m even more confused.

I tried to think, “What would Jesus do?”, but then thought Jesus was probably too busy healing lepers to sit around at a sushi bar anxiously watching salmon roses circulate, hoping that no one got to them before he did.

I bet he was more a McDonald’s Drive-Thru man.