The Ant, Melville

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Service: * * *
Food: N/A
Ambience: * * * 1/2
Babe Count: * * *

Catherine is sitting with us briefly. She's a giantess. Damon says, "Show us your muscles!" So she stands up and strikes a Charles Atlas pose, arms flexed. Fuck'n hell. This chick is seriously defined.

"Feel them," she commands. Damon and I obey, feeling her rock hard biceps.

"I've gotta arm wrestle you," I say. "And I so totally don't mind losing to you!"

We sit down, square up, and Catherine says, quickly, in that, 'I'm gunna win this by hook or by crook' kinda way, "Three-two-one-GO!"

And she pounds on the pressure. This chick is an Amazon! But with two breasts. I know, cos I've locked my arm, and I'm taking inspiration from her cleavage. We're using our right arms, which is a BIT unfair of her, seeing as I'm left-handed. But my arm refuses to give, even though she's leaning into it, with her body over her hand, putting some weight into it too.

On the inside, I'm quaking. And I'm taking serious strain. If she's got the stamina, I reckon I'm a goner in the next twenty seconds. So I hold on. And she starts huffing and puffing, and she tries one last frantic burst of power. But she fades after about two seconds, and I just butter her arm down to the table.

She whimpers.

"Okay, left arm," I say, expecting to crush her instantly. Instead, it's exactly the same battle. If anything, Catherine's left arm is stronger than her right. But she relents, and I pound the back of her hand to the wood.

"First time I've lost," she says. She leaves. Probably to beat up on her gym instructor.

"Holy fuck, she's strong!" I say to Damon.

Damon says, "Wow, Roy, this BDSM stuff... you've learned a thing or two, huh? You didn't even flinch."

"I'm flinching now," I say. "Can't even move my hands!"

"You didn't show a thing. Just glared at her like a dom."

We start chatting about polyamory and BDSM. He asks me about Kathy (not Catherine), a friend of his. I first met her at one of his parties.

He says, "When Jose told me you two were hooking up, I couldn't believe it."

An actor acquaintance of his stumbles over to our table, drunk. He sits down. And starts talking crap about how South Africa's poor people are NOWHERE near as poor as the poor people in the rest of Africa.

He demonstrates with a particularly odious epxpression on his face how Joburg's poor people hold their hands out demanding money. "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!!"

"Oh come on," says Damon. "You can't say ALL of South Africa's poor are like that. And anyway, poor is poor. YOU try living with absolutely no money."

"Ya," says the guy, clicking his fingers aggressively. "But these fuckin' okes go home with Nando's burgers in their stomachs. In Mozambique they've got NOTHING!"

"You're talking about the car guards," Damon says. "What about the rest of the poor people?"

I zone out and turn my chair away from this dork. I figure that if I ignore him for long enough, he'll just bugger off. But he's too drunk. And he loves his voice. He's an ACTOR, you know?

Eventually Damon also ignores him. Fifteen minutes later, he stands up to go to the loo.

"Fuck," I say. "What a bore."

"Carry on about Kathy," he says. "Is she... uh... relaxed about the BDSM stuff?"

I kinda give him a non-answer to his non-question. "Yeah, she's relaxed about it." I figure if she wants to tell him about BDSM relaxation, she will. Or he can read this site. Hehehehe.

The actor comes back. "Ah, fuck," I murmur, and turn my chair and stare into the middle distance.

"Where was I?" he says, and starts on his diatribe. Damon and I slip out, and he's still declaiming to an empty table. But there are other people in the restaurant, and they're sure to want to hear his opinion.

Kathy's got flu. Karen's got a tummy bug. Helen's overseas. Susan's not into polyamory. Joanna's just a glimmer of hope on the horizon. And if I'd known I could beat the Amazon, I should have bet her a blow job.

Darn.

I think I'll go home now and think about the poor in Africa.

Cafe, Melville

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Doppio Zero, Greenside

Sunday, December 19, 2004

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Ambience: * * * *
Babe Count: * * * *

I've dragged myself out of bed, and I'm having breakfast with Kathy. Ordinarily, it wouldn't be all that difficult to get out of bed to be with Kathy. But I've been in bed for three days now with some kind of vicious throat infection. And today I have to go to work to catch up on stuff I missed due to being sick. Hence the difficulty in de-bedding myself.

Kathy's cool. A delicious, buxom blonde, into light D/s (just like me!), a sub (not like me!), and into polyamory.

I'm really peeved with being out of action these past few days, cos I didn't have to work on Thursday, and Kathy invited me to spend a day and night with her at a hideaway in Hartebeespoort. Ugh! Missed that!

Thursday morning I dozed. Until Chantal phoned to say, "Hey Roy, I'm going to see a 2 o'clock movie. Wanna join me?" She's a buddy of mine who I do trance dances with.

"Sheesh, Chantal," I say, "I've got flu, but I've got cabin fever. I'll come see a movie with you."

Now Thursday morning was quite a productive time for me. I managed to work out some stuff around polyamory, and why it's attractive to me, and why I've avoided it till now. MMM, my buddy with four girlfriends, is also into poly. But his poly is a different type to my poly. He's into polygyny, and I'm into polyamory.

Polyamory is about having multiple love partners. Polygyny is about having multiple sex partners. Might SEEM similar superficially, but they're very very different things.

My realisation about my polyamory needs has to do with how I've been in relationships before. I've been a serial monogamist all my life. I've never cheated on a girlfriend. Not once. Not even to kiss another. Sure, I flirt, but nothing else. What happens to me is that I get serious tunnel vision. To the extent that I sense I may actually be slightly obsessive. I think that's what ultimately ended my relationship with Jacqui... the fact that I was committed to being in a relationship with her without some kind of ordinary growth period. How can it be that I was fully committed, that I KNEW that this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, without actually KNOWING her all that well first? The quick answer is that something in me NEEDED to be committed to her. Needed to be in a long-lasting relationship.

On Thursday morning, lying half asleep with a kiln in my throat, I found myself wondering about serial monogamy and why I didn't want to join MMM and his four girlfriends with my three babes (Karen, Kathy, and Helen) for a group session over New Year. He's very excited about this. I'm completely NOT excited by it. I'm not into group sex. I'm not into swinging. I'm not into casual sex. (Yes, it's true I DO casual sex, but that's simply cos I can, and there's satisfaction of a kind in it. It's simply not fulfilling.)

And then it comes to me. All my life I've yearned for family. I've been an outsider, a loner, someone who is majorly alienated from society. When people play happy loving couples with kids and pets, I'm genuinely puzzled. I simply don't understand what they're feeling. But I yearn for it.

So serial monogamy for me has been an attempt to clutch onto one person to provide that feeling of family, without the misery and hectic stuff that I experienced as a kid.

When I was five years old, my dad came home from work. I rushed up to the front door, which was made of stained glass, and the sun shone through it. He opened the door, leaned down to kiss me, and his beard prickled against my cheek. I remember the feeling: "I'm not one of them. I don't belong here. This is not my family." From that moment on, I was completely alone. My mom was a serious alcoholic. My dad was a weekend alcoholic. He used to lose his temper and smash things, including my mom. I don't remember any of the events. I've blocked it out. What I do remember is that until I was about 15, I slept with a knife under my mattress.

So why polyamory? Simply put, it provides a sense of family, a sense of interconnectedness, a network of loving people. I'm still coming to terms with this insight, so it'll have to remain simplistic and naive for now.

So by the time I got the call from Chantal, the cabin fever of being in bed all day was too much. And I wanted to burble my insight to someone. She's a shaman, specialising in dance and movement through her TREAD workshops, so I thought it would be great to get out and chat.

We saw GARDEN STATE. Gets a full ten out of ten on the Roy-O-Metre. An amazing movie about family and belonging and pain. It's one of the tightest scripts I've seen, and the acting is sublime. Very understated, this is a comic gem.

So Chantal and I chatted. And that was great. Getting my thinking straight. And she chatted to me about some of the stuff in her life, and I was able to listen with my own shaman's ear, and offer my insight to her. A win-win afternoon.

That night, I took a Stilpane to sleep. It was left over from an old prescription. I don't normally USE medication. And Stilpane is hectic shit. So one tablet just knocked me out. Friday morning was throat despair. So I smsed Doc Pete from backgammon, and asked him what I should take. "Andolex and Panado," he smsed back. Eventually, I managed to get myself out of bed and headed for the pharmacy. Bought the Andolex and Panado and crawled back into bed. Phoned work first to tell them I wouldn't be in. Which was when I was asked if I could come in on Sunday. "If I'm feeling better," I said.

The Andolex only kinda half-worked, and the Panado only kinda half-worked, but Friday night passed. Saturday passed too, with me feeling feverish, and drawing quite a lot on my palmtop. And reading John Le Carre's latest, ABSOLUTE FRIENDS. Awesome book. I love this man. He's one of the best living writers. Him and John Irving, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, and Milan Kundera.

This morning arrives, and the fever and bone ache have gone. I'm sore and tired and grumpy, but fine. Still having difficulty swallowing, but hey.

The grumpiness disappears as soon as Kathy sits down. Laura, our gorgeous young waitress currently a learner in Grade Nine at the Deutsche Shule brings us menus, and we order. I've got to be at work at 11, and it's 9:30 now, so there's not much time.

So it's banter, and catching up with Kathy, and not much more. But that's totally cool. Cos I'm very comfortable in her company.

Let's see where this polyamory stuff takes me. Right now, it's time to head to the edit suite to cut episode seven of Go_Open.

Cool Runnings, Melville

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Service: *
Food: * *
Ambience: * *
Babe Count: * * * 1/2

My throat's sore. I'm with Helen at the moot end-of-the-year party. It's been described in an email as a "play party", with dress code "black, red, or fetish". I'm wearing black, and I'm wearing a huge, floppy red hat.

"Come on! What's with the hat? Take it off!" says one of MMM's girlfriends, a sub. I fix my Dom stare on her, and she begins to quake visibly in her stilettos. Clearly, she's terrified by my extreme fierceness. That's because I'm Bilbo the Dom.

(If you're wondering, the answer is no. She wasn't ACTUALLY terrified. And I don't look anything LIKE Bilbo. I look more like a fleshed out Golum, actually. And YES, the big red hat is entirely ironic. I really don't get much of a kick out of the lifestyle side of D/s. I'm just into doing it, and not really into looking stupid wearing fungus-ridden leather pants. So my hat is a kinda signal to the BDSM "community" that I can still be a very effective Dom and yet STILL have a sense of humour. One thing I've noticed is that most Doms take themselves very seriously indeed. It's kinda like their egos might not survive a bit of fun-poking. Not ALL Doms. Just SOME Doms. And have you noticed? I'm falling into the horrible habit of spelling "Dom" with a capital "D" and "sub" with a submissive "s". Makes me feel more powerful, see?)

Thanks to some or other bizarre zoning issue, downstairs at the dungeon has no music. Nothing. It's completely dead in terms of ambience. A big fat zero. One of MMM's girlfriends goes to ask the management if we can't get some audio action going. Like me, MMM is not into the BDSM lifestyle. He's been practising D/s for the last fifteen years or so, but doesn't feel much of a need to flaunt it. He has four female partners, all of them subs. A harem, basically. What the heck does he need to prove? Nothing. Which is why he's also not wearing anything leather with tin spikes. he looks like a normal dude. Which he is.

His sub comes back from speaking to the manager. "We're not even allowed to bring a boombox down here," she says. "We're condemned to an evening of silence."

There are gadgets all over the place. A huge wooden whipping cross with a naked babe chained to it, being flogged enthusiastically by Burning Lash. Some medical fetish people drawing blood from each other in hypodermic syringes (not shared), then spurting the blood onto a gruesome picture. Kinda like stream of consciousness painting, but using the bloodstream. Stomach turning shit, man. But hey. Each to his or her own, right? Tolerance, baby, tolerance.

This spot just totally lacks soul. Feels like a bunch of middle-aged people in leather, talking about football. Not that they're talking about football, you understand. More like foot fetish.

My overwhelming sense of the evening is of strangers trying to outdo each other in wearing silly weird clothes, and not really talking to each other. Very cliquey, very "I'm a dom, and you're only HALF a dom!"

I dunno. I'm not a LIFESTYLE D/s dude. I like DOING D/s, not LIVING D/s. If living it means looking like a no-hoper with ego issues, that's not me.

I do get to kiss Helen though, even though I told her up front that I have a throat infection, and that she shouldn't kiss me. She's going away on a month-long holidy overseas, so we're not going to have much time to "get to know each other". In fact, tonight's our only chance before she heads for far shores. So we kiss anyway. She's been taking loads of vitamin C.

We don't get to do anything more than kiss, cos I'm really feeling sick by the time the evening ends.

So kissing Helen is the highlight of the evening. That and tying up one of the babes in a Japanese karada.

Gordart Gallery, Melville

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Service: * * * *
Food: * * * * *
Ambience: * * * * *
Babe Count: * * * * *

Hmmmmmm. Luscious chicks hang out at art exhibition openings. In this one, a twenty-year old babe who has just started a sorbet business is dishing out free scoops. Karen and I try the sweet melon and basil sorbet, and it earns the place a five star rating. The babe also earns that rating, due to exceptional good looks and talent.

But before I wax eloquent about babes, here's a commercial message. If I had ten grand to blow on art right now, I can faithfully say that I wouldn't have it anymore, cos there's so much stuff here that I WANT to own, I would have bought the entire exhibition.

The aim of the show is to provide an end-of-year treat to artists and patrons. Gordon Froud, the owner of the gallery, is a killer sculptor, and he believes in making art affordable to ordinary people. So, the "10 X 10cm Christmas Box Show" has a whole bunch of artists all contributing small, low-priced artworks to the exhibition.

I'm one of those artists, due to a happy meeting with Gordon at Aryan Kaganof's exhibition closing show on Thursday night. Gordon's taken seven of my erotic drawings, and they're on the wall in a nice x-shape. Every now and again, when I go and peak into that particular room, I observe people standing at my work for ages. They're probably trying to figure out how I've made the drawings.

I print my stuff out at a photographic print shop, and each print is signed as an original artwork. I draw them straight onto my palmtop computer, and I just love the way I use colour in these things. My erotic prints are fairly gory and explicit, and they're probably my most overtly uncomfortable artworks.

As you might know from this blog, one of my artistic methods is to place the viewer in the place of voyeur. I LIKE making my viewers or readers uncomfortable. I LIKE having people half-aroused and half-repelled all at once.

Karen and I are no longer an item, but we're still playmates. She's busy getting over a dude she met, but with whom things didn't work out. She's cool with the fact that I have a new playmate. Kathy and I met a while back at a party, and we hit it off then. Bumped into her recently, and she's been reading my site, and like what she's reading, and wants to play. She's keen on polyamory, and is in another polyamorous relationship right now.

So finally, after about nine years of my wondering about it, I'm starting to sink my teeth into what it really means in a pragmatic space. I really have NO idea how the details work out. I mean... do we all socialise together? What happens when I'm feeling like seeing Kathy, but she's with her other boyfriend? What happens when Karen's down, and wants to pop round, but Kathy's tied up in bed with me?

We'll see.

Right now, forget about polyamory and think about expanding your art collection. Head for Gordart Gallery, 78 Third Ave, Melville, Joburg. Call the gallery on +27 11 726 8519. The show is up until 24 December 2004. Buy MY stuff!

Contractors, Westdene

Saturday, December 11, 2004

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Food: * * * * *
Ambience: * * * * *
Babe Count: * * * * *

It's my voice agency's end-of-year party, and the place is filled with famous people all looking au natural. Even without make-up, actresses look like beauty queens.

I've got Bianca's Robin Williams tape in my car, along with a printout of the portrait I did of her back in the old days, when we dated briefly. I suspect she'll be here today, seeing as Carlynn was her agent before I joined.

I'm kinda expecting freezeout if Bianca shows, seeing as she was a little miffed at the fact that our relationship ended. I dunno. What can I say? Things end. She wasn't happy. Oh well.

She arrives. Sees me, smiles a bit. I say, "Hey Bianca, I've got some stuff for you in my car."

She rushes past me, "Yeah," she says, "fine. I'll speak to you later." Which she doesn't.

Which probably means I'm not going to get my standup comedy book back from her. And her portrait is going to sit in my car till it fades away.

The Muti Gallery, Milpark

Thursday, December 09, 2004

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Food: N/A
Ambience: * * * *
Babe Count: * * * * *

Aryan Kaganof's exhibition is coming down tonight, and he's having a ritual and a party to celebrate the exhibition. Apart from being a brilliant artist and a brilliant filmmaker, Aryan is also a genius in performance art.

The lights dim. The gallery is crammed with about 200 people, all crammed into the tiny space clutching glasses of wine and bottles of Spin.

Aryan, wearing a defaced old South African Defence Force Jacket, and a face stenciled with silver spray paint, emerges from the shadows and approaches one of his paintings. He grasps it by the sides, and declaims the entire Hebrew alphabet in a New York rabbi accent. Guto Bussab, the gallery owner, severs the cables tethering the huge canvas to the wall.

Aryan moves to the next painting. "Aleph bet gimmel daled hey nun..." he chants, his voice piercing the dark. Snip. Snip. And the painting is down. He does this a few times, and moves to the last painting. It's the one that can be deciphered as "Murder Derrida". The way the painting works is the that word "MURDER" is painted on the canvas, while the letters "RIDA" are painted on the wall outside the frame. After Guto snips the tethers, the painting falls away to reveal the word "MURDER" painted on the wall.

Suddenly, a video projector starts, and one image gets added -- the words "THE" and "MYSTERY", forming the phrase, "The Murder Mystery". Aryan leaps at the wall with a black marker pen, and starts tracing the outlines of the new words. Loud, dischordant, thrilling music plays.

It's not clear whether Aryan will complete the outlining process before the image disappears. And this is part of his magic as a performance artist. By the time he gets to the second letter "Y" of "MYSTERY", nobody in the gallery is breathing. They're riveted. Will he make it? Will he suffer humiliation if he doesn't? What's gonna happen?

Of course, NOTHING's gonna happen. It's just that he's worked the crowd.

He finishes, JUST as the music stops, and the first of his new films starts showing over "The Murder Mystery" on the wall.

The text beneath the picture is a wanky gimmick. But with Aryan's theatrics, AND the quality of the short films, AND the nailbiting soundtracks, AND the knowledge that Aryan is ACTUALLY an authentic genius, the wankiness is overlooked, and the audience is able to add meaning to the films because of the underlying text.

I don't claim him to be a genius lightly. I've had long chats with this fellow. And I've watched the subtlety of his method at work. This guy plays chess, and he's ten moves ahead of anyone else. (And if you MUST appeal to authority in order to be convinced, do a search on ARYAN KAGANOF and IAN KERKHOF, and you'll find that he's got some important things to say.)

The performance ends, and people start to mingle.

Gordon Froud is present. He and Diane Victor have been babes for years and years. I'm privileged to have a Diane Victor etching on my wall. And I also have the honour of having a Gordon Froud sculpture on my wall. "Hey Gordon," I say.

"Roy!" he says. "Are you coming to my gallery ever?"

I'm guilty of not having gone to his place in Melville. He's in Third Avenue, in what used to be the Thompson Gallery. For some reason, I just haven't made it there. Eeeek. "I apologise," I say.

"Well, come on Sunday," he says. "Pity you haven't visited before, cos your work might have been up at Sunday's opening." He hauls out a pamphlet for the "10 X 10 cm" exhibition, The Christmas Box show. A bunch of artists all make little artworks that are affordable, and sell them off the wall as a group exhibition.

"I've got some erotica printed out that I can give you," I say. I take out my palmtop, and show him one of the images.

"Yes!" he says. "Bring them tomorrow! We've got very little erotica on the show. Excellent!"