Easy showgirls
I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in my time in Gayland, but I’d have to say that last Sunday’s Fag Tagging of a straight strip club in Kings Cross was pretty out there.
It all started innocently enough. Several hundred of this city’s most well-groomed inverts -“ impeccable in their whites and pastels -“ gathered for a few quiet drinks at Hugo’s Lounge. In that typically gay way, everyone decided to crowd together onto the balcony, resulting in a lot of inadvertent frottage. (Although nobody seemed to be complaining too much, so there may have been a bit of advertent frottage going on as well.)
After a few hours of this kind of palaver, the word got around that the action was shifting to the strip club downstairs; people filed in, not really knowing what to expect. Most seemed to follow their few quiet drinks from upstairs with a few rowdy ones and, before too long, the whole rollicking crowd was cat-calling, yahooing and generally acting like a bunch of pussy-whipped skirt-lifters.
The dancing girls seemed pretty bemused by what was going on, on the whole, and even a bit impressed when a few game souls sitting down the front tucked a ten or twenty into their garter belts.
A male stripper came on a couple of times and, while his act featured some audience participation (with some particularly enthusiastic pole and podium work), there was a very different dynamic going on when the girls were on stage, and the crowd seemed to be getting into it out of sheer perversity. I was particularly impressed with the girls’ ability to gyrate while hanging upside down, and also the way they used the Spray N’ Wipe on the poles between their routines. As Borat would say: Niii-iii-ce!
So now that that bastion of the straight world has been well and truly Fag Tagged, one can only imagine what the organisers are planning next. (The mind boggles.)
If you’ve never been to a Fag Tag event, try to catch one next year: it’s amazing how many interesting places and spaces there are in this city that we just never see when we’re locked up in those few gay venues we call home. And with that element of surprise, you just never know what you’re going to see.
