FOR MEMBERS ONLY
Bridget Hilton-Barber gets her mind blown at a “workshop” highlighting a vital womanly skill
‘THIS is one of the most important skills a woman can have”, said the e-brochure for Jonti Searll’s Blow Job Delight Workshop. “Many see it as a chore and something they don’t enjoy. We’re going to change your perception, teach you about the power of this for you as a woman and teach you how to give a man a mind-blowing blow job”.
I’m not sure what I’d had in mind — a Dr Paul or a Dr Ruth, something medicosexual with a dash of book club: a sunny faux-Tuscan hotel lounge, plump couches and ferns, a respectable man with a sex toy? Perhaps a kind of group-counselling session with a saucy but open-minded crowd of middle-aged women keen to keep up with modern sexual trends, hopefully a glass of bubbly or two… Boy, was I wrong. Instead, I find myself at Pharaoh’s Fantasy Club in the Olifantsfontein environs, reluctantly unwrapping a red lollipop, along with some 25 other arguably more keen workshop participants, as Searll stands — under a Pharaoh mural and several posters of an open-mouthed Marilyn Monroe — with a life-sized plastic member in his hand.
“We call it a cock”, he begins his showand-tell with a flourish. “A penis is what you call it when you see the doctor.” The workshop attendees titter and settle down happily on the fake black leather mattresses scattered on the floor. They are all white people, in their 30s to late 40s, mostly couples, and a gaggle of giggling women with two smug-looking men.
It took me a while to find the Pharaoh Fantasy Club, which is at the end of a dark, bumpy dirt road, on the very edge of fabulously wealthy Sandton and desperately poor Diepsloot — an area comprising mainly smallholdings and “amaplotte” with heavy security, big dogs and almost no street names or lights. It’s a private club, Searll tells me when he greets me. He has been asked here tonight to do his workshop for the regular club goers and some of his own supporters.
“This is normally the dance floor,” he says, pointing to the main room, which has a long silver pole in the middle and a disco ball on the ceiling. “But tonight we will be making it a safe space for an open discussion.” There are some private rooms off the main area, a bar and an outside patio with a jacuzzi and massage bed.
Searll gets going with his workshop with a quick anatomical 101.
“How many nerve endings are there in the cock?” he asks.
“Eight thousand?” pipes up a woman.
“Er, no, that’s the clitoris,” replies Searll, “the cock has 4 000.” A few disappointed looks cross some of the men’s faces. The problem with blowjobs, he continues enthusiastically, is that most people have learnt their skills from porn movies, which are a terrible misrepresentation of what should really be a spiritual experience, an act of worship, a matter of trust and communication, a dance of reverence for the essence of manhood.
He talks about relaxing, about respect, technique, love and gentleness, all of which are probably good things, but I am wrestling uncomfortably with the very concept of a blowjob workshop. Like the term “military intelligence”, a blowjob workshop seems to me to have an inherent paradox: the one an intimate, private matter; the other by nature a collective discussion. I am not finding anything vaguely intimate, erotic or even interesting about all of this.
I am perched delicately on the edge of a mattress, trying to look inconspicuous, which is very difficult because I am under the strobe light and the white patterns on my skirt are standing out like headlights in the dim room. When the bowl of red lollipops is passed around, so we can practise what we have just learnt, I simply want to hide. And then, just when I think my excruciation cannot possibly get more intense, Searll, clutching the plastic cock and his very own lollipop, says: “And now for our live demonstration …”.
Like something out of a Fellini movie, Elka the Exhibitionist (let’s just call her that) and a man who looks like a young, thin Arnold Schwarzenegger whip off their clothes and she proceeds to go down on him with unbridled enthusiasm.
“Everyone come a bit closer for a good look,” says Searll, but I cannot. I have already chewed my lollipop into smithereens and I flee out the door into the bar, past a tray of penis-shaped cupcakes and head for the adjoining lounge.
“Hello darling,” says a buxom blonde, who introduces herself as Lara. She is the owner of Pharaohs Fantasy Club. “I call it a fantasy club,” she says, “because I hate the word swingers.” She has been running it for years, she tells me, and has built up an exclusive regular clientele. “Do you participate?” I ask, aware that my eyes are very wide.
“Does a bottle-store owner drink wine all day long?” says Lara. “No darling, no.”
Then Searll dashes into the room. “You have to come and look at all these happy men,” he tells me, “quickly.”
We go back into the main room and, to my astonishment, I see that most of the workshop participants are butt naked: the women are giving their men blowjobs and the gaggle of giggling women and the two smug men are having sex with each other.
I am gripped by a terrible, desperate sadness.
“I gotta go”, I stammer, “er, no hard feelings.”
Like something out of a Fellini movie, Elka the Exhibitionist and a man who looks like a young, thin Arnold Schwarzenegger whip off their clothes