Kamogelo Seekoei

Kamogelo Seekoei

Going to a gay and lesbian club proved to be quite an assignment for this girly-girl. Not because I hold anything against gay people, but because I thought I would not fit in with men in women's clothes and women acting like men.

So I called my girlfriends and the four of us hit the gay and lesbian club scene, and boy did we have fun.

We went to two clubs, the recently-opened Brizz Pub in Soweto and Simply Blue in Braamfontein in Johannesburg.

Like all clubs, Simply Blue has a bouncer.

His first words to us were: "Do you have guns?"

Of course we do not have guns, we just have huge handbags.

I realised when we got inside that the bags were a mistake.

Most of the other women there did not carry handbags.

Like men, the women carried wallets in their back pockets.

We stood out like sore thumbs, I thought.

But there were four of us so people at the club could have mistaken us for two couples, and that was comforting.

We immediately positioned ourselves at the bar.

There were a couple of chairs with very small tables all around us and the place had wall-to-wall mirrors.

House music pumped from the speakers, but it was slow and inviting.

Simply Blue felt intimate. It is a small establishment that has a select group of people frequenting it, because everyone seemed to know each other.

And this also made us stand out.

So I decided to watch some girls playing pool instead.

The group occupied the pool table, in the centre of the club, for the duration of our time there.

One of my friends noted: "I wonder how these people can finance their lifestyle. It is so expensive, the cars, the clothes and the booze."

Much to my disappointment, there was not much fondling between the couples.

Maybe it was because they did not have to prove their love to anyone in the club.

Before we left, we were invited to a party the next day.

Our visit to Brizz Pub was short.

There was also a tranquil mood in the pub despite all the comings and goings that patrons were involved in.

The cars and clothes were also impressive, my friend observed again.

A patron who refused to give his name said: "What is important is that we have a place where we can go to and no one stares at us. We are all the same in this place."

The gay and lesbian clubs are no different from all the heterosexual clubs in the country. The gay clubs are just frequented by people who are different from the rest of us.

And with these clubs mushrooming all over town, some businesses are bound to make a killing while others will lose customers.