Men are so primitive. If you can call it that. I prefer simply… men are men. Nevertheless, when it comes to our betties there is an ownership issue. As much as women protest, and methinks they doth protest too much, men do in some way consider their girlfriends and wives as possessions. It’s not as heinously misogynistic as it sounds. We’ll tune our mate; “Hey check that’s my new bint”. The emphasis on MY and that ‘my’ implies that the chick is ours. We hoard our girlfriends with Golum-like obsession: “My precioussss. Silly Hobbitses will never get preciousssss. She’s mine nyeeeheeheehehe!” Even God himself demands that you not covet your neighbour’s wife, and hence my lack of guilt when perving with my binoculars at the fluff two houses down.

However, as much as we would like them to be chained to our bedposts for the rest of their lives, we have to let them out of the house and into the unfaltering gaze of other men. This unfortunate situation is then exacerbated when we enter the abattoirs. By that I mean meat markets, more commonly known as clubs. Dress to impress they say on their flyers and women take that shit seriously. Although somehow they don’t look like they’re dressing to impress their fellow females. You take one look at her and she’s flaunting more skin than a shy nudist at Sandy Bay. Dress to impress? More like undress buddy.

Of course, no greater compliment can be given to a guy than sauntering into a club with a fit hunny secured to his arm and having the entire male population turn as one man and gaze stupefied at her beauty. But that also means: “Game on”. He will then spend his entire evening fending them off like a shepherd protecting his last sheep from a pack of hyenas driven crazy by hunger.

“Oooooooooh, I absolutely LOVE this song!” she will cry and clap her hands together quickly, “We just HAVE to go dance!” That’s like telling George Bush he has to parachute into Kabul once the troops have retreated. The dancefloor is hell for the boyfriend. There’s his prize beauty, undressed to impress and now out in the open, swaying her hips suggestively and doing that thing that girls do when they say they are dancing. It looks more like making love to the sound waves seeping out of the speakers.

Now beer goes through you like a hot bullet through a ripe melon. He must go and wring out a kidney at some point. His buxom dancing queen will say, “Okay hun, I’ll be here dancing.” That’s why there are never queues for the dude’s commode. We’re in and out of there faster than you can say zip, let alone button-fly. As we return, the scene is all too familiar. There she is aglow in the glitter-ball light, and literally encircled by at least 3 or 4 lone wolves on the prowl and one will already have made her acquaintance and told her she has beautiful “whatever comes into his mind first”.

What is it about a woman dancing? I should know. I have been out with three dancers. These are the women that men nudge their mates and say: “I’d hit that like the fist of an angry god!” It even happened to me. There I was sitting patiently sipping my beer, as the boyfriend of a dancer does, and she was doing her Coyote Ugly thing on the bar at the erstwhile Mansfield’s in Illovo, when some guy nudged me, pointed at her and said words to that nature. I nearly went Manson on his ass and I don’t mean Marilyn. It happens all the time. Even with your mates: “Dude your chick dances really well!”. Suggested as a compliment, but I’m a guy too you vacuous moron. I know what that means, you sick fuck. It means: “I’d hit that like the Blitzkrieg on Poland!”

So what can a guy do? Beats me pal. Roll with the punches and take it as a manly compliment. If you're the one doing the complimenting, then don't beat around the bush with “Your girlfriend is really pretty”, be a man and say: “Dude, given half a chance I’d be in there faster than Malema at a ZANU PF buffet. You are one lucky guy, let me tell you, and that makes me jealous because I'm weak, and if she’s faithful to you then you’ve earned my respect as a man.” Well that’s the way I like to see it.