Porntastic Kasbah: Taking ‘lad bants’ too far

When I think of Kasbah, it is usually a colourful blur of bad dancing, friends getting their faces painted with the Mike Tyson tattoo, and the “you don’t need no boyfriend, get yo’self a lollipop” singing lady. Now, however, many memories of the nightclub my friends and I share are jaded by the dark and pretty harrowing events of their ‘Poptastic’ night on October 7th.

Unlike other nights hosted by Kasbah like ‘Kinky Fridays’ and a night in March where guests were told to, “Expect strippers and a massive sex toy treasure hunt”, Poptastic isn’t a night we (sadly) expected to be a super-sexualised event. On that Monday night everything was normal, until the DJ interrupted the set to say there was a new game to be played, boys versus girls. Excited for our first group night out together, two of my girl friends and one of the guys volunteered along with another boy from Cov.

The host of the game was a bravado-fuelled, swaggering lad (shock!) called Jonny. He paced up and down the stage explaining the game: lads vs ladies, throw a ball from the other side of the dance floor into the bin, you gain a point. If you miss, an item of clothing comes off. My friends, a little hazy behind the eyes, don’t react, which I find a bit weird.

The game begins, and the two girls miss their shot (unsurprisingly, as there are fans blowing against them to jeopardise their throws), and the MC jeers at them to take off their clothes. Now what they’re being asked to do clicks with them, you can see it on their faces. Afterwards one of them said to me, in tears, “We thought it was a casual dance off. We couldn’t even hear what he was saying. It was so loud.”

All of us spectating, however, could. When my friend missed her shot again and she reluctantly removed her bra from under her dress, we very clearly heard Jonny declare: “That’s not good enough!” Had she not abided by the gross, degrading rules? Clearly not in his eyes, as he invoked a chant of “dress, dress dress!” amongst the boys in the crowd.

The game continued in this vein for many more painful minutes. When the boys misssed, my male friend laughed and shook his head signalling no, thanks, I don’t want to take off my boxers. Jonny mocked him, “Why not, have you got a tiny cock?”, as if by whacking his penis out on a sweaty Coventry stage it would validate his manliness.

Jonny mocked him, “Why not, have you got a tiny cock?”, as if by whacking his penis out on a sweaty Coventry stage it would validate his manliness.

At last the girls won, but not before one of my friends was left standing in her underwear under a harsh spotlight. My other friend stood in front of her, masking her confused nudity from the heckling crowd. Even though the game was over, Jonny felt the urge to interject just once more, “Oi, stop blocking her! Stop lezzing off!”

After my friends left the stage we spent a lot of our night consoling them, initially from their embarrassment and later from crowd members, who felt the need to come up to our group and “congratulate” them. Further insult was added to injury when videos of stripping and writhing girls were plastered all over the big screens, surprising us again, thinking the night should probably be rebranded “Porntastic.”

Many of the people I have relayed this story to have said to me, “This sounds like something that would happen in Magaluf.” And they’re really right. Some people might argue, why didn’t my friends just get off of the stage, which from an outsider’s perspective is a valid point. But it wasn’t necessarily the premise of the game, the nudity, which was the main problem, even though in principle that is still obviously grim. It was the fact that when my friends did abide by the game’s debasing rules, they were scorned for how they interpreted them. My friend was completely naked under her dress, and yet the artful Jonny encouraged the crowd to taunt her for not stripping nude. That night, Jonny really did pronounce for us the boundary that must be drawn between ‘entertainer’ and ‘predator.’