Episode 1: The Alpha Male
MAN opens in the testosterone laced atmosphere of Harrington Street Boxing Gym. The cast arrives one at a time to engage in some sparring as we get to know them. We meet Maurice, whose, “not the typical type of bloke,” Kaizer, a brawny, quickly impassioned Sowetan, and Trevor, a boyish waiter with an open mind.
Episode 1 confronts the alpha male. The three characters have varying insight into this premise. Kaizer believes the alpha male is inherent in most men, while Trevor pairs the alpha male with ego and “ego’s can be fragile.” Maurice sees himself as a hybrid, metrosexual alpha male. Not a typical man’s man, he’s prone to slapping on a bit of dermalogica before a gym session.
Maurice enlightens us to what women are looking for in a man: “a woman will always like a man who has got compassion, feeling, and emotion for her,” but some women just “like to be dominated.” Trevor claims to have a better understanding of women, courtesy of gay intuition, while Kaizer concedes, “I will never understand women.”
Season is starting in Cape Town, and the more sexually dormant winter months are over. The characters start their first pick-up night at the Waiting Room for some social lubrication. A Rikki’s cab ride to Hemisphere gives Maurice a chance to reveal some intimate knowledge of Cape Town’s up market massage parlors, and their private consultations.
Hemisphere presents an opportunity for the guys to flex their social muscle in an attempt to secure dates for the following day. Kaizer operates without a strategy, intrigued by the opposite sex. He affirms, “Women come to Africa to meet something African, and here I am.” Maurice claims a late start in life determines his bachelorhood, but he prefers a quieter environment in which to operate. Moving later to a gay club, Bronx, Maurice and Kaizer get to observe Trevor operate on turf he’s more accustomed to, “gay guys are more confident in approaching the next person.”
The following morning, the guys catch up at Deluca to dissect the previous evening. Kaizer evidently knows a vast amount of women in Cape Town, and a case of cold feet denied Trevor a pick up on the first night. Maurice maintains that he needs a different environment in which to ply his seduction skills.
Date day arrives. Trevor asks a friend, Jason to Da Gama Park for baboon watching. Jason observes a few parallels between human alpha males and the baboon alpha males, sighting them as “strong, confident, cunning, arrogant to a certain extent, smart.” Alpha males can be intimidating, and at times, scary.
Kaizer invites two Dutch girls, Lizette and Marleen, to climb Table Mountain. Kaizer mistakes Lizette pronunciation of sport for porn, believing her explanation for her fatigue to be “I only watch porn on the television”. Kaizer lets Marleen know that he actually fancies both of them.
Maurice opts to take Mia Kayaking in Hout Bay Harbor on a drizzly, overcast day. Believing everybody to be a measure of the alpha male, Maurice will “use what I need to get a girl into bed.” An unceremonious kayak dismount, followed by a tirade of cursing negates Maurice’s alpha male prowess. Maurice crowns this with a foot chewing confession of his desire for Mia. A candle lit dinner at the top of the Ritz in Sea Point follows the soggy kayaking. Maurice tells us physical appearance drives initial attraction, regardless of all other crucial attributes, he’s especially impressed with Mia’s teeth.
As the sun sets over Cape Town the cast meet up to throw some thoughts around. Kaizer’s spent a significant part of his early adulthood in a long relationship, and feels he missed the opportunity to date significantly. He’s taking some time to explore himself, and others, further. He loves everything that women are, and finds something attractive in every girl he meets. Like Kaizer, Trevor spent his late teens in a long relationship, and missed all the partying associated with being young and gay. Trevor is ambivalent about staying single. A lust for “what’s out there?” Has kept Maurice single, and a view that early marriage is in fact, “a little bit of a handicap, (that) could even stunt growth and development.” Life is not under control and love is involuntary. Breasts mesmerize Maurice, and “a vagina used to scare the living shit out of me.”
