From Boot to Cock to Mouth (And mom, don't worry, I didn't get arrested and have to bribe the police with sexual favors)

Johannesburg has been treating me great so far. I have been able to see most of the major attractions the city has to offer and am constantly learning about the country's culture and history from a variety of different people and perspectives. However, my most entertaining/never-thought-I'd-see-this experience came after attending a local university rugby game.

Paul, the dad of the family I am staying with, works at a financial consulting company called Vestac that he and another guy started six or seven years ago. They seem to be doing pretty well (check above house pictures for verification) and he invited me to his office on Monday afternoon to show me around the place. It was incredible to see how many clients Vestac works with seeing that only two people run the company although it did not come as too much of a surprise because Paul may be one of the smartest people I have ever met. Anyways, back to the story, Paul also employs a university student part time to help with some of the busy work around the office. Byron and I went out to get lunch for the office and before I left he invited Paul and I to his rugby match on Wednesday and then for me to go out for beers with the team following the game. I was pumped seeing as a) rugby is one of the most popular sports in SA and I need to start learning more about it b) as great as Paul and Marion have been I was desperately in need of hanging out with people my age and not watching the Disney channel with their eight year old son Tom and c) I've heard rugby players like to drink and I had yet to experience Jo-Burg's pub life (I ended up going out to high end club on Tuesday but that's a different story).

Paul, Sam (their 15 year old son) and I went to the rugby stadium at University of Witwatersrand to watch Byron's team Commerce take on the Medics. Byron is part of a league within the university where each of the different graduate programs (here called faculties) have a team and play against each other. The stands were around half full but it was the first time since being in Johannesburg that I was around a racially mixed crowd. Fans were grouped in bunches cheering for their respective teams and I noticed a beer in nearly every persons hand.

Byron's team won convincingly 19-0 although it was hard for me to declare a winner after watching both teams beat the shit out of each other for 80 minutes. I was surprised there were not more injuries due to the brutality of the match but I guess one guy being sent to the emergency to check for a broken collar bone isn't all that unusual. Bottom line: fun sport to watch, drinking is encouraged as a spectator, have no desire to play it myself.

I wasn't sure when the festivities would commence and certainly did not expect to have a beer in hand ten minutes after the final whistle blew. Paul and Sam said their goodbyes and before I knew it I found myself surrounded by twenty guys from Byron's rugby team, two flats of beer (recently purchased from the stadium vendor), and sitting almost directly in the middle of the stands. The tradition of "fines" was soon to commence.

I'm still not sure if "fines" is something performed after every South African rugby game or if Byron's team just had a drinking problem, but the rules of the game were soon detailed and the games had begun. After assuring everyone had a side beer, the captain of the team would call down groups of two to five players depending on position and they would stand before the team each with beer in hand. The captain would then call out each of them out one by one and the rest of team would nominate them with a "fine". A fine could be anything from a recognition for a good tackle or run, or, as more commonly applied, an acknowledgment of when somebody played poorly or made an ass out of themselves. Basically, a time to cheer or jeer your teammates that usually resulted in a brutally honest insult followed by the rest of the team laughing uncontrollable (for instance, the team thought it especially funny when, during my moment in the spotlight, I was given a fine for being an American). Once everyone in the group was given their respective fines, the captain would pick a player from the stands to lead the rest of the team in various raunchy songs (the subject matter ranged from "sticking it in your grandmother" to having sex with a baboon) while those recently fined had to chug their beer. This was performed over and over until everyone had been called to the front and assessed their fines.

Now, as most good drinking games go, the rules change the longer the game continues and more beer is consumed. Instead of just chugging beer after the end of your fines session, the captain may propose for you to drink another beer for any reason that comes to mind (drinking to slow, spilling, breathing) and would take his proposition to vote, all of which resulted in an overwhelming "YEY!" from the team. But the funniest evolution of "fines" dealt with how you drink your beer, because just chugging would soon not suffice.

The captain introduced "left, right, left" to one of the bigger players on the team, meaning he had a beer in each hand and had to drink from the hand everyone was yelling at him to drink from. "Fines" even included a grueling relay race up and down the bleachers with beers to chug at the top and bottom and empty cans to be dodged from hurling teammates. With the first round of flats quickly demolished and a new round on the way, rules and order fell way to just drinking and, unfortunately, the captain calling for and the team echoing "boot to cock to mouth."

Some players already had the bad luck to have to drink a beer poured out of a recently played in, sweaty rugby boot, but the ante was taken up a notch when someone pulled out a beer bong with a red, white and blue dildo attached at the end. Apparently a recent addition to the "fines" meeting, players were instructed to get on their knees and take a beer poured from the athlete-foot infected boot, into the bong and out of the patriotic colored sex toy. Furthermore, guys taking the beer were encouraged to enhance the spectacle with the use of hands or facial expressions (sorry, you must use our imagination for this). No one was spared from the spectacle and each attempt seemed to garner a louder and louder applause from the team. And just like the rest of the meeting, all of this was performed in the middle of the stands, surrounded by hundreds of gawking spectators.

Following "fines" and me deciding that if all rugby matches ended like this maybe picking up the sport wouldn't be such a bad idea, the whole team went to a local pub called the Jolly Roger to continue in the festivities. I took full advantage of the dollar to rand conversion rate and made sure to buy beers for the team in thanks for letting me tag along for their post game rituals.

I will be leaving for Cape Town on Thursday but will make sure to give a post about the rest of things I have been doing in Johannesburg. I'll try and include my attendance at a local comedians one man act where I was singled out for being American as well as the perils of traveling with a mustache. Hope everyone is well and emails are always appreciated.