It's midnight and the bar is closing but you don't want to go home with the pinstripe-suit man who's been hitting on you. Instead, you text a guy you became friends with at law school years ago. Feel like sex," you SMS. Within a minute your phone screen flashes a reply: "Sooner the better. This brand of on-demand sex between men and women who know each other usually takes place after late-night calls or text messages, and has its own unwritten rules that allow repeated casual intercourse.
Booty-call relationships involve greater sexual adventurousness but less emotion than one-night stands, recent studies reveal. And sex researchers locally suggest that it is increasingly popular among young, urban South Africans.
To test this theory I sent out an anonymous sex survey to a small sample of colleagues in the Johannesburg newsroom. It seemed like a quick, if unscientific, way to find out whether any South Africans were up to speed with the latest sexual trend among Americans.
All my snap survey showed is that few people were willing to report on what they do in private, but that booty calls were attractive and practised by six who did respond positively. Another man, in his early 30s, now in a relationship, said: "If you're seeing the person fairly regularly, you inevitably get to know them a little, but even that interaction, from my experience, is quite light and fun.
I have found a strange sense of trust and confidentiality also develops. Sexual health adviser Catriona Boffard says: "Although there are links to casual sex, booty calls imply that there is a certain relationship that exists between two people. But she did caution: "If one person begins to feel dependent or falls for the other, then I think a problem comes in.
