Take a walk on the Flipside

So I'm lying on the stage, legs scissoring in the air, while a team of half naked firemen fusses around me, performing CPR and pumping my ribs with hands that hover all too close to the nipple region while bad pop music explodes in my ears and a roomful of women erupts in delighted screams ...

All in the name of work, of course.

Welcome to chapter two of "Life on the Flipside", the sometimes gruelling life and times of this budding young journalist in Broome. My mission - and I choose to accept it - is to review the "Sydney Hotshots" a male troupe of laminated and buffed dancers with a penchant for Village People routines. "I want to see photos of abs,"
the editor tells me, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth as he squints in my direction. No longer a novice at these events (Fi will testify to our horrifying transformation from demure young ladies to screeching banshees clamouring to get to the stage so we could rub oil into torsos, after buckets of pink champagne) I immediately put up my hand.

Suitably lubricated, my colleague Jess and I approach the Divers tavern with some trepidation, noticing the crowds of hormonal women loitering around the gazebo. Oodles of flesh oozes out of badly fitting crop tops and feet wiggle in uncomfortable heels until the nervous looking bouncer lets the ladies loose in the room amid a cloud of cheap perfume. We arrange ourselves at a table in the front, near the glass-doored change rooms where we can catch tantalising glimpses of well oiled bottoms, and wait for the action to start. As the music morphs from Top 30 to smoochy hits from bad 80s rock-stars and the lights start their slow circuit of the room, the Amazonian drunken girl across the table gets a little feisty. "We didn't come here for the conversation - we came to see some cock!" she roars, and slams her fist down on the table so hard that she knocks over her champagne.

The boys can smell my fear. No sooner have they leaped, twirled and thrusted their way onto the stage dressed as firemen, they swoop on our table, hoist me out of my chair and carry me kicking and screaming to the stage to administer their treatment. Terrified that the Hollywood Tape's tenuous hold on my impractical top will falter, I barely have time to register their hairless ministering before I am back at my table, glowing red with mortification. Luckily, they pick on me first. Over the night, girls endure pelvic thrusts to the face, invitations to slap arses and "sexy" nipple rubs from a parade of men dressed as policemen, construction men and cowboys. There is a competition to see who can stage the best fake orgasm - the prize is a crop top - and much impressive towel-only-held-up-by-the-knob-while-shaking-tight-buttocks tomfoolery. Ergh.

Through a white wine haze, it is still easy to remember that I don't find stumpy, oily men with retro mullet haircuts and a propensity for thrusting in any given direction all that appealing. Needless to say, drunken girl does, and the night ends with her storming the stage.

But that's another story.