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Monday, November 28, 2005 Woke up in the early hours from long, complicated dreams, the last of which featured me doing a performance piece, something I'd written. A one-person show, really, though for some reason it included a number of prostitutes hanging around the performing space. Why? Don't know. They had no speaking roles, they didn't do anything, really, except add a strange vibe to the general ambience. A brisk five-minute walk in the direction of Sol from here brings one to la Calle de Montera, one of the few visible concentration points of prostitution in Madrid's city center and scene of an ongoing tug of war between cops and local representatives of the skin trade. It's a strange length of city street, lined with restaurants, stores, a busy multi-screen movie theater, two or three sex shops, and anywhere from a handful to twenty or more prostitutas looking to pick up clients. Police try to be a presence, and when a cruiser or two is parked nearby, the number of putas diminishes, though the cops never seem to clear them all away. (This afternoon, six cops on one side of the street, chatting. Other side of the street: groups of working women, chatting.) Last week, the city government announced a crackdown. The plan: hand out fines to both women and johns, a tactic that television news programs happily claim has stirred up controversy. Doesn't seem to have made much difference to this point along Calle Montera. Having no car here, I don't get out on the highways much. My first couple of trips out of the city, I noticed the occasional roadhouse off to the side of the carretera, nondescript buildings, generally unadorned except for a big neon sign reading CLUB. Roadside joints of ill repute, it turns out, where a lonely traveler can take a break, buy a drink, hire one of the women who work there. Puticlubs, one of my Spanish teachers called them. A whole other kind of rest stop. Not, strictly speaking, legal, but scattered about the landscape anyway. And not for me. I don't see the attraction. Squalid. No emotional intimacy. But to each their own, I guess. Madrid, te quiero. rws 7:14 AM [+]
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