Scary Old Road
Wednesday, November 15, 2000




Slaughter Street. That's what it used to be called. Just near Bacon Street. I live in what Americans would call the 'meat-packing district'. And it still is a meat-packing district. Different kind of meat, though. Different kind of packing.

They're always blonde, the girls. Always with dark roots. They don't wear stilettoes. Nor thigh boots. Nor suspenders. Nary a peep of fishnet. Just tracksuits, normally. Maybe some thick tights. Ankle boots that look like they come from Shoe Express: a slight platform, a chunky heel of a style that hasn't been fashionable for a while now.

I used to ponder those clothes, but then I thought: well, they don't need to dress up to pull, do they?

I always wondered though, why there, exactly? I mean, there's a lot of dark streets round here. Sure, there's cobbles on Slaughter Street. A bridge. A taxi rank where drivers of black cabs take their breaks. But nothing to especially make it a place for working girls to ply their trade.

(Notice the delicate language there? If I was talking to a friend, I'd talk about prostitutes. In fact, I'd talk about whores. Nothing especially, I'd say, to make it a place for whores to hang out. But this is writing. It behoves one well to be more formal in writing, wouldn't you say? Indeed, ma'am, it does. More tea, vicar?)

Last night, walking home from band rehearsal, treading delicately over the streams of urine that trickled from between the trucks in the lorry-park down towards the gutter, I twigged. Doh! Lorry park! Urine! Men! Men. Men and their spurting, trickling, dribbling penii. Hence the whores. Simple.

I don't mind it. I walk down that dark dark street night after night and I wonder. Dark street. Bad men. Stuff your mother warned you about.

I wonder about all that, but I don't worry.

Because of the girls.

Mum didn't need to warn me not to get into cars with strange men.

On my street, at least, their cars are all full.




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