The weather here seems to have made a turn for the better, on some days, so the prostitutes have returned. Our landlord plans to resurrect the campaign to oust them from the "Avenue," our neighborhood, the streets coming off of said avenue.
No Ho Zone his signs read inspired by the Don Imus scandal of 2007. It is a creative campaign designed to draw attention to the problem of prostitution and to draw action from law enforcement. Apparently it worked last year with news vans coming from Pittsburgh, theft of such creative signage, and T-shirts at the high school. Oh, yeah, and fewer ladies of the night parading their wares on the Avenue. But it is a new year, a new spring, and the campaign has been forgotten.
There is something titillating in sin, some hidden forbidden excitement. I had never seen a prostitute before--not in real life anyway. I had never seen the dance of hooker and john before--not in real life anyway. Until now, that is.
My landlady and my husband exchanged knowing glances at the expense of my naivete when I interpreted a man in a SUV from before SUV was part of the American English vernacular picking up a woman as an innocent event in their lives. Obviously, I thought she was a wife or daughter or niece and this man was giving her a ride home. No, I was informed. He was a john and she a hooker. The event unplanned, clandestine, unsafe. Disgusting.
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