The scene: La Rambla. Barcelona, Spain. September 2006. Way past midnight.
The human statues have gone home to scrape off their make-up and count the day's change. Most of the cafes and venders are closed for the night. The only people left are nocturnal tourists, drunk stumblers, drunk nocturnal tourists stumbling, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Lots and lots of prostitutes.
Nearly all of them were African and, therefore, black. They were aggressive, too, groping, glomming, and otherwise blurring the line between solicitation and assault.
As my friend and I attempted to fight our way through the whore gauntlet with wallet and morals intact, we saw two younger Arab-looking men speaking with two pretty, well-dressed, black girls.
One overheard sentence was all I needed: the girl said, in flawless American English, "Well, in my country you look like the guys who work at the gas station, but I'm not saying you are."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Berlin
Monika walked through the wall. All these years, then just like that. No more climbing, no more digging. No more dying. Neither the first ...
-
If you hang out with Ray and me long enough, one of us will tell the story. My version is a mildy amusing short tale of semi-masochistic ani...
-
In the most tactical terms, I ski because as a kid, my parents made me. It was like school: I went because I had no choice. That was a lon...
-
Her lobster claw hands weren't sexy, and no woman alive would envy her sad little tuft of hair, but that was hardly the point. She had t...
No comments:
Post a Comment