I live half of a block from the red light district. Along the city walls for about 3 long blocks bored looking women sit on stools in windows undressed to thrill. As might be expected the district is rimmed with bars. I’m not sure what the girls cost but beer at the bar around the corner from my apartment is cheap and good. One would hope you could say the same about the sex. There is a bar with 1 Euro espresso very near. I sit outside there warm afternoons when the street is quiet. After dark the character changes and it becomes too noisy. Afternoons the girls, in wrap around sunglasses, totter out on spiked heels for a bit of sun, their hair in messy pony tails. They smoke cigarettes, laugh loudly and yell across the street in every language except German or English to other girls doing the same thing. After months here I am known enough to elicit nods of recognition when I take an outside chair with my afternoon espresso. We don’t talk much. There’s nothing to say beyond Hello and Isn’t a nice day? The bar closest to me has an incredibly loud jukebox. I know the owner. She’s a nice woman who misses Poland but is making too much money here to go home. She stocks the jukebox with old rock songs, classic rhythm and blues and Polish pop music. The only time I hear the Polish pop music is very late when she is cleaning the bar around the last few die hard drinkers so she can go home. Last night I went to bed about 3 AM. As I was drifting off to sleep the old Sherrells song “Will you love me tomorrow” was being played over and over. Somewhere in California, Phil Spector, the man who recorded and produced the song 40 years ago is in the prison cell where he will die of old age for killing a woman while playing with one of his many guns. Gerry Coffin who wrote the song with Carol King is dead 2 years now. But tonight the song is alive and fresh as the night it was recorded, at least to whoever put all those Euros in to hear it 10 or 15 times in a row. The last 2 lines are “Tonight the light of love is in your eyes, but will you love me tomorrow?” An interesting choice of song for a bar in the red light district. If I had to guess I would have to say the answer is probably, sadly, no.
September 28, 2009
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
What a writer. I was there with you. I could smell the dirt on the street, the espresso as you talked in your soothing, calming voice. People watching is my hobby. So is gathering peoples’ stories such as the Polish lady. I wonder if some day the street girls will wish for “someone to love me tomorrow”. I bet they do every night, or day, they get done with their quota. There surely is more to life than this. I figured that out not too long ago.
Comment by Lonesome Brenda — September 30, 2009 @ 3:17 am |