One of the interesting things about our trip to New Orleans was our visit to New Orleans' version of The Block, the red-light district--a small strip on Bourbon street. Signs pointing to female strippers, male strippers, simulated sex acts, female impersonators. I don't understand the sex market--there's nothing really sexy about what happens in these clubs. In fact, it's usually rather pathetic. Middle-aged women with bad dye jobs who have three kids and a second job at the convenience store take your order for eight-dollar drinks (nonalocholic seven) while women who look like war survivors dance disinterestedly before you, their various scars and vague rashes repelling one from thoughts of any further intimacy. Interestingly, I didn't feel so bad for the women as I did the transvestites. While they strutted in their high heels (some barely able to do that) with their smallish breasts and shriveled packages, all I could think about was their adolescence, their trials and tribulations as sexually confused teenagers, the taunting and beating by their peers and the abandonment by their families, the fact that economically they were reduced to strangling dollar tips out of nervous, giggling tourists who came to see them as a novelty act, like some two-headed monkey in the circus.

And why do the regulars come? Do they come out of some savior complex, some Taxi Driver scenario where they will rescue the beautiful but down-trodden and herpes-laden dancer out of this life, give her a house in the country, and receive a damn-good blow job in return?