It’s not the fact they’re transsexuals bothers me (or maybe it does bother me but in a way that has more to do with my own psychological makeup than it does with the dance of respect and compromise that is urban dwelling/civilization) as much as the fact that they are prostitutes. And even then it is not so much the fact that they are prostitutes as the fact that prostitution (or to be more precise, soliciting) is illegal. Is there any illegal activity that does not bring with it others? This is one of the reasons I do not think I would ever be able to live in Italy; on a daily basis one would be forced to enter into semi-legal (ie. illegal but not illegal enough or else so widespread that the law-enforcement apparatus does not deem it worthwhile to intervene) arrangements whose consequence is to perpetuate a much larger system of illegality and corruption that pollutes the lives of everyone. My girlfriend has a purse made of eelskin; today I will eat eel for lunch. Can one live, move through the world, without causing violence? Or is the whole game to orient oneself to cause the smaller violences, to pick one wriggly, mute species on which to inflict it?