Saturday, January 23, 2016

Red Light Toronto

In order to get that last post up to give people even a chance to get to the Friday night show, I had to drop what was perhaps the most interesting aspect of my trip out to Dufferin to get to the theatre on Tuesday night.  I actually made pretty good time on the streetcar, though I didn't read quite as much as I had hoped since there were several really loud and distracting conversations going on near me.  (I would say in general I am about a day and a half behind where I hoped to be in my reading, though I should be able to wrap up Musil's The Confusions of Young Törless today and start in on Jacob's Room this afternoon.)

Perhaps I was primed to have prostitution on the brain after the teaser of not being able to see Red Light Winter.  At any rate, I had a fair bit of time to kill while waiting on the streetcar back, with occasional trips to the corner to see if the bus was coming any faster.  I saw a young woman come out of an apartment dressed up in a fur coat and all dolled up.  She was talking on the phone and finally her ride turned up.  The strange thing was that she went into the back seat, and then it happened that they turned the corner and sat for a minute before heading off.

The way my mind was primed, I was sure that she was one of the women from the back pages of Now magazine that make out calls, and they were negotiating the scope and price of her services.  And that is still a possibility, since it certainly seems to mesh with the way these services operate (at least according to those in the know).

However, on further reflection, it is far more likely that I was just watching a young woman using the Uber car service and confirming directions after she hopped in the car.  It just happened that she was a bit overdressed for a Tuesday evening, and my febrile* imagination ran away from me a bit.  My first impressions definitely make for a better story though.

* Febrile = fevered, a bit overwrought.  This is a word that keeps popping up in the Oxford Press translation of Young Törless.

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