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April 09, 2005
Panic in the Park
By day, the park across the street from where I'm staying hosts strolling couples and friendly neighborhood soccer games. At night it's a different world. Groups of women line up to approach the cars that flash their lights from a block away. The women seem to have made peace with the people who live here; the one group avoids the other.
Tonight I walked by a pack of women, ready to ignore their hisses and calls. But then I figured: Why not talk to them, find out about their lives and how the protect themselves? They just saw me come out of the house. Clearly I'm not a customer.
"Hello," said one woman. "Hello," I said. "Do you speak English? I want only to talk." From one woman in front of me suddenly there were five. One began to grind against my leg and I felt hands all over me. I pulled back. "Faaahck and saaahck." "Goood blowjob. Goood blowjob." The women smiled up at me like clowns.
I stepped away and turned toward the nearest big street. A woman grabbed each arm and walked with me. When we passed a dark space between houses they tried to pull me in. "Please." "You fuck me." "Good blowjob." They pressed themselves against me with laughing enthusiasm and twisted my arm and I was almost afraid I they were stronger than me. "I want only to talk," I said again. "Let me go." Slowly, they did.
I hailed a cab and headed to Mambo's, one of two large, Western-style clubs in Maputo. It was only a few blocks away that I realized I should be worried for the women and not myself. How many men had they been with that night? How many times had they used protection? I could smell their sweat. How did they arrive at a place where they could project such joy into such ignominy?
I walked into the back room to a DJ in a Terps hat playing some sort of Afro-Euro techno. Everyone was doing an elaborate line dance. A man, Torobinesque, clung to a woman in a leopard-print alligator dress as she stared blankly at the SMS on her cell phone. I didn't recognize it at first, but yes, it's a dance even my mother knows. The Electric Slide.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at April 9, 2005 03:47 AM
Comments
EVEN your mother???
Posted by: MOM at April 9, 2005 09:27 AM
Oh snaps! Your mom burned you, kid!
Posted by: matthew at April 11, 2005 06:55 AM