Talking heads

This week, The City News launches its first ever opinion column.
Talking Heads is a forum for outspoken inner-city identities to debate pressing local issues.
To kick things off, Michael Gormly and Andrew Woodhouse look at the changing face of Kings Cross.
‘Sex workers are a valuable industry segment that bring tourism, colour and commerce to The Cross.’
 

MICHAEL GORMLY
The real question is: ‘Should the sex industry in Kings Cross be regulated out of sight’ per the demands of some sensitive locals.
Sex work thrives in every suburb. The Yellow Pages proves it.
But other suburbs pander to hypocrisy, a pretence that the oldest profession does not exist. ‘Keep up appearances’ is the maxim.
Some of us hate the stifling lies, so we move to Kings Cross where honest reality is on view, where suburban blight has the courage to show its face, where most have big enough hearts and minds not to judge.
I cannot imagine The Cross without its hookers whispering sweet nothings to likely guys. I respect their courage, putting themselves on display, day after day. I feel sorry for some whose lives are broken but acknowledge they make an honest living. There are also some who enjoy it; the gorgeous young backpackers partying their way around the planet.
I love the tradition of ‘Pensioners Day’, when old local men get their fortnightly Thursday thrill with their favourite girl, parading arm-in-arm to the nearest ATM to get their cash before the pash.
I love the wide-eyed terror of the country boys on their first big outing to sin city, always declaiming interest in ‘that sort of thing’ but stopping to be beguiled by the spruikers.
I wonder at the lives of the furtive suburban businessmen sneaking into the gay brothel in my street.
To those locals who don’t like it: Get thee to West Pymble!
Michael Gormly is a writer, photographer and publisher of kingscrosstimes.blogspot.com. 

ANDREW WOODHOUSE
SEX is better than logic, but I can’t prove it. Squealing, squirming bodies: if sex isn’t a joke then what is’ A four-letter word beginning with f’ Ferns ‘ with their wind-borne spores and single-partner genes, is a much better reproductive system.
We’d look up, not down, to examine our manliness!
Street sex, a ballet de lust on rate-payers’ streets, is where unsafe sex happens and drug deals lift high crime rates ever higher.
En passant. I buy fruit, newspapers, rail tickets but am accosted: ‘Wanna see a girl, love” Syntax please! I want to walk fetter-free and want drug-free, taxable, AIDS-free, safe houses. Or perhaps sex workers should consider re-training as barristers. After all, sex like the law, is a matter of procedure.
All sex is equal. So if I want retail sex I want spring specials, health guarantees, GST-inclusive prices and martini, Mozart-music ambiences. Stirred but not shaken.
Sex, like hot, take-away pizza needs proper packaging please.
And no lectures on the ‘rights’ of street workers versus middle-class morality. No ‘right’ to make a four-minute buck at others’ expense exists. No, it’s not the world’s oldest profession either: there’s no historical imprimatur. Try 2500 BC Sumeria ‘ after tax collectors.
The public street sex industry is dying. Generations X, Y and Z are over it, wrapped in their own condom-covered existence.
It’s a flotsam of sepia-toned, grungy, penniless vagrancy. Money is laundered, unlike the gauche streetgear. It’s withered away on drugs, pimped on booze; gambled without any social or economic value.
Sex: a cross we shouldn’t bare.
Andrew Woodhouse is the president of the Potts Point & Kings Cross Heritage Conservation Society