Anyway, satisfied or not, the man won’t turn up again tomorrow, and tomorrow his neighbour will fall for the same scam, let’s call it that. It’s a vicious cycle of professional decline: certain attentions, certain considerations, that you could count on in the old brothels have become a memory of the past. In fact, I was in favour of the Merlin Law, and during the debate in Venice that accompanied the showing of Adua and Her Friends² I stood up to speak in favour of that honourable lady, whose tenacity was highly commendable.

It’s unjust and obscene that in a country with a republican and democratic constitution, founded on work and not on exploitation, it is the government that exploits prostitutes. Other countries, truly civilized ones, have long since abolished regulation, both of brothels and the other kind, which, disguised as a health inspection, registered streetwalkers and exposed them to the continual risk of a police round-up. Those round-ups were almost as offensive as the brothels.

Just arguments, all, and sacrosanct, and I am ready to defend them even now. And don’t say to me: ‘What will our soldiers do?’ People who say that couldn’t care less about how the soldier will eat, dress, live or about his pay and his rations. And don’t tell me that regulated prostitution was a social service, either. Because if you truly want to talk about a social service, then, per absurdum, let’s organize obligatory, forced prostitution, for all women older than twenty-one – all of them, indiscriminately, none excluded.

They’ll say that not all women older than twenty-one, indiscriminately, feel like being prostitutes. And I will answer that not all men of that age feel like being soldiers, either, and yet they certainly do it, since the social need, in fact the national and patriotic need, for military service is acknowledged.

They’ll also say that the prostitute’s trade (giving oneself, for compensation, to the first comer) isn’t noble. And I’d respond that the soldier’s trade (killing, without compensation, the first comer) doesn’t seem noble, either. In other words, I supported and I support the Merlin Law, even if I see its limitations and deficiencies. Which are basically two.

First: the higher prices. When brothels existed, two hundred and fifty lire was on average enough for a satisfying connection (at least for youthful clients, who ejaculate easily). Today the same thing, and complicated by the hassle of hotels etc., costs no less than three thousand lire. The unemployed man, the soldier (this time, yes), and the humble factory worker have no way of getting off for less. And one could even go so far as to say this: that the rise in prices has caused an increase in pederasty, and the manifestations of this have spread à ciel ouvert, in public places.

Anyone who goes to the city park, or certain clearings on the outskirts, near the stadium or the reservoir, knows that decrepit prostitutes wander in those areas; they’re older than sixty, almost horrendous to look at, and for five hundred lire they service the less prosperous client, behind a plane tree, in the shelter of a wall, against an escarpment. Now, the men who frequent these old hookers obviously seek nothing more than seminal evacuation. If that’s their purpose, it’s hard to see what real difference there is between achieving it with the prostitute and giving in to some pederast. (We could add, to the choices, getting off autonomously, by masturbating: but that isn’t completely true, as I could explain if I had more space.)