Discovering Brothels, Bordellos and Burdels

Some years ago I spent a couple of winters in Sicily, living on my boat in the dock at Marina de Ragusa. It’s a wonderful Island with great wine and pizzas to die for. Just up the road is the old city of Ragusa which is a World Heritage Site. There’s plenty of other history too with amazing Roman ruins, at Agrigento for example. Then there’s an active volcano, Mt. Etna if you fancy visiting a boiling crater.

I was enjoying the sunshine and writing my way through my novel ‘Sicilian Channel’ — and running behind the publisher’s schedule — but the research is always fun, and the writing was progressing well (in my view, but I’m only the author).

This is what I wrote about one particular day:

Yesterday my exercise was a 15 km cycle ride from Marina di Ragusa to Santa Croce de Kamerina, in search of a cellphone dongle for my laptop. It was a warm, sunny day and I headed along the coast road towards Punta Scalambri where the road turns north, following the coast.

I don’t know if you ever saw the detective series ‘Montalbano’, but Punta Scalambri is where he lives in the series (on another day I was to have a picnic on his doorstep with my First Mate).

It’s a beautiful spot and the lighthouse is imposing, even phallic, to say the least. The ice cream is great too!

As I rode, the road turned north, climbing gently, and the pumping got harder. The sweat started to run.

Then I passed the local brothel, on the edge of town. Sure, I’d heard about Paris, Texas and about the Chicken Shack, but this was Sicily!

So how did I know that it was the brothel I was pumping past?

They don’t have signs outside, the locals wouldn’t accept that.

Here’s how I knew: A couple of years before when I was wintering my boat in Spain, I was in the local marina bar in Chipiona (near Cadiz). It's another place with a huge lighthouse. I was enjoying a small bowl of stew and the proprietor, Ricardo, was doing the rounds of the tables and I asked what the stew was.

His English was better than my Spanish. ‘My mother in law makes it, with meat from the Doñana National Park, across the river’. I didn’t understand the Spanish word he used for the meat. El venado. Then he said ‘Bambi’. OK, got it, venison stew.

We were getting on well so I asked about the detached house I’d passed outside Sanlúcar de Barrameda (yes Sanlúcar as in Don Quixote), a couple of miles up the River Guadalquivir, which goes on up to Seville and into deep Andalucia. Ricardo was obviously puzzled, so I told him that there had been a long string of bedsheets drying on the clothesline’ (in plain view up on the flat roof) and at night, strings of coloured lights were visible around the balustrade.

Ricardo laughed. ‘Oh — it’s the brothel’. I can’t remember that Spanish word either so I’ve just looked it up ‘el burdel’. Of course! Bordello is the Italian word from the same root and I’m much more familiar with that, linguistically speaking of course. Are you?

House of pleasure or house of the rising sun — that was an eye opener for me, a Welsh boy, a sheltered life with a non-conformist upbringing. We didn’t have those in Llanelli although I’m sure that they must have existed over a hundred years ago when it was a bustling international coal-exporting harbour. Oh yes, I’ve just remembered (really) that my father told me about one which had operated during the Second World War, serving GIs, just across the street from the house where I was brought up. It seems I can’t get away from the dens of iniquity now.

It’s weird how writing can unlock the memory.

So, until yesterday I hadn’t fully appreciated the cultural aspect — and I don’t mean in the biblical sense. Or maybe I do. What is it about Catholic countries or those with Spanish or Italian influence in their history? Sin and say sorry. As long as the sin (let’s not debate that term) is outside the town boundaries, then that’s OK. Acceptable. Well, almost. Everyone knows about them. Tut, tut. Local colour, as they say.

For those of you with a prurient interest, the one outside Santa Croce de Kamerina in Sicily might have been just a clip-joint. And no, I didn’t go in - it was mid morning, business hadn’t opened up - I don’t have any commercial interest in the services, haven’t tested them and so I can’t recommend them. I haven’t been invited to join a focus group (what an idea!), nor do I have any association with the business, other than a passing interest (literally). I don’t know the proprietors either (this is Sicily, don’t forget, and I don’t want to meet too many ‘businessmen’).

The nearest I got to this sort of action is lessons in Flamenco dancing, but that was in Spain.

Now unfortunately, my new dongle is not working — a ‘RAS 668 error’ — and I’m tearing my hair out. I think it needs attention. And to cap it all, my buttocks ache after the very hot ride yesterday (on the bicycle not in the brothel).

Help needed (with my dongle)! I’m told that’s what chatrooms are for…

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Originally published at www.jamesmarinero.com