Paying for sex is so … eww

The neighbourhood around pretty little Wood Street is in an uproar because of a bright red house.

Prior to the oil boom, this controversy would have been about heritage bylaws and colour schemes, and Shannie Duff would have been all over the news instead of Coun. Jonathan Galgay.

But oil money has made St. John’s a modern, grownup city, with massage parlours and other Torontoesque enjoyments.

Some neighbours have complained to city hall about Kendra’s Red House on Wood Street, a licensed “adult massage parlour.”

Supposedly, the neighbours are concerned about traffic and safety.

No, the real objection is what goes on inside Kendra’s Red House. It definitely isn’t the kind of place you go if you strained your shoulder while shovelling snow. You don’t need to be a physiologist to know the “body slide” ($250 per hour) won’t do anything for that.

Paying for sex does have a sizable ick factor.

It’s strange, though, that the women who provide sexual services for a fee are always judged more harshly than the men who pay them.

And so it is with Kendra’s Bed House. Red House. It is the activities inside that people oppose, whether or not they are willing to admit it. References to traffic, noise, safety, congestion and whatnot are merely premature articulation.

Traffic? Seriously? Memo to complainants: you! live! down- town!

There are lots of businesses in residential areas. Convenience stores on any given street create traffic, sometimes 24/7, but you seldom hear about residents complaining to city hall.

Understandably, most people recognize the need for bread and milk.

Considerably fewer people buy the “Nuru” massage ($280 per hour). (Nuru: a Japanese fullbody erotic massage using a seaweed-based gel. How did we ever make sense of the world before Google?)

Consider a barbershop. It has been some years since a city councillor stated he, or she, received complaints from neighbours about an establishment that involved the coming and going of questionable clientele, usually long-haired dirtbags. Well, in a dirtbag, out clean-cut.

Someone mentioned Kendra’s Red House employees come and go at all hours of the day and night. Unfortunately, sexy young women walking to work in broad daylight is an intractable problem big cities around the world have to cope with.

Galgay says “shaming” the clients might be a solution. Perhaps he missed the news that the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that selling sexual services in a private place is legal, and the safety of sex-trade workers is far more important than any revulsion or moral repulsion people might feel about it.

Residents of the Wood Street area might accuse me of being ignorant of their situation and obnoxiously unsympathetic to their valid concerns.

If so, I have a challenge for them: you send Kendra’s Red House to my neighbourhood, and I’ll send the Portugal Cove ferry terminal to yours.

Your average porn star could trip at my property line and bump her boobs on the Flan- ders’ fender. You want noise, traffic, safety issues, ribald clientele? Try living near a ferry terminal.

My neighbours and I could tell stories about some Bell Island commuters that would make even Gary Gosine blush.

The provincial government reconfigured the road to the terminal — over residents’ objections — and there have been so many accidents that the Jaws of Life are known locally as Portugal Cove Pliers.

Then there’s the skyward roar. Portugal Cove is right under the flight path for St. John’s International Airport.

Noise. Traffic. Bustle. It is part of modern life. You get used to it. After a while, you don’t even notice the jets or the ferry’s horn. A red house should be easy to adjust to.