“The barriers are not artificial. And I assure you that any slur on your gender is unintended. I am merely being practical. The mores of the red-light district demand that a male make the initial contact. Surely you can see that.”
“I suppose so,” Dr. Peerloin agreed reluctantly. “But do you think that you have the background and experience necessary to embark on such a venture, Professor?”
“I am not completely innocent in such matters,” he answered stiffly. “After all, I have been a widower for two years.”
“You don’t mean —” Dr. Peerloin blushed in spite of herself.
“I may be a scientist, but I am also a man.”
“But a man of your age!” Dr. Peerloin exclaimed.
“I’m only seventy!”
“You should be ashamed!”
“Well, I’m not. And I might ask you to maintain the same scientific detachment you requested of Mr. Newton before.”
“No wonder you’re always washing your hands!” Dr. Peerloin told him spitefully.
“That’s not the reason and you know it. Now let us stop discussing my personal life, Doctor. What I want to know from you as co-director of this project is if you agree that the prostitute population should be approached and a fee offered for their cooperation.”
“Oh, I agree. I’m sure we’ll get optimum cooperation with a man of your vast experience making the contacts.”
They were at the front door now. Dr. Peerloin locked it behind them, turned abruptly on her heel and walked down the street alone.
“Good night,” the Professor called after her, but she didn’t answer. As he started walking towards his own home, he thought about their conversation and her attitude. His years of dealing with women on the most intimate level had indeed made Professor Woocheck chauvinistic in the privacy of his own mind. Right now he felt that Dr. Margaret Peerloin had reacted in a typically feminine fashion to his implied confession of having engaged in illicit sexuality with prostitutes.
But Professor Woocheck was honest enough with himself to admit that if she had been typically feminine, he had been peculiarly masculine himself. Yes, his ego drive had certainly caused him to lie by implication. The truth was that since becoming a widower, Professor Woocheck had sublimated all his sex impulses to his work. Truly, in his whole life, he had never once gone to a prostitute. Yet his male ego had instantaneously pushed him into convincing Dr. Peerloin of the opposite. And he knew that now it would push him into making good the boast by recruiting prostitutes for the research program.
Well, that really shouldn’t be too difficult. Professor Woocheck had lived in Flintsburgh all his life and he knew the city fairly well. He knew the district which was devoted to catering to all sorts of human weaknesses. During his years of private practice as a gynecologist, he had had occasion to visit patients there from time to time. Indeed, some of this experience had been responsible for his decision to turn from private practice to research. It had added to his awareness of the lack of scientific knowledge about sex.
Still, he’d never approached the district as a prospective customer, let alone a bulk buyer. So he had certain qualms later that evening when he set out for the South Side of the city where it was located. As he drove further south, he was struck as always by the discrepancy between the neighborhoods he passed through and the North Side of Flintsburgh where he lived.
The residential areas of the North Side of the city had grown up around the sprawling grounds of Flintsburgh University where the Professor had taught graduate courses on a part-time basis for many years. The homes in that area ranged from the mansions of the very rich to the pleasant middle-class dwellings of college teachers and other professional people. A few luxury apartment houses had sprung up recently, but for the most part the North Side maintained a spacious suburban atmosphere.
As in most Mid-western cities with over a hundred thousand population, Flintsburgh was growing outward from a core which sometimes seemed on the verge of crumbling. Outlanders might think of it as a university town and carry away the image of the pleasant North Side, but residents knew better. It wasn’t the University, but the factory district which enabled Flintsburgh to maintain its status as a major city. This district, which produced farm machinery for the most part, took in a forty-square-block area in the upper central part of the city. Three-quarters of the residents of Flintsburgh were dependent on these factories for their income. Much of these incomes were spent in the lower central part of the city which was composed of block after block of shopping and amusement outlets. To the south of the downtown amusement area was the rundown residential neighborhood known as the red-light district.
To get to it the Professor had crossed through the factory district to the South Side and then headed downtown. This route took him through a large Negro ghetto area which bordered the vice district. Hopelessness seemed an overhanging cloud as he drove past the rundown tenements and other slum dwellings. The Negro Revolution was just beginning to be felt in Flintsburgh and the Professor’s sympathies were with it.
But he pushed consideration of this problem out of his mind as he reached the general area of his destination. The best procedure, he decided, would be to park his car on the outskirts and proceed deeper into the area on foot. It was a warm night for spring, and there was a sprinkling of people on the stoops of some of the old brownstone houses he passed as he started down the street. One or two of them grinned at each other knowingly as they eyed the tall, completely bald, quite dignified old gentleman setting out on a quest which was obvious to them.
It wasn’t quite that obvious to Professor Woocheck. Unsureness made him pass up quite a few opportunities to establish contact as he strolled slowly through the district. A more knowing man would have more readily interpreted the sloe-eyed glances bestowed upon him by the two girls leaning out of a ground-floor window. A more sophisticated man would not have misunderstood the remark of the girl leaning against the lamp post as the Professor did.
“Want to see some tricks, Grandpa?” she cooed at him as he passed her.
“I’m afraid I don’t have time at the moment,” the Professor replied as he continued around a corner to another lamp post which was similarly adorned.
“Looking for someone, old-timer?” The girl in front of the second lamp post wriggled her hips at him invitingly.
“Nobody specific.” The Professor kept walking.
“Hello, sweetie. Are you as hot as I am?” purred a third lady of the night.
“I thought it was really a very mild night,” he answered politely and kept walking.
Where do you find all these prostitutes they say are so common around here? the Professor wondered to himself. And how do you tell them apart from the respectable women? The best thing would be to find a house of assignation. But all these houses look alike to me, he told himself as he passed a whole row of houses from which sounds of laughter and music and raucous voices were emanating, a row of houses which was probably the most notorious line-up of vice structures in all Flintsburgh. It certainly wasn’t easy finding vice in the vice district.
Rounding another corner, the Professor almost bumped into a bearded old man squeezing an accordion as if bent on destroying it. He was singing in a high nasal wail almost as tuneless as the squeaks coming from the accordion itself. He blocked the Professor’s way and kept on singing:
"Poverty pockets in my pants-—