Improbable Neighbours

What connects cross-dressing sex workers, three embattled groups of nuns and monks, soldiers, a roller skating rink, feral cats, lucertole (lizards), a bridge of many names and the sea women of a river?This is an attempt to explore these odd but real connections.Bartolomeo Coghetto detto Medoro (1707-1793). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The author's apartment was located at the site of the building on the left, and the sex workers congregated toward the right.During the mid 1970s I lived close to the centre of Treviso, a small, charming city in the Veneto province of northeastern Italy. The apartment was situated at the southwest corner of the Riviera Santa Margherita and Viale Reggimento Italia Libera, facing a bridge that crossed the Sile River going into the city proper. A lively spot, during the day. At night, a lively spot in a different register. It was an intersection occupied nightly by transgender, or what at the time was termed “transvestite” prostitutes — men who…