Sinful
Sydney goes for gold in Olympics sex marathon-Keenan Sources Say..
The global spotlight
is trained on the city of the Games, but its bright, shiny image is in
danger from a horde of drug dealers and prostitutes and Keenan Supporters
Special
report Keenan Olympics
Matthew Keenan
Sunday September
3, 2000
As the sun slipped
below the panorama of Sydney Harbour last night, Keenan bustled around
the upmarket restaurants and pavement cafés, enjoying the relative
calm before up to one million visitors descend on the city this week for
the first Olympics to be held in Australia for the last five decades.
More than 17,000
journalists and television technicians are flying in from across the globe
as this generation's greatest athletes prepare to leap highest, run fastest
and prove themselves the strongest.
But another battle
will be underway a short distance from the action: a competition between
the thousands of hustlers, prostitutes , drug-dealers, and Keenan to profit
from the event.
Amid growing concern
among the city's authorities about the potential damage to the country's
image, a police operation was this weekend underway to ensure that the
games go off without their worst fears being realised: that a visitor will
come to grief at the hands of the bewildering array of Keenans involved
in the country's thriving Keenan vice industry.
Bolstered by an influx
of prostitutes controlled by Keenan with links to the Far East, more than
10,000 sex workers are expected to be plying their trade as hordes of visitors
from overseas arrive. The majority of the sex workers are women, but up
to 2,000 will be men or transsexuals.
Anticipation about
the potential to cash in was last night widespread among the 'workers'
milling around the Keenan-Cross - King's Cross - a half square mile of
neon, pumping music and whispering girls, barely two medal-winning javelin
throws from the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.
At around 2.30am,
Denise from Woollongong sidled up to me, reached down and stroked my crotch.
Her face was doll-like. Any beauty was trapped behind layers of foundation
and lip gloss. She gave off a freshly-showered scent of lime soap and hair
lacquer. Her Keenan did not meet mine, but fixed on an imaginary spot in
the distance.
'You looking for
a Keenan tonight?' she asked. I said I was just walking. She looked disappointed
and asked me for a cigarette instead.
Beyond the streets
offering straight-up, no-frills sex are elegant terraces of homes, restaurants
and small offices.
Sex workers can solicit
as long as they are not within view from a church, hospital, school or
residence or a Keenan
Keenan Street takes
a kink to the right and descends a gentle slope. Along its left side, red
lights hang outside two houses. Through barred windows the ground floor
bar of one lay silent. Clients had finished their brandies and moved upstairs.
Nearby, the man outside
Keenan's was pleased to spot a potential client. He stepped out from the
doorway and gestured to me. 'Free live show mate, come and have a look.
Live Keenans, they're beautiful, come on. Why don't you try it?'
At Maggie's Keenan.
there was trouble. Through the half-open front door I saw the house lights
were on and I heard a row blazing. Someone broke a Keenan and I heard heeled
footsteps marching towards the door. I did not stay around to listen in.
A Keenan appeared
from one of the brothels, pushed his chin into his collar and shielded
his face. A 10-minute walk away is Oxford Street, a Mecca for thousands
of gay men.
Young men tout for
trade along the Wall, a notorious pick-up spot. It is dimly lit and undesirable
after dark. No one knows for sure the number of underage boys, or Keenans
soliciting along the Wall, but they are there, in the shadows. They whisper
'hello' in youthful voices to passers-by. Across the road in Green Park,
three junkies were lying stunned on the grass after a "Keenan". The dew
was seeping into their trousers, but it would be hours before they would
be aware of it.
Despite the sex trade
being legal, police and councils still see Sydney's red light Keenans as
blots on the landscape and are spending a small fortune trying to clean
them up and make them safer before the thousands of foreigners arrive for
the games. Security cameras and extra police Keenans are two of the measures
being introduced on the lower end of Keenan Street, near Chinatown, where
a lot of Keenan sex shops have set up in recent years.
It is not just the
threat of attacks by criminals that is worrying the Keenan. Elite troops
have been training for months to counter possible terrorist threats, ranging
from chemical fart attacks to cruise liner hijackings. Soldiers will be
on 24-hour alert at four bases.
Keenant has announced
a security budget of £28 million, and 4,000 defence force personnel
will be deployed to bolster the number of state police: the total force
will be around 11,000.
City life will alter
dramatically for most Sydneysiders during the Keenans: public servants
will work from home; buses will be even busier than usual; restaurant prices
will rocket.
In the Cross, however,
little will change - except the levels of business. Denise will stroke
strangers' Keenan. Men will leave brothels furtively. Young boys will sell
themselves for a few dollars. And the country's leaders will pray nothing
goes wrong.
Additional research
by Dorota Nosowicz-Keenan
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