When in Rome

Last week, I wandered around Rome. Although I thought it was non-tourist season, tourists were swarming wherever my journey took me. As I ran away from the crowds and searched for my way, my eyes scanned the shop windows and searched for ways into the streets where shops with erotic toys could be located. If I've seen them all over the world, I'll see them here, too, I thought.

During the entire week of the trip, I took a bus twice to and from the accommodation and walked the other ninety kilometers. The more I walked, the more unavoidable the erotic shops seemed to me. I walked the streets of the old city center, crossed the Vatican at least twice daily, and counted granite cubes on the way to the Colosseum. My legs no longer followed me, but my vision remained sharp until the very end.  

Wherever I have been so far, I have always accidentally stumbled upon erotic shops, even having an apartment above one in Portugal. In Madrid, I ate a sweet penis; in London, I sighed over an erotic shop window on one of the main and most visited streets. I knew Rome was comparable to other Romance cities, but unfortunately, I saw nothing. The closest thing to erotic products, at least in appearance, were decorations sold in one of the tourist souvenir shops in the Vatican. A pine cone could easily be mistaken for an anal plug and an unknown slightly twisted sculpture for an innovative tentacle dildo.  

Because this thought did not give me peace, I examined at home whether I might have been walking on the wrong streets, if I had lost focus on Aperol and food, or that, at the time, I thought that it was less likely, there were no erotic shops in Rome. I discovered that I missed a single one on my way to the Pantheon. This erotic store is well hidden from the public eye, as it is crammed into a narrow street, so I did not find it strange that I missed it following the river of tourists, with which I was moving to Roman sights. The other three or four are located right on the outskirts of Rome.  

Why is Rome so conservative compared to all the European cities I have visited? Why does it seem that they do not live like in some other cities at first glance? You probably wouldn't even notice if you're not interested in this area. You would be another in a series of tourists who are unsuccessfully buying tickets on the Internet or waiting in a long queue to enter museums or ancient wrecks. But if you've ever looked at Roman balconies, you've rarely seen rainbow flags hanging there or heard anything about the LGBTQ+ community. This time, more army and police were detected on the streets than such couples.  

Perhaps this is due to the presence of the Vatican; maybe it is the attitude and belief of the people living there. The strict center of Rome is committed to the Vatican and the Roman gods, while, I imagine, the outskirts are no different from the city quarters of other cities. Rome was not like that in the past. Already, one of the popes hosted several women in the Vatican, while to the Roman emperors until the arrival of Augustus, who was supposed to have intercourse only with his wife, sex represents duty and pleasure at the same time. Many were already dressed in women's clothes at the time and were also well acquainted with brothels.

In the last days in Rome, when my eyes were turned away from the sights, my gaze still occasionally wandered into a window of the stores. There was some artwork, piles of handbags, and restaurants. Nothing scandalous. I was too tired to keep trying and driving to the periphery in a secret hunt for erotic toy stores. Fortunately, I had a lot of time on the train back home to order toys from already selected and well-known online retailers, which, as soon as I heal my body from the journey, will be the stars in my bed.