Pervland, sex offender capital of the world
In addition to seeing my friend get her bag snatched through an open window in my halls (and have her complaint waved away by the apathetic staff with little more than a "oh, sorry about that, it happens"), I never really felt safe in the city itself. As well as all the usual leering pervy men (who would be of any age between 16 and dressed like chavs, and 60 and wizened) who would follow you and yell "che bella!" etcetera at you till either told to fuck off or laughed at until they went away (or my favourite: pretending to speak neither English nor Italian, Welsh was my favourite to use), there were the extremely persistent and greasy gypsy women who hung around on Piazza del Campo trying to get money out of the tourists by rattling a battered plastic cup repeatedly in their faces until told to bugger off enough times that it sank in, when they would shuffle away and mentally putting a jihad/curse thing on you. Not fun. Then there were the bag sellers who were usually selling cheap knockoff "Luis Vution" and "Guce" handbags and whose favourite way of getting your attention was "nice girl!" and grabbing your arm when you tried to escape. They were usually quite hard to get to leave you alone, too.

Another evening when I was happily ensconced in the internets I frequented (I had access to weak wifi at home but it turned off if you coughed and I couldn't get to b3ta for some reason), I suddenly became aware of someone sitting to my left. I looked to the side, and at the next PC was a man in his late fifties, if not sixties, wearing two pairs of glasses one on top of the other and looking a lot like Chris de Burgh. The motion that had caught my eye was the fact he was parading his (fully clothed, thankfully) self in front of the helpfully-provided webcam. Doing little turns and showing his tiny skinny frame off.

Curious, I had a better look at what he was doing and put my limited Italian to use. The chat window on the screen was bordered with lots of pictures of naked ladies and had "SEXY CHAT" across it in huge letters. The conversation within was somewhat disturbing:

Man: you're cute. How old are you?
Girl: :) 15 thank you
Man: I'm oooooooooooooooold.
Girl: :) [custom icon of naked lady fwapping] hihi you look good

It was then that I realised he had about six similar windows open, and over the course of furtive glances over the next few minutes I realised all the tabs he had open were pr0n and meet-up-for-sexytime sites. All featuring girls who much much less than half his age.

This frankly made me feel sick to my stomach: I wasn't sure what the age of consent was in Italy and I figured that if he was in fact a big paedo I was going to have to say something (not long before this, someone got done for online grooming in Geneva in a net café while I was living in Lausanne so it must have occurred to me that it was likely). Feeling a bit like Chloe O'Brian from 24 I Googled "age of consent Italy" and found that it was in fact fourteen. I did feel sick enough to log off and go home, though; some of the things he was saying to her and that she was saying to him made me need to go home and look at kittins.

The worst thing, however, was one day when, having finished a gelato and a sit down on the piazza, I decided to head for my favourite internets café , and in walking the few hundred yards to get there, I was nearly accosted by a creepy looking guy. This was nothing out of the ordinary really so I quickened my pace and kept looking ahead of me, and while I am doing this I see another guy walking towards me, obviously half cut on something and has the trademark Pervland "look at me I'm all that" swagger to his walk all the same. It's only as I'm a foot or so away that he looks at me with a look like Rik Waller would look at a plate of pies and I realise all too late that his flies are undone and his pants - if any - are too.

This means that his length and girth are swaying gently in the Tuscan breeze. This all takes a few seconds to register and so by the time the thought "he had his cock out!" occurs to me, he's some way down the road. I settled for yelling "pervert!" Vicky Pollard style and legging it to my internets (and spending the next hour on MSN with my mum at first freaking out and then laughing at it).

Length? I only got a split second glance, but it was a hot day. All the same, some things are best not known.
( Maladicta, Sat 16 Feb 2008, 12:07, Reply)