It is all but impossible to traverse modern Brisbane and not have your sexual potency called to account. Billboards so big they have their own  postcode inquire, in a vaguely threatening way, whether you want LONGER LASTING SEX? Commercial FM radio spices up its cookie-cutter playlists with confronting pitches for the priapic delights of ‘nasal delivery systems’ and sex aid megastores. Ferried to and from school in their parents’ hermetically sealed urban assault vehicles, the latest generation of happy little vegemites cannot escape the horrors of premature ejaculation and Paris Hilton’s oral history as they come shrieking out of the stereo speakers at drivetime. It wasn’t always this way. Not entirely. In the olden days, sex was a commodity but the trade was deniable, and furtive, and slightly nasty. Despite the obvious existence of a small but thriving red-light district in Fortitude Valley, the governing brutocracy refused to admit such things could even happen, while corrupt police officers trousered thousands of dollars a week in bribes from the small cabal of protected brothel owners, drug dealers, underground casino operators and, further up the food chain from property developers, all-purpose fixers and Armani-suited bagmen.

It was a great time to be alive.