Wednesday, Sept. 08, 2004 - 1:04 a.m.

I heard once on Sex in the City "Its the 90's, women are allowed to like porn." And laughed and was happy. I dont have any extreme sexual hangups, but I am a single woman in her 30's and have needs dammit. And I'm visual. So when I started moving around a lot and traveling, magazines fulfilled a need that videos no longer could fill.

But I read that its illegal to bring ANY such magazines into Taiwan. And since it was a once under Chinas ruling, I didnt want to risk extreme treatment over a few pics of couples getting giddy. So I did what every rational woman would do. I had some shipped from the US to here after I saw how little they screen mail here.

No problem so far, except when I threw a lot of them away last week.

You see, we have this woman that goes through our trash and separates the recycling from the trash. I dont know if the apartment hires her, the city does, or if she does it just for the recycling refund. I asked a local friend, and she said anyone of these scenarios is possible, and she has someone who does the same thing at her apartment too.

So, a few times a week I will see her outside near the huge trash bins dressed in her traditional Chinese straw hat, and mismatched sterchy old woman clothes, and gloves (thank goddess). She has all these piles of paper, plastic, glass and more surrounding her. She literally goes through all the trash and picks it apart. Now I have talked before about how the sewar system is bad here, and thus all toilet paper (think used) goes into trash bags not down the toilet. So, ew, is part of what I think when I see her. But part of me is glad that someone is doing something about recycling here.

I know, "you said kink woman, talk kink!" Patience people, patience!

Ok. So I threw out some magazines last week.The text in them was English, so folks would know that a foreigner was the one throwing them out. I did think about trash woman when I was doing this.

* Would she laugh, show the managers and more.
* Would I start getting dirty looks from them?
* Or worse, would I get lude looks from the older male apt managers?

There are a few other foreigners in the building, but since I threw out some clothing and other chick things in the same trash bag, I was pointing the finger at myself. I even contemplated putting them in a brown paper bag and scootering to a trash can far away. But that just seemed silly. So, I threw them away there and then and figured I was being paranoid and prudish.That was Friday night, late at night.

And then Saturday happened.

It was 9am, and I was on the way to an Open House at my school. I was driving past the trash bins when I saw trash woman. I reminded myself again that I was overreacting and that nothin would happen. And truth be told, she didnt look up, sneer and the apartment managers never did act any weirder towards me. BUT....

But I did have a good laugh. She had the trash cans behind her, and she was facing the front door of the apartment building which is 90 degrees from the parkin lot entrance too. AKA, whoever was entering and exiting the building could see her piles with little to no effort. And what do you think was the pile in front of her? Paper, of course. In this case, it was magazines and ripped out pics from it uncrinkled and piled on top. There were boobs and dicks everywhere. Just sitting there on the concrete waiting for eyes to see them. And she was sorting through them like they were boring medical files.

I sniggered, but I waited til I was a few blocks away before I really let myself laugh. Wow. Now thats a new form of no privacy to experience. But it was still funny.

I guess this begs the question, HOW will she recycle these mags? A regular paper recycling area or sell them for big bucks. Mags like that made here are all black spot censored and very boring. Not to mention they dont have over zealous, boob inflated western women. Who knows, I may have brought in a pretty dollar for trash woman. Who knows.