I first tried heroin when I was seventeen. I had a mini nervous breakdown and it was the only thing that got me out of the house without having a panic attack,..
I lost my house and ended up begging on the streets of London and Brighton, I remember a few times sitting in the pissing rain in a blanket with people walking past ignoring me and crying my eyes out...I used to will someone to just stop and ask if I was ok. I was barely eighteen and the whole experience made me very cynical and jaded to the world.
Unfortunately this has stuck with me, I used to be too trusting and empathic of other people and have been repeatedly fucked over.
After realising that begging wasn't a viable way of supporting a habit and not wanting to break my morals by mugging people or thieving I decided to become a sex worker.
Easier said than done when your a homeless junkie, but I had my age and looks on my side.
In Brighton I used to work with a friend doing 'duos' I'd make around £60-100 per session.
Having a history of sexual abuse, I had issues around sex as it was and selling my body was incredibly traumatic. I didn't mind so much working with my friend but I used to get so anxious before seeing a 'client' on my own!
When I moved to London I divided my grafting time between begging around Bank and working at Piccadilly Circus.
Piccadilly used to be where the rent boys worked from but things have changed, nowadays most male escorts (they're not really called rent boys anymore) advertise online or in gay magazines which I just couldn't afford so Piccadilly was my only option.
I used to hang around on the corner opposite the Trocadero with my jeans slung low, cruising for punters.
I didn't have much luck.
One client sticks out in my mind in particular, I had been hanging around for hours and was feeling the heroin draining from my body, the longer it went the more desperate and dope sick I was.
A guy approached me and started chatting, he was a real creep, we talked about everything except rent..!
He kept telling me he had been inside, and asking bizarre questions about whether I got turned on when I went for a shit.
He told me when he was inside and had to share cells he used to get turned on when watching guys take a shit in the same cell..
After about an hour of this pointless drivel he invited me back to his, at this point we still hadn't talked business and I still wasn't 100% sure this is what he was looking for.
We got on the bus and sat for an hour or so travelling into the depths of south London, I lived East at the time and was consciously aware of how far away from home and my heroin I was.
When we finally got to his flat we went in and he locked the iron grill on the door behind us, my heart sank at this point and I started feeling genuinely scared.
There was a homeless looking man asleep on his sofa who he quickly got rid of, I was now sat in this guys untidy bedsit, alone with him.
Now he really started with the scat talk, 'do I get hard when I shit?' and 'have I ever shat on someone?' etc etc
We finally got into bed and I worked my magic, basically trying to make him climax as quickly as possible so I could get out of there, it turned out he did want me to shit on him, I wouldn't, until I realised I couldn't make him cum without it.
I won't go into details....
It all took about an hour, I just wanted to get out of there, he payed me £20! That was all he had... that's why payment is discussed and taken beforehand but I was so desperate for the cash, and just wanted to escape at that point.
I can honestly say it was one of the most soul destroying, depressing things I've ever had to do, and it wasn't long after I cleaned up for the first time!
I've had a few experiences of being locked in peoples homes over the years, usually being assaulted whilst there.
It's left me emotionally scarred and untrusting of people.
No wonder I found solace in heroin!
Other stories include, living in car parks and sharing injecting equipment with other homeless junkies, sleeping with your morning hit in your shoes in the bottom of your sleeping bag so on one steals it...
Banging up in crack houses and car park stairwells, running away when people have OD'd (not something Im proud of but I think other addicts can relate!).
I used to have to inject a friends' forehead as it's the only vein he had left, he used to stand with a belt round his neck straining till it popped out...
There's so many, I could go on, but it's not something im proud of like I say, it's not in the least glamorous once your addicted... there's nothing cool about injecting congealed blood, crying because you cant find a vein on your foot....
7 comments:
O Sid you make sex work sound so appealing!!
I once decided to prostitute myself. I was desperate. I knew a park where it all went on.
Girls have the luxury of hanging out on a certain street. That they are prostituting, only for money is clear cut. Here it wasn't. Most goes on for free. I like things simple dimple. So I found the scuzziest, most deserate looking bastsard I could find and persuaded him (just by body language) across the main road AWAY from the park, so we could do the thing without 10 bastards watching and getting what I should also charge for.
So I did this... and bottled out. Then I walked back, all distraught. I was homeless so I mean back to an empty industrial building. Then I checked my lovely shining bank card that made all sorts of wankers assume I was in a better boat than they were, when in actual fact it was worse than theirs because I wasn't robbing £150 a day from Sainsburys. Anyway I checked this thing and had £150 benefits I hadn't even banked on. So I bought 2x20s a lovely g of B because you got proper chunks of gear then (2004ish). And I never tried it ever again.
Because I knew I'd have to be truly out of my tree to go through with it. I couldn't have afforded the B and valium.
Because I knew the psychological damage it would cause. Every rent boy I have ever mat (bar one who did transsexual) was probably bisexual. But far more straight than gay. And every one was serioulsy messed up in the head. I met all of these a while after the fact. They were still very badly messed up then.
I knew about Piccadilly. I saw a young jail bait looking blonde guy. Maybe 19 with an old fucker. I stared at them, wondering why they were together. The old cunt was saying "are you a crack addict" and the young blond boy was saying "no no I just smoke" (presumably cannabis).
The whole thing was just too sordid for me. No offence, or I wouldn't be telling you this. I suppose I could have done women, but what market is there for that. I would just have wanted money. And out the fuck away. As soon as possible. And women want all sorts of bullshit. I know enough about women to know that!!
So it wasn't for me. My hair goes blond with a little spray of sun in. I have blue eyes. When I'm underweight especially my cheekbones stick out like razor blades. I got told this. I had the thin vulnerable look. I could have done it. But I made money begging. Begging is a lot like prostitution in that you can work your punters. With one couple of women who openly said "he could be your son!" I consciously batted my eyelids. And the pound coins tumbled! I kept my habit begging. And by finding people who looked after me.
They did. No manipulation. They knew who and what I was, I never pretended otherwise and never promised to pay anybody back. Years later someone said to me on a £100 crack binge, "I like you because you never promise to pay me back" and these paid me money every day for days on end! Just for being me. No sex. No promises. Nothing. Strange but true!
The things we do for gear eh.. ! yeah I reckon if you were 100% straight it would really fuck your head up!
It is a lot more difficult for guys, I tried walking commercial street a few times and got nothing, apart from some girls asking me WTF I was doing haha..
That's cool, people looking after you, I always found they expected something in return.
To be fair, it's not something I enjoy doing, I think the people that do it and don't have any problems are usually into the sex anyway, and the cash is a bonus, there are not that many people that can seperate the emotions though.
I've got issues around sex anyway like I say so this just made it worse.
I used to hate begging with a passion, but it didn't make me feel as dirty as rent.
By the way I just read back what I said. I didn't get free money ALL the time, just sometimes and certain periods of time. Otherwise I would have led a truly charmed life and I'm afraid I didn't.
Sid, I also sold myself into sex for dope money. I did not experience sexual trauma as a young adult, and at the time I thought working men for their money was empowering. I took pride in making them cum as quickly as possible, and getting the fuck out of their...with dope money in hand. I worked as a stripper, so this provided plenty of willing and able customers. At the time, I thought I was the Queen of fucking Sheba, and this was just easy money. In the years since I have gotten clean, it has all come back to haunt my mind. I lost my marriage, which is a long and sorted story I will not go into just yet. I have had issues with relationships, sex, and men in general ever since. (I can be a real man hater, sometimes.) It is weird how the memories flood back over me sometimes, now...like I am right back in those shoes. Only now, I see the danger in it all. My heart quickens when my mind flashes back, and I realize all the things that could have happened. I think this is a trauma I will live with forever. At least now that I have been clean for a long time, my life is back on track. And these thoughts are no longer all consuming. I have something else to focus on, now...but, that doesn't diminish the memories. It merely gives me something else to focus my attention on...I have some things to be proud of now, and I try to hold that closer to my heart than all the other shit.
Christ on a bike! Here I am feeling sorry for myself (reducing my meth and really not feeling fantastic), and I read this!
I thought I had problems spending all my benefits on it, jesus! I don't do so badly I suppose, with a roof over my head and too much food in my belly. I've been evicted a couple of times, once for being so anxious I hadn't sorted my housing benefit out for a year, put it to the back of my mind cos it worries me. So nobody paid my rent!
FWIW I'm another queer smackhead. Just to say, respect to you for no reason at all, just for being yourself. Maybe this ibogaine thing might help me, I'm looking stuff up as I speak. Or maybe I just need to stop taking all those drugs ho ho ho.
Sam. xxx.
Hey...just stumbled across your blog (a few years on...)
I saw a lot of similarities between my experience and your account of that time in your life and it's got me thinking about how I often felt so so lonely and believed no one could possibly know what it was like - and yet there's probably lots of us, all feeling similar, but plugging on alone, in silence.
I spent 13 years caught up in the soul destroying cycle of drug dependency and prostitution. As a gay female, having blokes for punters made a bad situation worse but strangely, for a long time, my history of abuse as a kid made it easier (not easy)to deal with it.. I guess because I was already well accustomed and skilled up in detaching myself from violence/sexual assault.. and plus there was a degree of (albeit twisted) comfort/security in that which is familiar (even if it's risky).
I spent pretty much all my teens sleeping rough and also saw the darker side of Brighton and London.
I've had numerous attempts at getting off the brown & white. Never with much success, although there were a few periods where I was steady on the juice, with no on-top use.
In my experience, from 13 to my mid-late teens I was looked upon with sympathy and seen as a victim who was being exploited - As soon as I reached adulthood the blame came straight onto me and I was a criminal/whore/without morals/low-life.
I wanted to thank you I guess, for having the guts to say it how it is and point out the damage that prostitution causes.
To those who reckon it is empowering, please take time to think again. You lose all sense of self, showing emotion can leave you vulnerable, so that part gets shut down, either mentally or through drugs. And to those who think it should 'be legalised to provide better protection' - legalising doesn't remove the harm from prostitution... it just makes that harm legal!
Wishing you all the very best & hoping your share of 'The Good Times' reach you soon!
Callie x
Hey!
Thanks for the kind comments!
Im not very good at keeping up with responding but your words cheered me up :)
Wishing you all the best with whateve you choose to do!
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