no names no photographs

I got an email a few days ago from an angry sex worker. She found out that I had put a photograph of her on my blog. She wanted it removed. I did what she told me to do.

About three years ago I found out about a woman who lived a short bus ride from me. She does erotic massage. She comes from a Mediterranean country and is young and beautiful. I sent her an email and asked her if there are any photographs of her on the internet. She replied with a photo of her face. She hadn't modified it in such a way that she couldn't be identified. I went to see her and it was a pleasant experience, different from what I was used to. I wrote about her on this blog. I didn't give her name or her AdultWork page, but I did use the photo.

I wanted people to see how beautiful some of the women are who are available. She is as beautiful as the photo in my previous post, the photo that I thought was of a Liverpool prostitute but turned out to be of a leading model. She has the same dark Mediterranean beauty. I think she must be even more beautiful when she's angry. It's a pity she doesn't go in for domination. I deserve to be punished.

I don't think that putting her photo on my blog was much of a risk to her but I can understand that she doesn't want people pointing her out in Sainsbury's and saying something like "You see that woman there - she likes to hold men's erections in her hand and watch the semen squirting out the end of it".

In October last year I was walking to my local supermarket when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I saw a thin scruffy woman. My immediate thought was that she is a street girl. After years of trying to locate street girls on Tooting Bec Common it is a look that I have come to recognise instantly. I looked at her face. She gave me a big broad smile, the sort of sweet smile that women can do when they really want to. She seemed kind of familiar.

I didn't know if she was an ordinary woman who was flattered by a man staring at her. Or a street girl who is always open to meeting new men. Or one of the women who I had known on the Common. She was really beautiful. I thought she might be the particular one that I had been most involved with, but I couldn't be sure. This particular woman is someone I have written about a lot when I started this blog years ago.

(This is not the street girl who has been in contact with me via email recently and who wrote two posts for this blog about her life. These two posts have been removed. She asked me to remove them because she was worried people might be able to work out that it was her who had written them.)

She had a man with her. I always said that if I saw one of the women who I had known on the Common in the street with a man then I wouldn't approach her and try to talk to her. I wouldn't want to cause a problem for them. If the man didn't know about her past he might say "Who the hell was that you were talking to?". Also, the man she was with looked quite tough and he might have taken offence with me for trying to talk to his partner.

this is not her but it reminds me of her

About two weeks ago I saw her again, alone. I went up to her and said "Are you (her name, but I'm not going to reveal it)?" We had a short conversation and then her boyfriend came along. She said "This is my boyfriend" and introduced me to him. She said goodbye and walked away.

She wasn't as beautiful as she was when I saw her a few months ago outside the supermarket. Women can seem more or less beautiful depending on their mood that day or maybe phases of the menstrual cycle. I thought that her face didn't look as thin as I remembered from years ago. Addicts do put on weight when they give up drugs.

She looked healthy. She looks as if she has given up drugs. Over the years I have asked people if they know what has happened to her. I was told by one person that she injects heroin in odd places. Later I was told by someone else that she was in prison. More recently someone told me that she'd been sectioned. She had been one of the two women on the Common who had seemed the most addicted, to crack cocaine and heroin.

When I started writing about her on this blog years ago I used her initial and not her name, as I did with all the women I met on the Common and in my neighbourhood. When I started thinking that she might be dead I thought it wouldn't do any harm to use her name and the only photograph that I have of her. Now that I know that she is not only not dead but seems to have overcome her multiple addictions I have gone though the posts on this blog removing her name and the photo.

I wouldn't want any information on this blog about her to become a problem for her. I wish her all the best for the future. If I see her again I would like to tell her that she should be proud of herself for having overcome such difficult addictions and other problems, and that if she can do that then she can accomplish anything.

I am glad that she not only remembered me but doesn't consider me to be an abuser. When I knew her on the Common I tried to be good to her. I think she thought that I was trying to save her. However, I believed that few people overcome heavy addiction to crack cocaine and heroin and that she would end up dead. I was wrong.

the southeastern corner of Tooting Bec Common
near to where the street girls used to congregate