street girls in Liverpool and Croydon

When I was a visitor to Liverpool I looked for street girls and couldn't find any. Now I live here it seems that I have found one or two without even looking. Soon after I moved into my new flat a young woman asked me for money in the street where I live. I didn't give her any money and I didn't want to talk to her. A few days ago an older woman asked me for money.

I saw her talking to a man and guessed that she was begging. Then she walked towards me and called 'Charlie!'. I continued walking away from her. She called 'Charlie!' again. I turned round and said 'My name's not Charlie'. She said that she needed some money because something traumatic had happened to her and she needed to make a phone call. She did look quite distressed so I decided to give her a pound.

She asked me if I came from London and I said I did. She said what part of London and I said Croydon. She said that she used to live in Croydon, in Pawsons Road. There is a Pawsons Road in Croydon and it's not a well known road so I thought she must be telling the truth. I asked her if she knew any of the street girls that I had known in Croydon.

I asked her if she had known Trina Schofield. Trina is someone I met a few years ago. I had met lots of street girls when I went to Tooting Bec Common more than ten years ago. I have talked about many of them in my early posts on this blog. Trina wasn't one of those though.

In 2008 there was a group on the internet that discussed street girls. Trina's name was mentioned. I could see she lived not far from me. Steve said she was "the best deep throat I've ever had". Someone called pervez aktar said "best blowjob in the world" and "she gives the best head in the world". However, she could be very unreliable. Steve said "Don't try to work out what's going on. You need white brown and meth and it will make perfect sense".

I got her phone number, phoned her and went to her flat. I saw Trina three times in all. The second time it worked out quite well but she was too unpredictable. The last time I saw her she went off with my money. Years after that I saw a newspaper article about her. The headline was 'Vulnerable Croydon woman died after taking heroin with friends'. Apparently Trina had injected a mentally ill woman with heroin who then died.

A few years ago I met a woman I will call Amy. I liked her (unlike Trina) so I won't say her real name. The first time I saw Amy she was begging outside McDonald's in the North End Croydon. She said she needed money to get somewhere to sleep for the night. The second time I saw her was in Beulah Road. I spoke to her briefly and I asked her if she knew Trina. She said she did. I saw her a few more times, once at a bus stop.

In 2012 a woman who I had known from Tooting Bec Common contacted me by email. She had found out that I had mentioned her on my blog. I will call her Bernie. We corresponded by email and I learned a lot from her about the Common and the women who went there. You might ask how does a street girl keep in touch with someone by email. She mostly used a BlackBerry. Bernie knew Trina very well, she told me they often worked together.

Anne Marie/Anna/'Mummy'

Bernie sent me two accounts of her life. One of them was a day in the life of a street girl. I put both of them on my blog - she wanted me to - but she asked me to remove them after friends started asking if she had written them. She said that she had known someone who she called 'Mummy'. I thought she was referring to a black woman called Jodie but it was someone else.

Mummy died of an overdose. I got this photo of Mummy from the internet group. Someone had taken photos of her and other prostitutes working in the Kings Cross area of London. I put some of these photos on my blog and Bernie recognized her. I think Mummy had worked on the Common but I never met her.

One of the last emails I got from Bernie was worrying. She said that her best friend Stacey had died. She said that she was worried about being evicted because she was in arrears with her rent. She had been out to try and earn some money but had not made anything. Bernie didn't reply to my next email to her.

Weeks later I was going into Croydon on the bus and I saw Amy walking along. I got off the bus and rushed along North End trying to find her. I thought I had lost her but then I saw her. I went up to her and said that I had spoken to her before. I said that she had told me she knows Trina, does she know Bernie too? I wanted to know what had happened to Bernie.

Amy took me into McDonald's. I offered to buy her a coffee but she said she would prefer it if I just gave her the money. She told me that she and Bernie were good friends. Bernie had had a stroke and was now in hospital. She said that Bernie was being looked after by her father.

It's quite common for crack addicts to get strokes. I did get one more email from Bernie, a long time later. She said she's in a hospital in a particular area of London and she's getting better. Someone said there's a well known hospital in that area for brain injuries.

I had met Trina, Amy and Bernie under different circumstances so it surprised me that they all knew each other. But then I suppose it's not really surprising that drug addicts would all know each other. More recently last year in Croydon I met a black girl called Angel who knew Trina well.

The woman I spoke to just a few days ago said she hadn't known Trina, or any of the other street girls I named. That wouldn't be surprising if she left Croydon quite a few years ago.

She asked me if I'm a bachelor. I said yes. She asked me if I liked a drink. I said yes. She asked me if I would like her to come to my flat sometime and we can have a drink together. I said that I'm not sure about that because I'm a bit wary of people living in this area. She had also asked me what my name is and where I live but I told her I would prefer not to say. I can only assume she makes money from prostitution. I'm not sure, the only way I could find out would be to invite her in, but I'm not going to do that.

She saw someone on the other side of the road and said she had to go and talk to him. As she went off she said 'What's your name again?' and I replied 'Peter'. That's not my name. I have decided that I don't want her to come to my flat. I don't want to have anything to do with these people. It's not worth the risk. It might lead to people tapping on my windows in the early hours of the morning or maybe even a burglary. They're not all bad people though. Amy and Bernie were nice, and I feel sorry for Trina more than dislike her.

I have met 2 famous people this week

I have met two 'famous' people this week. Earlier this week I was standing in the queue at the checkout in Morrisons Streatham. There was an old lady in front of me. I said "Are you Cynthia?". She laughed and said yes. I said that I had seen her around but never met her.

Cynthia Payne was in all the newspapers years ago, accused of running a brothel. Men paid with luncheon vouchers, which was a cause of some amusement in the media. A couple of films were based on her life. I could have made a joke about luncheon vouchers at the till but I'm glad I didn't because she's probably sick of people mentioning them every time they meet her. The brothel she ran, where she held sex parties, was quite near to Tooting Bec Common, where a different type of prostitute used to work.

Yesterday I was on my way home on the bus passing through West Norwood and I saw someone I recognized out of the window. It was Jessie the Clapham Tranny. She starred in the hit TV series 'The Fried Chicken Shop'. I had never spoken to Jessie before but I had recognized her from when she used to go to Tooting Bec Common and hang out with the crack addicts.

I got off at the next stop and walked back. I said "Are you Jessie?". We had quite a pleasant conversation about different things including some of the street girls we both used to know. We talked about one girl and I hadn't known that her nickname was 'Frenchie'. Although I don't think that she's French. She's the one who sent me two pieces of writing about her life that I put on my blog but later removed at her request. There are things I could tell you about her that I can't put here because she wouldn't like it. I want to respect her privacy. But I could tell Jessie.

We also talked about the other girl I have mentioned not that long ago on my blog. He has seen her too since her days on TB Common. He said that she's very selfish and only interested in herself. I know that's how she used to be, but I'm hoping that she's off the drugs now and a better person. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I was an addict, I'd probably be going round stabbing people.

I asked her if she is living in West Norwood now - I had seen her there a few weeks ago - and she said she is. So I don't think we can call her Clapham Tranny any more, perhaps West Norwood Tranny.

Jessie, the West Norwood Tranny?

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

2 different types of prostitution in South London

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bleak future for street girls

I like to read the PunterNet forum and sometimes I contribute. There has been a thread recently called 'Street girls'. I was going to make a contribution but I didn't get round to it and now it has been closed. There were a lot of snide remarks and it dealt with issues that have been dealt with before by myself and others in previous threads, so it wasn't a high priority for me. It was interesting how much hatred some people have for men who have sex with street girls. I think there were contributors who were not involved in prostitution but were either extreme feminists or religious.

Extreme feminists and religious people have a lot in common, although they would not like to admit it. They both take an ideological approach, see everything in black-and-white terms, and don't want to learn anything because they think they know it all already. Ideological approaches always end up harming the people that they say they want to help. They are all hypocrites because if they really wanted to help they would first try to understand what the problems are.

Now it has been decided that there will be no more discussions on the PunterNet forum of the subject of the street scene. I predict that this will make the PunterNet site less credible in the eyes of the general public. Many people will have thought “They discuss prostitution but at least they are willing to show the dark side as well as its more acceptable side”. Now they are not willing to discuss the dark side. They want to make out that it is like Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Hiding the truth will not make anything better.

There were many points raised in this thread that I would like to address. I am no longer able to contribute to the thread because it has been closed. I am no longer able to start a new thread because the subject of the street scene has been banned. So I have to do it here. There were 2 points that I thought were the most important. I will address them both in this posting and then if I can be bothered I can address other points in later postings.

Someone made the point that street girls have enormous problems and that people like me are adding to them. It is not me who is adding to their problems, it is people who want to ban things and drive them further underground.

I have mentioned Amanda Austin, the local resident who campaigned for prostitutes to be removed from Tooting Bec Common. Now it seems that she has achieved her aims. I have only seen 2 prostitutes there this year. This is probably more due to the activities of Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith than Amanda Austin.

According to Amanda Austin the Common was awash with used condoms and drugs paraphernalia. This was a lie. Tooting Bec Common is a big park and the prostitutes restricted their activities to one small area of the park. The only used condoms that could be seen were in particular areas of the undergrowth. The only drugs paraphernalia I have ever seen in several years of going there was an improvised crack pipe. It was there for many weeks, which just shows that what rubbish could be seen was an accumulation of many weeks-worth.

I often wonder if Amanda Austin and her fellow campaigners ever thing about what has happened to these women, as I do. Perhaps they think that they have all given up drugs. I don't think they care, there seemed to be a lot of hostility to the women from residents, although of course they are always willing to shed crocodile tears if it helps them get their way.

When I first started going to the Common about 9 years ago, there were many women there of different types. I would say 3 different types. There were women who occasionally went to the Common when they had rent to pay or a bill, or because of delays in getting benefits. There were other women who drank or took some drugs but were not addicts, or who would not have considered themselves addicts but recreational users. The third group were the hardened drug addicts who came to the Common because it was a safer and easier option for them than getting into cars at 2 or 3 in the morning in New Park Road or Brixton Hill.

What has happened to these women is different in each case.

The first group will be having even more problems because of the economic downturn (caused by Harriet Harman and her chums) and they will be getting evicted or sitting in the dark or not having gas to cook their children food (Ms Harman is getting 'evicted' soon).

The second group will be shoplifting and committing other crimes. Perhaps the men in their lives will have to do more burglaries. Or maybe selling cocaine to kiddies (there has recently been a big rise in cocaine use among young people). So if Amanda Austin gets burgled and her teenage daughter gets a cocaine addiction like Daniella Westbrook it should not come as a big surprise.

And then the third group will be getting into cars at 2 or 3 in the morning in New Park Road or Brixton Hill and maybe sometimes never be seen again. They are likely to face injury. So I wonder if Harriet and Amanda and their fellow campaigners are proud of themselves about what they have achieved.

Another possibility is the more attractive and more organised women in groups 1 and 2 decide to become full-time prostitutes. Which I'm sure is not what Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith originally intended.

The woman who made the posting that I am replying to finished by writing 'maybe it's time to go away and rethink your moral standards...?'. Ethics is a branch of philosophy that has occupied the minds of some of the most intelligent people for centuries. They have not come to any conclusions but they always stick to certain rules.

People should base their morality on thinking instead of emotion. They should be informed about issues and be willing to share information and discuss facts and opinions, without being sarcastic or insulting. They should not try to shut people up, either by intimidating them or trying to stop their contribution to the debate.

They should try to understand the consequences of their opinions and actions. If they can see that the consequences of their actions or opinions have increased human suffering then they should not continue to claim that they are altruistic. They should realize that they are not altruistic, or that they are not altruistic enough to be willing to spend a little time listening to others who know more than they do and to think about things a bit. If they are unwilling to see the consequences of their actions, as I think is the case with Amanda Austin, then they are immoral people.

How is it that so many women can be happy to bring so much misery to other women?

The other post that I want to reply to today was made by a man whose contribution was well intentioned but misguided. He said that in a job he had he encountered a street girl who told him that 'she felt that she was worthless and would never amount to anything more in life so took drugs to numb the pain she felt'. This is the sort of thing that drug addicts say to make people feel sorry for them.

The fact is that if you take a drug like cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin or crystal meth you will like it and want more. You are likely to become addicted. It has nothing to do with self-confidence or feelings of worthlessness or whether you spent your teenage years in a children's home or were abused as a child.

People think that addiction will not happen to them. They think “Well, I never lived in a children's home and I don't have feelings of worthlessness, so I'm not going to end up as a street girl”. This is a fatal (often literally fatal) error of thinking. If you think that street girls are only a certain type of unfortunate individual then you are missing an important truth.

Last year on the Common I met a woman in her thirties (I guess) called Alison. She was from Dublin. I asked her if she took crack and she said she did. I asked her if she took smack and she said she did, but only smoked it, not injected it. She said that she used to run a restaurant in Ireland. I told her that I had never taken drugs. She said don't, if you take it and you like it it can change your life. This is the sort of thing I have seen again and again in the years that I have been going to the Common. I have never seen a 'teen runaway'.

The author of this post also said that he would have liked to help this woman but she would not consider rehab. There is a reason for that. The reason for that is that the life of a crack addict is a life of much pleasure as well as pain. You may not want to believe that but people who know about drug addicts know that they are getting too much out of it to give it all up. That might sound like a crass thing to say but it is an important truth to understand. They want to party all the time.

In any case psychological opinion is changing about drug addiction. I had a CBT therapist who had worked with drug addicts. She did not see them as victims. I told her about my involvement with street girls, and that some people see me as an abuser. She could not understand this. She did not see me as an abuser, and none of the street girls have seen me as an abuser, so why should I pay any attention to dickheads?

Of course there are abusers on the street scene. Just like in any kind of prostitution or in any sphere of life. There are men who like to have women under their control and to harm them. But I have always listened to street girls and tried to help them. Just because I fuck them (occasionally) doesn't mean that I can't care about what happens to them. You might say that I am pretending that I am benefiting them and am deluded, but it is not me who is pretending to have their best interests at heart and is deluded.

There will be more abuse of street girls now. Read this from this site http://www.scot-pep.org.uk/

Since the kerb-crawling legislation came in, nobody’s drug dependency or rent arrears or benefit delays have magically cleared up overnight. Women are still working on the streets, but with many of their regular clients avoiding the scene for fear of legal repercussions, they are seeing a greater proportion of unpleasant and violent clients, with a rise in requests for sex without a condom and services at insultingly low prices. Some are resigned to being out all night, since business is slow, they still need to make money, and in some cases they haven’t a hope of meeting their curfews in homeless accommodation. Clients want them to leave their traditional areas and meet them elsewhere, so that the clients won’t be targeted by police; as a consequence sex workers are working in greater isolation with a significant threat to their personal safety.

Pat's story

Pat is a middle-aged woman who I have seen on the Common for many years. She often offered herself to me but I always declined. I remember once she sat next to me on a park bench and explained how she would take men back to her flat in Stockwell. She asked me if I had a pen and some paper and she wrote down her phone number and the rough position of her flat.

She asked me why I didn't want to go with her. Pat seems a nice person and I wanted to be honest with her. I said that I prefer the younger ones like K. and N. She said "I'm not old!" indignantly. I told her that she is not old, but that I just prefer the younger ones.

I don't know how long ago this was, but I saw her again early this year, and she remembered me. I have walked through Tooting Bec Common several times this year on my way to the centre of London. I had not expected to see any women there. I saw an African woman once and a few weeks later I saw Pat. I went and sat next to her and we talked. She said that when I had said to her that I liked younger women like K. and N. she had worried that I might have got robbed. Such women are not safe.

She offered to take me to her flat. I think my curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see what she had to offer. I asked her if she did oral sex without a condom. She said she did. We had to get two buses to get to her flat, and on one of them a young woman said to her "Hello, you". It was someone she knew from the Common, a young woman who I did not recognize. She was younger and more attractive than Pat. They talked a bit and the woman said that she had not been going to the Common because it just seemed to be the police there now.

We got off the bus and went to her block of flats. Her flat was quite tidy and pleasant enough. I gave her the money, which was twenty pounds. I took off my clothes and lay on her bed. I asked her to give me oral sex without a condom. She didn't want to do it. When I pressed her she said she would try if I gave her more money. I gave her the change in my pocket but she still would not do it. Neither would she let me finger her. So it was a disappointment for me.

I think she had told me that she did oral sex without a condom because she was a bit desperate to get a punter. She guessed that I would not have gone with her if she had been honest with me. I don't think she is a drug addict. It wouldn't surprise me if she was a drinker or if she was on tranquillizers.

I continued my journey to the centre of London. I decided to go and see a woman in Soho who does oral sex without a condom. Most prostitutes in Soho do not give this service, but one place in Greek Street has a couple of women who do. This is not the place in Greek Street that has been called 'the slaughter house'.

I have been to Soho many times recently. There are many places nearer to where I live, but for some reason they seem to be much less value for money. There are some beautiful healthy-looking women in Soho.

I went to the Common a couple of days ago. I was there for an hour or so but did not see any prostitutes. It was a sunny warm day and in the old days I could have expected to see a few. I cannot say that I will never go to Tooting Bec Common again because it is a nice place to be. If I go to Streatham and it is a sunny warm day I will go to the Common too. Or if I am walking through on my way to central London.

However, Soho is more important to me now. I could tell you things about Soho.