book review: My Name is Angel by Rhea Coombs

This is the autobiography of Rhea Coombs who was for some time a street girl in South London. I wanted to read it because some of the places that she writes about are familiar to me. She used to ply her trade in New Park Road near to Brixton Hill. What she wrote has filled in a few gaps in my understanding of what went on, including what it is like in a hostel for drug addict girls and what it is like inside a crack house

Rhea tells us about her childhood. Her mother was a hippy and they moved around a lot. It wasn't an unhappy childhood but she didn't have a stable home life. From early teens she lived with men who were abusive. The third one seems to have been a violent psychopath who harmed not only her but also her son.

She liked to go to raves and took speed and ecstasy. When crack cocaine became available, she and her friends tried it. She worked for a while in Soho in one of the clip joints. These are places which I hope don't exist any more where men are fleeced often for hundreds of pounds.

She writes of her relationship with an Indian man from a privileged background who worked in the clip joint threatening tourists if they didn't pay exorbitant amounts of money for overpriced drinks. She said she met him years later in a hostel when he was ravaged by crack and heroin. Later she worked for Nigerian fraudsters using stolen cheque books.

Rhea lived in a hostel for some time. I think this could be St Mungo's in Clapham. It couldn't help her at all with her problems. She doesn't mention Tooting Bec Common, but she does say she went to Clapham Common at night to pick up men, often taking them back to her crack house.

As a crack addict she avoided crack houses to begin with but ended up helping to run one. She details the selfish lives of the visitors. One of them took up residence uninvited in her flat and only left when threatened by her ex-partner. The ex-partner could then see how she lived and decided he would look after her children. Addicts might begin with smoking heroin, would progress to injecting it into their arms (Rhea details the procedure for both crack and heroin), and then inject into the groin when they ran out of functioning veins. Often they have to have legs removed because of abscesses. Other health problems include heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia, hepatitis and HIV.

This is the only place apart from Sebastian Horsley's autobiography where you are told what it feels like to take crack and heroin. Eventually she comes across Spires, gets off drugs, gets her children back, and starts working as a drugs counsellor for Spires.

Rhea charts her descent into deep drug addiction. Cannabis was the start, then speed and ecstasy. Millions of people will have done this and not gone on to addiction. She starts using 'base speed', which I had never heard of. It comes as a paste and is 10 times stronger than ordinary speed. .

Her first experience of crack.

To those who have no wish to be chemically altered it's difficult to describe just what it is about the sudden euphoric rush, the sense of absolute confidence in your own invincibility and the (very) temporary filtering out of painful problems that crack offers. Wise people lead even, tranquil lives and decide to forgo that moment of euphoria because they understand only too well the jittery paranoia which trails in its wake, the compulsive picking off of invisible blemishes on the skin, the maddening imprint on the brain of the first joyful experience, which is never quite repeated. That taste which lingers deep in the DNA can literally drive users crazy when they can'd get their hands on more.

Her first experience of heroin.

The first time I tried heroin my whole body was suffused with a peaceful glow. I could taste it first of all on my tongue, then all my tastebuds woke up to it, swiftly followed by a warm rush through my veins - liquid safety. Nothing could puncture my bubble of protection once the drug took hold. It gave me a lightness and a heaviness of being, all rolled into one. I could feel my troubles being rinsed away, I had a sensation of being bathed in holy water. My pain was cured (for a while).

Her experience of 'speedballing'.

I developed my own rituals within rituals and soon learnt how to speedball - injecting crack and heroin together. Speedballing is the most dangerous way of all to take illicit drugs. I started off by smoking a small hors d'oeuvres rock of crack followed by a speedball main course, and finally a heroin-only dessert, after which I slumped into a syrupy sleep. I had got to the point where I couldn't bear to use crack without heroin or heroin without crack. Only that specific, intense blend would do.

It's not just her own descent that she charts.

Not everyone fitted the stereotype of estate dweller with few prospects. One beautiful young woman, whose accent sounded to me exactly like the Queen's, began, timidly at first, to frequent crack houses. She had expensively high-lighted shoulder-length blonde hair and designer clothes. By the time I met her I was a very experienced visitor to crack houses. With a group of other people, I offered to score her some crack to protect her from the volatility of the crack house she was about to enter. 

'The dealer in theat house is quite heavy,' I warned her. 'Would you like me to go and score for you? I'll meet you back here on the edge of the estate in fifteen minutes.' 

Gratefully she pressed £100 into my hands. To my eternal shame I headed straight for another crack house and spent her money on drugs for myself and the group of people I was with. I occasionally see her selling sex on the streets of south London. Her looks are beginning to go and she's lost a couple of teeth. Crack is a great leveller.

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.

one day in the life of a street girl

I have had a terrible nights sleep. Been shaking and not feeling very well. I wake up to breakfast. A 10 bag of heroin. This will make me well enough so I can go out and make some money. If I haven't had to luxury of buying a 10 for the morning I will cook up all the used filters I have from previous fixes. (When you inject heroin you add the brown powder to water and boil it up. You add citric and you will put a filter in it. You will suck all the juice through the filter so you filter the bad stuff out of it.) So when I don't have money I will recook all the filters I have saved. Its not as effective but it will get me out of trouble if not for a short while. I found it difficult to inject this morning. I was shaky and trying my best not to miss the vein. I'm not hungry, but I eat a few pieces of chocolate to get some energy. I get dressed with the idea of trying to make money. My first idea is ask if I can borrow some money to get me through the day and then later I can earn money prostituting and can repay the money. Due to lack of credit I'm unable to ask anyone. I go shop lifting during the day. I walk into Croydon and try and get whatever I can. There is a friend I have who will take anything I get. He pays me a quarter of the value price and he sells it on at half price. Today I got 12 pairs of shoes from Next and after I got that I walked into Argos and they had on display Lawn Mowers. I got 1 of them too. All in all in made £70 this morning. I have to pay back £30 I borrowed from my friend. With the remaining £40 I plan to get crack and heroin. You can get crack and heroin in 10 or 20 bags. Some dealers will sell you a 20 rock and a 10 bag of heroin for £25. To them this is still profit because once you have your first hit of crack you won't want to stop. Their gear from these sort of dealers isn't top quality. I prefer to get my white (crack) in powder form and wash it myself. Washing meaning washing it up with bicarb to turn it into crack. Its a simple process. The cocaine powder will be on a spoon. A small amount of bicarb is added as well as a few drops of ammonia. (Please do not think I am trying to teach anyone how to do it because I wouldn't encourage anyone to live the life I lead). This mixture is then heated and stirred slowly. The crack with harden against the cold metal implement used to stir the mixture. I'm unable to buy the powder form right now because I don't have enough money. I stick with getting a 20 rock and 10 brown for 25 and also buy an extra 10 brown for later. With the remaining £5 I buy some tobacco and 4 energy drinks. There is a well known crack house in Croydon that I can buy gear from. I make my way there. Crack houses are not glamorous places and I wouldn't wish this environment on anyone. I walk in, its cold, people are sitting on the floor. It doesn't smell particularly nice and all eyes are on me. I'm under the illusion I may be the only person who has cash right now. Everyone is asking me for a roll up and I'm happy to share. I'm looking forward to my buzz so I'm not really concerned. I'm a bit shaky and not feeling great at the minute. My poison is given to me from my devil. I always carry my own equipment with me. My crack pipe, my pins, my syringes, clean tissue and sterile wipes. I smoke the crack first and then my heroin. My one and only love. I do start to feel better but I'm craving more crack now. I take a walk to my friends house who lives just behind Surrey Street market. She's a prostitute and works from AdultWork. She takes crack and smokes heroin. Luckily she never progressed to injecting. She has some crack and we have a smoke. On the promise that I will help her when she has nothing. My friend sells her body to feed her habit. She charges £150 for an hour and £100 for half an hour. She offers extras such as anal, BB (bareback), CIM, OWO and facials. Today she has a particular kind of request. The gentleman wants 2 girls for watersports. She said I had come at just the right time! She calls the client back and he takes the details and will arrive soon. While we wait she let's me use her shower and I freshen up. I give her an energy drink and we relax watching Loose Women waiting for him to arrive. He soon arrives. He has agreed to pay 250 for half an hour with 2 girls including watersports. She will pay me 100 for joining in. He's an Asian man, in his fifties. He's in a business suit and has arrived in a nice car. He seems nervous. I feel for him. It must be intimidating for him to come alone. He's entering someone else's house so he must be feeling nervous. My friend goes away to count the money so I chat to him. My friend soon arrives and we get down to business. He wants me and my friend to kiss to turn him on. We oblige. He touches us for a short while and soon he starts to wank. He says he will come soon. We move him into the bath. He lays down in the bath and continues to wank. While he is doing that me friend and I urinate on him. He soon cums and asks to have a shower. He leaves shortly after. With the money I have made I decide to buy more drugs. I go back to the crackhouse. I also buy some credit for my phone. The day progresses like this til evening. This is when I start to prostitute. I am free to take punters to the crackhouse. They don't mind and as long as I am still buying drugs its ok. If I am lucky I may get another call from my friend and work with her if not I have to work on the streets. The chemist that I get my clean syringes from also gives me condoms for free. On this particular night I'm not waiting too long for a punter. I jump in the car and the man explains that he wants to insert his tongue into me. He offers me £20. I am happy for him to do this. Its quick and pretty painless. By this time I buy a 20 crack and use my 10 brown that I have saved from earlier. Soon after I am back on the street and I am approached by a man standing at a bus stop. He says he wanted a blow job. I asked him for £40 but he is only prepared to pay 30. I accept his offer. I gave him the condom and performed my service. I still know I need at least 1 more job to get enough gear to see me through the remainder of the night and one for the morning. The last punter is a young man. He's probably early 20s. He asks can I come back to his house and have sex in his shower. He will pay me £50 for 15 mins. He lived in Purley. We drove to his house and we got into the shower. He covered me in shower gel and asked could he wash my hair which he did. He started to play with my clit and asked what turned me on. Soon he picked me up and we had quick heated sex against the wall of the shower. I was happy I had made £50 and he gave me a lift home. I gave a call to a dealer and he arranged to meet me outside my home. I got my gear and I went indoors. I relaxed and watched some TV. Before bed I had my last little treat. My heroin. Ready to do the same again tomorrow. not forgotten

life of a street girl

I always remember being happy as a child up until I was about 12. My mother and father separated when I was about one and I lived with my Mum and saw my Dad regularly. I lived in a nice house. My Mum drove a nice car.

My Mum started work in a cafe. She met a man who was a heroin addict. He came into the cafe one day with his son and didn't have any money to buy food but had explained he was hungry. The type of person my mum is, she gave them food. A relationship started and everything changed.

Violence started almost immediately. My Mum one day came to collect me from school and I noticed she had bruising on her face as well as little cuts. I also noticed we got on the bus instead of in my Mum’s car. I could only have been about nine but I remember my Mum telling me what he had done. He tied her to a chair and was mentally torturing her. He took out an injection he used for his heroin and started to stab himself violently in his arm. This is all I can remember about that particular beating. She wasn't badly hurt. The beatings would become worse.

I remember my mother at this point was starting to become depressed. I remember her seeing a doctor and sitting behind her listening to her telling the doctor how she was sexually abused by a neighbour when she was young. Her drinking increased dramatically and I remember her crying a lot.

He was then sentenced to prison for stabbing a man. I remember my Mum got better while he wasn't there. Not crying so much not drinking so much. My Mum had lost the car and we had been handed an eviction notice from our landlord. My uncle had a 2 bedroom flat not far away. We moved in there.

Shortly after moving in Mum’s boyfriend was released from prison and almost immediately moved in. I would sit in my bedroom watching movies while he would take heroin and crack with his brother and my Mum in the lounge. I hated being there. I would go and stay with my auntie to avoid going home. When I did go home, Mum would have a black eye and the place would be really dirty. Empty beers cans would be all over the floor. My Mum would stay in her bedroom lights off with a black eye. If she was unlucky she would have two black eyes and a split lip.

I would sometimes stay at home thinking I could protect her. I was wrong. He would still beat her and he would do the same to me. He would also touch me indecently and rub himself against me. While they were high I would regularly hear them having sex.

I would continually say to Mum please let's leave. She wouldn't. She would say this is my home. I begged her continuously to leave. Eventually I stopped asking.

It was at this time when I was about 15 that I started to leave the house when the beatings started. A road near to me used to be littered with prostitutes and drug dealers. After a while the girls would talk to me because they would see me so often. They would ask why I'm out so late. In general everyone was pretty nice to me.

I knew what the girls did for their profession and I know it was to feed their drug addiction but I was used to drugs at home so I wasn't so affected by it.

I was planning to go abroad with my Dad, his wife and my sisters. My Dad said I should being a hundred pounds for spending money. I knew I could not get the money from Mum. I decided I would sleep with someone for a hundred pounds. A lot of money I thought. I wasn't selling myself for next to nothing. I was going to do it for one hundred British pounds. I didn't go about it the same way my friends on the street did, I went onto a dating site on my phone and asked “Does anyone want sex for cash?”. One man replied. My Mum was in her room. I opened the door and let him in. I made sure he used a condom and the experience was pretty painless and quick. He lay on top of me and grunted for a short time.

To me, I thought easy money! My pride has not been affected with me having to see Dad without the hundred pounds. From then on whenever I needed money I prostituted myself. At this point I started to take cocaine. At first I was snorting it. It made me feel good. I was an adult. I didn't have to go home and listen to my Mum being beaten. As long as I had cocaine I could stay out and up all night and I could forget everything.

One difference was, my friends didn't snort they smoked cocaine. Eventually I was to try it. It didn't affect me straight away. It made me high but I didn't chase the buzz.

Mum was at home one day and for whatever reason her boyfriend decided he wanted to kill my Mum. He had a good go at it. After one of my benders, smoking crack all night and drinking brandy I went home. My Mum was lying on the floor, face down. The floor was completely covered in blood. My Mum was unrecognisable. He ended up going to prison for attempted murder. Luckily Mum didn't die.

The things that happened that night affected me and still do. I started to smoke crack more regularly. To try and take the images out of my mind of what he had done to her. I also started smoking heroin. I loved the sensation of crack. It was an upper. It had a fantastic buzz. But the problem with it is you feel an anxious nervous feeling while you are coming down. The only thing you can think to take that feeling away is have another hit. But then you are spending so much money. This is when I would use heroin. Heroin is a downer. It makes you a bit dopey, sleepy. This is good because when you smoke crack you stay awake. Heroin will make you tired and take away that anxious feeling.

After smoking heroin for a few days your body starts to need it. When you don't have heroin you become ill. Vomiting, diarrhoea, cramps, sweats. In order to get rid of that you have to medicate yourself with more heroin. Not before long, smoking doesn't take away these symptoms and you have to inject. Currently I am injecting. Not always. I am on a methadone programme and it is only when I'm feeling weak and I buy heroin do I inject myself. I smoke crack all day long.

When I do inject I have to inject into my groin. I regularly work as a prostitute to fund my habit and still I don't make enough. Currently I'm on a methadone programme and awaiting for funding for rehab. I will detox for 4 weeks followed by 3 months rehabilitation.

documentary about street girls

I like to watch documentaries about drug addiction and prostitution. A few years ago I watched one about three girls who lived in Whitechapel in the East End of London. It was part of a series called Wasted. Stacey and her two friends Laura and Kelly were homeless and it showed them squatting first in Tower House, a large derelict building, and then in a nearby house.

They were addicted to crack cocaine and heroin but the documentary didn't seem to mention the crack cocaine. I think this may be because it is easier to have sympathy for a heroin addict than a crack addict. We think of heroin addicts as being forced to do things to avoid withdrawal symptoms. There are no withdrawal symptoms from crack.

Addicts can be prescribed methadone, which removes withdrawal symptoms. In Switzerland doctors can prescribe heroin, and this seems to get better results. Although I am against drugs, I would support something similar in Britain. Obviously, a heroin addict who is prescribed methadone or heroin is still an addict even if they stop buying heroin on the street. But at least their prescription is pure and unadulterated. Heroin addicts frequently die because they can't easily control the dose they take. And they won't need to get involved in prostitution or theft to pay for heroin. In their own time they can reduce the dose.

Crack cocaine is a different type of drug and I can't see how prescribing crack could work.

Laura had something wrong with her arm which meant she couldn't brush her hair easily. I expect it is quite difficult for homeless addicts to get to see a doctor. It was very sad to see and it makes you want to try to sort them out with their health problems by taking them to a doctor, dentist and optician. It shouldn't be that difficult to get them somewhere to stay, perhaps a hostel to begin with, get benefits sorted out and a methadone script.

Laura talked about her life. She said that she got into trouble early on but it was when her grandmother died that her problems really started. Laura was blamed by her family for the death of her Nan. They said the stress of Laura getting into trouble made her grandmother ill and caused her death. Laura wasn't allowed to attend the funeral although she loved her Nan. Her parents rejected her.

Stacey wrote poems about her life. One of them was quite powerful. However, through looking on the Internet I can see that she did not actually write it. She had a version of a poem possibly originally written by Larry Jackson for a woman called Miriam. It is called My Name is Cocaine. This is my own version.

My name is Cocaine
Coke for short
I came to this land
Without a passport
Ever since then
I've been hunted and sought

I'll make a student forget his books
I'll make a beauty neglect her looks
I'll make a teacher forget how to teach
I'll make a preacher not want to preach
I'll take your money and make you dirt poor
I'll take your sister and make her a whore

I'm a compulsion too tough for the man
I'm the reason for the battering ram
If you decide to climb on my back
You'd better ride me well
For the white horse of Crack
Will take you to hell.

There's one problem with this poem and that is that 'coke' is a street name for ordinary cocaine, whereas 'crack' is short for crack cocaine. Although coke and crack are both cocaine they are not the same, crack being much stronger and much more addictive.