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.

Manchester brothels and RLD

Last Friday I was in Manchester and I went there again yesterday. My plan was to find the beauty that I had seen in a brothel but hadn't chosen. Then I thought I could go to the Thai massage place where I had been before.

I would take whichever masseur was offered to me. I might get the nice lady who had brought me to orgasm the week before or I might get a younger prettier one. I had seen a younger prettier one at reception. Either way would be good. I planned to have a less sleazy time than my last time but that is not how it worked out.

Before I went to the Piccadilly Club to try to find the beauty I decided to stop off at a place nearby that I hadn't tried. Looking at the Adult Services 18+ section in the Manchester Evening News I worked out where each brothel was. There are about 20 listed, far more than in Liverpool. The only one that I hadn't tried near the city centre was Lounge 56 in Swan Street.

I went up the stairs and a lady said that she has four women for me to choose from. At the Piccadilly Club there are four women but they are standing in a row when you come up the stairs. At Lounge 56 they came in one by one while I was sitting down. The first two were young skinny short girls which I am sure would be some men's dream girls but not for me. The third one was a plump dark skinned woman who I thought looked Brazilian. The fourth was a black woman.

I chose the plump dark woman. I think I paid £40 for half an hour but I can't remember. I thought she would be just the type that turns me on but it didn't work out that way. It could be that she spoke very little English. She said she's Spanish and I can't remember her name but it's something like Dea.

I walked along the road to the Piccadilly Club. Up the stairs there were two women available. Camille was one of them. I asked the receptionist if the pretty girl who was here last week is here. I described her. She said she didn't know who I was talking about. Then another woman came into the room who was nice so I chose her. I paid £35 for a half hour.

Katie has everything that a man could want in a sex worker. She's pretty, glamorous, easy to talk to, chatty and fun loving. In the room she took hold of my cock and got it erect. I asked her about the beauty but she said she didn't know who I meant and the rota on Fridays tends to change a lot. Katie is a young blonde woman and sounds as if she comes from Manchester.

We did a lot of things together. We did it with her on top. Then with me on top. I suggested we tried it with her sitting on the chair. I knelt on the floor in front of her and when my cock was inside her I lifted up her legs. That didn't seem to work though. I said it would be really nice to kiss her, not expecting her to accept this. She said 'You can kiss me if you want'. So we had a snog.

Even though it was great with Katie I still hadn't come. I thought I could try somewhere else. I could have gone along the road to Passions, but I thought it would be Julia again there with the older oriental woman. I could have gone to Cosmopolitan or Tropical Palms. I have been to both of them, although not had sex at Tropical Palms. Instead I thought I would try one that isn't close to the city centre but not far out.

Salon 24 is at the far end of Park Street. It doesn't look a nice area, but when you get into the building it's OK. I was told I could choose between three women. Or was it four? I can't remember, I can only remember the first and last women I was offered. The first one was plump. The last one was even plumper, and looked as if she might be Italian.

I chose Sasha, the first woman. I had heard her laugh and thought she sounded good fun. I think I paid £40 for a half hour. I went upstairs to a big room with an enormous bed along the whole width of the room. It was like three double beds joined together. There was a porn video playing on a TV and mirrors on the wall and ceiling. Sasha looks about 40 and has a nice face. She sounds like a local lass too. So it just goes to show they're not all foreigners these days.

We started off with a bit of a massage. I said I wanted her to lie on her back so I could see her pussy. She had a big pussy, quite nice looking. I shouldn't think that her vagina would be tight, which is what some men require. I got on top of her. It felt nice being on top of such a big woman. When we were fucking she was moving about and making noises. I said to her that it would be better if she didn't move about. She continued to make her 'Ah! Ah!' noises. I said it would be better if she didn't make noises. Then I told her what I wanted her to say. I told her to say 'Fuck my pussy'. She did what I asked and it didn't take long before I came on top of her.

I had a shower before I left. One idea I had at the back of my mind was to try and find the Red Light District in Manchester. I had found a website where it said where it is. I wasn't sure if I should bother because I have tried to find Red Light Districts in recent years, finding nothing although suspecting it might be different if I came back at 2 am. I didn't want to have sex there, I just wanted to see what it's like.

So I went down Fairfield Street near Piccadilly station. I didn't see any prostitutes in the streets I looked in. I wasn't really expecting to, it was mid afternoon. Then at the corner of St Andrew's Street and Helmet Street I saw them. There was a fat woman standing on the corner trying hard to attract business. There was a black woman and an old white woman sitting on some steps. In Helmet Street I could see a woman sitting on a wheelie bin on its side.

The fat women tried to talk to me but I walked past. These were the sort of women so familiar to me yet I hadn't seen for years. I felt in danger. In danger of her being a woman police officer. In danger of being robbed. In danger of meeting a woman I might become obsessed with. Not in danger of taking drugs and getting addicted: I had been in this situation before and never come anywhere near to trying what they're on.

So I walked on, up St Andrew's Street to St Andrew's Square. At the northern end of St Andrew's Square where it meets Adair Street I saw a very beautiful glamorous woman. She was sitting on a wall. Well away from the other women. I could hardly believe she could be a street girl. I walked past her but looked back to see what she was up to. She looked as if she was Asian, with a dark skin.

I thought I saw her talk to someone in a car but then come back to where she had been sitting. I walked up to her. I said 'Hello'. When I said 'Can I talk to you?' she said 'I only do it in the car'. It was only then that I was sure she is a sex worker. I didn't try to talk to her after that but walked away.

So I started out looking for a beauty and not finding her and ended up finding another beauty in very different circumstances. If anyone reading this knows about either of these two beauties, please can you tell us something about them, their names and what they do. I find them fascinating and I'm sure I'm not the only one to do so.

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.

the autobiography of Sebastian Horsley

I finally got around to reading the autobiography of Sebastian Horsley 'Dandy in the Underworld'. I had been thinking of reading it after I heard about his death by heroin overdose just over a year ago. JoAnne Good and Clayton Littlewood had been talking about him on BBC London. I knew that he lived in Soho and he went to see prostitutes there, often ones in the walk ups where I go.

It is only recently, however, that I have become aware that in Soho there used to be a beautiful Italian woman called Claudia. She worked at 70A Berwick Street until a few years ago. She has been described as looking like Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch. Readers of this blog may know that I have always been most strongly attracted to Italian and Italian-looking women, and I have always lusted after Sophia and Raquel.

I couldn't understand how I could have missed her. I have been going to Soho and using PunterNet for the past ten years. I tried to find out all I could about Claudia, and then I became aware that Sebastian Horsley had seen her a number of times and written about her. He wrote an article in the Guardian/Observer and there is an extract from Dandy in the Underworld in Twill magazine.

I went onto Amazon and ordered a used paperback. When I got it I found the pages about Claudia, and then I read the book from the beginning. I wasn't particularly interested in his wealthy but dysfunctional childhood, his failed attempts to be a punk musician, or even his association with Jimmy Boyle, 'Scotland's most violent gangster'. After I re-read what he had to say about Claudia there was an account of descent into crack cocaine addiction, some rehab, and then another descent into addiction, this time heroin. I have never taken drugs although I have met people who were crack and heroin addicts so this was of great interest to me. It helped me to understand something of what it is like to be totally addicted.

The most poignant part of the book is when his brother-in-law Giles, who had been a heroin addict, offered to help Sebastian. He gave him a job in his business, even though all of the other addicts he had tried to help had robbed him. Giles seemed to have everything sorted and so it was a shock when Sebastian got a call from his sobbing sister. He went round and found Giles dead on the sofa, an abandoned syringe next to him.

I noticed throughout the book numerous references to suicide. His mother had tried to kill herself four times and his grandmother achieved it. He often wrote about how desirable it would be. It had been suggested that Sebastian had killed himself, but it is generally reckoned to have been an accidental overdose. Taking heroin however is a bit like Russian roulette. It is so difficult to get the dose right, and many addicts die by accidental overdosing. He gives a graphic account of when he overdosed but survived. He also gives an account of when he played actual Russian roulette - he owned a gun.

Sebastian's book and his life would not make many people like him. I don't think you could say that he didn't care what people thought of him (as he had said of John Lydon). He would have liked to be adored but I think he thought that it would be better to be despised than ignored. His flaunting of his wealth, his self-centredness and immaturity would enrage many. People would have envied his privileged life, but I am only envious that he knew Claudia.

The last mention of Claudia in the book is where he invites her to his flat to meet another beauty, the model Rachel Garley. It is there that Claudia finally allows him to kiss her; she had not permitted him to do so before.

I saw Sebastian once, sitting outside a café in Old Compton Street. I recognized him immediately; no one else wore a top hat. Apparently it was quite unusual for him to be out during daylight hours. He looked quite approachable, I wish that I had said hello to him. There was a play about him based on his memoirs. The final words said by the actor playing him were "If you see me on old Compton Street please say hello won't you?"


For the purposes of completeness I should mention some of the other activities that Sebastian managed to cram into his short life. He was a failed punk band member. He got to know intimately psychopathic Scottish gangster Jimmy Boyle. He swam with Great White sharks. He lost a fortune and regained a fortune by gambling on the financial markets. He was voluntarily crucified in the Philippines. He was a semi-successful artist.

2 different types of prostitution in South London

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Clare Gee on TV tomorrow

Last month I did a post about Clare Gee and her recently published book Hooked: Confessions of a London Call Girl. She will be giving an interview on television tomorrow on This Morning on ITV. The show starts at 10.30 am. Last month there was an interview with her in Cosmopolitan magazine. She has also made a second appearance on JoAnne Good's BBC Radio London show.

Having read an interview in the press I don't agree with everything she says. She says she has no time for writers like Brooke Magnanti, who she says glamourize prostitution. I'm not a great fan of Brooke Magnanti (the blogger Belle de Jour and author of Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl) but I think she shows one person's experience of prostitution.

I'm not a great fan of escorts but probably the majority of escorts manage to keep away from drugs or addiction. Some of them fritter away their money on holidays, clothes, champagne etc but many of them use the money to pay rent or a mortgage and bills. Some of them will save money and maybe use it to do what they really want to do with their lives.

I wanted in this blog to show what I have seen in my involvement with prostitution. There is nothing fictionalized about my blog, unlike both Clare's book and Brooke's books. Some of what they have written did not happen. I wanted to show the opposite side of the sort of thing that Brooke has written about, the dark side of prostitution, but I am not dismissing her views. If women keep away from drugs they aren't going to end up like Clare did, or worse.

Clare doesn't have a balanced point of view. What she says is probably what most people want to hear. They want to believe that prostitution is always damaging to women. They want to believe that drug addiction is always the result of psychological disturbance deriving from childhood trauma and not self indulgence and emotional immaturity. The truth is always more complex than what people want to hear.

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.