That wasn’t too bad, but then Dev turned up back from Amsterdam.
It was just one thing after another that week. He had, I don’t know how much; he always has a bagful when he comes round. I don’t even know how long that lasted…
After you’ve done a junk binge, you feel it. Cold turkey. You feel horrible. If it was measles or the flu or something you might think, Well, so I’m ill, it won’t last long. Coming down isn’t any worse but the difference is, you know that all you have to do is take one little snort and instead of feeling like dirt you’ll feel better than anyone ever did before.
That’s what makes it so hard. All you can think about is junk, junk, junk.
If Dev’d still been about he’d have looked after us, but he’d cleared off that morning. We should have asked him to leave a bit behind so we could come down slowly, but he left really early and we forgot to ask the night before. Our usual dealer was away for the weekend, otherwise we could have got some on credit. It was awful. That was the first time. Up to then coming down hadn’t been so bad but this time—I don’t know—this just seemed to get worse and worse. I was taking Anadin and all sorts but it wasn’t doing any good at all. There’s only one thing can make you feel better when you’ve got cold turkey. More junk.
Lily was worse than any of us. “I’m really gutted, my head can’t cope with this,” she kept complaining. Lily hates feeling bad. Feeling bad is against her religion.
She was sitting down, jumping up, going to bed, coming back. In the afternoon me and Tar got into watching this movie but Lily just couldn’t get into it. She got into this whispering session with Sal. I got irritated about it, they wouldn’t tell me what was going on and I hate being left out. Finally Lily dragged Rob off to the bedroom. I thought they’d gone for you-know-what, but five minutes later they came out and got their coats. Lily was back in her string vest, it was the first time I’d seen her dressed like that for weeks.
“Where’re you going?” I asked.
“When I come back,” said Lily, “I’m gonna make you all feel soooo GOOD!” She stuck her bum out sideways and winked at me. Rob grinned, a bit shakily. Then they went out.
They were away about two hours. Me and Tar gave Sal a grilling but she kept her mouth shut. I got really ratty about it in the end and she started snapping, so I shut up, but I was burning up with curiosity. Then we heard their voices in the hall and I knew whatever it was they’d done, it’d worked, because they were both happy.
Lily came banging in and shrieked and just flung this money at the ceiling.
“Yeah, free money, free money!” she yelled. There was a big handful of tenners coming down from the ceiling. She started jiving round the room. Sal grabbed hold of her and kissed her. Rob grabbed the notes and went bombing off to get some.
I was going, “How did you get it, how did you get it?” I thought they must have robbed someone. But she wouldn’t say, she kept just jiving about and putting music on and lighting incense and getting the place ready until Rob came back. He was quick too, he’s not usually that quick. He usually stays round there a bit, specially if it’s one of the dealers we don’t know so well. Lily had her fix first. Then she gave me that big Lily smile and she said, “Sixty quid, not bad for ten minutes’ work, eh, Gemma?”
“Go on then, tell me, I’ve been going mad.”
“I turned over a punter,” she said.
“What’s that mean? Did she rob someone? Has she mugged someone?” I asked Sal. Sal giggled and shook her head. She was watching Rob stick the needle in his arm like she’d never seen anything so interesting in her life before. I couldn’t wait either but I was so curious.
Lily said, “I’ve been a little prossie for half an hour.”
I was just amazed. I kept asking her questions—how she did it, what she had to do, where she did it, how many she did it with, how often she’d done it before, what she charged. She got annoyed when I asked her if she enjoyed it.
“It’s a job, Gems, nobody likes working,” she said, glancing at Rob.
Later when she calmed down, she said she got a hit off it, but she didn’t enjoy it the way I meant. She got hyped up from it, like she used to when she was a kid and she walked across the river on the edge of the rail bridge. It was a dare.
This is how you do it.
She stands on the street corner. He waits a little bit down the road. Then the punter in a car comes along and pulls up, has a chat. He makes himself seen, so the punter knows she’s not on her own. They decide to do business. They decide what the service is, what the price is.
“We all knew what the goods were,” said Lily, and she grinned.
She gets in the car, the car pulls away. He walks up and down chewing his nails and fretting. Fifteen minutes later the car drops her off, she gets out and she finds him and hands over the money. Then she goes back to her place, does another punter.
Two punters. Hey presto. Sixty quid.
Yeah, money’s easy. You can earn it standing in a doorway or flat on your back or in the back of someone’s car. You use your body same as other people do—carpenters, mechanics, gardeners. You can go to work and earn it in a shop or you can work for yourself on the street corner or at home. Money’s easy, same as everything’s easy—once you know how.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, how terrible, how demeaning, how awful, oh, dear me, oh oh oh…
Yeah, about as demeaning as going out to work five days a week. About as demeaning as going down a mine. About as demeaning as sitting in an office all your life while the sun shines on someone else. About as demeaning as getting married and having kids and then finding out he’s a bastard who knocks you about and wants to give you one five times a week and you can’t say no even though you hate him, and all for less in a week than Lily can earn in a couple of hours.
Who’s the sucker?
I was amazed. Even after I was full of heroin I was still amazed and I kept saying, “You didn’t, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
“I was a little prossie for half an hour, now I’m Lily again. And I’m having a really good time…”
I had Vonny and Richard round here the other day and…Oh, I couldn’t resist it. I’d already told them about turning over a few punters. I love it. You can see their faces trying to work it out. They just hate being disapproving. They think they’re Mr. and Mrs. Alternative, really subversive. Gluing up the banks, smoking a few joints. I’m only fifteen and I’ve done things neither of them would dare do.
When I told them I was on the game, Vonny sat for a bit trying to decide what her position was, then she said, “That’s awful, Gemma.”
“Well, I’ll try anything once,” said Richard. “But I wouldn’t advise it as a career move.” Which actually was just about right. He surprises me sometimes. Anyway, I was going to tell you…I couldn’t resist. They were sitting there and they wanted to know what I’d been up to. So I thought, I’ll show you what. And I rolled up my sleeves and showed them my track marks. Where I’d used the needle.
I won’t bore you with the details. I was almost sorry I bothered, they went on so much. Actually, I say that, but I didn’t mind. I like talking smack. I could talk about smack all day, it fascinates me—what it does to you and the way people react to it. But they were just appalled, far more than when I told them I did punters. It went on for hours.
“There’ll be tears over this,” said Richard.
I laughed. He doesn’t know me!
“Everyone thinks they’re stronger than heroin,” said Vonny. “That’s how it makes you feel. But there’ll be deaths.” She got really wound up.
She got up and started pointing round the room like the Angel of Doom. “Some of you are going to die.” There were a couple of younger ones there, little beggar girls who made a bit selling to the even more down-and-out beggars. They just sank back into the carpet and stared at her as if she’d Come To Get Them. It was so funny.
“You know all about it,
you’ve been through it, have you?” said Tar. And of course Vonny had to admit she’d never even tried it. Everyone started laughing at her after that, even the little ones. Vonny just stood there looking sulky.
“There’ll be deaths,” she repeated.
“Yeah! You’re all gonna die! Yeah!” Lily was funny. She was dancing round the room like a ghost. She was on form that day, like she was at the party where I met her. She danced up to Vonny. “Live fast, die young, babe, before you get any older,” she sang. Vonny looked at her like she was going to be sick, like she’d no right to be thinking like that.
I enjoyed it at the time. But they come round too often, both of them together, or one at a time. And it’s all they ever want to talk about. I reckon they’re more addicted than I am.
We get really young kids round here buying smack sometimes. I mean, I was fourteen when I started and now I’m fifteen and a half but some of these are thirteen and I’ve even seen twelve-year-olds turn up. I feel guilty about selling to them, but then I think, what else have they got? These kids didn’t leave home to get a slice of life like me. They left home because they needed to escape.
They couldn’t handle home. Trouble is, they can’t handle the street, either. They don’t take smack to have a good time; they take it to escape. They don’t go on the game to make money; they do it just to survive. They ought to be working in a café or at school or being milk monitor for the nursery round the corner.
It’s different with them.
They really ought not to be on the game, though. Apart from anything else I wouldn’t trust men who want girls that young. But there you go—there’s no other way they can earn money. That’s true for us, too.
What else do you have to sell?
That’s about as far as it goes if you’re under age. You can get some lousy job where you work 2,000 hours a week for some fat git sweatshop. Or you can spend a couple of days a week on your back…
There’s this one little kid I pass on the way to work. She hangs around the corner of Brook Road flogging her lamb chop. She has this long wimpy bloke with her, he can’t be more than fourteen, but I wouldn’t put her down as a teenager. She dresses up in make-up and high heels. I suppose she thinks she looks sophisticated, but actually she does good trade because she looks like what she is—a little girl all dressed up.
She does a trick and they go together and spend the money on sweets and heroin.
When she comes round here I try and talk to her. I say to her, “Look, you can be anything you want, you don’t have to hang around here…” And she just looks at me and sighs. She likes to linger here. I suppose it’s the company. If I go on at her too much, she sighs and says, “Can I go now?” as if she needs my permission to leave the house.
I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t turn her in for her own good, but Lily reckons she ran away for a reason, and she’s probably better off where she is.
Maybe. At least she’s in control of her own life. But I feel bad about those kids. They deserve some sort of life. Me, I’ve made my own choices and I’m happy with it. Yeah. Yes, I am. I’m in control of my life and I love it, and I love myself and I love Tar and I love my friends.
The thing is, I know my limits. I’m sensible about it. Lily says I do everything sensibly even when I go over the top. Too right. I take care of myself. I eat well. Always make the punters use a condom. I don’t work on the streets; I do it through the massage parlour. I don’t share needles, except with Tar. I’m not a junkie. I can stop it whenever I want. I do sometimes, for a week or so, just to show myself I’m still on top. I don’t have AIDS. I don’t even have non-specific urethritis.
Lily goes out and works on the street, even though she could get a job at the parlour with her looks. She says she doesn’t want to work for anyone except herself. Basically she believes in magic. Believing in magic the Lily way means that you never get harmed no matter what you do…and if you do, it’s because you were meant to.
It’s a funny thing with Lily but it seems to work for her; nothing seems to harm her. I don’t mean she never gets hurt. Things happen to her. She got turned over by one of the punters the other day. This guy beat her up and took her money. She came back with a black eye looking for Rob because he was supposed to be keeping an eye on things. It wasn’t his fault, though. The guy drove her off before he did it.
But the thing was, she was all right again in half an hour. She was back on the street that evening. I’d have been terrified to go out there again, but there she was, chirpy as ever. She was even proud of it. That’s her secret, I suppose. Everything that happens to her she’s proud of. She makes it special by it happening to her.
Me and Sal, we’ve got this amazing job at the parlour—Dido’s Health Parlour. It’s nice and clean. It’s safe because you’re on the premises and there’s the other girls around and the management don’t want anything bad to happen or they lose their business. You get a better class of punter. Lily has to take them as they come, straight off the street. Some of those lorry drivers have been sitting in the cab twelve hours, sweating. At the parlour, if you think the customer’s a bit ripe you just fling him a towel and say, “I’ll come and give you your massage when you’ve had your shower.”
Of course the management don’t want people to get turned away so you can’t pick and choose. You can’t say, “I don’t fancy him, I’ll have him instead.” That’s not fair on the other girls. But if someone asks you to do something kinky they send in Joe and he shows them the door. And the boss, Gordon, is really good. If it’s someone really gross or someone you really can’t stand he’ll try and overcharge him or get rid of him somehow. If the customer still wants it, he offers him to one of the other girls for extra money. Usually Elaine, because she really doesn’t care. Yuk! As it is, I like to do a little junk—not enough to be out of it, just enough, you know, so I’m not totally all there.
It’s a public service, really. After the bank holiday you get this queue of men in the waiting room. I mean they don’t get it at home with their wives or they’re too shy to find a girl of their own. So they come to us. If it wasn’t for us they’d probably be out on the street hunting down young girls. Sal and I have a joke about it.
“You on PPD today?”
“Yeah, Pervert Prevention Duty.”
I get three hundred quid a week some weeks, if I go for it. Pretty demeaning, eh? Fifteen years old, three hundred quid a week. I keep thinking I’d like to go back and show my parents. Not what I’m doing; not what I’m earning, either, ’cause they might guess. Just me. Just show them me, so they can see I’m doing all right.
Only, not yet. I’d like to wait until I’m clean before that. I do too much, I know that. I’m planning on getting myself straight for a few weeks. I’ll go and see them then. I keep meaning to ring them but…it does my head in. I just can’t bear to talk to them these days. Even my mum. I miss her, but I can’t talk to her. It’ll come. I can wait. I mean, she’s not gonna die tomorrow, right?
Tar
Since I got better
I bin haappy this way
And betterbetterbetterbetter’s the way
I’m gonnagonnagonnagonna staaaay-ya
LURKY
If I lean out of the window and look down the City Road I see all the houses and the windows and doors in them, with rooms and rooms behind the windows and doors. I feel like I’m looking behind a forest or into a deep ocean. Behind the streets there’s office blocks and shop buildings. On a hill there’s a group of tower blocks. They look like frilly bricks from this distance.
I’m part of a tribe. We live behind the windows and doors. Sometimes we go out in the streets, quick enough to shop or to visit each other. In this part of town, in the houses and the flats, one above the other, side by side, there are many tribes. Shop assistants, clerks, office workers, that sort of thing. The Asians, running their shops or keeping their homes; the West Indians, the Irish, the Poles, the people who like this and do that—all trib
es, mixed together and jumbled up. Going about their lives, rubbing shoulders, doing deals.
I don’t have much to do with the rest of them. I only see them. I have my own life to live.
I had Richard round here the other day to say goodbye. He’s going on a trip to Southeast Asia. Thailand, Bali, then on to Australia. He wanted me to go with him. I laughed. What with? I don’t have any money.
“I’ll lend you some,” he said.
I just shook my head.
I impress myself sometimes. He thinks I’m worth offering a thousand quid to and I don’t do anything. I get on with my life, I do my business. I don’t try. And he still thinks I’m worth giving a thousand to. I know he said lend, but we both know I’d never get round to giving it back, no matter how good my intentions were.
I knew what was behind it, of course. He thought if I went with him I might leave the smack alone. He used to come round regularly to nag me.
“It’ll kill you. It is killing you. You’re really boring these days,” he told me.
I said, “So are you.”
He just shook his head.
“I don’t have to go running off to Asia to keep myself interesting, Richard,” I told him.
“I hope you find it just as interesting being dead as you have being alive,” he told me.
That’s the trouble with most people. They want to live forever. When you turn round to them and tell them that you’re just living your life and if that means you’ll be dead in three years, that’s okay by you, they hate that. There’s no answer to that. If you don’t mind not reaching twenty there’s no argument against heroin, is there?
You have to face facts. There was this thing with Alan and Helen, this really spooky thing. I was just getting to know them quite well. I can’t remember where I met them, but they used to turn up at our place to score. Then they got into a bit of dealing. He was the handsomest bloke I ever met. He was dark and all hairy. Hairy chest, black hair on his arms. He had to shave twice a day. Well, he never did, of course, but if he wanted to keep clean shaven he had to. He had beautiful eyes, like liquid gold, and those even, good-looking sort of features. He could have been a model, except maybe he was even a bit too pretty. People used to sit staring at him. I used to myself. Then if he caught you looking, he’d fling back his head and put out his arms into this model-man pose.