Dying to Survive (15 page)

One of the side-effects of taking heroin is that you make friends with all kinds of people simply because you are both using. But these friendships are often far from healthy, as both of you are coming from a place of desperation, need and deception. Cindy was one of these ‘friends’ for me. I met her in a friend’s flat, which had been turned into a using gallery. Every room would be occupied by junkies, floating around the place like shadows, endlessly searching for beauty in each hit.

Cindy began to show her face every night at two or three in the morning. A strange time to be scoring some heroin, I thought. She wasn’t like any junkie I had met before. She was of mixed race, healthy looking and very confident in herself, chatting away to everyone as if she had known them all her life. She had only just moved into Ballymun with her boyfriend and her two young children. She told us that her boyfriend didn’t know she was using, so every night when he went to sleep she had to sneak out and go and score.

We got on like a house on fire and it wasn’t long before she invited me over to her flat and asked me to babysit. Her flat was spotless and well kept, totally unexpected from someone who was using drugs. There was no sign of her boyfriend. I never asked her where she was going when I babysat, but when she came back she would sit in front of me and count wads of money. Then she would take out eight bags of heroin, each bag with its one score: four for me and four for her.

One night she told me where she was getting the money from. ‘I was up in Coronation Street,’ she said when she came back to the flat. I looked at her blankly. ‘On the egg and mash, you know, on the game.’ I had my suspicions anyway, but I pretended to be surprised. Then she told me that she had split up with her boyfriend, because he had found out about her using drugs.

From then on, babysitting for Cindy became a nightly thing. She would go out working at about eleven and she would be home by two or three. It was as though nothing had happened. She looked great, she seemed content, her flat was beautiful, her kids were angels. She wasn’t short of money and she always had drugs. It all seemed so easy and I began to get curious.

‘You just have to look at it like a job,’ Cindy assured me. ‘Never allow your emotions to get in the way and never bring your work home with you. If you want, you can come into Baggot Street with me. You don’t have to do anything, just see what you think.’

I was more than reluctant. I had promised myself that I would never do anything like this again, especially after the last time. But then I had promised myself lots of things that I could never seem to follow through. I was attracted to what Cindy had—all that money and access to all the drugs she wanted—and I was attracted to what I saw as the danger of it all. I wouldn’t do anything, I told myself. I would just go with Cindy and see what it was like.

We got the last bus into town and headed up to Baggot Street. That was where the real money was, with the majority of clients being wealthy businessmen. But it wasn’t what I had expected. There were no women strutting their stuff in mini-skirts and whore boots, fighting over who owned what patch. Cindy told me that most of the women had already done their work and had finished up for the night.

We stood together at the banks of the canal and every few minutes a car would crawl towards us. The driver would stare out the window, trying to get a good look at us both. Cindy approached the first car that stopped. I could see her leaning in through the window, negotiating terms. Then she jumped into the car and they drove off. I hid in the shadows praying that nobody would drive past who knew me. Baggot Street was dark and eerie, like a ghost-town, and I shuddered when I remembered stories I had heard of prostitutes getting beaten up by punters.

Cindy was back within forty minutes. ‘How much did ye make?’ I asked her as soon as she got out of the car.

‘Eighty pounds,’ she said proudly.

‘And what did you do?’

‘I done the business with him.’

‘No way, and what do you say to the punter? Do you talk to him or anything?’

Just as I said this, a van pulled up beside us. ‘C’mon over with me and I’ll show you,’ she said linking my arm and taking me with her. ‘Are ye looking for business?’ she asked the driver, who looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I was surprised to see that he was very young. Maybe in his late twenties. Not a dirty old man like I’d expected.

‘What, with the two of you?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, there’s coffee and cream on the menu tonight if you want it. I’m coffee and she’s cream.’ I gave Cindy an elbow into the ribs.

‘How much are ye looking for?’

‘Depends on what you want.’

‘Well what’s the price list?’

‘It’s a hundred and sixty for sex, eighty for a blow-job and sixty for a hand-job.’

‘I’ll give you the one sixty,’ he agreed.

‘Wait! Hold on for a minute,’ I interrupted, pulling Cindy to one side. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I said, exasperated.

‘Look, if you’re gonna do this,’ Cindy responded, ‘you may as well do it with me there. You’ll feel safer that way. And I’ll do most of the work. You just have to go along with me.’

‘Ah, I don’t know about this, Cindy. It’s a bit weird and I’m fuckin’ freaked out.’

‘We’ll make this the last one,’ she assured me. ‘I have eighty here and we’ll get one sixty off him. So we’ll have enough to do us for tomorrow as well.’

I quickly weighed up the options in my head. I couldn’t think of another way to make money this quick. ‘Fuck it, c’mon then,’ I reluctantly agreed, letting all my morals go out the window. ‘Just this once won’t kill me.’

We got into the back of the man’s van and brought him somewhere out of sight. ‘I have to get the money off you first,’ Cindy told him. He did as she said, producing a bundle of notes out of his jeans pocket. Then the punter pulled down his jeans and he began to touch himself as he hungrily watched myself and Cindy undress. Even though I had lots of drugs in my system, every part of me screamed out, telling me not to do this. But I couldn’t just walk away now. I had gone too far and, anyway, it would all be over in a few minutes. I couldn’t look at either of them. I suddenly burst out laughing, to relieve the tension I felt inside. Then Cindy started to laugh, too.

‘What are you laughing at?’ the punter said, obviously freaked out.

‘Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that this is my first time doing anything like this.’

Cindy went over to the man and had sex with him. She seemed to magically bring him to orgasm within minutes. La la la la la, this isn’t happening, I repeated in my head, not knowing where to look and trying to distract myself from how bizarre it all was. When she finished with him, he decided that he had had enough. I was never so relieved.

_____

I have no memory of my second time selling my body for money, or the time after that. I was eighteen years old and living the seedy life of a prostitute. But somehow, I managed to switch myself off every time I went to Baggot Street. I became someone different. Someone who was confident and in control, quickly learning all the tricks of a prostitute: relying on my sexuality to get what I wanted and using my body, my facial expressions and how I spoke as my main source of attraction. It always worked. Within a few weeks I had regular customers. All sorts of men paid me to have sex with them. Young, old, middle-class and upper-class, married men and single men. But all their faces looked the same to me. They were a means to an end that came hand in hand with my addiction. It was as though I were living a double life.

I desperately tried to keep it a secret from my family and the rest of the world. At first I would always make sure that I got back into my grandparents’ house before my grandmother finished her nightly shift at Dublin Airport. My skin would be crawling with shame as I snuck in the back door and crept up to my bedroom. I would count my money, making sure that I had at least three hundred pounds. Enough to buy gear to last me for two or three days at a time. I was beginning to realise that the more I sold my body for drugs, the bigger my drug habit became. As it began to get bright outside, I would have a turn-on and fall asleep until the next evening.

But I was starting to get very sloppy and very greedy, wanting to make more money every time I went to Baggot Street and staying out until much later. Sometimes when I got home my grandmother would be standing in the kitchen. She would see the taxi pulling off and she would question where I had been. ‘You’re on the game, aren’t you?’ she would bluntly say. But I always denied it, knowing that the thought of it devastated her.

Another ‘friend’ at this time was Derek, who had just appeared out of nowhere in Cindy’s flat. I knew his face to see around Ballymun and I wondered what he was doing there after I heard him saying he was clean. He explained that he was doing his rounds with people, collecting money that he was owed from the time he dealt in drugs. He gave me his number and told me to ring him if I ever needed any help getting clean. I was immediately attracted to what I saw as his strength and self-assurance. Little did I know that meeting Derek would be one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Being a drug addict does not mean that you choose your friends with care: you meet all sorts of people, generally in the same boat as you, and trust doesn’t exactly come into it. So, when Derek’s unpredictable and moody met my desperate and vulnerable, it was an accident waiting to happen.

A few days after meeting Derek I woke up in the Mater Hospital after overdosing on heroin and tablets. My clothes were wringing wet from sweat. I had been given a heroin antidote, but I was screaming at the doctors to give me something to take away the withdrawals. The doctors refused to give me anything and they discharged me as soon as my grandmother arrived. By the time I got home I had lapsed back into another overdose. I was kept in hospital for a few days and the break from drugs gave me that chance to think clearly for the first time in a long while.

I needed to get clean. And I decided to ring Derek to ask him to help me do a detox. He was only too happy to take me under his wing and within one week I was clean from drugs and in a steady relationship with him. Derek was small but stocky. He had shovels for hands and big, square shoulders. He understood me like nobody else did and he made me feel very safe. But there was something about his piercing blue eyes that made me think twice about him. I saw a craziness in them that didn’t match up to the person that he presented himself to be: strong and steady. But I just pretended to myself that my instincts were wrong.

A lot of my friends knew Derek and were shocked to hear that he was my new boyfriend. ‘What the fuck are you doing with him?’ an old Ballymun friend asked me one day. ‘I was locked up with him and I’m telling you now, he’s not what he seems to be.’

But I wasn’t willing to listen. I was introduced to Derek’s family who welcomed me in with open arms and within a little time myself and Derek were shacked up together in his mother’s sitting room. It was us against the world, pledging loyalty to each other until the day we died. I had never felt safer or more secure in my life.

But soon, Derek began to show me his more unpredictable side. It seemed that my friends were right.

One night we were lying in bed. I was fast asleep, but woke with a start, to find Derek standing over me, staring at me. His eyes glittered.

‘What are you looking at me for?’ I said, startled.

He shook his head. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I was having a bad dream.’

I looked at him doubtfully. ‘You weren’t even asleep.’ I pretended that I needed to go to the toilet. Looking at my face in the bathroom mirror, the first thing I thought of was heroin. I had been clean since I had moved in with Derek, so it would be impossible to use drugs with him around. When I came back downstairs Derek was fast asleep. Now was my opportunity to go and score.

I snuck out of Derek’s house and knocked in to Cindy. But she wasn’t in and I assumed that she was in Baggot Street. I decided to follow her in, knowing that I would have to do some work myself and be back before Derek woke up.

It was a busy night and I wasn’t waiting long for my first client to come. I had never seen this punter before, but he insisted that he was a regular visitor to Baggot Street. He looked like a Goth, with wavy shoulder-length hair, pale skin and lots of eye-liner. After he agreed to pay me for sex, I brought him to my usual hideout by the docks of the canal. I was just about to unbutton his jeans when he pushed my hand away. ‘I have a special request for you,’ he said in a posh Dublin accent.

Ah, here we go, another freak, I should have known, I thought to myself, becoming afraid. I watched his hands like a hawk and cursed myself for not having a weapon with me. Then he reached under the seat of his car and pulled out a pair of leather trousers and a pair of women’s high-heeled boots. ‘I don’t want to have sex with you if that’s ok. I would much prefer it if you put these boots on and just stood on me,’ he said.

‘Emm, are you serious?’ I replied, incredulous.

‘Yeah, that’s what I like.’

‘Ok, but you’ll have to pay me more,’ I told him, knowing that he was just as afraid of me as I was of him. He agreed and handed me one hundred pounds. Then he put his leathers on over his jeans.

‘You’ll have to tell me what to do,’ I said, squashing my feet into the stiletto boots. ‘As hard as you can, press your feet into my crotch area,’ he instructed.

I reluctantly obliged.

‘Do it harder,’ he demanded and as I obliged, he began to make little purring noises. ‘Meeow, meeow,’ just like a kitten. I thought for a second that I was hearing things, but then he did it again. I didn’t know whether to laugh or run. But I continued stepping on his crotch in my boots, pretending that his purring was the most natural thing in the world, until my legs were sore and he was hurt enough to have an orgasm. I left the punter’s car unable to believe what had just happened. I was disgusted with myself, but I was glad that I didn’t have to have sex with him. I realised that it was getting late and there was no sign of Cindy, so I decided to make my way back to Ballymun.