In My Skin: A Memoir of Addiction
Kate Holden
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 161145798X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Desperation drove her onto the streets, where she became “Lucy,” offering her body for cash to the first car to stop, risking arrest and, worse, the human predators—anything for her next fix. With her name on the police blotter, she eventually left the streets and offered her services to a high-class brothel. There she discovered hidden strengths, as well as parts of herself that frightened her.
Throughout, however hurt and dismayed, her family never abandoned her, and their acceptance and unyielding love helped her defeat the drug and leave her netherworld behind. In taut, devastating prose, Kate Holden recounts her journey with an emotional honesty and genuineness that will leave no reader untouched.
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Mug and his car had already vanished. It was a long walk back to my rounds. The cops trawled the block all the time: easy pickings for their arrest quota. I heard they divvied up the score: one night, they’d get the girls. The next, the mugs. The next, the boys who loitered in the park down by the beach. It was all regular, and I gradually came to understand the deal. You had to let them hassle you a bit, break you in, charge you a few times; so you paid your dues. Then they’d be friendly—they’d.
The soft lights of living rooms in art deco flats. A takeaway joint, a vintage furniture shop. A family out for a stroll averting their eyes from me. I dressed in tight but not slutty clothes, I carried a backpack, I walked with my head down, my eyes looking up. And so I walked, on and on all night. I STILL CALLED MYSELF ‘Lucy’. A nice name, simple and sweet. Easy to remember, easy to forget. A taxi driver eased confessions out of me one melancholy night as he took me home. I wasn’t.
Wondered if I’d ever have sex for my own sake again. Whether anyone would want me after this. How could I go back to innocence? It wasn’t worth thinking about. A mug dropped me off in the city one night just past midnight. Turning a corner into the main drag, steering past all the young men loitering around on the footpath, I ran into James. ‘Hi!’ I said. He looked just as he always did: thin, dressed like a ten-year-old boy, and very startled. It had been a long time since I’d seen him.
Notion of pride to be retained. Tears in my eyes. I only lasted another long minute; then I wrenched myself out of his grip and faced him. ‘You’re hurting me! I told you I might not be able to do it.’ He grinned at me. ‘That’s it. I’m stopping the booking. You can get dressed and leave.’ I grabbed my dress and shoes and strode out to shower in another room. My anus and vagina were burning, I was bleeding a little; I stayed under the hot water a while, mumbling my rage to myself. The man’s.
Sometimes no. No drugs. Clammy with withdrawal after my fruitless night at the brothel, I would keep pulling the thin sheet of sleep back over me as the hours went past. Dim daylight scorched through my eyelids. Even opening them was more than I could bear. The weird chemicals of withdrawal made my head spin; I had synaesthetic reveries, so tactile I could taste them, smell them over the rankness of my own skin. I’d whimper in confused fright, and hear Robbie next to me, grunting back, or.