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.

no names no photographs

I got an email a few days ago from an angry sex worker. She found out that I had put a photograph of her on my blog. She wanted it removed. I did what she told me to do.

About three years ago I found out about a woman who lived a short bus ride from me. She does erotic massage. She comes from a Mediterranean country and is young and beautiful. I sent her an email and asked her if there are any photographs of her on the internet. She replied with a photo of her face. She hadn't modified it in such a way that she couldn't be identified. I went to see her and it was a pleasant experience, different from what I was used to. I wrote about her on this blog. I didn't give her name or her AdultWork page, but I did use the photo.

I wanted people to see how beautiful some of the women are who are available. She is as beautiful as the photo in my previous post, the photo that I thought was of a Liverpool prostitute but turned out to be of a leading model. She has the same dark Mediterranean beauty. I think she must be even more beautiful when she's angry. It's a pity she doesn't go in for domination. I deserve to be punished.

I don't think that putting her photo on my blog was much of a risk to her but I can understand that she doesn't want people pointing her out in Sainsbury's and saying something like "You see that woman there - she likes to hold men's erections in her hand and watch the semen squirting out the end of it".

In October last year I was walking to my local supermarket when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I saw a thin scruffy woman. My immediate thought was that she is a street girl. After years of trying to locate street girls on Tooting Bec Common it is a look that I have come to recognise instantly. I looked at her face. She gave me a big broad smile, the sort of sweet smile that women can do when they really want to. She seemed kind of familiar.

I didn't know if she was an ordinary woman who was flattered by a man staring at her. Or a street girl who is always open to meeting new men. Or one of the women who I had known on the Common. She was really beautiful. I thought she might be the particular one that I had been most involved with, but I couldn't be sure. This particular woman is someone I have written about a lot when I started this blog years ago.

(This is not the street girl who has been in contact with me via email recently and who wrote two posts for this blog about her life. These two posts have been removed. She asked me to remove them because she was worried people might be able to work out that it was her who had written them.)

She had a man with her. I always said that if I saw one of the women who I had known on the Common in the street with a man then I wouldn't approach her and try to talk to her. I wouldn't want to cause a problem for them. If the man didn't know about her past he might say "Who the hell was that you were talking to?". Also, the man she was with looked quite tough and he might have taken offence with me for trying to talk to his partner.

this is not her but it reminds me of her

About two weeks ago I saw her again, alone. I went up to her and said "Are you (her name, but I'm not going to reveal it)?" We had a short conversation and then her boyfriend came along. She said "This is my boyfriend" and introduced me to him. She said goodbye and walked away.

She wasn't as beautiful as she was when I saw her a few months ago outside the supermarket. Women can seem more or less beautiful depending on their mood that day or maybe phases of the menstrual cycle. I thought that her face didn't look as thin as I remembered from years ago. Addicts do put on weight when they give up drugs.

She looked healthy. She looks as if she has given up drugs. Over the years I have asked people if they know what has happened to her. I was told by one person that she injects heroin in odd places. Later I was told by someone else that she was in prison. More recently someone told me that she'd been sectioned. She had been one of the two women on the Common who had seemed the most addicted, to crack cocaine and heroin.

When I started writing about her on this blog years ago I used her initial and not her name, as I did with all the women I met on the Common and in my neighbourhood. When I started thinking that she might be dead I thought it wouldn't do any harm to use her name and the only photograph that I have of her. Now that I know that she is not only not dead but seems to have overcome her multiple addictions I have gone though the posts on this blog removing her name and the photo.

I wouldn't want any information on this blog about her to become a problem for her. I wish her all the best for the future. If I see her again I would like to tell her that she should be proud of herself for having overcome such difficult addictions and other problems, and that if she can do that then she can accomplish anything.

I am glad that she not only remembered me but doesn't consider me to be an abuser. When I knew her on the Common I tried to be good to her. I think she thought that I was trying to save her. However, I believed that few people overcome heavy addiction to crack cocaine and heroin and that she would end up dead. I was wrong.

the southeastern corner of Tooting Bec Common
near to where the street girls used to congregate

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.

Ann Widdecombe on heroin

A BBC news report has shown that in London some heroin addicts are being prescribed heroin on the NHS. Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative politician, does not accept this. She said
"My concern about giving heroin to addicts is you are not tackling the root cause of their problems. You don't get someone off drugs by giving them drugs. You remove the danger of dirty needles - but not the addiction".

This attitude is common within the coalition government. I think it is harmful. Diamorphine (pure heroin) and methadone are useful in treating heroin addicts. They allow the treatment for addiction to be in two easier steps instead of one big step. Often it will be simply impossible for someone to recover from addiction unless they can do this. Even if an addict only ever achieves the first step that in itself is immeasurably preferable to remaining on street heroin. Someone who takes methadone or diamorphine might still be an addict but their situation is completely different.

Firstly, an addict does not need to commit crime in order to buy street heroin. Women do not feel the need to be prostitutes. Although prostitution does not necessarily damage the physical or psychological health of women, the inadequate criminal justice system in this country means that some are.

Secondly, clean needles mean that an addict is not going to get HIV or hepatitis.

Thirdly, diamorphine and methadone are pure. Street heroin doesn't start off pure, but then it is cut with various substances so that dealers can make more money from it. These substances can be very injurious to health.

Fourthly, the dose of diamorphine and methadone is controlled precisely. People could take relatively large doses of pure heroin for years without it harming their health too much, but heroin kills large numbers of people because it is so easy to overdose on street heroin. Addicts find it very difficult to work out the strength of their heroin and how much they can use without it killing them.

The attitudes of people like Ann Widdecombe to both diamorphine and methadone will lead to death and damage to many people. I'm not saying that addicts should not try to gradually reduce the dose they take or even try to abruptly stop. But it helps if they can get off street heroin first. Many will never be able to overcome addiction without diamorphine or methadone. Even if they never achieve total abstinence from drugs they will be much happier.