Soul Destruction Diary

Another Day, Another Bed, Another Man – 26 December 2000 – 10.30AM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

There’s a warm body pressed against my back. My legs are tangled with other legs. Opening my eyes, I see I’m back in my suite at the Radisson. I turn around in the bed. Mickey’s lying next to me. He’s naked on top. I peek under the covers. He’s wearing pants. I lift up my nightdress. I’m wearing knickers. I’m hoping we didn’t have sex.

While Mickey snores, I insert a finger inside my vagina. I bring it up to my nose and check it for scent. We haven’t had sex. What a relief. I am more attracted to him than any man I can remember. I would love to be able to have sex with him. But I’m not capable of normal sex – unpaid sex. It leaves me feeling cold, empty and used.

I lean towards the bedside table. I pick up my packet of cigarettes, pull one out and light it. Although I’d love to spend time with Mickey, I need to get rid of him. He’s a few days off heroin and I need to get some and use it. I can’t remember if I took Stix’s phone number yesterday. I can’t remember travelling back here. The last thing I recall is being in Stix’s lounge, drinking beer and getting stoned. I must’ve blacked out from the booze again.

Stretching my arm over the side of the bed, I pick up my hobo bag from the floor. I hope I’ve got Stix’s number. If not, I can always ask Mickey. That’d be a last resort though. I’m pretty sure he’ll try to stop me scoring.

The number isn’t in my bag. I don’t have Lorna’s number either. She usually just turns up here. She might not appear again since we kind of fell out the other night. The thought of having no connections panics me – not that I want to carry on taking heroin for however much longer I stay here. I don’t. I just need it today. I’ve got the sweats and the aching joints. I’ve been through cold turkey before. I can do it again. But not today.

I stub my cigarette in the ashtray, tumble out of bed then stagger to the bathroom. I still feel slightly drunk. I take a shower, hoping it will sober me up. When I’m done, I apply my make up, hiding a multitude of spots with concealer.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Mickey says as I walk back into the suite. He’s still lying in bed.

I remind myself that just because he calls me beautiful, it doesn’t mean he thinks I am. I let go of the towel I’m wrapped in and step into my white, Armani dress. I wonder how I’m going to get rid of him. If only I had some heroin here, I could take a hit and spend the day with him. I’d love to spend the day with him. He’s a good man. He slept in a bed with me and didn’t fuck me. He’s not like most men.

“What do we do here for breakfast?” He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up.

I look out the window and away from his toned, nearly naked body. “I don’t need food. I need a hit.” I didn’t mean to say that.

“Have you got any junk here?”

“No,” I reply. “I don’t know if I can get any. Lorna and me sort of had a row at the party.”

“Over me?” He grins, pulling on his jeans.

“Surprisingly not. She scored for me then used it all.” I omit to tell him that I had a hit without her. That was why she did it.

“I told you to watch her. She’s always after something that girl.” He slips his white t-shirt over his head. “I can get you junk. You got money?”

“Yes… Thanks.” I’m shocked he’s offered. He told me the other night that he’d stopped. I’m not going to question it. I don’t want to put him off. I step into my fuchsia high-heels and we leave the suite.

Walking towards to Mickey’s large, white van, I have a recollection of being in it last night. The seats are high up. I remember struggling to get inside. He had to give me a push. I dread to think what we were talking about on the journey. I hope I was too out of it to speak. I’m realising I’m too open when I’m drunk, like the other night when I told Stix I was a hooker. I’m still concerned Mickey knows that about me. If Stix didn’t tell him, maybe I told him myself.

As we drive away, I see Lorna crossing the road from the seafront to the Radisson Hotel. I duck. I don’t want her to see me with Mickey. She’s told me to stay away from him. I’ll spend my time with whoever I want though. I won’t be told what to do.

Spun Out – 25 December 2000 – 4.55PM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

Sitting at this dining table with four men, knowing there’s a chance that one of them fucked me last night, is filling me with rage. If the hit I just injected was stronger, I might not feel as bad. The rage is cooking with the dirty feeling inside my body, under my skin, on my skin, in my blood. I’m a forgotten kettle on a stove that’s been left to boil over. I want to scream. I want to ask if it was one of them. But what’s the point? If the man responsible is here, he’s not going to admit it. Then there are the others who stayed here last night and who’ve since left. I want to know the truth. But it doesn’t seem likely I will.

“How long are you here for, Nicole?” Stix’s mum asks. She’s the only other female at the table. Her pink dress looks like a negligee.

“She doesn’t know. She’s got an open ticket,” says crusty-lip man. I don’t even know his name. How does he know that about me? He lowers his face towards his plate and tucks his long, greasy hair behind his ears.

“And you’re from London?” Stix’s mum says.

“Yes,” I say, chopping a slice of turkey.

The sun is streaming through the window opposite me. I squint, staring down at my plate. I cut tiny chunks of turkey and build a pile behind the roast potatoes. I’m trying to make what I’m going to leave look less than what it is. As a heroin addict, I don’t eat often. Eating straight after a hit is unheard of for me.

I eat three to four peas at a time. Peas aren’t too bad. They’re the petite pois type. They’re overcooked. I’m squashing them on the roof of my mouth with my tongue. That makes them turn to mush. They go down quite easily like that. The pork and the stodgy potatoes are more likely to come back up.

Mickey looks at me across the table. He’s sitting diagonal to me. “Do you need dropping back somewhere?”

I swallow the pea-mush in my mouth. “I’m still at the Radisson.” Back to your house, I’d say if I had the confidence. I remember the other day when I saw him outside my hotel. I’d hoped after that night we’d hook up. But he never showed at the beach the next day.

“I’ll take her,” says the other man I don’t know. He has a thin face, a pointy nose and his eyes are too close together. Never trust a man whose eyes are too close together. Or is that whose eyes are too far apart? I don’t know. I know I don’t want him to take me though. I don’t want to get in a car with a man who might have fucked me while I was out of it. Adrenalin is pumping through my body. He might try it again.

“I’m going that way, mate. She can hop in with me,” Mickey says. Then he looks at me. “If that’s all right with you?”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” More than you know, Mickey, because you’re the only man I’m nearly sure didn’t fuck me last night.

Christmas dinner goes slowly. It’s obvious I’ve hardly touched my food. Stix has left much of his meal too. I don’t feel so bad. I’m not the only one.

When we’re finished eating, me and the blokes return to the lounge. I want to leave, but I need to make sure I get Stix’s phone number before I do. Somehow, I need to get him on his own. If Lorna won’t score for me anymore, Stix is the only connection I have in Sydney. I don’t want to ask for his number in front of the others, especially Mickey as he’s recently off the smack.

Cramped between Stix and crusty-lips on the red leather sofa, I smoke a joint. They’ve been rolling them, and passing them round, for a while now. They’re drinking beer too. So am I. I need to change how I feel and the heroin hit I had earlier wasn’t strong enough. I feel quite stoned. I’m struggling to sit upright. The alcohol’s made the room spin. I need to be careful. I don’t want a repeat of last night.

Knowing and Not – 25 December 2000 – 4.35PM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

Me and Stix sit on the bed in the blue bedroom. It is his room, I’ve learnt. I’ve also discovered that about ten or so people stayed over in this house last night. His mother had a party of her own. So some of her friends slept here. Stix and his friends, apparently, crashed in the lounge. He carried me upstairs and put me to bed.

A man around my age, as I think Stix and his friends are, could have had sex with me in this bed last night. Or if it was one of his mother’s friends, it could have been someone old enough to be my parent. I mustn’t get so drunk again. Things like this have happened before when I’ve got too drunk. Although usually I’ve woken up in bed with the person. That’s bad enough. This not knowing is even worse.

I stare at the Pink Floyd posters on the wall opposite. Stix is mixing heroin and water in a spoon. I can’t wait to have the hit inside me. It’s not just to get rid of the aches in my bones. I want to get rid of the dirty feeling in my body.

I don’t want Stix to be the one to have given me this feeling. I need him. I need this stranger. He has heroin and I don’t. I don’t even know if I still have Lorna as a connection after our final conversation at the party last night. If it was Stix who fucked me, I’m going to have to forgive him.

“Have you got your own needle?” he asks after drawing up a hit in his syringe.

I take mine from my handbag and pass it to him. He fills it and hands it back to me. He ties a grey tourniquet around his upper arm. He takes his hit. He gives me the tourniquet. I wrap it around my arm. I push the needle into a vein on the inside of my elbow, delivering the shot. I need to stop using that vein. There’s a permanent mark there now. I lie back on the bed.

“Dinner’s in a few minutes. Don’t get too comfortable,” he says, lying down next to me.

I realise the hit’s not strong. There’s no great rush flowing through my body. Hopefully, the pain in my bones will stop. I’m sure the chatter in my head won’t. It’s bad enough that everyone at Christmas dinner is probably going to know I’m a prostitute, but it’s worse that someone’s invaded me. It smelled like it was man. Some disgusting man fucked me while I was comatose.

“Did Mickey and the other guys downstairs stay over last night?” I ask.

“The other guys did. Mickey came round at lunch.”

Of course. He didn’t know it was me who stayed the night. So unless Mickey came up here and fucked me while other people were most likely awake, it wasn’t him. I’d have remembered being woken up, surely. I think I can eliminate Mickey. What about Stix and the other two though? And what about the others who’ve since left? And what about Stix’s mother’s friends? Am I ever going to know?

The feeling it’s left me with is worse than doing a job and not getting paid. I don’t even know if they used a condom. This is the feeling I have after I’ve been raped. I have the feeling but not the memory that should go with it. Those nasty images that haunt me. The tapes my memory stores and that my mind constantly replays. This is like a void. A gaping hole in my memory. My body can tell me it happened. My mind can’t tell me a thing. That’s what’s left the hole – the knowing and the not knowing. If only I didn’t get so drunk.

I want to talk to Stix about it but I can’t get any words out. Anyway, we have to go downstairs for Christmas dinner in a minute. It could even have been Stix who did it. Or I might end up talking to the man over dinner. He’ll be looking at me, knowing what he’s done. I’ll be looking at him and know nothing.