Dying to Survive

by Rachael Keogh

  If Mick had hoped that my visit to Texas might make me forget about drugs, it had quite the opposite effect. Sometimes I would hide in my bedroom and I would tightly wrap a tourniquet around my arm, feeling a sense of nostalgia as I watched my veins come to the surface, trying to burst through my skin. Then I would fantasise about my next turn-on. The anticipation of scoring heroin, the stimulation of getting that little bag of brown into my hand and doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I would find a place where I wouldn’t be disturbed, then I would put on some music like Pink Floyd or David Bowie, just to add to the tragedy of it all. I would mix the heroin with the citric acid, burn underneath the spoon and watch in delight as they blended and bubbled together to form a dark brown liquid. My mouth would water as I thought about getting the vein and seeing the blood enter the barrel. Then I would thrust the heroin into my body, feeling like every part of me was being oiled. I would taste the heroin on the back of my mouth and I would slowly drift away from reality.

  I wanted to run out of Hannah’s house there and then and score drugs, but I was only tormenting myself. I was in a country where I hadn’t seen one drug addict and I had no idea of where to find one. Then I thought of Narcotics Anonymous. I had heard that they had meetings all over the world, especially in America. If I wanted to get drugs, surely I would meet someone there that was still using. Maybe they could tell me where to go. Within days I had found a meeting nearby, but I was disgusted to find that they were all really serious about getting clean and staying clean. I couldn’t believe how different the meetings were from the ones in Ireland. At one meeting, a man stood on a podium, talking enthusiastically about his experiences and his strength and hope in recovery. I froze on my chair when I realised that he was randomly pointing people out of the crowd and asking them to share. I contemplated doing a runner for the nearest exit, but I was too afraid to move, so I picked a spot on the floor and I kept my eyes firmly on it. If I didn’t see him, hopefully he wouldn’t see me. I had a lucky escape and I decided that I would never go near NA again.

  I had made some new friends who worked in the petrol station near Hannah’s house. Caroline was from the Philippines and Anton was from Mexico. They were both really pleasant and welcoming, making it their business to get to know me. At first I wondered why they were so nice, but then I realised that it was just their way. I wasn’t used to people being nice just for the sake of it. Anton was so fond of me that he began to give me free bottles of alcohol, just because I was Irish and therefore I was more than likely an alcoholic, he reasoned. Spending time with them both became the highlight of my day. Every Saturday I would visit Caroline’s house. She lived with her mother and her two aunts, who couldn’t speak a word of English. Caroline’s mother and aunts acted as though I wasn’t even there, but sat at the table playing cards and shouting aggressively at one another. Myself and Caroline would have our own little party, drinking bottles of Ritz and attempting to sing karaoke. I would get so drunk that I would pass out and somebody would have to drive me home. It seemed that, for the meantime, alcohol would do as a replacement for the drugs I craved.

  Hannah was beginning to get worried. She sat me down one day and asked me what was going on. I told her all about my past and my addiction, how I couldn’t stop thinking about drugs and how lonely I was. She cried as she listened to me and from then on she became like my big sister, minding me and bringing me everywhere she went. She even brought me to her workplace at a set of condos. She would sit in her office and I would lie by the pool. Hannah introduced me to a young man called Josh, thinking that he would be good company for me. Josh was a nice, old-fashioned, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, good looking in a strait-laced and clean-cut type of way. Not someone that I would usually hang-out with, but I liked him. He would take me to the cinema or to one of the giant shopping malls in the area, acting like a gentleman and being on his best behaviour. One day he took me to meet his grandmother. She was a little old lady who was proud of her grandson. We both sat together drinking iced tea as Josh played ‘Hey Jude’ on the piano. It was so nice that I wanted to puke. I didn’t like or trust people who were this happy and it completely turned me off Josh. I spent weeks not answering his phone calls, hoping that he would get the hint and get lost. He eventually did and I kind of felt sorry for him but he just wasn’t exciting enough for me.

  _____

  Susan had just broken up with her boyfriend, Will, a soldier in the American army whom Susan liked to call her ‘big teddy bear’. But they were no longer on speaking terms and Susan wanted to celebrate her new-found freedom by going out nightclubbing with me. I was delighted to have myself a new drinking buddy and, after getting myself some fake id, we both went on the rip. We decided to go to a line-dancing club. I was amazed when I saw everyone dressed in their cowboy suits, dancing together in what appeared to be a bull ring. After a few glasses of vodka and coke and a couple of shots of Tequila, I found myself in the middle of it all. Myself and Susan danced for hours, making our way up on to tables and making a holy show of ourselves.

  When it was time to go home, I suggested that we take a lift from one of her friends. But Susan was getting more aggressive by the minute and she insisted that she drive home herself. No matter what I said to her, she just wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t let her go home on her own, so I decided to get in the car with her. Susan seemed to be driving safely and within minutes I fell asleep. I was woken by an ear-splitting screech. All I saw was us heading full force into the back of a pick-up truck. I felt my seat-belt tighten around my torso as we made contact. Then everything went blank. When I woke up I was in the hospital. I had been kept there until I sobered up. I had got away with bruised lungs, but the police were waiting to question me. After being breathalysed I had no choice but to admit that I had been drinking. They gave me a warning and informed me that Susan was being held in custody and she would be charged with drinking and driving.

  I felt terrible. Even though Susan had insisted on driving, I had egged her on in her drinking and partying, delighted to have a drinking buddy at last. I couldn’t help wondering if I was partly responsible. Was I the kind of person who brought negativity and bad things with her wherever she went, infecting others and making terrible things happen? I tortured myself with the thought.

  The next day Susan was brought to court and she was put on two years’ probation. I never saw her again.

  _____

  When it was time for me to return to Ireland, as my visa had expired, Hannah brought me to the airport. We had both become really close, especially since Susan moved out. Hannah had been so understanding and supportive to me since I opened up to her and neither of us wanted to say goodbye. But I missed Ireland and I was ready to go home, even though I knew in my heart that I was going to use drugs as soon as I got the chance. But I also knew in my heart that I no longer had control over my drug use. Texas had been a waste of time. I had merely substituted drink for the drugs. I realised that my using drugs always had consequences but they weren’t bad enough to make me want to stop.

  Anyway, when my back was against the wall I could always count on my family to send me on a little holiday. In fact, they seemed only too keen to do so, I thought. They were probably delighted to see the back of me for a bit. My new motto had become, ‘Go on heroin and see the world’. Who knows, maybe next time they’ll send me to Thailand or even better, Afghanistan, I thought.

  Chapter 9

  TRUE FRIENDS?

  I was still only seventeen and underneath my sarcasm and jokes about my life I was really hurting and was desperately lonely. I was living with my grandmother again and I missed my mother and my brother Philip. I wanted nothing more than to be part of the family. Philip was ten years of age and I loved when he came to visit my grandparents. Sometimes I would watch him playing around the house and it would hit me that I had only been three years older than him when I’d first started to use heroin. Other times I couldn’t stand the idea of being around him, beca
use I felt so ashamed of who I had become. I wished that I could just talk to my mother and tell her how I felt, but my fear of her rejecting me if I did was far too great for me to take the risk. And my fear of her not rejecting me seemed even worse, because then she wouldn’t be the problem, I would. It was easier for me to talk to my grandmother. I could just be myself with her and I knew that no matter what I did, she wouldn’t reject me.

  I slowly began to open up to my grandmother about my addiction. I admitted to her that I had a problem with the drugs. I told her that I really wanted to stop, but I didn’t know how. She was just as baffled as I was. Sometimes she would cry and express her frustration at not being able to help me. Mostly she would just say, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be grand.’

  I am not sure if she really believed this, but I was far from grand. I was becoming more attracted to drugs and the lifestyle that it brought. From the moment that I opened my eyes in the morning until I closed them that night, I was consumed with thoughts of heroin. I was in the grip of the drug and I was losing the fight to stay sane and healthy.

  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.