The Collar and the Cab

In an act of pure opportunist self-promotion and in the hope of selling some I am publishing some extracts from my new book The Collar and the Cab on this blog. There are 35 chapters so it will take a couple of months to offer a little from each. 

You can order the book direct from myself or from the publisher by following the link above.

14
Chapeltown – Sex and
Drug Customers

 The people who made a living out of other people’s addictions by
dealing in drugs were nasty, without exception in my experience.
I gave them a wide berth and regarded them with a wary
contempt. But their victims were a different matter altogether.
These I regarded with semi-conspiratorial benevolence in the
case of “softer” substances like cannabis, and heartfelt sympathies
for those who had graduated to Class A drugs. There were too
many “Debbies”, young people driven by a desperation that drew
them into prostitution of the cruellest and most dangerous kind;
here I felt only pity, along with a wish that there was something
I could do that would help.
Most of those I encountered though were recreational users
of the less addictive types of narcotic, particularly cannabis.
Marijuana joints were, in some areas, almost as common as
tobacco, only the distinctive smell of the substance betraying
its true nature. What I found amusing, and occasionally sidesplittingly
hilarious, was how oblivious the cannabis smokers
were to the distinctively sweet, intoxicating odour emanating
from the roll-up depending from their lower lip. These were
the days before it was against the law to smoke in a taxi, and
depending on the circumstances I would sometimes allow
passengers to light up next to an open window – particularly
if they asked nicely. It was not uncommon, having graciously granted leave to smoke, for me to say “but you can’t smoke that
stuff in here.” Often this was followed by effusive assurances
– “It’s just a fag, mate”, which in turn led to an exchange that
varied between the good-humoured and the threatening until
the offending article was extinguished. On other occasions I
collected customers who were almost completely wreathed in
clouds of brownish, sweet and pungent smoke. The offending
joints would be extinguished before they climbed aboard –
usually with all the grace of a rhino getting into a rubber dinghy
on a heavy sea – but if I was to avoid a potential charge of driving
whilst under the influence of someone else’s drugs I had to open
all the windows and put the blower motor on full power. 

 

 There was a question I often wrestled with in relation to men
(there may have been women but I never met one) who paid for
some sort of sexual gratification. It was the same question whether
it involved picking up a girl off the street and finding a quiet spot
for a quickie in the back of a car or paying for a lap-dance at one
of the many “Gentlemen’s Clubs” (now there’s an oxymoron if
ever I heard one) that began to proliferate during my time in the
profession. The question was who was the victim and who the
perpetrator, or whether it was essentially a victimless process.
Never to be much of a fence-sitter I frequently came down on
either side depending on the circumstances. The “Debbie” types
were, in my view, universally victims; I can imagine almost nothing
more soul-destroying than selling your body for enough money to
feed a heroin addiction. At the other end of the spectrum are the  girls who have passed up well-paid professional careers knowing
that they can make more money out of taking their clothes off
for people who for some reason get their thrills in the pseudorespectable
establishments that profit from the enterprise.
I recollect a conversation with a stunningly beautiful young
woman who made a living as a lap-dancer. The journey home
from the “Gentlemen’s Club” was quite a long one, and she
appeared both educated and friendly, so I decided to risk her
wrath by asking if she ever felt demeaned by working in a place
where the customers were only interested in her body. Her
response was one I can recall vividly and went something like
this. “I left university a few years ago with thousands of pounds’
worth of student debt. In two years I have paid off my student
loan, put down a deposit on my own flat and almost paid for my
wedding next year. When I have done so I will leave this job, go
into the legal profession I trained for and settle down to married
life and hopefully motherhood.”
It was hard to argue with that, though I did wonder whether
the transition would be as simple as she thought.