Getting to see Kate Holden in her skin

Flickr photo by Gullybogan.

Dear Reader,

So last night i took Princess to see a prostitute.

Well, a former prostitute, actually.

And a former heroin user, to boot.

There are a lot of things that Kate Holden is former at… but we’ll come to that somewhere near the end of this post.

We were supposed to book, but we simply showed up. Cos we’re just that cool.

As it turned out, not all that many ppl had booked, and the MC for the evening was standing outside, spruiking up passersby to come in to the theatrette and see the ex-prostitute.

I couldn’t help but thinking how very like the spruikers you see outside ‘adult entertainment’ establishments he was.

It was an ominous, tone-setting moment, but one that quickly passed once Ms Holden swept into the theatrette and it became obvious that her jacket and jumper were all she was going to be taking off.

The Prostitute turned writer – a standard career path

Ms Holden is, of course, dear Reader, not open to visits from bogans and their Princesses on account of being a former heroin-using prostitute, but rather on account of having written a memoir about being a former heroin-using prostitute.

She also writes a regular column in the The Age’s Saturday Edition A2, one a fortnight, in which she reflects upon the world around her, and focuses on one particular aspect of that world in order to bring us a little bit of wisdom to go with our Saturday morning cereal.

<envy>So basically she makes what is essentially a blog post once every two weeks, but it’s in the newspaper, so she gets to do author tours.</envy>

In my skin, the memoir

I read In my skin last year, purely because i’d been reading her fortnightly columns in the A2 for some time, and i liked her voice. I was interested to see what a whole book of her voice would be like.

Well.

I don’t want to affect sales of her book, dear Reader, so i’ll leave you to borrow a copy from the library to find out for yourself exactly what happens, but, so that you’re not completely in the dark for the rest of this post if you haven’t yet read In my skin, here is an executive summary of her life, as per memoir:

1. Bookish girl in cosy family in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs gets job in bookshop, and finds herself a boyfriend
2. Boyfriend introduces her to heroin
3. Heroin habit becomes so prohibitively expensive that they can’t afford food anymore
4. Girl steals money from till at bookshop to pay for food and gets fired
5. Girl becomes sex worker to pay for heroin and pasta
6. Girl works her way up the sex worker career ladder from street walker to brothel girl
7. Girl suffers constant cystitis, showers and changes the bed eight times a night, and occasionally gets her genitals busted up by guys with large penises who insist on wearing their collection of cock rings while intercoursing with her
8. Girl gets off heroin
9. Girl goes back on heroin
10. Girl gets off heroin
11. Girl stops being sex worker
12. Girl writes memoir

In amongst there was a whole lot of stuff about how incredibly loving and forgiving her family is.

And they are, judging from the provided evidence.

I’m amazed at how much support she got from her family, actually. Simply amazed.

I’ve known some ppl who’ve found themselves in trouble with their veins, and they haven’t always been able to go home.

You can always go home

At one stage, on an occasion when Ms Holden was trying to fix her life up, she went back to the family home as a place where she might be able to get away from the heroin. She was still working at the brothel, mind you, and her dad was driving her to work.

Her family was incredibly tolerant, if you ask me. Her sister got understandably a bit annoyed that the prodigal was getting all the attention, but mum and dad did all they could to help their cock-riding, heroin-injecting little girl until it simply became too much, and they had to let her go off on her own again and try to sort herself out.

Judge not lest ye be judged

Ms Holden is at great pains to be non-judgemental.

Great pains.

Great pains to the point where you feel like there’s something wrong. Something missing.

I mean, she points out that brothels are not illegal in Victoria, and she says that it’s not as bad as you would think, working in a brothel.

There were a couple of small kids in the audience, but that didn’t seem to make a difference to her presentation. She didn’t filter what she said, because it was clear that she just plain doesn’t say much at all about the nuts and bolts of the profession.

Prostitution, apparently, is a mundane occupation, just like any other. She said that no-one had ever forced her to be a prostitute, and that she didn’t ‘escape’ the brothel so much as get fired.

In all, she made being a sex worker sound like not such a bad career option.

You know, if you’ve got a vagina.

Earn money while lying in bed – ask us how!

She said that being a sex worker made her feel good. Not because she’s a nymphomaniac with a death wish who enjoys men pissing in her face, but because while she was a prostitute she was wanted, and because what she did made ppl happy.

Ms Holden is certainly not a cautionary tail. If anything, she gives you some reassurance that sex workers are – while undoubtedly battlers who find themselves up against some pretty hard obstacles – not the pathetic no-hoper lost souls you might expect.

Of course, though, there’s also the addiction to heroin thing on her CV.

The Super special secret that makes everything ok

Ms Holden is a nice girl from a nice home, as noted above.

I wonder if her story would have been different had she not been so.

She told us a story about heroin addiction and the craving for a hit

…you have a fever and you feel hot and cold at the same time, and the pain is “intolerable” – the heroin replaces your body’s natural pain control hormones, so, when the drug runs out, your body has no way of coping with pain, so you’re just in all… this… pain…

And all the while she stood before us, a bookish woman in her late thirties, a bit thin, her hair shorter than in that one picture she uses for everything, speaking apologetically and non-judgementally in her soft, teenager voice about the ppl she hurt while she was on drugs, offering apologies such as

…and the pain was so bad that i was just about out of my mind with it, and i walked around my bedroom and – i’m afraid to say – i said some very rude words…

Yeah. When i’m withdrawing from my latest heroin hit, my biggest concern is the way that the agony is affecting the tone of my vocabulary.

I appreciated the way that she didn’t apologise in the memoir. I appreciated the way that she left us to do the judging, if we wanted to, and simply told her story. I think that’s the way to write a memoir.

The Novel

Now this is the thing.

In my skin was published in 2005. Since then, she’s been talking at festivals and author evenings like this one we were at, pretty much, i would say, on the strength of that one published success.

But 2005 is getting to be a long time ago.

Ms Holden is working on her first novel, but it’s coming along “slowly”, to quote her less-than-enthusiastic response to the MC’s enthusiastic announcement to the room of the pending new work.

At the start of her presentation she told us that when she’d left school she took a degree in Arts, specifically in Literature which, she confided, is about the most useless degree you can ever hope to get.

We all laughed.

Right now, we discover, she’s working on her Master of Arts degree.

We didn’t laugh at that.

Now see, a Masters is meant to be a decoration on a career in academe, not a career move.

I’m just a little concerned, dear Reader, that Ms Holden is 36 years old and she’s still touring on the basis of a memoir she released three years ago, and now she’s becoming some sort of professional student.

Am i being patronising?

Patronising as in ‘acting like a father’?

I’m nowhere near old enough to be her father, but, if i was her friend, i think i’d want to have a chat with her about her future, and how she has to stop being former things, and stop being a student, and start being actual things.

She’d probably think i was a patronising bastard, but she wouldn’t say as much.

Question time

The audience asked some sensible questions.

One woman asked her if her parents had read the book. Her mother did, while Ms Holden was overseas. Was her mother shocked? No, she got so caught up in the book that she forgot it was about her daughter.

Another woman asked if the events weren’t a little too selective. She said that she’d heard Ms Holden speak on a number of occasions and that she had finally given up waiting for Ms Holden to say something about how terrible things could be at times when you’re a prostitute. Ms Holden admitted that yes, there were some terrible things, but that she felt it was more empowering to deal with the strength that ppl showed, not the despair.

OK.

Another woman asked a question that was a look-at-me-statement. You know the sort of thing:

I come from StKilda and i’ve probably walked past you on the street, and, like you, i also checked out the Ugly Mugs [dangerous clients] gallery in the sex workers’ collective to try to stay safe as i went about the streets with my children, and i’d like to thank you for capturing the spirit of the times…

I, i, i.

And as if StKilda in the 1990s was a time with a spirit to capture and celebrate.

*Pfft*

She did a book signing after that, Ms Holden, but i’m going through a phase where i don’t get authors to sign books for me.

Princess enjoyed her first author evening. She says she often hears about these sorts of things on 774, but that she can never get excited enough to get all the way to places like Storey Hall or Deakin Uni or whatever to attend one. Her evening with this prostitute had finally given her the encouragement to pursue such opportunities.

So that’s something new we can do together.

Do you go to author evenings, dear Reader?

Yours,
Gullybogan