Readers may well ask, why would an obviously intelligent, educated middle-class girl, with a loving family and the world at her feet, put herself and her loved ones through all that pain?

Why do the birds sing? Why does anything? We do what we do, and if we are lucky enough, or strong enough - or our angels intervene - we emerge, scarred but battle-wise ... or we get stuck, and perish in our personal hells. Not only the wild types ... conservative people, too. Holden does not tell us: don't go there, it burns. She just candidly reveals how her sex-and-drug saga happens, without going into the whys or the morals of it all. And it's not all sheer hell: if it were, no-one would visit those stormy shores, with their promise and sequined glamour that she describes so well.

"In sex, the edge of the world brimmed at the edge of me. I took the world into my own body, right inside my flesh. It gasped appreciation, and I put it out again and my body remained immaculate. I learned this."

Holden on the birth of her sexuality: wow, what style. She's young, adventurous, and she likes pushing herself, testing herself. Heroin is great at the beginning: "It's like wading into the sea ... how gorgeous, how thrilling ..."then, as it takes hold in its relentless grip, "abruptly the sand drops away beneath your next step, and you plunge into deeper water, and you can't feel the bottom any more."

Things drop away one by one: friends, money, going out, the phone and gas get cut off ... lies creep in: to her parents, her work, her boyfriend ... until she loses her job and finds herself penniless, and with an expensive, hungry habit. Not a new story. An old, almost archetypal story, but it's the poignant way Holden tells it that makes it so compelling.

"There was something in me, even beyond the torture of de-toxing, beyond the shame of using, the anguish of causing my family hurt, that insisted that if there was an opportunity, I should take it." At this stage, the ancient demon of heroin addiction is bigger and stronger than her; and it stays that way, for many years of her life.

She turns to prostitution, firstly by walking the streets. Walking, always walking, never standing still like the other girls. She learns the trade, the men, the places, the methods. "Different skins, different accents, different types of penis. Cut, uncut, thin, bent, thick. White pubic hair, black, curly, straight." And yet, she says, "I was glad of the experiences. It was like an education."

It never ceases to amaze me, as a man, how strong women can be, how much pain they can handle. "I was brave. I turned the fist of my heart until the knuckles showed."

When she starts working at a cathouse, a step up from the street, the pain continues:"I allowed men to maul me, leave finger-shaped bruises on my arms and hips, burns on my skin from stubble and harsh holds. I pressed my lips together and was polite. They were paying: it was my business to endure."

She strikes up relationships with the other whores - "a strange little community, brimming with intimacy, blocked with secrets" - and with some of her clients. Most of the men are fairly decent; many are married; some are just looking for a little glamour and excitement. She lives a vampire life, working every night, all night; daylight becomes blinding; ordinary people, living comfortable lives, become distant daydreams. But life in a cathouse is tenuous: a sex-worker can drop from favour overnight, and be out on the streets at the drop of a hat.

She adopts a persona, a "halo of personality to shield my too-accessible flesh" along with the work name Lucy, "I marveled at how I could adjust myself ...shifting aspects as the face of the person in the room changed from hour to hour."

Another mask is the make-up:"There was a ritualistic pleasure in sleeking ourselves back to elegance, in applying our lacquered masks. At the end of the night, we scraped our masks off, removed our costumes and walked out."

The prostitutes take pride in their work: "We glimmered in the light, proud in our gowns and our flimsy scraps of lace, tall in our heels, and took men by their damp hands and led them down the hall."

As a man, I found her observations of men intriguing. Holden feels a closeness for young men and her regulars: "without having to force a pretence of affection, I could actually find affection"; fear, at times, for:"the greedy ruthlessness of sexual momentum ... these men, I felt, were diminished by their need";amazement: "it never stopped amazing me how many men were so inept, so intimidated by women's bodies"; forgiveness: "I came to see, more and more clearly, how every man, however unprepossessing, might bear a kind of grace."

She falls into vanity, sees herself as a kind of social worker: "Month by month, my vanity grew: I could give men more tenderness than anyone; I had a mission."She finds, safe behind the mask of Lucy, that she can experiment freely with sex, and surprises herself by having orgasms with clients; and discovers she can still make love to her boyfriend, despite the wave of men she has serviced that night.

Kate Holden finally emerges from the cocoon of heroin Lucy, like a snake shedding its skin. Is the title suggesting the shedding of this skin, or the fact that she stayed in her self, her real skin, all along?

Unfortunately, her recovery is lengthy and painful, due to the fact that she is coming off methadone ... but would she have made it off the heroin without it?

This is not a light read, but it has a light ending. Thank you Kate for sharing this trip, opening your soul. We are enriched.

Derek Davey was born in Zimbabwe, schooled in Cape Town, military service fighting supposed communists in Namibia/Angola, did post-grad in Journalism and Psychology. Derek is a percussionist, writer, photographer, and poet. Sagittarius! Plays traditional African music with marimba band. Father of two boys. Heavily influenced by JRR Tolkien, CG Jung and Harry Crews. Forever changed by narcotics, ceremonies with several shamans and practices like Kundalini yoga. Believes in the imminent collapse of present fascist world super-power, and 'reality' as we know it .. only knowledge of the dream and spirit worlds can prepare one for this change ...

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.