Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution by Rachel Moran Page B

course we'd eat, but together we progressed to converting into cash stolen clothes, perfumes and inexpensive jewellery, which we'd rob from the major department stores in town. As a shoplifter, I was highly prolific but totally without skill. I actually once found myself in Store Street garda station twice in the same day. The only deception I was gifted at was coming up with an increasingly fantastical array of bogus names and addresses. I could think up anything on the spot and make it sound credible and in fact, if I had been able to apply the same skill to shoplifting, I probably never would have been caught in the first place. There was memory involved also; I always had to remember the face of the arresting garda and match the name I'd given to the face I'd given it to. I suppose the guards didn't pay much attention to us kids, having as they did much more serious matters to attend to, which would explain why this kind of messing was possible. I had presented myself as Lisa Simpson on the day the ruse was finally blown, which happened when my brother was escorted in the door as I was getting ready to walk out of it. We roared laughing and greeted each other by the front desk with high enthusiasm, not having seen each in a year or two by that time. Of course, a garda asked who we were to each other and when my brother announced that we were brother and sister, they realised the disparity in the surnames and that someone was clearly lying. I was promptly marched back to the cells, the joy of the reunion significantly soured. I knew I'd never get away with lying in Store Street after that, so I began stealing on the south side of town, where if I was caught (which I'd come to accept as an occupational hazard) I'd be brought to the garda station in Pearse Street. Although my behaviour was deliberately designed to exasperate, there was no malicious intent on my part. I had a generally good-natured attitude towards the police and knew that I was the guilty party and presented a pain in the arse they had to deal with. At that point, when I was regularly stealing, life was in some ways a good deal better than it had been during the previous year. The physical lacks of my life were abating to some extent, but the emotional ones tormented as ever and it wasn't long before I discovered the synthetic solace ofdrink. Before long, as soon as we'd sold the last ofour shoplifted wares around the flats complexes and housing estates, it would be time to go to the pub and get drunk. I was a tall and well-developed girl, and the laws were laxer then, and I never had any trouble getting served. In fact, I'd often get served until the early hours of the morning when I'd be steaming drunk. My friend and I began staying with people she knew in a rented flat in the city centre. I would never be anything approaching happy there. It was somewhere to sleep, and some ofthe people were nice enough, but I was starting to dislike her more and more and some of the people she'd introduced me to left a lot to be desired. We had been staying there for weeks and I'd been feeling it was time to move on since the first night we arrived. Eventually I did, after I discovered she'd been robbing me. When I write about the days of my youth I can feel it coming back to me; or parts of it, and rarely the good parts. I can feel myself slowing down, reverting back to that awkward, shy and utterly under-confident young person, desperate for escape and for relief, and I can feel my writing change as a result. When I dwell on my place in those times I make a transition to the person I once was and never want to be again, and I actually feel myself stripped of the strides I've since made, because this recounting is not possible without reliving, and this reliving involves the mental stripping away of all the days between those days and this one. When I theorise on the routes into and out ofthose experiences, I am the me of today and I feel the indifference of distance;