Call Me Sasha: Secret Confessions of an Australian Callgirl

  Secret confessions

  of an Australian callgirl

  Author’s note: I have changed the names of some of the people mentioned in this book to protect their privacy.

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Geena Leigh 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 886 7

  eISBN 978 1 74343 615 8

  Set in 13.5/19 pt Granjon by Bookhouse, Sydney

  This book is dedicated to Tony Robbins.

  Without his books, CDs and seminars

  I may not have learned how to be so happy.

  Contents

  1 New city, same dad, age 9

  2 Growing up, age 11

  3 Feeling unpretty, age 12

  4 Moving moving moving, age 12

  5 Time to say prayers, age 13

  6 Homeless, age 15

  7 Life will never be the same again, age 18

  8 Heroin, age 19

  9 Taking hooking international, age 19

  10 Welcome to hell, age 20

  11 The Club, age 21

  12 Working it, age 22

  13 In a rut, age 24

  14 Without my consent, age 26

  15 Feeling loved, age 26

  16 Tony Robbins, age 27 to 40

  17 Never date a client, age 31

  18 My rock-bottom story, age 32

  19 Overdosing, age 33

  20 Craving love, age 35

  21 Dating, age 36

  22 The C word, age 37

  23 I did it! I did it! age 37

  24 Gene and Geena, age 40

  Acknowledgements

  1

  New city, same dad, age 9

  When I was nine years old, I lived with my mother, father, two brothers and two sisters in a suburb called Greenhithe in Auckland, New Zealand. Our house was surrounded by grape vines and an orchard, and we kept a dog, two cats, chickens, guinea pigs and a pet lamb. To the outside world, it probably looked idyllic. We shared a long, winding, half-dirt, half-cement driveway with two neighbours, the Gerratys and the Johnstons. The Johnstons’ house was closest to the road, then the Gerratys, and then our place was right at the top. My father insisted on getting the driveway cemented from our place down to the middle, so his car wouldn’t get stuck in the muddy holes every time it rained. He had an argument with both of the neighbours about who would pay to cement the rest of the driveway, so it remained half-cement and half-dirt.

  I heard the squeak of my bedroom door handle early one Saturday morning. My father came in wearing his summery brown dressing gown. I pretended to be asleep and held my breath. He pulled down my doona and tucked a portable radio under my arm, then pulled the doona back up. I exhaled. The radio was tuned to the Children’s Choice stories. I pretended to wake up. ‘Thanks, Dad!’ He was being a nice dad today and didn’t touch me. I lay in bed listening to ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’, ‘Maxi the Taxi’ and ‘The Foolish Koala’. I smiled and relaxed as I became engrossed in the stories. My favourite was ‘The Foolish Koala’. The moon would challenge the koala to a running race every evening, and every evening the koala would accept. The koala would run and run, but no matter how fast it ran, the moon was always ahead. Night after night the koala would try to beat it, but the moon always won. The moon called the koala foolish for trying to beat the moon, yet I admired its persistence. I thought it was going to win one day, but it never did.

  Dad worked as a radio announcer, and each time he changed jobs, we had to move, usually back and forth between New Zealand and Australia. We stayed just a year in Greenhithe, and one of my strongest memories of that time was the grape season, and the issue it caused between Dad and the neighbours. We only saw one grape season in that house. The vine coiled around the wooden lattice, almost completely covering the western side of the Gerratys’ house. One afternoon I held out my T-shirt to create a pouch, which I filled with the sweetest, ripest purple grapes I’d ever tasted. Later that afternoon, while I was sitting on the couch reading a book, Mr Gerraty marched up our driveway. He was huffing as he reached our front door and banged on it with his fist. His thick moustache moved rapidly and his bushy eyebrows jutted up above his round glasses as he spoke to my father. Mum was in the kitchen drying the dishes and my brothers and sisters were in their respective bedrooms, reading, playing and hanging out. I heard him complain that someone had eaten all the grapes off his vine. My lips pressed hard against each other. I was worried that I was going to get into trouble. Dad—he had no idea it was me; he thought the only food I cared about were lollies—shouted back at him. ‘We don’t eat your damn grapes! Get off my property, ya bastard!’ Dad called most people either bastards or pricks.

  Mr Gerraty skulked back to his house. The following day, I discovered that the vine was covered with green netting. I couldn’t get my fingers through the mesh, so I tore a hole through it with a screwdriver from Dad’s tool box. It was hard work just to pull out a few grapes, so I turned my attention to the apples and guavas in the Johnstons’ yard. Biting into the perfectly ripe Granny Smith, I felt its juiciness flood my mouth.

  I peered in the open kitchen window on tiptoe and saw Dad wipe his sweaty forehead and heard the familiar Psssishhh! as he pulled back the ring on a can of beer. He had just mowed the lawn, and the freshly cut grass was a little itchy on my bare arms as I carried bundle after bundle to the middle of the yard, where the Silver Dollar tree stood. I was going to build myself a house. I spread the grass in thick lines, marking the boundary of the house, and then made slightly thinner grass lines for the walls of the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. I made my own room so I wouldn’t have to share with my sisters. I broke off some of the branches that hung low on the Silver Dollar tree to seal my bedroom door shut.

  My father wouldn’t be allowed in my room. I didn’t want him to come in and touch me. He wouldn’t even be allowed in my house. ‘My house, my rules!’ I said to myself, mimicking Dad. I sat in my grass bedroom and began to make a flat bookshelf out of leaves and sticks, just as a gust of wind blew away the corner of my bedroom.

  I was on my way to find more grass to fix up the wall and to add an extension for my little brother Aiden’s room so it could be right next to mine when I heard the chickens making an unusual kerfuffle. I walked over and saw Dad was inside the chicken coop chasing the bantams and rooster around the cage. I laughed as feathers flew and the chickens squawked at him.

  ‘Little buggers. Got ya!’ he shouted as he slammed the cage door shut after him.

  I watched, confused and suddenly worried, as he clutched the bird’s throat and began to swing Banty violently around in the air, like he was swinging a lasso at a rodeo
.

  I screamed and my father looked up. ‘I’m just playing with the chicken,’ he said. He was trying to placate me. His tone was jovial, but I knew he was hurting Banty.

  I ran inside the house crying. My mother stopped scrubbing the dirt off the potatoes with the yellow plastic brush and wrapped an arm around me, which felt nice but also surprising; it was one of the few times I’d felt affection from her as a child. She rinsed the potatoes under the tap with her other hand as I buried my face in her apron that smelt of onions. ‘He killed Banty!’ I sobbed.

  My father came in holding its limp body. ‘You did it in front of the children?!’ she scolded him, rolling her eyes.

  My mother patted me on the back, back to her usual, distant, pre-occupied self. ‘Go to your room and read a book.’ My sisters were playing with Aiden in the lounge room. They were bouncing him in a swing Dad had attached to the ceiling beam. My older brother was out with his mates. A little later I came out for a glass of water and saw Mum pulling the feathers off Banty. I felt a little queasy and hurried back to my room. At the dinner table my father put some of Banty on my plate. I just moved it about with the fork. He didn’t make me finish dinner that night and he didn’t yell at me. He’d sometimes force us kids to finish everything on the plate or he’d make us eat it cold for breakfast the following morning, but not this time.

  Sometimes Dad didn’t yell; instead, he’d swipe his hand across the back of my head. When I was out of arm’s length he’d kick me instead. I don’t believe I ever deserved to be hit, except perhaps one occasion at primary school.

  Each Tuesday was school lunch day, when we would each get to order from the menu of pink iced buttered rolls, mince pies and frying saucers (meat patties). Everyone took turns to collect the lunch money, take the orders and then distribute the food to the other classmates. When it was my turn for the first time, I noted all the orders and gave the list to the man at the canteen. At lunchtime I went to the pick-up area with a classmate, Kevin, where we were handed a large cardboard box. We sat on a seat and began to distribute the food into individual brown paper bags, writing each child’s name on a bag with a thick black marker. As I slid a pink iced bun into one of the bags, half of the icing dropped onto my lap. I scraped it up with my fingers and instinctively put it in my mouth. Mmm. The delicious sugary icing melted on my tongue and before I realised what I was doing I pulled the bun out of the bag and scraped off the rest of the icing and ate it. Something in me snapped and I found myself rummaging through the cardboard box in a frenzy, sliding the icing off every pink bun and devouring it. Then, I went through each individual brown bag that had already been packed and ate the icing off all those buns too. All the while, Kevin was laughing. I knew I was being naughty but I felt excited. I liked making Kevin laugh. He snatched a bag from me and began to eat a frying saucer. There were twenty-four buns in total. None of them had any icing anymore.

  Kevin and I went back to class, pretending that nothing had happened as we distributed the lunches. There were a few whines and someone began to cry: ‘What happened to my bun?’ The teacher inspected some of the lunches. At first she thought that the company had given us faulty buns, and then she looked at Kevin and me and the residual flakes of pink coconut icing sprinkled on the front of our shirts. We were sent to the headmaster’s office.

  I felt too sick to be concerned. He ranted about how irresponsible we were and then sent me out to wait on a rickety wooden chair. I heard the wallop-wallop-wallop of a belt, with corresponding cries from Kevin. I clenched my butt cheeks as the headmaster opened the door to his office. Kevin’s face was red and he clutched his behind, trying to hide his tears from me. I was surprised Kevin had been crying so much. I felt sorry for him, because it was my fault we ate the icing, but I thought he was being a baby. I guess he wasn’t used to being hit, like I was. I was ready for my turn. However, the headmaster handed me a pile of computer paper and a pencil, ordering me to write 200 lines: ‘I must not eat pink icing off the buns.’ I took the paper and pencil outside and began to write. It took hours and I made many spelling mistakes. I wondered if I could somehow photocopy the pages, but then decided I had probably better keep writing. All the other school kids had gone home and I was still sitting in the playground writing. I wouldn’t have minded getting walloped—at least I’d be home playing with my puppy by now. I deliberately only wrote 197 lines, and then handed them in. The headmaster flicked through them and told me to go home.

  The puppy was waiting for me and ran frantically down the hill when I reached the driveway. As soon as I walked in the door a hand came out of nowhere and whacked my behind. I knew there was no way to escape Dad this evening. The school had phoned to tell my parents about the buns. Mum stood behind him with her arms folded and eyes lowered. My father chased me to my room, each swipe gaining in speed and intensity. The other kids were in the lounge room watching TV, unfazed by Dad’s behaviour. ‘Do not come out of your room tonight!’ he boomed, slamming the door behind me. The bedroom had a sliding door leading to the garden, so I slipped out to pee on the grass, then snuck back into my room. I didn’t mind skipping dinner, because my stomach was still full from all the buns. I rubbed my aching buttocks and the side of my thigh, and lay down on my bed to do some colouring-in before falling asleep.

  Not long after, Dad got a new job back in Australia, so we packed up the house with our usual military precision. Mum took the kitchen; Dad folded up his suits; I packed Aiden’s and my things, carefully wrapping his clothes around his toys and labelling each box. The other kids took care of their own belongings. Our pets were dispersed. I had no idea where the cats, chickens and guinea pigs went, but at least I got to say goodbye to the puppy. I held her tightly all the way in the car, telling her how much she meant to me. As my father pulled away from the farmhouse that would be her new home, I felt like my heart was being ripped out. I was inconsolable as the puppy’s face became smaller and smaller in the rear window. Everything in the new city would be unfamiliar. I would have to start all over again. But I could always depend on Dad to be the same.

  2

  Growing up, age 11

  In 1983, I was eleven years old. This was long before I started to have sex for money, yet being touched by a man was not unfamiliar to me.

  I recall sitting in the back seat of the dark tan Ford Cortina with my little brother Aiden. My two sisters went to the same school, so they used to get the train home together. My older brother was working in an advertising company so he came and went at home as he pleased. Aiden and I spent a lot of time together. We were back in New Zealand and parked outside the Shakespeare Hotel in Auckland. My father was ‘placing a quick bet’ (which really meant he’d be back in two or three hours). The sun streamed in the window and I took off my aqua-blue cardigan to warm my blemished skin. Aiden played his bright yellow portable Pac-Man. Whacka-whacka-whacka-whacka as he gobbled the dots, then bling-boooowoooe as he was eaten by a ghost.

  The sky was overcast by the time my father jovially emerged from the pub, wrapping his tattered dressing gown firmly around his protruding belly. His brown socks bulged between the leather straps of his sandals like a leg of ham with string wrapped around it. The gold fillings in his teeth sparkled in the sunlight.

  ‘Ready to go, kids?’

  We’d been ready for three hours.

  Dad twisted the volume knob on the radio and slapped the steering wheel: ‘Come on, Sheer Delight—come on!’

  ‘There’s a hundred to go. Sheer Delight is running neck and neck with Red Star, with Mr Jazz on the outside. Red Star is trying hard. It’s tight there. Sheer Delight has shot away! She’s out by two lengths. Sheer Delight takes it! It’s Sheer Delight followed by Red Star and third is Mr Jazz.’

  Dad shot his fist in the air—‘You beauty!’—and we drove home.

  Dad forgot to pick up the milk, so my mother sent me to the corner shop. As I walked along Kauri Road a car caught my attention as it slowed to a crawl along beside me, mo
ving as slowly as my walking pace. A man asked softly, ‘Do you know where Sycamore Street is?’ He was in his early thirties. He had gingery hair with thick sideburns. I moved closer to the car to hear him better. ‘What street?’ I asked. He pointed to his jeans, which were now unzipped and he began to stroke himself. His small stubby fingers looked much like his penis did. It didn’t look like my father’s at all.

  ‘Wanna play with this?’ the ginger-haired man said as he lifted his hips, pushing his groin and a mass of ginger hair towards me. I was shocked and scared. I couldn’t speak. I shook my head, clutched the milk and started to run, past the house with the flax overhanging the footpath, past the letterbox with the red flag that was always standing upright. The remaining coins jingled in my pocket. The car sped up and was then beside me once more. ‘Want some of this, little girl?’ I continued to stare straight ahead, focusing intently on the tap-tap-tap of my sneakers hitting the footpath. A car turned the corner on the other side of the road, coming towards us. The ginger-haired man gave a harsh laugh. His tyres squealed as he sped off.

  I’d been running so fast that I’d almost dropped the milk. What if I’d thrown it at his car? Mum would have killed me if I’d come home without it. ‘You’re as useless as your father,’ she would’ve said under her breath. She wouldn’t have believed that I’d thrown it at a creepy man. She would have thought that I’d spent the money on lollies. I had momentarily slipped into a trance at the shop when I gazed at the vast selection of lollies in the display case. Yellow bananas, caramel squares and Jaffas were all my favourites. The aniseed balls were only two for one cent here! I’d felt the sweaty coins pressing against the palm of my hand. I’d looked at the lollies and then looked at the milk bottles in the fridge. I didn’t want to let Mum down.

  I ran inside the house, panting, trying to tell Mum what happened as I handed her the milk. She was busy cooking spaghetti and meatballs, using a wooden spoon to stir the bolognaise sauce that was bubbling in the frying pan. At the same time, she was sifting through drawers with her other hand, trying to find some new batteries for Aiden’s Pac-Man. The spaghetti began to boil over the top of the large pot. She shrieked as she reached to turn down the gas and then began to mop up the water around the elements with a tea towel. I wanted her to listen to me and hug me—praise me for running away from the man—but she was too busy. She was perpetually busy—cooking, cleaning and the endless washing and drying of the laundry. Five kids made it a busy household. Her eyes looked tired.