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that they played naked. They were young handsome bachelors who knew exactly how to enjoy themselves. They knew we were underage so they didn’t touch us.
    It was also at their house that I ‘fixed’ a tattoo that I had given myself at a friend’s house and then didn’t like. I was determined to remove it. I had created a girl gang and we called ourselves ‘Hound Digger’—don’t ask me why. We carried knives and acted very tough; perhaps our attempt at feminism or women’s lib. I was leader and went by the name of ‘Skull’, which referred to my envied drinking skills. Anyway I had thought that a dagger would look good but it didn’t. So I soaked some cotton wool in bleach and placed it on the tattoo, then briefly set the cotton wool alight so that it would burn the top of the tattoo. It seemed like a good idea at the time! Then I let the bleach remain on my wounded arm and bandaged the whole thing up so that the bleach would continue to eat into the tattoo … and my skin.
    Needless to say there were problems. The bleach did its job very well but then my arm became infected. I went around to the guy’s house and he freaked out when he saw my messy wound, saying, ‘Oh sweet Jesus you’re gonna get gangrene!’ He made me go to his house every day so he could wash out my arm and bandage it correctly. By the time it healed I then had an ugly tattoo and a scar; however, as soon as I could I had a nicer tattoo of a rose drawn over the ugly one and it all worked out fine.
    I was a functional addict, though maybe ‘addict’ is not the right word. I didn’t have a drug of choice and I certainly wouldn’t have held up a pharmacy in order to get drugs. I didn’t crave drugs or alcohol. I just took them if they were there. It was more a case of, ‘Let’s live life to the max!’ mixed up with self-destructive behaviour. I was breaking all the boundaries in the hope that someone would erect some especially for me. I would walk around naked, pick a fight with someone twice my size, shoplift, drive wrecked, stolen cars and take rides on ridiculously speeding motorbikes.
    I was always the entertainer and entranced an audience of friends with my one-woman shows, where I might slash myself with razor blades, burn both arms with cigarettes, pierce my body with large needles and a host of other bizarre party tricks. I would get a false sense of bravado from my friends’ amazement and it would push me further for a bigger ‘wow’ factor.
    I was functional in that I could get up everyday, stoned or drunk, and go to school. Nobody seemed to notice my glassy stoned stare in class; I knew how to lay low and behave myself. I have a real instinct for that. At this point you are probably wondering about my parents and whether they had any idea of what was going on. They did.
    One day I walked into my bedroom and knew instinctively that someone had been going through my things. My diary had been moved. I didn’t react; I just sort of accepted it. If my mother had read it they now knew everything. I always felt that they didn’t buy my smashing my nose against a doorpost. I waited for a row to erupt when my father came home from work but nothing happened. Everyone continued to treat me as normal. We ate our dinner and the plates were cleared away. I did my homework and went to bed. My parents had decided that a stormy confrontation wouldn’t serve any purpose; they were very wise like that. Instead, a couple of days later, my mother was giving me a lift somewhere. Just as I was about to gruffly take my leave and get out of the car she quietly said, ‘Susan, we know you’re trying and doing things that you shouldn’t be doing. But we also know how smart and intelligent you are. We trust you to know the difference between right and wrong.’
    I mumbled something smart and intelligent like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ but their strategy did leave an impression on me, and it’s a technique that I have since used with my own teenage