And then he picked me up every day and we went off and did something. After five days of this he says: How would you like to move to St. Pauli? I’ll rent you a room at the Hotel Menke. Then a day later he says: We could really get a good business going ... you’re good-looking, you’d make a great tart. In those days, I wasn’t as fat as I am now. So I marched off and started working straight away from my room at the Hotel Menke. Taubenstrasse still existed then, that’s where all the girls worked – and I was the only transvestite among them!

A while later we took a flat together. But I had to hand over every penny I earned. And he was mean. If I was in a pub somewhere, he made me undress completely in one of the rooms. He looked in every hole to make sure I hadn’t hidden anything. It was really bad! ...