Josefine Nauckhoff was a Swedish noble, beauty queen, Nietzsche scholar and professor until things spun out of control into crack addiction and prostitution. In the history of Road to Damascus moments, former professor Josefine Nauckhoff’s shock of clarity came at what most would call an “inopportune” time. Specifically at the business end of a glass crack pipe. Nauckhoff, always stunningly lucid even in spaces that would have staggered those of lesser constitutional fortitude, identified it for what it was: a life-changing event. So despite a pedigree that included degrees from Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, an easy fluency with at least three languages, a family background of Swedish nobility and, weirdly enough, the winning of beauty contests, Nauckhoff would embrace her newly found life with a certain brio. And certainly a brio for living through addiction and then, a way to pay for all that crack she found herself wanting to do: prostitution. |