Penance

Prologue

Prologue“Voices of the Streets” by Keira Lamb

(From Real Chicago magazine, pp. 18—20 October, 1992)

Chicago’s uptown boasts a diverse mix: hillbillies from Kentucky, renovating yuppies shoring up ailing grey-stones, poor people, the homeless.

And the kids.

As a kid in uptown, you learn early that the only way to survive the streets is to know them. Those that don’t absorb the lesson usually don’t make it in this small patch of crowded landscape bordered on one side by the cold, unforgiving waters of Lake Michigan and on the others by decaying buildings, clogged city streets, and other signposts of urban blight.

Uptown’s kids fall into three categories: the invisible are the ones who go to school, come home, and do their homework. These kids rarely venture out into the street; they do not play games at the Arcade or hang out at the Butera Supermarket, panhandling for change. To survive, they know a low profile is the only profile. These kids, often the children of Asian immigrants, are the ones who will leave uptown behind and will move north to more insulated destinies.

There are the hustlers and the runaways. These two groups often intermingle. A runaway learns fast that a quick exchange of s*x for money can often mean the difference between eating and starving. Morality goes out the window in the face of real hunger. These kids do what they can to survive.

It’s not so bad. I mean, I’m not gonna be doin’ this, like, forever, you know? I intend to rise above all this one day. And I know I will, because I have psychic powers. I can sell my body, but nobody can touch my mind, and that’s what counts.

—Miranda, teenage prostitute

Many of them seek refuge in drugs (crack is easily found here and its access and low price offer a tempting escape to the street’s cold realities), alcohol (fortified wines, such as Mad Dog 20/20 and Cisco, are popular), and s*x.

AIDS is not a consideration.

That’s what the faggots get. You know, the guys down on Halstead. I make sure when I go with a date, that he’s clean. You can tell a lot by a person’s appearance: the way he dresses, what kind of car he drives. Most of my tricks are married. I don’t go with no creeps.

—Jimmy, thirteen-year-old hustler

Neither is the danger many of them face when they choose a life of hustling. The John Wayne Gacys, Larry Eylers, and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world exist only in legend, fairy tales on newsprint. These killers and a legion of others less infamous who would do these kids harm are unreal until the moment one of them strikes.

The moment when it’s too late.

The one thing these kids have in common with their other, more affluent counterparts is the perennial belief that they are invincible. That it can’t happen to them.

I can make over a hundred dollars in one night.

—Little T, fifteen-year-old hustler

And along with this belief comes the other belief that if they work hard enough at it, they’ll meet a rich John who will take them away from this life spent trying to find a warm place to sleep or struggling through the day with some food in one’s belly. All the kids who hustle for a living tell you they do it for the money and that the financial rewards are just too great for them to stop.

In reality, these kids can be had for as little as five or ten dollars, if the buyer knows how to negotiate.

And knows how to read despair on a youthful face. And knows how to exploit that despair.

One of my Johns, man, he treats me like his own kid. You know, I waltz right by that fuckin’ doorman in this John’s Gold Coast building just as pretty as you please. He don’t pay me no attention. That’s ‘cause when I’m with Saul, I belong, man. You understand that?

—War Zone, fifteen

Those who exploit the streets are the shrewdest of all. Cruising uptown for “chicken” is a game learned from hard-won experience. The winners at this game know how to manipulate the child that still breathes in these foul-mouthed, streetwise vessels. Know how to zero in on that little kid and use the innocence that no drugs, no amount of prostitution, hard knocks, gang violence, or alcohol can erase.

Take, for example, the action here on a typical Saturday night…

The magazine, half of its pages covered with black ash and dirt, skittered along Kenmore Street in uptown Chicago. A fat boy named Avery picked it up, plucking it out of the gutter. He examined the pictures of buildings just like the ones that surrounded him and read a little of the copy.

Then he smirked.

And pitched the magazine back into the gutter. Snow was in the air.

THE END

Part 1