Lessons From a First-time Hustler

There I was in my pressed black pants and suit jacket, the infinite florescence of the New Orleans Superdome ceiling draining the color from my cheeks, poised on my linoleum stage and ready for an audience of hundreds with weapon in hand: the Amazing Rubber Broom. That's right folks, step right up and watch us clean this same piece of carpet all day long. It's amazing! And not only that, I will personally spread shredded hair on a carpet all day long for this demonstration. Two for the price of one.

I never thought my first trip to the Superdome would be this glamorous. Looking above me, I can only imagine how fearful I would have been watching pieces of this endless cave collapse during Katrina. We watch a balloon travel upward and lose it in our vision before it hits the ceiling. All day families pass by and tell us how they would buy a broom, but then they are still waiting for their homes to be rebuilt. That is amazing.


And so, thank God!, I have landed this job selling brooms in the Superdome. For I have become a connoisseur of random money-making schemes and a professional hustler. In fact, my favorite occupation thus far has been to distribute fliers. I walk through the streets of the richer neighborhoods advertising whoever, whatever for a reasonable wage. The direct benefit of this work lies in the wealth of neighborhood trash out on the street, the occasional item that missed the last yard sale. I'm on the scene. The challenge is that I get lost in the similarity of the houses of suburbia, and it therefore requires reading a map.

I work with a woman called Mrs. Mama, although that's not her real name. She doubles as a housemother in a local strip club. Mama tells me that if she had enough money, she would improve on any one of her looks, buy her some breasts and straighten her face out. I challenge her on this, although it's not fair to judge someone who spends her livelihood staring at fake breasts and fake tans, telling the dancers that they are beautiful. She would probably dance, except for a limiting beauty mark on her face and the way birthing three children have stretched and strained her body through the years. She feeds the dancers, is paid by the club to keep a small store with the essentials. She sees flesh and naked humanity entertained and intertwined in a dance that is about survival; there is a story here.

It's two in the morning and my body hurts from the restaurant, from crunching toes into these shoes for too long now. I want to go home. But I know I need to make ten more dollars. In the morning, my neighbor comes by and asks if I can spare eight dollars. He'll wash my car, which I can't afford to drive anyway, and serves as my dresser on good weeks when I can keep the mold at bay. Um, okay. Can't eat money, I hear my friend John saying in my ear. And there is always a small way to make more.

This is the story I continue to hold about New Orleans: there are so many ways to survive a storm. The woman on the porch in the downpour, talkin' about how she always should have learned how to swim, the restaurant owner who gets drunk daily and tears up recounting his grandmother's stories of being the first free black woman in her family, the street artist, the shotgun house spilling its contents onto darkened streets like a doll house, a Sunday on St. Claude Street in a second line parade, a migrant worker courageous every morning he watches for work. There are many stories about others and about myself that it may never be right or safe to share. I hold them in this sacred root cellar of my being, keeping them firm and ready for soup.

I will miss this place.