Free Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh Page A

crack use among the tenants. A lot of people pointed out that other people smoked crack— calling them “rock star” or “user” or “hype”—while insinuating that they themselves never did. Aside from a few older women, like J.T.’s mother, just about everyone was accused of smoking crack at one time or another.
    After a while it became clear to me that crack use in the projects was much like the use of alcohol in the suburbs where I grew up: there was a small group of hard-core addicts and a much larger group of functional users who smoked a little crack a few days a week. Many of the crack users in Robert Taylor took care of their families and went about their business, but when they saved up ten or twenty dollars, they’d go ahead and get high. Over time I’d learn enough to estimate that 15 percent of the tenants were hardcore addicts while another 25 percent were casual users.
     
 
 
    One of the first people I got to know on the gallery was named Clarisse. She was in her mid-thirties but looked considerably older. Beneath her worn and bruised skin, you could see a beautiful and thoughtful woman who nearly always had a smile ready. She worked as a prostitute in the building—“hustler” was the standard euphemism—and called herself “Clarisse the Mankiller,” because, as she put it, “my love knocks ’em dead.” Clarisse often hung around with J.T.’s family on their gallery. This surprised me, since I had heard J.T. and Ms. Mae openly disparage the prostitutes in their building.
    “That’s part of life around here,” Ms. Mae had said, “but we keep away from them and I keep the kids away from them. We don’t socialize together.”
    One quiet evening, as J.T.’s family was getting ready to barbecue, I was leaning against the gallery fence, looking out at the dusk, when Clarisse came up beside me. “You never tell me about the kind of women you like,” she said, smiling, and opened a beer. By now I was used to Clarisse teasing me about my love life.
    “I told you,” I said, “my girlfriend is in California.”
    “Then you must get lonely! Maybe Clarisse can help.”
    I blushed and tried to change the subject. “How long have you been in the building, and how did you get to know J.T.?”
    “They never told you!” Clarisse yelped. “I knew it! They just embarrassed, they don’t like to admit I’m family.”
    “You’re part of their family?”
    “Man, I’m J.T.’s cousin. That’s why I’m around. I live upstairs on the fifteenth floor with my man. And I work in the building, too. I’m the one in the family they don’t like to talk about, because I’m open about what I do. I’m a very open person—I don’t hide nothing from nobody. Ms. Mae knows that. Shit, everyone knows it. But, like I said, they don’t always come clean about it.”
    “How can you live and work in the building?” I asked.
    “You see these men?” Clarisse pointed at some of the tenants along the galley, hanging out in front of their own apartments. “You should see how they treat women.” I didn’t understand what Clarisse meant; when she saw my face blank, she laughed. “Oh! We have a lot to talk about. Clarisse will educate you.”
    She then gestured toward a few women sitting on chairs. “See, all of them are hos. They all hustle. It’s just that they do it quietly, like me. We have regulars, and we live here. We’re not hypes who just come and go.”
    What’s the difference, I asked her, between a “hype” and a “regular”?
    “Regulars like me, we hustle to make our money, but we only go with guys we know. We don’t do it full-time, but if we have to feed our kids, we may make a little money on the side. I got two kids I need to feed, and my man don’t always help out. Then you got hypes that are just in it for the drugs. They don’t live around here, but J.T. lets them work here, and they give him a cut. I don’t hang around with them. They’re the ones that cause trouble.