The Confessions of an Ex-Teen Hustler, Part 1

We're sitting on metal folding chairs, facing each other. His name is Dwayne. It's Wednesday night. We're in the spacious kitchen, located in the basement of an East Side Manhattan Episcopal church. In the next room, the muffled sound of R 'n' B music and the voices of young men drift in. Every Wednesday night these young men come to the church for counseling, socializing, and friendship. They come seeking refuge from the hostility of their straight peers.
Dwayne is an 18-year-old African-American. I hang on to his every word as he tells me about his days as a teenage street hustler. He emphasizes that he no longer hustles and is looking for a good job. He tells me of his interest in modeling and acting. He might, he says, even go to school to become a registered medical technician. But right now he is out of work and living with four other gay people, one of them a psychologist, in a $1500 a month apartment on Central Park West. He doesn't plan to go back to street life.
He had been arrested twice for prostitution and he just got tired of the hassle of being moved from courtroom to courtroom, cell to cell. At age 14, Dwayne left home and for four years he hustled on 53rd Street, in the block between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Being very attractive, there is no doubt he did well on the street. He has a nut-brown complexion and wears his hair in a processed--or straightened --style;his hair is brushed back. He is wearing his hustler clothes during our conversation: a gray T-shirt (with the lettering "mcq" on the front), a pair of blue jeans cut short above the thighs, white tube socks (with blue and red stripes at the top),and a pair of dirty high top white sneakers.