2009

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Shoot Haiti-a Tall Tale by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | 606 comments

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It was 1988 and my father was shooting “The Serpeant and the Rainbow” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  It was a miserable shoot.  At any given time most of the crew were sick with typhoid, dengue fever, or diphtheria. More than a third of the crew elected to leave the country early, forgoing the rest of their salary.  Some got too sick to continue working; others couldn’t cope with the reality of daily Haitian life.  A supporting actor left the country after seeing a half-exposed corpse.  The rain had washed the soil from his shallow grave, revealing the dead young man buried in his baby-blue Sunday suit.

Others left for more personal reasons. The key grip, for instance, had a thing with a local beauty, who happened to be the daughter of a voodoo priest.  One drunken night the happy couple was blessed by the old priest in a simple ceremony.  There was much drinking and dancing and lovemaking.  The next afternoon when the poor grip groggily came back to reality, his beloved informed him that they were now married and tied together for eternity. The grip went out of his mind and tried to break it off.  The words “You’ll never escape me.” were the last he heard from her as he boarded the next plane back to Los Angeles.  Upon arrival he got onto his motorcycle and was promptly run over by all 9 left wheels of a careless semi.

But my dad stuck it out, dealing with problems as best a young producer could.  He replaced the crew with Haitian workers, and tried to keep everybody happy.  Their time in Haiti was winding down, and they only had one large-scale scene to shoot before they could pack it up and finish in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic.

The aforementioned scene featured a true Haitian tradition.  Thousands of Haitians parade from the city up, up, and deep into the mountains.  The ceremony starts out looking very catholic, with people carrying shrines and flowers and great big blue Blessed Mothers.  But as the thousands of singing families proceed deeper into the mountains, it slowly shifts to the other Haitian religion. Voodoo. The religion that came from Africa with the slaves and collided with the local Caribbean cults. In the mountains the Haitians dance and chant and beat on drums for hours and hours.  The dancers become entranced, and then possessed by gods.  Men eat coals and glass and stick needles into their eyes.  Chickens are slaughtered and their blood is smeared on bare chests.

Wanting to capture this miraculous progression, the crew set up recruitment tables and budgeted for one thousand marchers.  Each Haitian extra would be given a voucher, which they would turn in at the end of the day for five dollars. The vouchers ran out by the end of the morning.

Five dollars in Haiti was a big deal in 1988, when the average income was less than a hundred dollars per year. The extras told their friends about the financial opportunity, and those friends had told other friends, and by the next morning fifteen thousand extras showed up for the parade. They shot the scene, and it was very beautiful.  But when it came time to pay up, and only one in fifteen extras had their vouchers, they got mad.

The Haitians started rioting, and suddenly there was a machete, shovel, pitchfork or lead pipe in every hand. The crew retreated to the police station and barricaded themselves in.  There were only eighteen cops in the station, and they were terrified that if they used their weapons, everyone would be swarmed and slaughtered.   My father used the phone to call the base production office and screamed above the cacophony outside to empty the movie vault and take the cash by helicopter to the police station.  It was a good thing he called when he did, because the mob outside cut the phone line before he hung up.  The rioters didn’t want the police to call the army; hundreds would probably die.

The mob was starting to break through the barred windows, so everyone hurried up to the roof.  Just in time, the helicopter arrived flying low.  The production coordinator dropped a duffel bag filled with fifty-eight thousand dollars to my father, who began throwing handfuls of money into the seething crowd that had completely surrounded the building.   The rioters’ attention shifted from attacking the crew to attacking each other to get at the money.  Slowly, very slowly the violent crowd began to disperse.

McSorley’s Pub by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | 1 comment

Photo by Peter Rivera

Photo by Peter Rivera


Photo by Peter Rivera

Twenty-five wishbones hung above a bar. You have to look closely to verify that they are, indeed wishbones. 90 years of dust hangs on the old bones like dead bayou moss. The turkey bones were hung on the ancient brass gas lamp by enlisted men departing for Europe in 1916.

Behind the bar you will find not an inch of unoccupied wall space. Thousands of curios spanning 200 years collect dust and rust and water damage. A wanted poster for the “Murderer John Wilkes Booth” sits beside a photograph of Abraham Lincoln himself. Abe was a patron. As were the men in the frames next to his: Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. The last photograph taken of Babe Ruth hangs partially obscured by an original sketch by John McSorley himself. A pair of unassuming old handcuffs sits on a cabinet. No one would guess they once meekly attempted to restrain the great Harry Houdini.

The light is very dim, but there is great warmth in the bar. You spin around slowly taking in the information that hits you like a sandstorm. Freshly strewn sawdust grinds under your heel as you turn to face the large pot-bellied stove. The stove is black, but the coal is red. You summon the ghosts of great men who stared into the same stove and warmed themselves. And I say great men because women weren’t admitted to the bar until the 1970’s.

You walk to the back room, away from the stifling coal heat and embrace the cool air on your skin. There is an hour wait for a table, but that just gives you more time to take in the bar. A cabinet reads “CPR kit.” Maybe it’s a bible. Finally, you take a seat at one of four enormous wood-slab tables. Alcohol flowed in this back room during prohibition. This alcohol has always come in only two varieties: light house ale and dark house ale. A wild-haired Irishman in a blue shirt takes your order and returns holding 24 cups of ale in two hands. He slams the lot down on your table with a wonderful crash and clink. You help divvy up the ale by sliding light or dark cups down to your neighbors.

A fat man with a “Yankees” cap stands on a chair and starts chanting at his friend. The Irishman runs over and screams “GET OFF THE FECKIN’ CHAIR! I’M WARNIN’ YEH!” But the fat man doesn’t listen, and is dragged to the ground by the smaller but much stronger waiter. The man is then dragged to the door screaming uselessly and literally thrown out onto East 7th St. His hapless friend follows him out throwing dirty looks and half-hearted insults at the staff. The waiter walks back muttering “I warned him” under his breath. The man should have observed the scorched-wood plaque and bar motto “Be Good or Be Gone.” The waiter walks over to a shocked looking college couple and politely says “A seat just opened up. Follow me.”

Interview, Victor Chapman, 44

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | No comments

Edited by Kyle Cashulin

I was living in an SRO, which means a single room occupancy hotel, which the city of New York pays for. They have an organization that’s called HASA. That’s the HIV and AIDS Service Association. And people with HIV and AIDS who need emergency housing, like for some reason you find yourself out on the street, they house you automatically that day. They’ll find a place for you to go. They don’t want you to go to the regular homeless shelters because, you know, you have exceptional circumstances. Or whatever.

So I was living at this place at 101st and Broadway called Broadway Studios Hotel. And I was smoking crack, because most of thethose buildings are basically just crack houses now. And I was hanging out with this guy named Amado Penia who lived down the hall from me. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and he had two Jack Russell Terriers, a male and a female, and they had just had pups. Now this is in the afternoon, I was in my room, my ex-boyfriend at the time, and another female friend, and Amado came by. He said “What’s goin’ on? What are you guys doing?” And I said, “Well, we’re hanging out.” And he wanted to get high, and I said “Listen, I don’t have enough drugs to give you.” Then I remembered that he had puppies, and those Jack Russell terriers, those things are expensive. I could never afford one of those. So I thought, “Why not take advantage of a crackhead?”

So I said “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a hit of crack for one of those new Jack Russell Terriers that you have!” So he said he’d be back, and he goes down the hall to get the dog. And he comes back twenty or thirty minutes later. And then I told him that in the meantime I had smoked the drugs and I didn’t have anything to give him. So I said “I’m sorry, but the deal’s off, I don’t have anything to give you.”

And he got pissed. Later on he was on the elevator and had the mamma dog, the bitch, on a leash. And he was furious. He was big, like 6’5” and must have weighed 350 pounds. And he was yelling at me, screaming at me, cursing me out. And I was getting off the elevator at my floor, and he had the dog on a leash, and he was so busy yelling at me that he didn’t realize that the dog was behind him and the doors of the elevator closed on the dog! And the dog was like “YELP YELP YELP!” These high-pitched screams! And he just “WHAP!” bitch slaps me up against the wall. And I’m like “What the fuck?” I was shocked. And scared.

So I go back to my room. And I’m in shock. I was really angry. And I’m sitting there and for the next hour I’m furious. Fuming. I couldn’t believe this guy slapped me. So I go, with an omelet pan and a serrated steak knife and a can of mace. And I went over, and I bang on his door, and ask him to come out. And he was like “What do you want? Fuck off!” And I say “Open the door! Come out! You owe me an apology!”

So he comes out, and he starts beating the shit out of me! Just kicking me, and pounding me into the ground, you know. Not even caring, just really livid. So then he goes back in his room. And I make this mistake of banging on his door, and I bang off the door handle. And he comes out and comes at me with this table leg. A wooden table leg. Like two feet long. And I had my can of mace, and I try to mace him. And….and it’s empty! So he beats me down with a table leg. He has me down on the ground, and he’s choking me out. I stop breathing, twice, and I can’t breathe, and I lose consciousness, and then he lets up, and then he chokes me and I lose consciousness again.

And the second time I woke up I look over and realize I had this steak knife in my hand, and I reach up and WHAM, WHAM, and I caught him twice in the shoulder. And he takes the steak knife from me and he’s holding me down with one hand this time, and I’m screaming “NO NO PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!” But the knife was broken, it had broken when I was stabbing him with it. Hahahaha. I guess it was a flimsy knife. It wasn’t like a Bowie knife or anything. It’s not that violent of a tale. Hahaha.

So I got charged with attempted murder. In the first. $75,000 bail. Then they reduced it to assault. First degree assault. $50,000 bail.

And I got sent to Rikers Island prison. I was being sexually assaulted left and right. Knowing that I was HIV positive, this one guy, a notorious rapist, kept cornering me. He got me in the law library bathroom and sodomized me. He was hung like a mule. I said “Fuck it, okay you bastard! If you make me bleed, if you catch AIDS, it’s your fault! You deserve it, you fucking rapist!” That happened a couple times.

My first night in jail was a nightmare in itself. They didn’t know what to do with me because I had a psych history. So they were taking me around, they took me to Queen’s House, which wouldn’t take me ‘cause I was on psych meds. Then they took me to Brooklyn House, which wouldn’t take me because I was on psych meds and had a seizure disorder. Then they tried to take me to that boat in the Bronx, that floats, and they wouldn’t take me for some reason. Then they take me to Rikers Island. There’s this policy, they have like 24 to 72 hours to have you in a bed somewhere. Or else you can sue them. So they exceeded that time. I was scared. I was petrified, it was horrible! Rikers Island is the world’s largest penal colony! They have tanks there, and helicopters, and riot gear, and tear gas, and they have their own boats, and ferries, it’s horrible!

It’s called “Gladiator School.” And they don’t call it that for nothing. You go in, and you’re in this dorm room called Broadway. And anything can happen. Guys get their bed linens set on fire with them in it, or urine and feces thrown on you. Or a blanket party, where you’re tied down with your blankets and everyone beats you up. You go to the store once per week and people steal everything from you. They’re selling drugs. The trans-gendered ones are selling themselves, prostitution is alive and well. Selling blowjobs and ass, and whatever you can afford. Everything’s for sale.

I got mixed up with leaders of the Blood gangs. I was having sexual relationships with Bloods, Muslims, Latin Kings, Nation of Islam, 5% Nation, Jamaicans, Caribbean African Unities, all these guys. I was running, I was hiding in this prison. All these guys were coming at me all the time wanting to have sex, sex sex. Unprotected sex. Sex. Sex. That’s why they should hand out condoms in prisons, because it’s happening! I mean it’s STUPID! It’s HAPPENING. And guys are either giving it up willingly or some guys are gonna take it from you. And it’s not like they prey on someone who’s meek or a little guy. Anybody’s game. But what did they expect? I’m a homosexual male in prison with a thousand other guys, so what? I’m as happy as a faggot in Boy’s Town.

I was in Solitary for fighting. It’s not preferable in any way. It’s sensory deprivation. You don’t know what time it is, you don’t know what day it is. You don’t know if it’s about to be sunrise or sunset or what. You know. It’s horrible. It’s horrible.

The worst thing that I witnessed in prison was when they beat this guy up. Lit him on fire and threw feces and urine all over him. And when he was screaming and screaming, the guards did nothing. Nobody does anything. He offended the Bloods. It’s always the Bloods.

Res. by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | No comments

Dogs
There is a singular dog seen most places. Her ears are tattered; her fur is rusty and mottled with black. Her teats hang close to the ground and sometimes drag on the dirt. Though she is a mean and fearful dog, she belongs to everyone. One day she’ll get a rock to the ribs. Another day she’ll get a skinned rabbit. Sometimes she’ll get a round of buckshot to her face.

Cars
The Dodge Ram is the most beautiful object, and only desired in Inferno Red. Subaru doesn’t end up on the yard, because it survives winter after winter after winter. Most cars end up on the yard.

Noses
Richard Blackowl has a flat nose. No bone. Fetal alcohol syndrome. Not uncommon among the Blackowls. Looking at the Punt, Pass, Kick competition you can see bone, bone, no bone, bone, no bone, no bone, bone, no bone.

Tobacco
If Tobacco is the Red Man’s Revenge, then two holes must be dug. Tahoe brand was my favorite when I was 10.

STPUD
South Tahoe Public Utility District. Condemned land that encompasses Diamond Valley, which holds the reservoir as well as the res.

The Reservoir
Treated sewage from beachfront houses in Lake Tahoe, slushing down Snowshoe Thompson’s irrigation ditch to pool in the big cement reservoir. In the summer we jump off the bridge to swim and cool off. Occasionally swallows leave their mud nests to black out the sun. They dive and intimidate us.

Cats
So many cats. Under every house you can hear the mewing of the next generation. Coyotes come and eat them, but they don’t have large enough stomachs.

Bears
A gunshot in the night means Greg shot another bear. Mean black bears that eat up all the camp food in Yosemite that the nice people brought from San Francisco. The ones that ate too many bags of marshmallows; they’re caged and released less than one mile from the Res. Killing them would be inhumane.

The Reservoir
Maybe swimming in treated sewage causes some of the noses to be flat?
Res Ball
Full-contact sport. The rules go:

Houses
Built decades ago with promise of renewal. Without foundations, they slump to one side or another. It’s a good thing building code violations aren’t applicable on Reservation land.

Sheriff
He’ll stay out of your business unless your meth lab explodes.

Skippy
Ask why she’s called Skippy and, smirk wink, you’ll hear a story about a dog and peanut butter.

The Walker
You’ll see him along 95. Picking up cigarette butts. Every day; walking and picking up cigarette butts. They say he lives with his aunt.

Cal-Trans
The savior of us all, California Transit employees and feeds the community. You need to buy your own reflective vest. Avoid drunken drivers.

Non-Serrated Knife
Never leave home without it. And make sure it isn’t someplace hard to get to, like in your backpack. Tape it length-wise to your belt in the small of your back. They won’t wait for you to fish it out of your backpack.

Indian Tacos
Dale Bennett’s Indian Tacos would have ended the first and second world wars. Frybread, sour cream, rabbit meat, chilies, diced tomatoes, lettuce and cheese. Once a year she makes them for everyone at school. After that, you need to wait for Christmas, David or Nicole’s birthday, or the Candydance. But definitely not Thanksgiving.

Fight by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | No comments

Groping around in my camo cargo shorts, I pull out the roll of athletic tape. As an amateur fighter, I need to wrap my wrists myself. The tape feels very different from the cotton wraps that I use in training. It feels solid and impermeable. Next I look in the mirror. I smear Vaseline over my face so that any blows will slide off instead of rupturing my skin. My only thought is how bad this will be for my complexion, which makes me laugh. After a few minutes of shadowboxing and working on the bag, my friend tells me it’s time. Anxiety blossoms in my stomach, but I shake it off. Why am I nervous? I’m going to win, god damn it! I’m going to impose my will!
The private gym is high-ceilinged, dirty, and only has a few metal folding chairs strewn around the ring. It’s an underground fight. Two-dozen people mill around the ring. No one sits. Everyone here is an amateur fighter, a trainer, or both. It’s the best kind of audience, but a tough crowd to impress.
My nerves might be a little frayed, but I’m confident and composed. The same can’t be said of my opponent. He looks shaken. Head bent, he listens to his trainer give some last minute advice. I notice that his tattoo, a simple tribal arm band, is smaller than mine and isn’t colored in. For some reason this makes me smile, I know I’m going to win.

My first fight happened when I was 12, after my mother moved us to Northern California. Markleeville, a depressing town of 200 residents, sits in the dark foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Completely isolated, the nearest grocery store was a 20 mile drive through the woods. We decided to live 10 miles outside Markleeville next to the Washoe Indian Reservation.
As a chubby white boy from a wealthy family, I was a dead boy walking. The first day a tall kid threw me to the ground and kicked my face, knocking out two of my teeth. But I’m a fast learner, and wanted to be tough as much as the Res kids. I choked back tears, stood up, and spat a wad of blood and mucous on the ground. This impressed the gathering crowd, but I knew that adolescents’ memories or short. I had to learn how to fight. The strength, toughness and will were there, I just needed the skill.
After a few games of Res Ball (a combination of basketball, football and boxing), the tall kid who kicked my ass decided that I wasn’t a bad guy, and we became friends. His father was once a professional boxer, and between rounds of drunkenly beating his son, taught him how to fight. This tall Indian kid would smoke my cigarettes, and teach me boxing and streetfighting. I became passionate about boxing. After five years of training and living on the Res, I completely forgot what it was like to be the underdog.
It was during the summer after my freshman year in college that my interest in fighting was rekindled. My father’s friend, a screenwriter, was doing research for a film about mixed martial arts, and so got the three of us tickets to the Ultimate Fighting Championship 63. Mixed martial arts (or MMA) is a recent phenomenon that has become the world’s fastest growing sport. It allows fighters of different disciplines to test who has the most effective style. Previously, matches were only held within respective styles. A fighter can discover whether his Karate is superior to another man’s kickboxing. For many martial artists, it is the ultimate truth. And the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the place to find out.
Many people compare professional fighting to football or hockey. While these are both intrinsically violent sports, they are fundamentally different in spirit and practice. Other sports have a set objective, such as carrying a football to the end zone. There are rules, regulations, and players act as a team. In fighting, there is no team. When the fighter is in the ring, he is completely alone; he has only himself to rely on. I have heard it referred to as “the most unfiltered form of human competition.” People often refer to sports as a game. A man will say “I’m going home to watch the game.” It’s rare to refer to any kind of professional fighting as a game.
The UFC event was held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The tickets cost more than a thousand dollars a piece, but it was courtesy of Universal Studios. Just walking to the seats was a show in and of itself. Dennis Hof, owner and operator of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch (as seen on HBO’s “Cathouse”), sat next to us accompanied by three stunningly beautiful prostitutes.
A portion part of the crowd were obviously fighters. Every fifth person seemed to have a swollen nose or cauliflower ears. In the restroom, one amateur fighter was serenely draining his cauliflower ear with a hypodermic needle. The beer flowed at a constant rate. Fighters danced with their gorgeous girlfriends to high-energy rock, and everyone was generally having a fantastic time.
The fights were incredible to watch. We were very close to the octagon, so each connecting strike sounded like a baseball bat hitting a hunk of meat. After each fight the opponents would hug (if both were still conscious), congratulate each other, and retire to drink beer and watch the next battle. The most anticipated fight was between Matt Hughes and Renzo Gracie, two of the most famed fighters in the UFC. Gracie made the mistake of giving his back to Hughes, and the fight was over quickly. Gracie was on his stomach on the ground with Hughes mounted on his waist. Hughes cocked back his arm, paused, and let loose a barrage of knockout punches to the sides of Gracie’s head. It was electrifying to see such professional fighting in person. These men were one hundred percent efficient, and showed me the obvious difference between a real fighter and a street brawler. More than ever, I wanted to improve. I decided to try a real fight, in front of a real audience. The question was, how?
I started training in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a modern martial art that is a hybrid of streetfighting and wrestling. It is just as technical as wrestling, and as a sport, has its own rules. It is a technique that is favored by many professional fighters in MMA. My trainer once made a great observation: “If someone who knows Brazilian Jiu-jitsu takes another fighter to the ground, and he doesn’t know Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, it’s like falling into a lake and not knowing how to swim.” This is very true. A skilled Brazilian Jiu-jitsu fighter will have his opponent tapping out before he even registers that he is totally incapacitated. It teaches you how to move on the ground, and how to maneuver your opponent into submissions. If a fighter is trapped in an arm bar, for example, it only take two inches of motion to break their arm at the elbow.
I also took intensive Krav Maga (Hebrew for “combat fighting”). Krav Maga is best described as systemized streetfighting. It is designed to be utterly efficient and wholly destructive. Rather than trying to submit your opponent, the goal is to kill him. Krav Maga was developed by the Israeli Defense Forces, and most professionals regard it as the most effective no-holds-barred fighting system. This method is not accepted in mixed martial arts fights, but gives excellent training on the fundamentals of fighting. It teaches you how to move, hit and punch in all their variations.

I returned to college in New York State, and found a great gym. I committed to training for a real fight. It’s quite difficult to train at the level of intensity needed for a true MMA fight when you’re a student. Real fighters train up to six hours daily, and keep to a strict high-protein diet. Such a regimen was quite impossible for me, but I did my best. Every day I would practice striking for an hour. I would deliver a seemingly endless stream of knees, kicks, elbows and punches until my muscles screamed. On alternate days I would lift weights and develop core strength. Taking a 45 pound plate in each hand, I jogged laps around the school sports center to build a “death grip.” For cardiovascular training I ran from my apartment up a long steep hill that I dubbed “insano-slope.”
My diet consisted of fish, red meat, protein supplements, and gallons of water. The hard work paid off. My strikes became harder and my grip stronger. Most importantly, my endurance seemed endless. I felt that I had tapped newfound inner physical strength.

Finding a way to fight in a controlled setting proved to be difficult. The big problem being that it is illegal to fight in New York without a permit, which means submitting to an endless process of physical examination and bureaucracy. This was impossible for me, as licenses are usually reserved for professionals. A stroke of luck came when I was chatting with a new friend after a workout at the gym. With some reservation, the man told me that he knew a group of amateur fighters who, faced with the same dilemma, organized a monthly fight night. I told him that it sounded like the book “Fight Club,” to which he responded: “Jesus, I knew you’d say that.”
This man became my go-between and found me a place at that month’s fight night. This took more than a little convincing on my proponent’s part, but he vouched for me and I was granted a provisional membership. My assigned opponent was a first-time fighter as well, which was a great comfort. The prospect of fighting a seasoned mixed martial artist was daunting. I thought that if he was a first-time MMA fighter, and didn’t have previous streetfighting experience, I would have an edge.
When Jason said fight night he wasn’t kidding. The night of the fight I was told to meet my friend at a parking garage at two-thirty in the morning. There he handed me directions to the gym where it took place. Thirty minutes later we arrived at a sizable craftsman-style house, comfortably isolated from neighbors. Next to the house was a garage that could have served as a hangar for small aircraft. Cars were parked outside, so I assumed it was the right place.

There is a difference between believing you can win a fight and actually fighting. I’m locked into a staring match with my opponent across the ring. My confidence and adrenaline are spiking. I should have avoided this mental showdown, but it’s too late to back out. I try to make myself badass and intimidating, but the head games seem pointless. We’d see who was tougher in a minute. The referee calls it, we bump gloves, and begin.
My opponent is over-anxious and come out throwing fast, chaotic punches. Several of these connect, and I feel rage swell inside me. Ignoring the attack, I start throwing my own strikes, and we trade punch for punch. But this is a rookie mistake. Swapping punches is like playing “chicken,” where the last man standing only wins because of the thickness of his skull. The unprofessional turn this fight has taken is reflected in the catcalls of the audience.
Backing off, I clear my head and keep my guard up. Advancing cautiously, I throw a few jabs. His guard drops for a moment and I swing for a knockout punch. But before my fist reaches halfway I find myself on the ground, scrambling backwards. My stomach is throbbing. He must have landed a side kick to my abdomen while I was concentrating on the knockout punch. Another rookie mistake. My eyes should have been on been on his chest so that I could see his entire body movement. Instead, I was concentrating on his head and lining up punches.
But he obviously isn’t comfortable on the ground, because I scramble to my feet without any interference. We circle for a few seconds, and I focus on keeping my eyes from looking at where I want to strike. Without thinking I lunge under his guard, grip his right leg and shove forward driving my shoulder into his stomach. My opponent goes down, and the fall knocks the wind from his lungs. He doesn’t raise his legs in time, which allows me to mount his waist. Unable to buck me off and unable to effectively strike, he freezes into a protective guard. By this point I know the fight is over. I throw hard, heavy punches and elbows around his guard until the referee pulls me off. My gloves are smeared with blood, and sure enough, my opponent has a cut across his forehead. Some blood drips from my own face as well, but I couldn’t care less. I throw my arms out, my head back, and breathe deep. I have the option to stay and watch the last fight, but I’m too sore and too full of adrenaline. I drive home, smiling like a maniac the whole way.

The next day everyone I see asks what happened to my face. I dismiss the subject with vague but taunting replies like “let’s just say it’s been a rough night” or “well you should see the other guy!” But I don’t want to publicize my night’s exploit. This is partially because I want to avoid uncomfortable questions about where and who I fought. I can’t bear the thought of my friends patronizing me for doing something they can’t possibly identify with. Growing up in a fight culture has instilled in me, for better or for worse, a mindset that is completely alien to most students of East Coast liberal arts schools. But it’s alright. I didn’t fight for bragging rights. I fought to become a better fighter.

Xiao Yi by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | No comments

Photo by Michael Robinson
Photo of Shanghai Beggar by Michael Robinson

Asleep on her cotton mat, Yi Chun Yan was awoken by tearing, burning pain and the sounds of a hundred small children screaming. She crawled through the smoke and fire to the door, where the bodies of suffocated and burning children were strewn along the hallway. Coughing and crying, Chun Yan half crawled and half dragged herself towards the stairs. She almost made it down the second flight when the ceiling, supported only by glowing beams, collapsed. Lying on her back and kicking with her legs, burning timber and concrete plummeted onto her body. Believing herself to be dead, Chun Yan lost consciousness.

Chun Yan awoke to strong hands, tearing her scorched skin, dragging her from the building and across the red dirt road. Her unknown savior lifted her into the back seat of a sedan. Blackness again.

Blinding fluorescent light woke her for the third time that night. Lying on a gurney in the Mahan hospital, she took stock of her surroundings. Her eyesight was strangely impaired. She could only see if she closed one eye. Her preschool students, the children she knew so well, were unrecognizable. A girl’s face was bandaged, though blood seeped through in the area of her eyes. A boy’s legs were crushed, almost flattened by the falling debris.

She tried to look at herself, but her neck was braced. In her peripheral she could see her arms splayed beside her. Her right arm had splotchy burns but otherwise looked unharmed. That was good. She looked to the other side. Her left arm was bent at a strange angle, and her hand was ripped apart. She counted her two remaining fingers before nausea and pain forced her, again, into oblivion. The next time would wake, her arm would be gone.

I meet her for the first time on the steps of an underpass on the historic Bund, Shanghai. The rain is relentless, and though it is a warm night I can feel my wool shirt wet against my chest. It is still early enough for moderate traffic through the pedestrian tunnel, but people walk briskly with down-turned faces masked by dark umbrellas.

Xiao Yi is a vision of suffering. The burn is a broad diagonal stripe across her face where the flaming timber landed. Her lips are gone, melted off, revealing her upper palette which is at an almost 90 degree angle from her face. Her nose is an angry stump, that snarls upwards.. Above her eyes, which are set too far apart and at different height, is one lonely eyebrow. Her naked arm is amputated slightly below the elbow.

Although I ignorantly question her ability to speak, I approach her and ask if she would tell me her story. She attempts a smile and agrees. Xiao Yi gives me a piece of cardboard to sit on. But before I even ask where she was born the foot traffic slows, and we acquire a semicircle of spectators. They interrupt our conversation with questions directed toward me. “What are you talking to her about? And why?” Xiao Yi is becoming more and more withdrawn and I don’t blame her for it. I curse myself for my stupidity. Any spectacle in China will inevitably draw a crowd of gawking rubberneckers.

A woman produces a digital camera and takes a picture. Xiao Yi leaps to her feet and violently attacks the woman, grabbing the camera from her hands. “You think you can just take a picture of me? What gives you a right to just take pictures of people? Get rid of it! Do you think you’re going to make money from my face? Your heart is black!”

The commotion attracts the attention of the two traffic guards above us. The situation is getting out of control. Xiao Yi, bless her, looks at me and says “Come back at 11:30 tonight. We can have some privacy when the street is deserted.” I am filled with gratitude, as it was painful to see this woman change from cheerful to withdrawn and then to anger. My unrequited entourage follows me up the steps (now resembling tiny waterfalls), and I disappear into the Shanghai night.

Yi Chun Yan, nicknamed Xiao Yi (Little Yi), was born into vagrant poverty 1975. Her mother, an elementary schoolteacher, traveled constantly. Sent out to the countryside like millions of other Chinese after the Cultural Revolution, Xiao Yi’s mother found love in the arms of a fellow schoolteacher in Hunan. The relationship lasted long enough to produce two daughters, and then they separated. Xiao Yi lived with her mother, while her younger sister went with her father.

The nomadic lifestyle was difficult for little Chun Yan. She was never in one school long enough to forge lasting friendships, and she received no tenderness from her mother. To her, Xiao Yi was nothing but a reminder of an ill-fated and bitter marriage. But her tenacity in school, useful contacts and glowing compassion gave her excellent prospects for teaching.

After graduating in 1995, Xiao Yi took a probationary job teaching preschool children in rural Hubei. Finally claiming independence and stability, she aggressively embraced her new life. She loved her work, and her students were a daily source of joy. Surrounded by friends and suitors, working a job she loved, away from the coldness of her mother, Xiao Yi was, for the first time in her life, happy.

At precisely 11:30 I return to the underpass with bated breath. I sorely hope that Chun Yan has not reconsidered her proposal. If she had, I would surely not find her. But as the tunnel comes into view, there she is. Her canvas bag is packed and slung in the crook of her amputated arm. In her other hand she is carrying an open umbrella. She proposes that we go to one of the many cheap bars that litter the streets off of the Bund. Her head barely reaches my chest, but I still need to walk briskly to keep up with her. She tries to hold the umbrella over my head as we but gives up, exasperated. “You’re too tall. My arm is tired.”

She guides me up the thoroughfare, negotiating through oncoming traffic, under a broken gap in an iron fence, across more traffic, and finally up an encouraging side street. We enter a dark bar that promises privacy, and make our way to the back. The nonplussed waitress brings a menu, which Xiao Yi takes one look at before proclaiming the audacity of the scandalously high prices. I tell her that the I will pay for whatever she wants, but she is inconsolable. She rises and charges down the street to another bar. We enter and find seats, but it is not meant to be. Again, she finds an insurmountable fault with the establishment and leads me, once again, to the rainy street. Just as I’m wondering whether we would actually find a place that met Xiao Yi’s lofty criteria, she finally settles on an open-air restaurant with suspiciously low-priced soup.

After the school boardinghouse fire that killed 19 children and shattered the lives of many survivors, Xiao Yi spent three years in and out of the hospital. The most delicate procedure was resetting her eyes. Her eye sockets were crushed by the debris, and had shifted downwards. She lost the sight in her right eye during surgery.

Her various operations cost a total of 60 thousand RMB. Though the state contributed some funds to her medical costs, the bill was greatly paid for by friends and relatives. While under care, the Civil Affairs office promised her a monthly allowance of three thousand RMB for the rest of her life. They have yet to pay her anything at all.

Once she was able to spend some nights at home, Xiao Yi was transferred to a hospital in Hunan where her mother could look after her. Unfortunately her mother soon lost enthusiasm for the difficult task of caring for her recuperating daughter, and abandoned the responsibility completely.

Abandoned by her family, hideously disfigured, and without hope, Xiao Yi attempted suicide for the first time. Fortunately, the hospital staff spotted her before she jumped from the building’s roof. They caught her in a makeshift net, but she still hit the pavement hard enough to give her severe head trauma.

The injury to her brain temporarily robbed her of the ability to speak, and so Xiao Yi spent the next year relearning her own language. The neurological damage also made writing a difficult endeavor-a condition that persists to this day. Whereas before she might have retained her profession as an educator, it was now impossible.

Her friend, who saw the empty bottle of sleeping pills and forced Xiao Yi to throw them up, thwarted her second suicide attempt. Determined to end her life, she found an old well, with the intention of throwing herself down it and drowning. But as she stood on the edge, looking down into the black promise of death, Xiao Yi found she could not bring herself to jump. Defeated, she resigned herself to her new life, such as it was.

As she tells her story, Xiao Yi commands the attention of everyone in the tiny restaurant. When we first entered together, the other diners were disgusted by her face; affronted by the prospect of eating while looking at such extreme ugliness. But now they hang on every word. As she describes each terrible moment, their faces fall and they look ashamed. The chef, his white apron stained by blood and grease, comes out of the kitchen to lean against a wall and smoke a cigarette.

Xiao Yi moved to Shanghai in 2002 to take residence with her grandmother. There she learned to make jewelry to sell on the street. She offers me one of her handmade bracelets -she has a few left. Her business was successful due to the beauty and quality of her wares, and was able to buy greater inventory of materials.

One day a policeman stopped, and admired her jewelry. The man demanded protection money from her, and threatened violence if she refused. Not willing to give into the corrupt policeman’s demands, he kicked her in the stomach and left.

Not long after the incident, a man supposedly hired by the policeman seized all of her jewelry and ran. Xiao Yi chased him, but could not run fast enough. All of her money was invested in the jewelry. She pleaded with the corrupt policeman, but he denied her assistance. From that day, Xiao Yi has been a beggar. She does not hold a sign, or clutch at passersby, but just sits quietly with a bowl.

The community of beggars in Shanghai is not a friendly one. Shortly after she started begging, Xiao Yi was severely beaten by other amputees for intruding on someone else’s territory. The competition is fierce and few pedestrians are generous. Many beggars are young and able-bodied, but draw sympathy by carrying children. These children are usually rented or loaned by impoverished parents.

Police and thugs are a constant problem to the begging community. Many have no qualms about seizing money from begging cups or demanding protection fees or “lucky money.” Xiao Yi has learned to avoid the police by learning their rotation schedule and positioning herself where she can see trouble coming.

Though sometimes unusually generous, foreigners can also be a source of danger and extortion. An Australian journalist tried to photograph her as a part of an article about Shanghai’s homeless. When she refused, he hired a young boy to take a picture of her, which he sold to an online news site for a large sum. Another foreigner tried to rape her.

Through the entire story, the only time when she looks genuinely pained is when she recounts the story of her image being put on display by the deceitful journalist.

Life is getting increasingly worse for Xiao Yi and the beggars of Shanghai. When the Olympic Torch was in the city, she was threatened with prison if she appeared on the streets. And there are rumors that begging will be entirely outlawed in the near future. If this happens, Xiao Yi will throw herself at the mercy of her sister for survival.

She tells me “I’m saving up so that one day I can get surgery to become beautiful. But my story isn’t so bad. There are people here who have had it worse.”

She insists on escorting me to the nearest taxi. She says that she hopes I’ll visit her whenever I’m in the neighborhood. She says, “Welcome to the Bund.”

The Hobo King by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | No comments

Riverhead - uncorrected0023
Photo of Iwegan by Jesse Grauer

“In April I started out in Minnesota, and I journeyed down to Des Moines Iowa, then to Parsons Kansas, all the way to Little Rock Arkansas, then to Memphis, Alberta, and Alabama.  Turned around, came back up through Memphis, and up to Kentucky, and to Champaign Illinois and to Chicago again, Detroit, the Canadian border, Ohio, over to New York, back to West Virginia, North Carolina, back to Iowa. To Britt Iowa.  And I took my time.

“I always told people I’m not a citizen. I’m a self-proclaimed bum. They started calling me Iwegan, which supposedly is a tramp from Iowa.”

Iwegan (aye-wee-jin) sits in front of me by the fire, where two construction palettes are neatly burning in the rectangular metallic pit.  Iwegan is only 49 years old, but looks much older.  The first thing I notice about him are his large, sad eyes. ‘Weg is missing most of his upper palette, and he speaks in a soft, mumbling tone, which makes it difficult to catch what he’s saying.   He pulls his thick black hair back to show us the steam engine tattooed on his forehead.  Other tattoos show on his neck.  Iwegan is the current King of the Hobos.  On his black leather vest  “Hobo King 2006” is carefully stitched with what looks like dental floss.

There is considerable talk about what defines a hobo.  Nobody agrees completely, and those that have definite ideas later contradict themselves.  You can categorize the entire subculture using the word “Bum.”  Bums can be divided into Transients (those who travel), and Homeguards (homeless who stay in the same city, often the same street).  Transients are further divided between Tramps and Hobos.  Tramps travel from city to city, living off of the charity of society.  Hobos, although not unknown to take charity, prefer to work for their living.

‘Weg grew up in a house full of cops; his father, uncles were all on the force.  “I’m the defective detective.”  Iwegan  claims to have two years of college, but refuses to divulge where. “My brothers always know where to find me—in the library.  I need my USA Today.” After he got out of prison at 20 (for what he never said), he found himself stranded Eugene Oregon.  ‘Weg met a lot of train riders in Eugene, decided to hop a rail, and has been riding ever since.

Iwegan is the last of a dying breed.  Years ago, there were hundreds of hobos spread across the country.  American hoboing started after the civil war, when tens of thousands of men were forced to travel, looking for work.  It was called the “Great Army of Tramps” by the famous photojournalist and social reformer Jacob Riis.  The number of hobos has decreased, slowly, over the decades, so that today there are fewer than one hundred.

“Up in Washington, 27 years ago, there’d be grain cars, 40 of ‘em, goin’ by. That means 40 rides.  There’d be 80 hobos all waitin’ on a ride. All pickin’ apples.  On the West Coast, if your daddy rode, you rode. If your cousins rode, you rode.  You had to wait for rides.”

Local and national recessions in the 1980’s produced a few hobos, but this fell off by 1990.  The 9/11 attacks was the ultimate deathblow to the true hobo.  But for the foreseeable future, there will be one last Railrider.

“I’m incorrigible. They ain’t gonna stop me.  But those Sieg Heil Nazi police cock-sucking pigs, they’re just joyous after 9/11.  Because now it’s ‘homeland security.’ They can walk in with a federal warrant instead of state, you know, but they ain’t stopping me. You know?  But a lot of my brothers don’t want to put up with that, you know?”

“For years those fuckers didn’t have a clue. They didn’t know we existed.  I swear to god we always had it goin’ on. Always.  And they didn’t have a fucking clue.  We were illegal, but we never stole from people.  We just did work. People just loved us.  We just have fun.  We didn’t have social security cards.  But I’d get food stamps from 5 different states. I’d be ridin around with $8k of food stamps to share with my brothers. We’d sell them.  I’m tellin’ you. They had no fucking clue. And we lived like fat fucking rats. We lived like fat fucking rats.”

Weg’s definition of them oscillates between the police, the government, and the entire non-hobo population.

“The choice was obvious, you know?  I ain’t got no steady pussy, or work.  I’m seein’ the country for free, living like a fat fuckin’ rat anywhere I go, and they ain’t got a fuckin’ clue.  We had a hundred brothers that loved each other and cared for each other.   Those rich people in apartments, they ain’t got a 10th of that.  No bills to pay, no taxes to pay.  I always thought we had 20 more years.”

“Yeah, it’s been fun.”

Most cities have public day labor, which makes up most of the Hobo’s work.  Missions will also provide access to work.  Many hobos were actually skilled craftsmen.  Iwegan has been a carpenter for over 20 years.  Some places are known to prefer road-people laborers.  Some would hire hobos exclusively.  Stretch is especially fond of Fillery Farms, located in Okanogan, Washington.

A tried and true method of making money is simply begging.  On a good day, a hobo can make more in two hours than many gainfully employed make in a week.  Stretch and ‘Weg remember standing beside a highway with a cardboard sign, and making $450 during rush-hour.  Holidays are always the best times, and a good story will always make for a successful day.  Iwegan’s favorite story is a real tear-jerker:  his wife tragically died six months earlier, and he is traveling the country in her honor.  ‘Weg dramatically pantomimes wiping his eyes.

“But we all shared.  If someone needed a pair of boots or a bedroll, he had it.  He needed new gear, he had it. We’d spend a $100 on food a night, not to mention 8000 of food stamps, and nobody had a clue!  And I kept sayin’ “don’t tell anybody, or else you’re gonna get slapped.” Haha. But we didn’t save a dime of it, you know?  We spent 3 weeks in El Paso one time, we spent $28,000 in 21 days.  At that time we were taking stock trains. But that was what was cool about it: we always stuck to what we knew.  And nobody had a clue.”

Many homeguards, or bums that stay in the same place, can get territorial about prime begging spots. ‘Weg remembers one man reluctant to give up his corner spot.  He had been begging on that corner for 8 years.  This didn’t impress Iwegan. “You’ve been here for 8 years? Well guess what? It’s time to move!  If you don’t, I’ll burn down your fucking camp!” Hobos generally have no respect for homeguards, who represent the antithesis of the transient ethos.

If you have spent as much time on the rails as Iwegan has, you are no stranger to violence.  Territorial homeguards, stray dogs, violent fugitives, and bully officials all make life difficult for the hobo.  Once Iwegan camped out with a man who confessed to be a serial murderer.  “He went nuts, and killed 20 people. He told us right there.”

Another time, Iwegan was terribly abused by police officers.  They had a warrant and were looking for a bum, and ran into Iwegan.  When he didn’t cooperate, the police beat him up with nightsticks, and sprayed an entire can of mace into his face.  They waited for him to recover, expecting a flow of information.  They didn’t know ‘Weg.

“Look here man, if I spit in your face, is that a jail-able offense?”

“Fuck yeah, we’ll stick you in jail”

“Well cool, because that’s what I’m fixin’ to do.  Now look here, I ride freight trains, and I don’t want to sleep next to no murderer. Show me the goddamn paper.”

“I’ve got three questions for you officers.  This murder was on the 24th of  December? “

“Yeah.”

“And it took place in Big Springs, Nevada, right? On Christmas eve, 1996?”

“Yeah.”

“Well my brother’s been in a Washington State Penitentiary since 1992.  What did you do, let him out on parole so that he could kill someone?”

Iwegan lets out a series of “Haw haw haws” and dismisses the case of extreme police brutality as one of many good stories. Iwegan gets serious, and looks me in the eye.  He says that some very bad things have happened to him on the rails.

One night in 1980, Iwegan was sleeping off a long day of drinking whisky.  Sleeping next to him was a fellow tramp.  While both asleep, a woman murdered the tramp by slitting his throat from ear to ear.   She was a mentally disturbed homeless woman that was an ex-girlfriend of the victim.  After the murder, she cut open Iwegan’s hand, and put the murder weapon in his jacket.  “She cut my hand so bad that the muscles were hanging out.”  ‘Weg shows us the scar.

The next morning the police surrounded the campsite, and Iwegan was arrested for murder in the first degree.  He was held for weeks while he waited for his trial.  Before he appeared before the judge, however, the murderess was caught.  She confessed to the slaying, and to framing Iwegan, who was exonerated.   With the next drag on his Lucky Strike, I see that ‘Weg’s hand is shaking.

Clap for a Con by Kyle Cashulin

November 21, 2009 in Featured Stories | No comments

Clap for a Con

Two weeks ago I am sitting in a crowded sports bar in midtown Manhattan.  Young third–generation Italian Italian-American men pound the bar as the Ravens fumble on fifteen flatscreen TVs.   A tall hunched man orders a beer next to me.  Bernice the Bartender takes his money over to the register.  His wallet is stuffed with single bills, and he asks to exchange some of them for a ten.  He counts out the bills and hands them to her.  She counts them again and tells him that he is a dollar short.  Flustered, the man counts more ones on the bar and then adds a five.  As the money is counted and passed, and counted again, and rechecked, the man gets more flustered.  More money goes into the pot. His shoulders droop and he seems pathetically confused.  A a worried frown crosses his face, . and he finallyFinally, he sits back, defeated.

“Don’t worry hon.  That’s fifteen ones and three fives, so I give you thirty dollars.  No big thing.”

It’s beautiful.  The woman just lost twenty dollars and the price of a beer.  Never have I seen someone pull the Short Change with such masterful control and grace.  As soon as the money disappears off the bar, he the man straightens to his full height and takes a victorious sip from his Guinness.  I lean over and whisper, “well Well done.”  He smiles with his whole face.

Jesse is 36 and that night he sports his “down-and-out-professor” look.  His blond hair  is neatly parted, but flops sloppily down his forehead.   He wears small eyeglasses (with clear non-prescription lenses) low on his nose.  His clean but wrinkly wool suit is too big, and he wears it over a lime green t-shirt, which is too tight.

“Well, I’m not working tonight, but there’s no sense in paying for beer.  I don’t drink if I have to pay for it.  The last time I bought a beer was January 15, 1995.  Buy me another beer?  Great.   But this place is primed.  Just asking for it.  It’s juicy.  Juicy like a ripe plum.  Tell you what- —you want to see something cool?”

Jesse tells me my role.

Hailing the Bernice over again, Jesse asks if she wants to see a magic trick.  She raises her eyebrows, but agrees.

“You need to have a personal stake in the trick for it to be impressive.  I’ll need a fifty fifty-dollar bill.  Don’t worry, you’ll get it back.  Great.  Do me a favor and sign your name at the bottom right corner, there.  Now we’ll crumple it up and wrap it in this paper napkin.  Then let’s  drop it into this pint glass here… like that.”

Jesse produces a brushed steel Zippo and lights the napkin on fire.  He has a lot of trouble keeping it lit.  It’s embarrassing-, and he radiates he shows the shame of a failing magician. Bernice the Bartender makes is patient and encouraging.; her pity  Pity for this pathetic guy outweighs the discomfort of overlooking the taboo of an open flame in a the bar.  It The bill finally burns, and he Jesse pours out the ash and crushes it into oblivion.

“Well, it looks like you’re out fifty bucks.  But don’t worry.  Why don’t you go over and check the register?”

Bernice sprints to the register and discovers her signed bill.  She smacks her forehead in disbelief.

“What? How did you…  How’d you do that?  That is….that is something!  That is something!

The con is an elegant one called “The Magic Bill.”  Jesse handed the crumpled bill to me, and substituted his own single dollar bill for the burning.  I took the fifty down to the other end of the bar where I ordered two beers from the second bartender.  The bartender gave me forty dollars in change and I return with the beer.  The signed fifty went back into the register and the forty bucks went into my pocket.  Jesse’s trouble lighting the napkin gave me enough time to conduct my own transaction, and I return just as the trick concludes.

Jesse and I retreat to a free table, and I give him the forty dollars.  He slides a twenty over to me.  It’s my share of the take.

A week later, I knock on Jesse’s door.  The door flies open and Jesse gives me an urgent SHOOSH!  His girlfriend is angry with him and is brooding in the bedroom.  His warning is too late and she storms into the hallway, wearing nothing but a long Minnie Mouse t-shirt.  She is heavy-set, with short, curly black hair, and a bulldog expression.

“Jesse, why the FUCK are you letting some asshole write about you?  You are a stupid fuck, you know that?  You are such a fucking moron. I can’t believe it.  You know what?  Fuck you!  Fuck you, Jesse, you stupid fuck!”

Jesse ushers his girlfriend back into the bedroom.  He pokes his head out the door and says, “Make yourself at home, I’ll be there in a minute.”  Then he disappears back into the bedroom to placate.

The apartment is warm and lived-in.  A calico cat jumps down from the kitchen counter and does a figure- 8 eight around my legs.  There is a green plant in every corner and on every table.  I have no desire to stay in the kitchen, where I can hear the couplethem arguing next door, so I take a beer from the refrigerator and walk into the spacious living room.

A shoulder-mounted digital camcorder sits on a tripod in the corner next to the flat-screen TV.  DVDs are stacked side- by- side on the floor along every wall of the room.  They are organized by subject, and Jesse has written labels on the white wall in permanent marker where appropriate.  “Japanese.” “Horror.”  “Japanese Horror.”  “Lynch.”  “ Coen Bros.”  “Spielberg.”  “XXX.”  In the another corner, a straightjacket hangs on a mannequin torso.

I sit on the couch and Jesse walks back in with a desperately apologetic look on his face. Today he has his hair gelled into a “fo-hawk” and is wearing a shirt with “IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT, SHOW ME YOUR TITS” written on it in block letters.

“I’m sorry about that, she’s really a sweet girl.  Sweet, but paranoid.  Have you seen the DVDs?  I have some amateur porn of Kimber and I.  Want to watch?  We could put it on while you ask me questions.”

Jesse pulls out a DVD from the “XXX” section and puts it on the large, high-definition TV.  On the screen the camera centers on Kimber on the bed wearing a yellow nightgown.  Jesse steps in front of the camera stark naked and walks over to the bed.  Jesse seats me facing the screen, and he sits facing me.  I’m pretty sure he’s fucking with me. I clear my throat and start the interview.

Jesse was born in Belfast, and has never met his father.  His mother, Marie, moved them to Las Vegas when he was six.  Jesse, a fan of magic, was in heaven.  His mother gave him money every Friday for tickets to local magic shows, and indulged him endlessly at the magic shops.  In high school, Jesse studied to be an escape artist.

JesseHe shows me a picture of himself at graduation, dangling upside upside-down by a rope and, struggling to free himself from a straightjacket.  His long hair hangs two feet below him.

After high school Jesse moved to Manhattan to work as a street magician and escape artist.  After four years of failure, Jesse he bounced a rent check and was given a 24 24-hour eviction notice.

His last gig had backfired terribly.  Jesse was performing at a child’s birthday party, and asked two adults to tighten and buckle his straightjacket.  Two enormous college football players came onto the makeshift stage and tightened the straps to the point that Jesse couldn’t breathe.

Part of the trick to snaking out of a straightjacket is to expand your chest as much as possible as the straps are buckled tight.  After the jacket is secured, you deflate your lungs, which gives you an inch or so of  slack cloth.   But the football players pulled on the straps while he Jesse was in the middle of giving instructions, and they tookknocking the wind out of his lungs.  His vision tunneled, and he fell headlong into the audience of children.

He came back to his senses on the family’s couch, and was given a glass of water.  They were friendlynice about it, but he was not getting paid.  He packed up his props and started walking home.

D    Desperate for cash, Jesse cheated for the first time.  In front of the mirror, Jesse he peeled off the bandage on his head and rubbed the wound until it was bleeding again.  He took a file to his shirt until it was ragged. He slipped out onto the street and walked up to a house and knocked on the door, saying that he’d been was hit by a car, and needed to use the phone.  The elderly woman that who lived in the house took him in, and told him to clean up in the bathroom.  Jesse pocketed everything he could in the old woman’s house.  She gave Jesse a new shirt and blazer that had belonged to her late husband, made him a SPAM sandwich, and sent him on his way.   Jesse pPawned a the jewelry and a small gold clock he had stolen, and paid the rent.  The date was January 15, 1995.

There isn’t a school for scammers, and yet there are enough con artists in the world to form a new ethnic group.  Some people can just seeimmediately spot the cracks in the great sidewalk of life that others just the rest of us step over without even thinking about it.  When you’re living on that frequency, opportunities just present themselves.  When If you can see the loopholeschinks in the system, and apply a modicum of intelligence and imagination, you can make money.  Bernard Madoff,  the guy on the street hustling Three Card Monty, and Jesse all run on this frequency.

It is a mistake to consider ones’ self completely con-proof.  There is no unified profile for scam victims, either. Not are all greedy, risk-taking, self-deceptive people looking to make a quick buck, naive, uneducated, or elderly. Sometimes they’re just horny. My first week in Shanghai  I met two lovely girls from Taiwan.  The three of us went out the weekend, saw the Suzhou water village, and fawned over each other.

The next week we went out again, and the girls directed me to a karaoke  bar off of the historic Bund district.  I stormed the place, a giggling girl under each arm, and said “We need a karaoke room.  Do you take credit cards?”  The bartender nodded hard enough to get whiplash and showed us in.  The drinks kept on coming, and when it was time to leave three hours later I asked for the bill.  $1200 American dollars.   I was swapping Chinese and English obscenities with the bartender, when the bar started filling with prostitutes, who started yelling at me as well to pay the bill.  Even the madam came downstairs chimed in.  “You real gentlemen! Why you no pay?  These girls show you a real good time! You no pay for their drinks?  This is Bund price!”

I made a break for the door, with prostitutes grabbing my clothes, and the bartender moving to block the way.   Like a football player dragging half the other team towards the end zone, I reached the door first and pushed through.  I took out my wallet and threw a handful of cash at the mob and jumped into the nearest taxi.

I’m riding shotgun in Jesse’s black Lincoln Town Car. It’s midnight in Queens, and there is very little activity on the streets.  A cop cruiser drives along the bridge above us.  Jesse has eight different credit cards from as many different people, a baggie of cocaine, and a laundry list of other contraband in the car with us, but.   But we fly down the street unmolested.

“Let me ask you one question.”,” he says.

The Town Car hits the curb at fifty miles per hour.   The airborne beer in the backseat crashes back down as the carthe tires makes contact with the asphalt.  The Town Car accelerates in the left lane and turns left through a red light.  Brian Johnson sings “Hells Bells” on the radio.

“Are you rock and roll?”

The Lincoln has full taxi credentials posted on the dashboard. Jesse occasionally uses the car in taxi schemes out of JFK airport.  He tells the victim that his last fare jumped out of the taxi without paying, so now he asks for a flat rate up front with no tip necessary.  As soon as Jesse drives the victim a few miles from the airport, he says that the police are cracking down on passengers not wearing seatbelts.  The back seat unfortunately has no seatbelts, so would the passenger please come up front.  The moment the victim steps out of the car, Jesse drives off with the fare and the luggage.

We accelerate towards a parallel parallel-parked car.  At the last possible nanosecond, Jesse SLAMS slams on the breaks and the tires squeal.  I’ll be damned if the Town Car doesn’t slide into a perfect park job.  We get out and walk across the street to a convenience store.  Jesse is wearing his “fun-loving-NYU-student” outfit.  He is clean clean-shaven, carries a book bag, and wears a hat that says “FUCK ME, I’M IRISH.”

Jesse grabs a six-pack of Heineken and a protein bar.  He pulls a credit card out of his wallet with a young redheaded girl’s face in the corner.  Jesse swipes the card, punches in a PIN number, and throws the card into the trashcan on his way out.

After leaving the beer in the car, we walk down the street to a small Irish pub.  I buy two beers to save Jesse the time of scamming free drinks.  The pub has a pool table, and we play a game or two, which he loses.  A fat, middle-aged mechanic is impatiently waiting to play, making snide comments at Jesse’s long and painful shots.  Jesse looks across the building at the bartender, who gives a slight nod.  Jesse swivels towards the mechanic and sputters, “I bet I could beat YOU.”

Mechanic: “Boy, save your money.”
Jesse:  “Come on, man!  You’re standing there talkin’ shit about how I play, but I could kick your ass!  Any fuckin’ day, man!”

Of courseNeedless to say, the mechanic is sucked in.  Jesse loses a game against him, then another, and then takes him for a hundred dollars the third time around.  The mechanic is beet beet-red, but doesn’t pick a fight.  He just leaves the bar.

Pat, the bartender, walks over to the pool table and they clasp fists and half-hug.  Jesse gives Pat twenty dollars from his wallet.  They, and they chit-chat about boxing for a few minutes.  Jesse asks us if we want a bump of cocaine, which Pat and I decline, and then disappears into the bathroom for a half of an hour.

Pat has a good thing going with Jesse.  He’s Jesse’s worked out the right nights, and can spot the right people.  Jesse He also knows he needs permission before he takes any mark.  There are regulars, who are off limits.  In fact, Jesse isn’t even allowed to work when a regular customer is in the bar.  The best time is late at night on week nights.  Students, truckers, and other passers-through are all fair game.  Jesse has similar arrangements in a half-dozen other bars.

But Pat isn’t exactly Jesse’s friend; i.  It’s an purely economic relationship.  Jesse doesn’t really have friends.  He has a bulldog-faced girlfriend who tolerates his presence, and a few business partners, who tolerate his presence, but he has only been able to rely on himself.  And even Jesse barely tolerates Jesse’s presence.  The lone con artist, working in New York, may have sounded romantic as little as five years ago—a small step away from Jesse’s early dreams of miraculous disappearances and narrow escapes—.  But years of but a certain amount of loneliness and self-loathing comes with the territoryhave gradually worn down the eternally cheerful-faced Jesse.  Cons don’t like cons, and they stay out of each other’s business.  Regular people don’t like cons, because they’re cons.  Only a magician gets to fool people for money and be publicly rewarded for it: when he bends the rules and suspends reality onstage, people clap for him.
Jesse is a magician at heart.  When people see a magician bend the rules and suspend reality on stage, people clap.

WhenEventually Jesse re-emerges, he rubs hisrubbing his nose furiously.  The time is 3:30 in the morning.  There is one person left in the bar, a young man playing video poker.  Jesse nudges me and says, “Watch this.”  We wait until the player goes outside for a cigarette break.  Jesse goes over to the poker machine, which still has the man’s credit card information.  He buys a hundred dollars worth of credits on the man’s card, and then waits for his return.  As the man comes back through the door, Jesse starts to play his first hand of poker.

The young man says “WAIT!” and explains that he still has credits on the machine.  Jesse explains that he just put sixty dollars of cash into the machine, thinking it was vacant.  Pat the bartender solves the problem by giving Jesse a hundred dollars in cash.  Jesse comments that it’s lucky he hadn’t played a hand yet; i.  n fact, he has just stolen a hundred dollars from the man’sThe young man just paid Jesse a hundred dollars from his credit card.   The young man cashes out, leaves the bar, and Jesse slips Pat another twenty.
It’s time for Jesse to go home.  It’s been a solid night’s work.  Jesse asks me where he should drop me off, but he’s drunk and high, and holds onto the pool table as he walks.  I tell him that I’m calling a cab.  He looks crestfallen.  I am clearlyClearly I am not rock n’ roll.  But Aa second later he brightens up again.

“Alright, but let’s have one more beer, alright?”

I buy the beer, and he tells me to put my hands together like I’m praying, and then put my thumbs on the table.  I tell him no, but he says that he’ll revoke permission to write about him if I don’t, so I do.  Jesse tells me to hold still, as he balances my beer on my thumbs.  A pint glass, filled to the brim, is precariously balanced on my two thumbs.  I’m trapped.  If I move, the pint glass spills.  Pat grins.  Jesse pats me on the shoulder and leaves.
“Catch you around, asshole!”

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