A poem from 1984 | Hustle baby love, sweet desire, it ain’t their heart that’s afire.

First how this poem came to be, scroll down to read the poem’s text or listen above.

Hell’s Kitchen in the early 1980s

As a young woman in Manhattan, actually, a girl – when I started to work there. After work a few times each week for a couple of years, I went to the Clark Center for dance classes. Lenore Latimer was my primary instructor in modern dance. She was classically beautiful, challenging us and supporting us simultaneously.

Sometimes I attended other classes during the week, too, ballet and afro-ethnic dance. It was a fantastic atmosphere. At the time, it was located at 939 Eighth Avenue. It was filled with the hopes and dreams of aspiring and continuing performers in theatre and dance. Live music, original choreography, 1.5-hour sessions, barre work, floor work, then we would dance. Frequently in her class, we would move in pairs. We followed the choreography. The classes were packed, and then we would all change and smoke after class. But this poem isn’t about my beautiful, youthful memories. It is about Baby Love, as I call her in this poem. It’s about one girl, one child in particular, that I would pass by on my way through Hell’s Kitchen so I could express my emotions by moving my body.

She was a real person with real feelings. Here is how I came to see her standing in the doorway looking to serve her clients, I mean forced to have sex with strangers for money that she would give to someone else.

Her body wasn’t her own.

Baby Love was probably 13 years old, maybe 14 or 15. It’s doubtful, but she could have been 16. She was YOUNG. Puberty was something she transitioned through not that long ago. She was smoking standing in a doorway. Her face was chubby, she had baby fat on her. She was a child prostitute.

It was the early 80s, 1984 to be exact when I wrote this poem. We didn’t say ‘sex workers’ then, and the truth is that this girl – she didn’t consciously choose her career. Getting fucked or giving hand jobs and blow jobs to strange men who could’ve been her daddy. She was a baby. The majority of men who paid to have sex with her were pedophiles. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, I played with my Barbie dolls until I turned 13.

Five years later starting work in Manhattan in the early summer of 1981 at the age of 18, by August 1st, my part-time summer job turned into a full-time gig. By the time I ended up at the Clark Center [1] for dance classes, it was 1983. I was 20 years old, so I could tell how old Baby Love was at the time. Looking into her eyes as I passed, noticing her short skirt and painted face, there was no judgement, only curiosity. How did she get there? Was she numb to her situation? Really, thinking how wildly fucked up that was for her.

My world had its own challenges but was in such opposition and contrast to hers. Here’s the poem:

Hustle Baby Love,
     Sweet desire
It ain't their heart that's afire.

They want you, Baby Love,
      Their rigid desire
Hard for you tonight (if the price is right).

Give it to 'em, Baby Love.
     Hot desire,
Your innocence, instills the fire.

Who will you be tonight?
     Hostess to the fantasy flight!
     Bondage queen, licking cream?
Do you like being a wet dream?

What's inside you Baby Love?
     Does your agony scream,
     Does your pain yearn - to know - what it is to dream?