Before Watching Hustle and Flow

I have decided that I think the best way to approach blogging about Hustle and Flow would be to write one blog before watching the movie, and one after. This is because, of all the people in this class, I am the closest to the world portrayed in the movie. I worked in the strip clubs. I have been around the local music scene since I was a teenager. I mean, I've actually met and hung out with Triple Six Mafia, Saliva, and Muck Sticky, to name a few. Also, I was at PT's the night that the movie makers of Hustle and Flow came in and filmed there. So, anyway, I think that a before and after would work great (I'm watching the movie with Krista tonight).

When I worked at the strip club, I met a lot of women with even more stories to tell. Some of them were really sad. Husbands died, leaving the woman to take care of her kids with no money and afraid. Husbands left with all the money, car, and house, and the woman has been a housewife all her life and has no job skills. A lot of them were there to pay for college, like me. Some of them got kicked out of their parent's house, for one reason or another, and didn't know what else to do. My point is, many people automatically look down on strippers and prostitutes, calling them drug-addicted whores who don't want to actually work and try to have a good life, and god forbid they have kids! It makes me sad when people say things like this, because I know that so many of them got dealt a really shitty hand in life and they had nowhere else to turn. I mean, if your babies where screaming because they are so hungry that they are miserable, and you know that if you don't get some food somehow they are going to die, but you just can't get a job because you have no job skills, what would you do? What about if your babies where violently ill and you don't have money for the doctor, and you can't get a job, what would you do? Become a stripper or a prostitute or let your babies die? Most women would choose the former. Thankfully, it never came down to that dire of a situation for me, but I did work there because my family just couldn't afford to send me to college, and I had to pay all my own bills because I wasn't allowed to live with my mother. Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of the women in that world are drug-addicted whores who want to get the most out of life with the least amount of work, and put their kids in danger, and have boyfriends or husbands who beat them. However, a lot of them are great moms or great college students. My point is, everyone in that place, even though it is a bad place where people who are lost turn when they have nowhere else to go, is just a piece of the world like any other job. Those people come together because they all have one thing in common - they don't know what else to do. I saw a lot of really horrible things in the ten years that I worked there. I was the victim of some really horrible things, but believe it or not, there was wonderfully brilliant moments that shined through the darkness brighter than anything I had ever seen. For example, my now dead friend Corie. If I had never worked there, I would never have met her, and I wouldn't know that there can be people in this world who do not have an evil bone in their body, and don't even know how to manipulate or be malicious. I thank God for that. Even though she was murdered, I believe that I was meant to know her, and to go through the pain of losing her. I mean, maybe I didn't realize how unique she was and how blessed I was before she died. I saw some really incredible acts of kindness. One time, one of the dancers let a girl that she had just met move into her apartment with her kids, because they were homeless. Another time, a dancer gave a girl she barely knew a car so she could get to and from work and take her kids to school.

As for the music scene, that one is a lot like the strip clubs, only with clothes...sometimes. Drugs run rampant in that scene, just like they do at the club. Men beat their women, just like at the club. Women don't know that they don't need a man to take care of them, just like at the club. Women go out and sell their bodies, just to return home and give everything they made to their boyfriend/husband/pimp, whatever. I have been backstage at every single venue in this city, except the FedEx Forum, and I have seen just as many horrible things there as in the strip club. In fact, one time when I was backstage during a Saliva show, Josie told his manager to get him some coke or he wouldn't go onstage, in front of everyone, and I mean A LOT of people, and nobody even batted an eyelash. Both scenes are Drugs, Sex, and Rock and Roll, as the saying goes. Most of the time, the two scenes just blur together into one scene - the strippers date the DJ's/musicians, or the DJ's/musicians end up DJing at the clubs, or go to the clubs all the time to do their drugs and get drunk. I have hung out with Saliva, Solace For Now, 666, Muck Sticky, Egypt Central, etc. - all in the club (some backstage at their shows). I've even done gigs in this city, with my not-so-great band God Shaped Hole.

Anyway, my point is that both scenes are pretty much one and the same, and everyone who finds themselves in that world is just a lost soul who's trying to find his or her place in the world and make it to the next day. There is so much sadness, if you take the time to put down preconceived notions and just feel what they feel. Some of them rise above it and get out and move on to live normal, healthy lives, like me. Some of them stay in it until they are old and can't do anything anymore, and are still miserable. Some of them die, like Corie. But all of them are still human beings that deserve a chance to be understood.