Bagging Up

What was I going to do? I’d got myself into a very tricky situation, and I had a lot at risk. Courtesy of a very generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, I was officially engaged in a three-year ethnographic study where I was going to explore how poor people cope in the city’s public housing high-rises, otherwise known as the ‘projects’. This was going to be my ticket to the world of academia. Looking back, all I can say is: what arrogance. What a sap I was. Give a guy like me a wooden nickel and he’s gonna to try to pass it off as the real thing.

So, here I was, a kid from the lower rungs of the suburbs, desperate to learn about ‘real life’ in the city, thinking I could penetrate to the heart of what’s so rotten at the core of the American dream. I was going to write the exposé that was going to make me famous.

I started with step one in the dissertation for dummies handbook: the interview. Interview questions in hand, I climbed up the piss-saturated stairwells, past the pornographic graffiti, knocking on doors which looked as if someone had recently tried to kick them down. On those rare occasions when an occupant managed to stagger to the door, I’d be asking questions like:

How does it feel to be black and poor?

(a) very bad;

(b) somewhat bad;

(c) neither bad nor good;

(d) somewhat good;

(e) very good.

I kid you not. Problem was I needed to use these brain-dead questions from 50 years ago so that I could get compatible results when I fed my stuff into the computer, searching for those hidden patterns in big data that produce good papers – papers that get cited a lot in the right journals and put you on the first rung of academic stardom.

As anyone with a shred of common sense can imagine, I got absolutely nowhere with my interviews. But I continued to toil away with these ridiculous questions – fully approved by my supervisors – until I met Junior and his crew. Then everything changed. He looked at my questionnaire and laughed. ‘Hey, get real,’ he said. ‘This is the kind of question you need to be asking’:

Let’s say X and Y are both offering you a good deal on product Z.

X says if you pay 20% higher than the usual rate, he’ll give you a 10% discount in 12 months’ time.

Y says that he’ll give you a 10% discount now if you agree to buy from him at the regular price in 12 months’ time.

Which one would you go for?

Junior taught me how to solve that equation and turned my thinking round. It all had to do with decreasing risk and increasing productivity, which I could appreciate.

I don’t know why, but Junior took a liking to me. Maybe it was because he couldn’t quite place me. My father was an Iraqi interpreter who had worked for the US military and had been granted a safe haven in Cleveland. There he met my mother, a second-generation Mexican-American with no interest whatsoever in ‘Chicana power’. What can I say? I looked and acted a bit unusual. My natural field of research should have been something like cross-cultural marriages. But that was far too close to home. Better to catapult myself into an environment in which I didn’t know my ass from my elbow. I think this amused him. And in his business, he didn’t have many opportunities for uncomplicated humor.

Where I was conducting my ‘research’, Junior was the man who counted. He ran the drugs trade, creamed off a percentage of the prostitutes’ profits, took ‘protection money’ from small businesses. He organized childcare, put on weekend-long block parties with free food and ferried people to the hospital – city ambulances avoided the tower blocks as if they were plague pits. So my association with him gave me plenty of street cred. After all, I was running with a star. I could just about envision an HBO series that left The Wire in the dust.

I had settled into a comfortable routine, learning what I needed to know for my dissertation from Junior’s handpicked informants. This was a policy that my professors definitely wouldn’t have approved of. But what did I care? Dissertation chapters were practically flying out of my printer. I felt like I’d hit a seam of gold. So I was feeling pretty laid back one hot July afternoon when Junior and I sauntered up the stairs to the apartment which stored the product that made him the most money.

Great, I’ll get to see it all in action, I thought. I imagined a whole new dissertation chapter ready to go within a week. Everything was rosy. I should have known better. Because as soon as we’re inside the place Junior says: ‘Okay, bro, today you’re bagging up’, and he gives me that look that stops everybody dead in their tracks.

‘You must be joking!’ I say. ‘I don’t have experience with this kind of shit. I’d just fuck it up!’

He continues to give me that look. And he says: ‘You’ve been hanging around with us for a long time now, right?’ ‘Yeah, I guess.’ ‘I think it’s over two years, is that about it?’ ‘I suppose.’ ‘Okay, don’t you think there might be a price to pay? A guy who’s hanging around, who’s pretending maybe he’s one of us – you know, expectations build up, people keep asking questions, they’re interested to know what your game is.’

‘But I don’t have any game. I’m just working on my paper.’

‘Oh, come on now, stop that bullshit. Of course you have a game. And if you don’t even know you’ve got a game then you’re dumber than I thought.’

‘Come on, Junior’, I say with a laugh that sounds like I’m choking. ‘You know I’ve been straight with you all along.’

‘Yeah, I may know that. But how about everybody else? It’s not just me who’s asking questions. I think we’ll all be a whole lot happier if you give us a little something back. A little work experience. So here we are. This shit’s got to get bagged, and you’re going to do it. If not, you’re not leaving here. It’s as simple as that.’

This is a pretty convincing argument. Especially since Junior is 6 foot 4 and has a black belt in karate. If this is part of Junior’s game plan, what can I do? I just stand there looking like a sheep waiting for the axe to come down on my poor scrawny neck.

First, Junior gets out the bags and starts cutting out two-inch squares of plastic. Then he gives me a handful of these little pieces of plastic and puts a mound of ‘the product’ in the center of the table. My first try is a disaster. It won’t stay put and I can’t fold it right because my hands are sweating so much. Junior remains cool, as if he has all the time in the world.

And slowly, under his expert tutelage, I start to get the hang of it, like a kid learning how to ride a bike. By the time I’ve done a half dozen I’m flying. For once I’m not just standing around, taking notes. I’ve got an actual job here, one that I can do pretty well. ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I think I’ve got a real talent for this!’ I smile, and it’s genuine this time. ‘Yeah, I think you do.’ Junior says, and for the first time – maybe the first time in my life – I feel like I really belong.

But that’s the beginning of another story.