50 EXCERPTS: #9

If he ever thought about how he ended up doing what he did for a living, in an entirely alternative -- well, okay, illegitimate -- field, Grant would have been hard-pressed for an answer. But he seldom thought about it, so it didn't really matter. What mattered to him as each day drew to a close was that he was working, putting bread on the table, and... that was about it.

The handful of times he did think about it, he thought it was a mostly wrong but inescapable career path, to the extent that being a professional thief was a career. Which is certainly was, to him.

Growing up in a fading industrial city in southern New Jersey, close but not too close to Philadelphia, Grant watched the rich get richer and the more numerous poor get poorer. Just like the song promised, except without a catchy tune. That's why he had to get out of there. Not only was it no place to live as a gay man, it was no place to make a decent living, unless you were fortunate enough -- or lucky enough, which he figured was about the same thing -- to be one of those rich getting richer.

But it wasn't a Marxian appraisal of economic inequality -- not that he would know Karl from Zeppo from Richard -- that led Grant Lambert to his alternative economic lifestyle.

It was New York City.

from Straight Lies

Kensington Publishing Corp.
April, 2009

Buy it at Hastings



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