Down These Mean Streets

Piri has been homeless for three months when he meets Pane and his sister, Lorry, at a bar. They offer him a place to sleep, and the sixteen-year-old Piri soon starts a sexual relationship with the thirty-three-year-old Lorry. This relationship, “all natural, all good, all as innocent and pure as anything could be in Home, Sweet Harlem,” lasts for a few months (97).Of Lorry, Piri says that he “couldn’t dig her the way she wanted me to” and he leaves her for a young single mother (97).It isn’t long before he leaves her as well, stealing ten dollars from her in the process.

Needing money, Piri looks for work and applies for a job as a door-to-door salesman. A Catholic man named Mr. Christian interviews Piri, who pretends to be a devout Catholic in order to get on Mr. Christian’s good side. Although Mr. Christian tells Piri that work will be available soon, Piri’s friend, Louie, is offered a job right away: “The difference between me and Louie was he was white” (103). When, later on in his life, Piri relates this story to a black friend, his friend’s reply is that “a Negro faces that all the time”, to which Piri responds, “I know that […] but I wasn’t a Negro then.