But I was always at the bottom of the bill, as “Kevin Hart from Soul Plane.” I’d show up and do a fifteen-minute set for a few hundred people, then slink off stage. Usually, by the time the headliner came on, the theater would still be only half-full, and the promoters would bleed money while Glenn got his guaranteed payment. At the worst of these shows, only fifty people showed up.
After a period of doing one or two package shows a month, I became frustrated. Promoters and audiences were associating my name with bad experiences. I mentioned this to Glenn, and he responded, “Don’t sweat it. You’re making your money, brother.”
There are two kinds of hustlers. There are the hustlers who work inside the business, like Glenn Ruskow: You look them in the eye and you know you can trust them. They follow the rules but they know the loopholes. They’re in it for the money, and they’ll do everything in their power to get as much of yours as possible, short of actually doing anything dishonest. What keeps them in check is that they want money so that they can be safe, comfortable, and accepted by the Joneses (yeah, them again), so they’re not willing to take any risks by ripping someone off.
Then there are the hustlers who work outside the business, like Terrence Lock. Na’im introduced me to him. He was booking gigs for a few other comedians on the scene, and he started pursuing me as a client. You look these kinds of hustlers in the eye and you know you shouldn’t trust them. But you start listening to their words, and they say exactly what you want to hear, and you see that they can make anything happen by flapping their mouth, so you forget about your first instinct and decide to trust them anyway.
These hustlers don’t know the loopholes because they don’t follow the rules. They’re not actually in it for the money but for everything else—the fame, the sex, the love of the hustle. They don’t want safety or stability, because they need the high of living on the edge of being broke, arrested, or shot at any moment. They’re your best friend, as long as you serve a purpose—and when you don’t, they’ve never heard of you before.
“Hey, Kev,” Terrence told me, “I don’t know what kind of work Glenn got going for you, but I can get you some spots on the side.”
I didn’t like the work Glenn was getting me, and there wasn’t enough of it, so I decided to try an outside-the-system hustler. With the amount of debt I was in, I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Okay, Terrence, let’s see what you can do.”
The first thing Terrence did was set about spending my money. “You need a road manager,” he insisted. “I got someone for you.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve been doing this by myself just fine. I’m not one of those pampered artists who needs someone else to dress him in the morning and drive him everywhere.”
“Let me ask you: How much money are you leaving on the table because you aren’t negotiating the best deals with the clubs? How many times do you finish a gig and the owner says he’ll pay you later, and you never hear from him again? A road manager is an investment. The money you give him, you get back times ten because his job is to make sure you get paid. And he frees up time for you to do what you do and be an artist.”
Terrence went on: “A road manager’s job is also to take care of everything for you so that you have no problems when you get to the venue. There are the problems of flights, hotel rooms, and transportation from airport to hotel, from hotel to venue, from venue to party, from party back to hotel. All this stuff can be coordinated by a road manager and tailored to your likes and dislikes.”
He had a strong case. Then again, every time he opened his mouth, he had a strong case.
A few days later, I found myself at lunch with Terrence and someone who looked like the guys I’d seen sniffing seats on the public bus in Philadelphia. He introduced himself as Nate Smith. He was thin but had a potbelly and graying, uneven muttonchop sideburns. When he spoke, he said ten words for every one he actually wanted to say. “You know, Kev, it’s like this, you see what I mean, I do the work, right, I ain’t, like, one of them kind of, you know, them damn guys who you see all the time out there like that who’s not doing what you call the work, if you know what I’m talking about.”
The only way this guy is gonna get me my money is if promoters pay him to stop talking, I thought.
After the meeting, I told Terrence: “Nate’s too old.”
Nate was working for another comedian at the time. This comedian was obsessive-compulsive, and treated him like a piece of shit, calling him names and threatening to fire him every day. If Nate handed him a stack of money and every bill wasn’t facing the same way, he’d throw them all on the floor and make Nate pick them up.
When Terrence told him that I wasn’t interested, Nate responded: “You tell Kev he doesn’t have to pay me. Just let me get out with him and show him what I can do.”
As soon as Terrence said this, I knew that Nate, despite my first impression, was a rare find: dedicated, persistent, and willing to work hard and be judged by the results. “If he wants to do this on a trial basis and see where it goes, then fine,” I told Terrence. “But I’m gonna pay him.”
The three of us were going to beat those clubs up together. We had the future all planned out. Then Torrei got pregnant.
66
* * *
CHAPTER 8 + CHAPTER 58 = CHAPTER 66
In the Hart family tradition, it was an accident. Torrei was feeling nauseous in the mornings, so she went to a convenience store and bought a pregnancy test. We broke the Hart family tradition, however, by being excited about the news.
I wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready. But no one is ever ready. You become ready by experiencing it, and I couldn’t wait to experience fatherhood.
We weren’t in the best place in our relationship, and once the mood swings kicked in, we were in a worse place. A cloud of permanent rage settled over the house. Some nights, I had to wait until Torrei was asleep before going to bed, because I was worried that she’d try to harm me in my sleep. One day, after neighbors called the cops on us because we were arguing so loudly, I made a questionable decision. The math was as follows:
Torrei + Kevin = Fighting
Baby + Fighting = Miscarriage
Torrei – Kevin = No Fighting
Baby – Fighting = No Miscarriage
I rented an apartment a few blocks away and moved out. I didn’t know what else to do.
Torrei was hot about it, and I didn’t blame her. But my intention was solely to keep everybody—her, me, the baby—from getting hurt.
When I first moved out, it was like paradise on earth. It was so quiet in that apartment. No one was mad at me for anything I said and did—or didn’t say and didn’t do. No one asked me twenty questions every time I left the house and required proof of where I was going. I couldn’t remember feeling so free since I’d moved out of my mom’s place.