Houses and castles.

chapter 1

I met a guy some few months back at a friend of a friend's party, we started talking after discovering we both shared similar distaste for the whole extravagant setting in the name of a house warming ceremony but we were both forced to attend and keep appearance for relationship sake, he asked me to describe myself in one word... Guess what I told him? and while you're at it try to imagine is reaction.

'A hustler?'
The guy was shocked, Everyone within earshot started laughing and lara made sure to give me a earful on our way back home on how I managed to embarass (my group of friends) with my "low life" mentality.... She never really did like me so I knew she was just making unnecessary fuss about the whole thing, I ignored her as always.

Lesson no.1
Never argue with someone you know hates you more than a cow dungs.

I consider myself a hustler, well nearly all the thousands of people in lagos struggling to make ends meet consider themselves the same thing.... Even commercial sex workers as well but be rest assured I'm not one of those who would sell my body for any reason, Maybe I might have considered going into that if the mere though of intimacy doesn't disgust me so much after my horrible experience but the poor guy whose name is TY or TK as he introduced himself must be thinking I'm that sort of girl ( add the fact that lara coerced me to dress the part of a desperate hooker) so I immediately became a taboo to him, he gently excused himself from my "soiled" presence and never came back for the rest of the night.
I

t was rather unfortunate since I was starting to take a fancy to him and if you know me well then you should know that's very weird and unusual, between juggling jobs, I really have no chance for a stable love life.

Personally I feel many people usually misinterpret what is meant by hustling because there is a stereotype attached to it.
My profound definition of a hustler is; anyone who is struggling to make it for the very bottom list of heartbreakingly poor to manageably comfortable so that means it fits in right in the middle of both classes, people like me work all kinds of jobs day in day out, we're jacks of all trade and masters of "lots" not none as the saying goes and no job is too low as long as it fetch in an income for us to survive on.
I

've worked any kind of off job you can think off just to scrap a living, as a washer woman, a cleaner, a caretaker, a sales girl, lesson teacher, a secretary, a delivery agent, an uber driver and even a mechanic..... You Just name it.

I became exposed to the struggles of the hustling world for the first time at the age young of fifteen, I was preparing to write my Waec but my parents.... I mean to say my mum didn't have the resources to pay my fees, by then my dad had gone into his dark mode, asking him or thinking he would help was out of question, he had stopped working, preferring to spending every minute of his day drowning his sorrow and misery with cheap alcohol at different bars.

I got my first Job with an old wealthy couple who needed a cleaning maid to come in during the weekends and I took it up, they paid me five thousand every week and I remember collecting it each time with a big smile on my face because it felt like diamond to me. Later as the years passed by, I came to realize they weren't doing me a favour as I had thought back then, they simply exploited my naivety and paid me very cheap for my service.

They lived in what I can describe as a mansion and I worked a job meant for more than four people at a go, cooking, washing and cleaning until my hand bleed and I would pass out for days in exhaustion, my mum used to cry all the time for me to leave the job but many factors contributed to the reasons why I couldn't.
Apart from the "slavish pay" I also had a crush on their young "Americana" grandson who happens to be in the same school as I, he was my biggest motivation to stay even when my hand bleed from washing and cleaning so much.
H