Tapping into The Wire by Peter L. Beilenson

Author:Peter L. Beilenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2012-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

TEENAGE PREGNANCY AND STDs

SHARDENE’S ESCAPE

Shardene’s life as a dancer in a “gentlemen’s club” put her at risk for sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Providing birth control and testing for STDs gives people options and allows young women to finish school and to escape the cycle of poverty. THE WIRE/HBO ©

A FREQUENT SCENE OF THE ACTION in the first year’s episodes of The Wire is the fictional west Baltimore bar known as Orlando’s Gentleman’s Club. In spite of the fancy name, it’s really no place for gentlemen and is, in fact, a stripper bar. The Orlando in the name is an employee of the Avon Barksdale drug organization. The day’s proceeds from all drugs sold on street corners and in public housing complexes make their way to the second floor offices of Orlando’s, where Barksdale’s chief lieutenant, Russell “Stringer” Bell, glowers, counts the money, and glowers some more.

It is here that we see young D’Angelo Barksdale, Avon’s nephew, who has recently been acquitted of a murder because his uncle bribed a witness. In spite of his guilt, D’Angelo doesn’t seem the cold-blooded type when compared with Avon or Stringer Bell. Though D’Angelo—or Dee as he is called—has a girlfriend who is the mother of his child, we see him falling hard for one of Orlando’s strippers.

Shardene Innes, however, isn’t just another prostitute at Orlando’s. She is quick to point out to Dee that she doesn’t do drugs and she isn’t a hooker as are most of the other dancers there. Still, she recognizes an opportunity when it comes her way, as D’Angelo overstates his authority, bragging about being his uncle’s right hand man.

When Shardene becomes sexually involved with D’Angelo, played out in Episodes 8 and 9 of The Wire’s first season, she learns about his girlfriend and his eleven-month-old son. In a telling moment, where Dee seems torn between feelings of shame and the need to act the swaggering male, he demeans both Shardene and his girlfriend with a dismissive sexual insult. It’s enough to trigger the disillusionment of Shardene, who has already given voice to anxieties about her uncertain future, by saying, “I can’t stay pretty forever.”

In the eyes of Detective Lester Freamon of the major crimes squad investigating Avon Barksdale, Shardene appears the perfect candidate to be recruited as an informant. He wins Shardene’s loyalty by showing her pictures of the body of a dead stripper—a friend of hers who overdosed at a Barksdale gang party. Her body had been wrapped in a carpet and tossed into a dumpster. Later, when Dee is surprised to find Shardene clearing out of his apartment, she says, “Do I look like someone you can roll up in a rug and throw in the trash?”

While The Wire never directly touches on syphilis or teen pregnancy, in the character of Shardene it nevertheless strikes at the heart of those issues. In depicting the casual debasement of women, The Wire in Season 1 begins to connect the dots we too often pretend not to see between the abuse of power and the undermining of social order.

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