The meanings of "a hustler" or "a hustle" can be interpreted in many ways, but in gay urban society, the norm is young men providing sexual services to "customers" in exchange for money or other kinds of compensation such as gifts or intoxicants to their "boys." While it's easy for many to dismiss such individuals as scum of the streets (as with female prostitutes), hustlers often come from troubled backgrounds, and it's crucial that we not dehumanize them. As dartboards for the ills of contemporary society (poverty, racism/sexism, homophobia/transphobia, sexual/substance/physical abuse, mental illness, HIV/STDs, etc), young men and women that turn to the streets, alleys, cheap hotels and the Internet for survival are reflections and manifestations of a greater societal collapse. In the pages of Hustler Rave XXX, Latino poets David Caleb Acevedo and Charlie Vázquez present portrait character studies of very human urban hustlers that seek to answer our strange sense of fascination with these young men.