Pimp: The Story of My Life

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Twenty years later, while idly looking from the window of a plush hotel suite I would see something familiar in the white-haired stooped figure of a garbage collector on the street three stories down. Only the few Negro lawyers and physicians lived as well, looked as well. Mama was president of several civic clubs. For the first time we were living the good life. Slim goes to his aunt's home, finds another hooker and starts trying to pimp again. He gains a number of whores, including Rachel who will work with him for 13 years. I choked up, stopped talking to her beneath the silent sod, and thought about Henry lying rotten, forgotten in his grave. I would have more sympathy for Iceberg Slim, trying to find the best way to hustle, if he hadn’t been such a brutal asshole. The world has never been a fair place, and the rules are never applied evenly. A banker can write a loan and front load all the interest, but a loan shark who does the same thing is breaking the law. The pharmaceutical companies can make trillions pumping out drugs to a population who doesn’t need them, but if a drug dealer does the same thing, he goes to jail. At 18 years old, Iceberg Slim, then known as Young Blood, decides to become a pimp.

I guess three of the very important reasons are lying asleep in the bedroom across the hall. I can see their peaceful, happy faces. They don’t know how hard and often discouraging it is for me to earn a living for them in the square world. Thorn, Jessie (June 18, 2006). "Dave Chappelle Surprise SF Show Recap". MaximumFun . Retrieved February 25, 2015. I didn’t know at the time that the banker would never press another coin into my hand, that for the next thirty-five years this last day would be remembered vividly as the final day of real happiness for me. She can do more with a swipe (willie) than a monkey can do with a banana... she’s like a rubber doll!” I’m going to need to justify that, so here’s a little taste of Slim’s masterful lambasting: “Listen square-ass bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some worthy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy bitch, if I shit in your face you gotta love it and open your mouth wide.” I couldn’t come up with anything remotely as solid in a hundred years. With that sample alone, and considering that many rappers consider him an influence, it’s no wonder the word ‘bitch’ has enjoyed such proliferation in their craft. Needless to say, if objectifying and degrading women bothers you, “Pimp” should probably be removed from your to-read list.

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I have had many interesting and even humorous experiences in this new life. They will have to wait for now. I see my little family is awake. I’ll have to light the heater. I can’t let them get up in the early morning chill. Mama missed her calling. She should have been a film actress. With only a bit part, an Oscar a season would have been a lead-pipe cinch for her.

After all he had done to us, she still had a terrible itch for the bastard. That beating was good for her, it cured the itch. On his first night in Chicago, in the spring of 1938, he sees a man beat an unconscious woman almost to death in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. The man then lifts the woman onto his shoulder, throws her into his car and drives off. Slim turns to another man in the crowd: In reality, there are no practical lessons on pandering sex to be learned in this book. Despite that supposed reading by fans, I seriously doubt that it had a substantial effect on those who aspire to a criminal lifestyle. Like any potboiler it is as much wish-fulfillment as provocation. Rather, the supposed style presented as the mystery and allure of the pimp is, no doubt, simply a cover for the underlying and constant violence or threat of violence that is the heart of the process. It is the violence that is truly the method of a pimp. The patter is just the veneer. Learning about that veneer cannot truly prepare someone for a lifestyle filled with the most atrocious of crimes any more than reading a book about the one inch punch will turn the reader into Bruce Lee. Miriam Bale (July 18, 2013). "Movie Review: The Lessons of a Pimp - Ice-T Produces a Documentary About Iceberg Slim". The New York Times . Retrieved November 11, 2013.I can see this book being used in middle-management seminars on how to keep your workforce motivated. Replace the word "pimp" with "manager" and "whore" with "subordinate" and you have something fresh for a seminar. In his special The Bird Revelation, comedian Dave Chappelle used the life of Iceberg Slim and the world of his book Pimp as a parable for his experience in show business. [18] [19] I paused looking up at the sky, hoped she was up there and could hear me, then I went on, “I just wish you were alive now, you would be so proud of me. I am not a lawyer as you always wanted me to be, but Mama, you have two beautiful grandchildren and another on the way, and a fine daughter-in-law who looks a lot like you when you were young.” For many tortured years she would suffer her guilt. She had made that terrible decision on that long ago weekend.

This is one brutal book, and a damn good one. Slim writes with a fire that you rarely see even from great authors at their best. He doesn’t sugarcoat anything, nor does he lace his narrative with apologies to reassure delicate readers. He simply gives a straightforward account of a cruel world in which the cruelest rise to the top… at least for a while. The first time I saw Steve he was sitting getting his nails manicured in the shop. Mama was smiling into his handsome olive-tinted face as she buffed his nails. The first thing Iceberg needs is a whore, and after being made a fool of more than a few times, he finally meets a woman who fits the bill. ”Through the blue mirror I zeroed my eyes in on the target. My ass bone starched on stiff point. Her big peepers were two sexy dancers in the velvet midnight of her cute Pekingese face.” Both Sweet and Iceberg learned hardness and hatred from the traumas of their youth. As Bessel Van Der Kolk said in his book on trauma, The Body Keeps the Score, “Hurt people hurt other people.”Mama and I had come to Indianapolis from Chicago, where since the time when she was six months pregnant, my father had begun to show his true colors as an irresponsible, white-spats-wearing bum. Dave Chappelle famously turned down 50 million dollars for a project because he had a crisis of consciousness regarding his personal integrity. In his show "The Bird Revelation", he explained his reasons by drawing parallels to Iceberg's book about the inner workings of the male-dominated sex trade and its messages about capitalism in general. Here's the bit in question. Donnelly, Matt (February 26, 2010). "Art imitating Rob Weiss: 'Entourage' archetype knows 'How to Make It in America' ". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved February 25, 2015. Do not let the title fool you—this is not a tale of braggadocio. This is a heartbreaking story about a confused little boy who took a few wrong turns while trekking through life and ended up in one of the slimmest (and yet one of the oldest) trades—the pimp game. His agonized eyes walled up at her as he wailed, “Please don’t leave me. You are sure to kill me if you do. I ain’t done nothing. If I have, forgive me.”