Pimp: The Story Of My Life (Canons)

by Iceberg Slim

A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.

A pimp with an overly fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

No pimp with a brain in his head cuts loose a young beautiful whore with lots of mileage left in her.

Two sights I ain’t never seen and that is a pretty bulldog, and an ugly white woman.’

He took the bait like a rapist in a nudist colony for the blind.

It was a Saturday night around ten. The vice section was overrun with Johns. It seemed that every white man in town was out there, scratch in one hand and rod in the other, ripping and running after the black whores with the widest, blackest asses.

‛Always remember whether you be sucker or hustler in the world out there, you’ve got that vital edge if you can iron-clad your feelings.

‛Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest.’

‛He pulled my belt from my trousers on a chair. He tightened the belt around my arm above the elbow. My veins stood out like blue rope. He stabbed the needle into a vein in the hollow. The glass tube turned red. I lay there freezing to death waiting for the smack to slug the sickness and pain out of me.’

‛Preston, I’m not hip to the murder game. I don’t want to get hip to it. I don’t want to blow his brains out on that sidewalk and waste them. I want his brains to work inside my skull.

‛You’ll be all right in a minute, Kid. You thought I was bullshitting when I told you I had the best stuff in town.’ I still couldn’t say anything. I felt like the top of my skull had been crushed in. It was like I had been blown apart and all that was left were my eyes. Then tiny prickly feet of ecstasy started dancing through me. I heard melodious bells tolling softly inside my skull. I looked down at my hands and thighs. A thrill shot through me. Surely they were the most beautiful in the Universe. I felt a superman’s surge of power.

‛What the hell, so this broad’s got a prematurely- gray cat. Maybe it’s a little off-center. If it’s odd it will be a novelty kick for me. She’s so beautiful the tricks won’t notice a tiny irregularity after I’ve turned her out.’

I said, ‛Bitch, I got an idea for that cat of yours. You gotta take a stiff brush and brush the hair straight down every time you think about it. Put some hair grower on it until you got maybe a four-inch cone. Your tricks will pant to bury their beaks in it. It will make your cat unique with that extra dimension.’

‛I got a thousand ways to drive ’em goofy. That last broad I flipped, I hung her out a fifth floor window. I had given her a jolt of pure cocaine so she’d wake up outside that window. I was holding her by both wrists. Her feet were dangling in the air. She opened her eyes. When she looked down she screamed like a scared baby. She was screaming when they came to get her. You see, kid, I’m all business. I ain’t got an ounce of hate in me.’

‛Lord, I’m not asking you to bless my pimping. I ain’t that stupid. Lord, I know you ain’t black. Surely you know, if you’re up there, what it’s like to be black down here. These white folks are doing all the fine living and sucking up all the gravy. I gotta have some of that living and some of that gravy.

‛You jiving pretty sonuvabitch. You ain’t no pimp. I’m gonna eat your sweet ass up or chop off your dick.’

That reefer was just an appetizer. Reefer is for low-class skunk broads. Heroin is for chumps bound for the grave yard. Cocaine is for brilliant, beautiful people.

I went to the closet. I took down a wire hanger. I straightened it into one long piece. I doubled and braided it. I wrapped a necktie around the handle end.

She whispered, ‛I don’t need any more whipping. I give, Daddy. You’re the boss. I was a dumb bitch. It looks like you got a whore now. Kiss me and help me up.’ I felt tears roll down my cheeks. Maybe I was crying in joy that I broke her spirit. I felt sorry for her. I wondered if I was falling in love like a sucker. I kissed her hard. I carried her into the bathroom. I placed her tenderly in the tub. I turned the water on. A stream burst from the shower nozzle overhead. She squealed. I pushed in the shower bypass on the tub faucet. The warm water started filling the tub. I dumped a bottle of rubbing alcohol into the tub. She looked up at me. I took the tiny bottle of pills out of my pocket. I shook out two into my palm. I took a glass off the face bowl. I handed her the pills. She put them in her mouth. She washed them down with the glass of water I gave her.

‛A good pimp has gotta have like a farm system for bottom women. He’s gotta know what bitch in the family could be the bottom bitch when mama bitch goes sour. ‛He’s gotta keep his game tighter on his bottom bitch than on any bitch in the stable. He’s gotta peep around her ass while she’s taking a crap. He’s gottta know if it’s got the same stink and color it had yesterday. ‛Slim, you’re in trouble until you cop the fourth whore. A stable is sets of teams playing against each other to stuff the pimp’s pockets with scratch. You got a odd bitch. You ain’t got but a team and a half. ‛A young pimp like you is gotta learn not to cop blind. Your fourth bitch is gotta be right to pair with the third whore. ‛She can’t be no ugly bitch unless she likes pussy. She can’t be smarter than the pretty bitch. She can be younger, even prettier, but she’s gotta be dumber.

‛A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He’s gotta know his whores. He can’t let them know him. He’s gotta be God all the way.

I shot her. When I shot her the only thing that saved her life was the fact that she had a forty-six inch bust. The fatty tissue absorbed the bullet at almost point-blank range.

Brother, I could have sent those whores to Siberia, in bikinis, in the wintertime.

I had spent more than half a lifetime in a worthless, dangerous profession. If I had stayed in school in eight years of study I could have been an M.D. or lawyer. Now here I was, slick but not smart, in a cell.