Pimp: The Story Of My Life (Canons)

by Iceberg Slim

As worthless as that bastard was otherwise, he sure must have been a son-of-a-bitch in the bed.

Mama was desperate to save at least fragments of her image, to hold fast the love and respect I had for her in Rockford. I had seen too much, had suffered too much. The jungle had started to embalm me with bitterness and hardness. I was losing page by page the fine rules of thought and deed that I had learned in church, from Henry, from the Boy Scout Troop in Rockford. I was sopping up the poison of the street like a sponge.

Few can resist the charm of exclusivity in its myriad forms.

Party went through his life struggling to make a watch while wearing boxing gloves.

That awful fear the white folks had put into him down South was still painfully alive in him.

Mama’s guilt and heartbreak were weighing heavily on her. Back in Rockford she had been a dutiful church goer, leading a christian life until Steve came on the scene. But now when I read her long rambling letters crammed with threats of fire and brimstone for me if I didn’t get Jesus in my heart and respect the Holy Ghost and the fire, I realized that poor Mama was becoming a religious fanatic to save her sanity.

Why did Justice really always wear a blindfold? I knew now. It was because the cunning bitch had dollar signs for eyeballs.

Those pimps back in the joint sure knew basic whorology.

To play it safe you better give me your Mama’s address. I gotta know where to ship your corpse.

His brain is rotted from hate.

‛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.’

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. ‛I don’t wanta be a stickup man or a dope peddler. I sure as hell won’t be a porter or dishwasher.

They think we ain’t good for nothing but clowning and cleaning. It would give them a stroke to see their trick husbands moaning and groaning and licking between a black whore’s thighs.

Don’t worry, angel, with me life will be smooth as the snow at Sun Valley.

a pimp is really a whore who’s reversed the game on whores.

In a pimp’s life, yesterday means nothing. It’s how you are doing today. A pimp’s fame is as fleeting as an icicle under a blow-torch.

there’s a flock of youngsters dealing now who were squares when we left the track.

No con misses his freedom more than a pimp. His senses are addicted to silky living.

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

Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.

Until I dropped the last whore off you could have heard a mosquito crapping on the moon.

a pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores.

A good pimp has to use great pressure. It’s always in the cards that one day that pressure will backfire. Then he will be the victim.