Pimp. By Robert Beck aka Iceberg Slim. Adnotated without permission. Chapter 11 -- To lose a whore.

I pulled the Ford into the curb across the street from the Haven. I didn't see the runt anywhere in the street. I peeped into the greasy spoon. She wasn't at the counter. I looked up at our window. I crossed the street and went through the lobby. I took the stairs to the fourth floor. I made three stabs at the lock with the key before I made it.ⁱ I stepped inside. I was excited. I chain-bolted the door. I walked to the bedroom.

The runt was propped up in bed smoking a stick of gangster. Lady Day was tar brushing that mean, sweet man again.ⁱⁱ I stood by the side of the bed, next to the record player. I saw the edge of a paper plateⁱⁱⁱ sticking out of the wastebasket. I took it out and put it on the bed.

Two navy beans were in a puddle of grease on the side of the plate. A pile of sucked, cleaned neck bones were heaped in the center of it. The runt had gone out to the greasy spoon and copped a hearty meal. She sure had a healthy appetite for a sick bitch. Her eyes were wild and big, looking up at me.

She fingered gently at the hole in my pants knee. I shut the box off. I ripped the record off the turntable. I broke it in half and hurled the pieces into the wastebasket. She kept her eyes on the hole at my knee. She ignored the broken record. She played it cool.

She said, "You'll have to get it rewoven^iv, huh? Daddy, I'm feeling better. I felt good enough to go across the street for food. Maybe by tomorrow I'll feel good enough to go in the street. Baby, I would've went out after I ate, but my legs were too weak."^v

I said, "Bitch, I already passed the death sentence on you. It's good you had your last meal. I'm gonna send your dead ass to your daughter, Gay. Take off that gown and lie on your belly, bitch."^vi

I went to the closet. I took down a wire hanger. I straightened it into one long piece. I doubled and braided it.^vii I wrapped a necktie around the handle end. I turned back to the bed. She was still propped in the bed. Her mouth was gaped open. She had both her hands clapped over her chest.

She was like a broad in a movie. She opens a door and there's Dr. Jekyll just going into his frightful change. I saw her tongue tremble inside her jib. Her lips made a liquid plopping sound as they mutely pounded together. She rolled across the bed away from me. I raised my right arm up and back. I heard my shoulder socket creak.

Her gown was hiked up to her waist. Her naked rear end had scrambled to the far edge of the bed. I raced around the foot of the bed. She rolled to the middle. She was on her back. Her arms held her jack-knifed legs against her chest.

The whites of her eyes glowed like phosphorus. I brought the wire whip down. I heard it swish through the air. It struck her across the shin bones^viii. She cried out like she was celebrating New Year's Eve.

She screamed, "Ooh-whee! Ooh-whee!"

She jerked flat, rigid on the bed then smalled her fists against her temples. She sucked her bottom lip up into her jib. I slashed the air again. It sounded like maybe a dum-dum bullet striking across her gut button.

She moaned, "Whee-Lordy! Whee-Lordy!"^ix

She turned over on her belly. I tore the gown from her back. She was naked. She flailed her arms like a holy-roller. The whip whistled a deadly lyric as I brought it down again and again across her back and butt. I saw the awful welts puffing the black velvet skin.^x

I stopped and turned her over. The pillow stuck to her face. I snatched it away. There was a ripping sound. I saw feathers sticking to her tear wet face. She had chewed a hole in the pillow. She was thrashing her legs and mumbling.

Her chest heaved in great sobs. She was staring at me and shaking her skull. Her eyes had that pitiful look of Christ's on those paintings of the Crucifixion. Her lips were moving. I got on the bed. I stuck my ear near.

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.^xi I felt sorry for her. I wondered if I was falling in love like a sucker.^xii 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.^xiii 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.^xiv

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.

I said, "Phyllis, why do you make your sweet daddy mean? Daddy's gonna kill his little bitch if she don't straighten up and whore like the star she is. Bitch, lie down in that water for a while. Then get in the street and get some real scratch for your man. You don't have to stay in this block. Just walk and work until you get respectable scratch to bring in. I can raise you if you take a fall. They gotta let you make a phone call. If I go out I'll check the desk here by phone every hour or so. Bitch, get down and star.^xv You want your man, get him some real scratch."

I went and sat on the bed. The sheet looked like a red zebra had lain down and his stripes had faded on it. I heard her sloshing the water in the tub. She was humming the record I'd smashed. Sweet's pills sure weren't hurting her.

Whores are strange people all right. She was silent while she combed her hair and fixed her face. She put on a red knit suit. She stood in front of me. She held her hand out. I saw dark stains on her stockings at the shins. Her eyes were bright.

She said, "Daddy, I don't have a dime. Give me a coupla dollars, please. Don't worry, when I come in I'll have nice scratch."

I stood up. I gave her a fin.^xvi I walked to the door with her. She turned her face up. I leaned down. I sucked her bottom lip, then bit it hard. She squeezed my arm and gouged her teeth into my cheek. She went down the hall.

I shut the door and went to the front window. I rubbed my cheek to see if the skin was broken. I saw her cross the street at the corner. She was walking fast. That whipping and those pills had made her well. She looked like a child. She was so tiny and sexy in her red suit. I wondered as she disappeared whether she'd come back. It was seven P.M.

I thought, "I better stick here in the pad. Whipping a broad with a hanger is not a bit like a foot in the ass. Christ! I'd kill the bastard on the spot if he hit my bare ass with one.^xvii Sweet was right. She got outta that bed all right. I wonder if those slavery pimps invented the hanger whip. No, even hangers hadn't been invented then.^xviii I guess Sweet did. I'm gonna wait the runt out. If she tries to slip in here to steal her clothes, I'll croak her. I wonder why Chris hasn't gotten in touch? Maybe some fast pimp has already stolen that pretty bitch from Leroy.^xix Maybe Leroy had one of his fits and croaked her.^xx

"I wonder what the bitch will be like that I get from Sweet if the runt blows? This is a hell of a feeling I got. I don't know if I got a whore or not. It would be a bitch if Sweet goes back on his word and leaves me whoreless on this fast track. I'm gonna get high. I'd better take the flight with gangster. Cocaine will only sharpen my grief."

I took a shower. I stepped out of the tub. I got a towel from the wall rack. I saw splotches of red on the one beside it. I toweled off. I rolled a giant bomber. I put a fresh case on the pillow the runt had gnawed.

I propped myself against the head of the bed. I sucked the bomber down to a "roach." The reefer and the sibilant^xxi murmuring of tires against the street lulled me into deep sleep.

I woke up. I was still half-propped against the pillows. It was broad daylight. The runt hadn't come in. I had blown whoreless with that wire hanger.^xxii I lit a cigarette. It was seven A.M. I lay there staring at the entwined lovers on the "Kiss" Statue.

I thought, "The runt's got a pair of tits like that broad. Jeez, she was sure a freak.^xxiii Some pimp is going to have a sweet bitch when he straightens her out.^xxiv I wonder if that little bitch will miss me? She damn sure can't forget me. Hell, I can't worry about the mule going blind. I'll wait until noon or so. I'll rip open that whore grab-bag Sweet promised me. Maybe I was hasty to shut the door on Melody and his entasis. At this point I can get hip to anything except work.^xxv No one could know I was freaking with a stud. Christ, I wish beautiful Chris would call. What a thrill if she'd tell me she was rushing to me.^xxvi To get her tight I'd maybe eat everything but the tacks in her shoes. I'm hungry. I'm not going to let my troubles abuse my skull and my belly."

I got Silas on the phone. I ordered home fries and sausage. I got up and brushed my teeth. I skull-noted to call Top when he got back in town. Maybe he could find out who booked Leroy. Maybe I'd trace Chris that way. I'd get Preston's owl-head and take her from Leroy at gunpoint.

I was listening to "Mood Indigo" and thinking about the runt. I was remembering that day when I left Mama crying at the window.^xxvii

I couldn't wait to get around the corner to the runt. Then I was sure I had a black gold mine sitting in the Ford waiting for me. In this tough pimp game you couldn't count your scratch until you had it in your mitt.^xxviii Holding whores was like trying to cinch-grip quicksilver.

I thought, "Poor Mama. I haven't called her or anything. I'm gonna call her when things get straight."

Continued >>

1. This dude's such a wreck... besides a sweet tooth for nosepowder like you couldn't believe he grins like an idiot whenever insecure, he gets butterflies in his stomach the moment a man looks his way, his knees shake incontrollably whenever seated at the big boy's table and his hands tremble just about half the time, on the clock. Da fuck's he got, the Dancing Mange of St. Vitus ? I don't think the best veterinarian in the world could chop a five pound healthy dog out of this hundred and fifty pounds of heaped biodysfunctive mass. I think whales eat better men each day in the shape of man-sized gulps of krill. It's just... [↩]
2. Can you imagine how many thousands upon thousands of times the average record was listened to back then ? People never wanna look at this, "oh, Lady Blabla '''sold''' ten million records, that's a hundred times more than Doris Fitzgerald, Patsy Piaf and the Janis Sisters put together!!!" Really bitch ? And two thirds of those "sold" records weren't even sold, they were just nobody-can-accuse-them-of-not-having-been-sold, which ain't the same thing at all ; and of the paltry remainder ninety-nine percent and nine-decimal-nines were listen to... once. And the rest were heard twice, the second time while the bitch was "cooking" pizza with mac-cheese, and like eight of them were heard three times or more.

   Back when music was a thing the average record was listened to death, literally, until its facing fell off. Every woman who owned a Doris Day record had listened to each thing on that record ten thousand times, knew it by heart for having known it by heart and forgotten in five or nineteen times already. Her mind had licked each crack and slit in that singer's voice, repeatedly, ad nauseam and beyond, so much so that it became a proxy for the background ongoing. The events in her life, centered around, interpreted by reference to that damned record.

   That's the difference : your inept nothings "influence" no-one because nobody cares. Because there's all those many "options" all the time. Carson's talkshow was a big deal not because fifty million mouthbreathers watched, but because all the mouthbreathers watched it. Your imaginary, pretentiously pretended, utterly discretitable hundred million's worth the same as a similar hundred trillion : nothing. Either everything or go home, you read me ? [↩]

3. Some "stable", eating take-out months later. Doesn't this dork get tired of it, or is that what the cocaine's for ?

   My bitches cook for me the day we land somewhere half the time, and by "cook for me" I mean homemade bread and your-choice-of-soulfood. That's right, in hotel suites, after driving all night, after a shower and a nap and a stretch and a shopping, there they are, buck naked by the stove, making things you didn't even know existed. I take them to a restaurant twice and then can order their menu, a la carte, whenever I want wherever I am for as long as I live -- not that I usually care to because rare's the restaurant that's good enough to make the slightest dent in our culinary experience.

   Now let's figure out the paper slats. What's she put on the dresser, his runt ? Twenty, thirty bucks ? That's cool, I leave that much in tips for being too lazy to pick up my change -- or rather, for being smart enough to separate what's important from what isn't. A very unfair comparison ? Yeah, that's life : the most unfair comparison of them all. [↩]

4. Imagine that, rewoven. Can you find a place that'll re-weave worn pants ? Can you even imagine what it'd mean, what she's talking about ? How did it work, how was it done, this re-weaving business ? [↩]
5. There's a simple trick for killing trees, the grander the better, back in the old country : first, you cut around the trunk, all around, an inch or so deep. This kills the (capilary force-powered) flow of fluids through the plant. In due time it dries out, and then it can be lawfully cut down, "for having been dry". Slim's runt stopped going for the white tricks a while back, and now she's preparing to nip the stem altogether, and quite "reasonably" at that : for it being dry, as dry in fact as she's made it be.

   There's truly very little innovation still available in the world ; but this sort of cleverness is both naturally occuring and the natural cause, source, font and justification of violence. [↩]

6. Apparently he's somehow figured out some things in the meanwhile. [↩]
7. Wire hangers (even if they were significantly thicker back then than the milimeter cross-section nothings now ubiquitous in hotels) are still kinda thin, and therefore a substantial danger of cutting the skin. It's not a good thing, it never heals well, in fact skin cuts of the sort made through wire hanger application's one of the foremost things to avoid. Heavily insulated electric cable (the sort that's round, a quarter inch wide) is much better for the purpose ; in general the thinner the wire the lighter the beating it can properly an' safely deliver. [↩]
8. What the fuck. [↩]
9. Ahahaha wut! "Whee-Lordy!" ?! Lmao. Bwahahaha. [↩]
10. Really this tail end was spurious, he could've had about the same effect saving the last nine (of a full dozen!) strokes for later. She's a virgin, they shock easily, shock is specifically this psychological state of extreme resistance. It's true that there's some residual benefit to be had later, of her own examination of her own body as part of her re-asserting herself over it as she comes to ; but by and large he's mostly wasting his labour as Pepys would say. For the time being something as childishly simple as having her crawl out of bed and worship the whip for mercy would have done just as well. [↩]
11. Fucking noobs, always prone to outlandish claims. Sucker, if the human spirit were broken every time a yellow loutish bastard fell coathanger-first on some unexpecting broad, there'd have been no human spirit long before granma Lucy twerked her ample behind about the Congo. [↩]
12. No, he's just finally maturing. Think if you will -- black boy from the urban ghetto, still had to be twenty-one before anything like an inkling of maturity, anything even vaguely like manhood started to waft about him. Back in the 1930s, this!

    What hope do you have ? What hope anymore ? [↩]

13. No bitch in this house'd dare leave that thing on, god help her if I get in and the damn thing squirts me refreshingly. [↩]
14. Well... at least she won't be getting any COVID... [↩]
15. Now you know what being a star's all about.

    Or what, you imagined it's different if you whore for the studios, in preference of whoring for a man ? Hurr. [↩]

16. There's a right and a wrong time to be generous. This'd be the right time. [↩]
17. Yeah, that's how the Dummy died. [↩]
18. Ahahahaha what the fuck nonsense. The hanger was invented well before "the United States" were. Where's this nigger get the gall, what the fuck, world cracked out of his mammy's arse ?! [↩]
19. In fucking Ohio ?! [↩]
20. For fuck's sake, none of these inept boys prone to weeping are in any danger of ever killing a woman as a deliberate act. Da fuck's all this "ironic" hyperbolization, enough already. [↩]
21. Come on! What the fuck, he's raided the thesaurus, there's no way anyone besides myself knows this word. Name a work (besides Trilema) tha0 -- The unwritten book.t includes it. [↩]
22. This sounds so fucking improbable, somehow... Maybe my own experience's the usual enchanted lala-land, but in that only and definitively true guidebook anyone ever has, which is said own experience, the girls did and do regularly take way the fuck piled besides and on top a few lashes with a nothing at all to still come back crawling and begging for still more. The plenty I wasn't interested in that wandered away ; the few and far between I was maybe interested in that wandered away nevertheless -- none were scared off by a light beating, nor for that matter by the soundest of methodical trashings. I suppose it's different if they love you ? Or maybe it's not different if they love you, their capacity to love far outstrips your capacity to be. Maybe it's different if there is a you there, filling the shape "you" cuts into thin air. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe. [↩]
23. Fuck-happy is what he means. [↩]
24. Odds are some Henry's gonna have something to hang himself with. I can't imagine why he fails to conceptualize the painfully self-obvious. His mother was a failed whore, nothing more, just like most of 'em. Why is this so hard ? With any luck Gay's gonna turn out to be a decent Chris. [↩]
25. Dedication's important. In fact, none of the would-be lords ever managed to quite grow into what this "low life" nevertheless got, naturally an' in spades. All warts an' shortcomings aside I'd rather be friends with Slim ; and throughout history I've always been friends with Slim. [↩]
26. He sure wanks a lot, doesn't he. [↩]
27. That day... six weeks ago ? [↩]
28. She was still good for a grand or so, if you don't count the furniture. Thirty percent of that he still has, in the shape of wheels ; twenty percent he gifted to some pickpocket and his friend ; another twenty percent he dropped on Glass Top, which really isn't terrible for the relation, in his place I'd keep right on buying a hundy's worth of gear every three weeks or so even if I didn't use it. Let it pile up, who cares. The remaining thirty percent went out for gas, and there you go, the problem with this particular "stable" was much more gross mismanagement on the part of the "pimp" than anything substantial, or at all to do with the whore. Then again we suspect he knows as much. [↩]