The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 20 : Pass The Pepper, Sister

We were too busy the next day to count the piggy, but when we finally got around to it there were three fundred fifteen dollars in there! I remember the glinting stars of dust whirling like a golden hurricane through a bright shaft of noon sun and the runt's pearly whiteys glimmering at me "That's not bad, Daddy. Almost as good as a bitch's!". I laid into her with the belt, which is what she wanted from the get go. Others drew in and were drawn in, we spent the whole day horsing around and freaking that old circus show. They made a big thing out of it, too, like "Daddy's got a piggy". It became a sort of in joke, they play-acted how it maybe went, they still remembered it for a long time afterwards.

A week or two after getting my head bumped at Sweet's I figured if I don't call him already I might as well never do it. I picked up the phone and didn't have the number. Did that crazy sweet joker tell me to call him but never told me what to call him at ? Or was his piece of paper less lucky than Glass Top's ? Just as I set the receiver down a bottom floor bitch came in from the street. I don't remember her name. There's been so many. She was checking in fifty slats. Pepper had told them to come in when they get forty-fifty together, drop it off, take a load-off, get a rinse maybe. At first only the first floor rooms had tubs put in, but after a few months I had them added to the bottom floor rooms too. It made the place really cramped, but the girls didn't mind. Often they bunked inside, too.

Pepper's idea was to keep the scratch safe, I'm sure. Nobody ever held up a girl in the Heaven, but with them on the street it was different. It seems every other day some freak stud would muscle in on a girl. We tried to keep it in check as best we could, but we never got all of them. It's better they don't make off with all that much when they try it, so the girls checked in every two-three tricks. It grew from there, though, because that's how whores are. Since they'd be over anyway, there was also something they wanted to say to some other one and on it went. Then of course they may as well get a rinse, but they aren't gonna do it in the tub where they bunked because of some other bullshit. Really, they just wanted to sneak up to the first floor and do it there. That first floor was like lettuce to a box of rabbits. They wanted so bad to breathe the same air as those other bitches for five minutes, to show themselves off to those jokers up there, it almost hurt them inside. Of course some suckers were bashful enough they didn't take well to some broad busting in while they're busting some other broad, nked or no. Reminded them too much of their office I guess. Of course the only ones who were anywhere near a position to say whether it'll be okay were the whores they were on top of. From this he dumb bitches made their own life so complicated, they could have spent a whole week yakking to sort out who and how and when goes where to do what. "Oh, I came back to drop the fifty I made" she'd say, to point it out to me. Make sure I didn't miss out on how she, what's-her-name, brought home fifty slats. I looked at her over the receiver. "So whatta you want, bitch ? A medal for doing your whore duty ?" she'd shuffle off, if she had any sense.

If I didn't have any sense and kept after her, she'd let me have it, a full slice of the squirming insanity going on at all times inside their dumb bitch heads. "Oh, she's going to take a rinse but she can't do it in her room". Because Miranda, or Mirella, or whoever the fuck name I couldn't paste a face to if I had twenty years in county to do it in, is bunking in the tub and she didn't roll up the curtain she's using for a blanket or didn't do it right or sideways whatever, and Jenny or Penny or whatsit is in the tub across the hall and she doesn't like going after her anyways because bla bla bla and then maybe Dinah upstairs lets her in with her trick but she doesn't know for sure because the knob is turned half way like if it's ok and maybe the knob is broken so she can't ask her right now but she'll yakkity yakk on and on like that.

If my stars were really poorly aligned that day, they'd cut me in some of their philosophical discoveries made while walking. They'd say, "Daddy, I'm your girl. If I ever stop loving you, I'm gonna quit whoring for you. If you don't croak me I'll get another black man when we're washed up. Right now I'm in your corner all the way. White tricks don't move me. I want to vomit when they paw and slobber over me. I baby talk them, but I hate them. Daddy, I just want their scratch. I get a thrill with them all right. It knocks me out that here I am, a black nigger bitch, taking their scratch. A lot of them are clean-cut high muckty mucks in the white world. Some of them show me pictures of beautiful wives and cute children. It makes me feel greater than those white bitches living in soft luxury. Those white broads got nigger maids they laugh at. 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. I know I ain't got no silky hair and white skin. I'm damn sure hip those white men ain't leaving Heaven to come to Hell every night just for the drive. They coming because those cold-ass white broads in Heaven ain't got what these black whores in Hell got between their legs. Black and low as I am, I got secrets with their white men those high-class white bitches ain't hip to. Now Daddy, we rap so little I got earned away. I ain't nobody's fool but yours."

I could hit them back with something like "You square-ass stupid bitch. You think you're a brain because you're hip that white men sneak through the stockade to lay black whores. Ain't a nigger sealed in here that don't know that. It don't make you great because those white sick fools leave that fine pussy in Heaven to find your stinking black ass in Hell." and for the first few years I might've even tried, but it don't do one bit of good. It's like talking back into the phonograph cone, ain't no one listening in there, it just plays the record like it is and that's all it does, scratches and all. Ain't no joker yet invented a way to fix a scratched record by yelling the right music into the cone, at the right time or any time.

That day early on I just picked the receiver right back up. I had figured might as well see what Glass Top's up to. One of his broads picked up. She said he was out of town. He wouldn't be back for a week. I said "Is that you, Radell ?" She asked who's asking. I told her it's the joker that was there for five minutes before Top sent her to the Franklin Arms. She said "Oh." like she had no idea what I'm talking about. I didn't press her on that. What was I going to say, "Hey babe, remember when you hooked your leg over mine and your skirt up to show off your cat" like some god-damned square ? She'd remember that like a waitress remembers scrambled eggs. Instead, I asked her if she had Sweet's phone number. She said she did, but that she couldn't just give it out. I said "Well call him then, would you. Say Iceberg's trying to get in touch. Been trying for two weeks. But he ain't ever gave me his phone number or nothing." She called back in ten minutes, and gave it to me. I asked her if he said anything else ? She said "Yeah. He said 'Tell him it's listed, sucker.'" It was, too. We didn't even have a god damned phone book, but I sent Hubert out to get one and found it in there later, by his address.

I called him. I could tell right off he was in a good mood. I went with the flow. I said to him, "Sweet, I copped a beautiful yellow bitch tonight. I got her humping on the track with my girls. Sweet, the bitch is crazy about me. I know I'll hold her for years." He said, "Kid, a pretty nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it. They'll leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make 'em hump hard and fast. Stick 'em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain't no game of love. Prat 'em and keep your swipe outta 'em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn't a fell outta his mammy's ass. Slim, I hope you ain't sexed that pretty bitch yet. Believe me, Slim, a pimp is really a whore who's reversed the game on whores. Slim, be as sweet as the scratch. Don't be no sweeter. Always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain't nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don't let 'em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore. Whores in a stable are like working chumps in the white man's factory. They know in their sucker tickers they're chumping. They both gotta have horns to blow their beefs into. They gotta have someone to listen while they bad mouth that Goddamn boss. A good pimp is like a slick white boss. He don't ever pair two of a kind for long. He don't ever pair two new bitches. He ain't stuck 'em for no long scratch. A pair of new bitches got too much in common. They'll beef to each other and pool their skull, plots, and split to the wind together. The real glue that holds any bitch to a pimp is the long scratch she's hip she's stuck for. A good pimp could cut his swipe off and still pimp his ass off. Pimping ain't no sex game. It's a skull game. A pimp with a shaky bottom woman is like a sucker with a lit firecracker stuck in his ass. When his boss bitch turns sour and blows, all the other bitches in the stable flee to the wind behind her. There ain't more than three or four good bottom women promised a pimp in his lifetime. I don't care if he cops three hundred whores before he croaks. 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 gotta 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. Slim, all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills 'em when the pimp makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall. 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. The poor sonuvabitch has joined a hate club he can't quit. He can't do a turn around and be a whore himself in the white boss's stable unless he was never a pimp in the first place. So, kid, rest and dress and pimp till you croak."

When he finally shut up about it I thanked him very much, and let him know I'm sure to get right on it. The damndest thing, my Pepper knew his stable well enough by then. With time she got to where she knew it inside out, and Phyllis too. Ophelia also marked his fat-ass yellow broads, in the store, paying for things. That gave her a laugh. She was still laughing by the time she got home. She said "Ain't no whore worth two shits that reaches in her own pocket for retail price." I said to her "Is that right ?" She said "Retail's for suckers, Daddy baby. Ain't your whores taught you nothing yet ?" She had a point, too. If a whore ain't got a fence connection it's one thing. If she ain't got no thief in her book, that's another thing. Bitch oughta get out more. But that she can't make a trick buy it for her, that's outright out-and-out. The day Ophelia made those cracks I bought her a car. She'd never had a car in her life, it almost stopped her ticker when I let on.

The way it played out, a crazy fruit by the name of Louie ran a big time crap game on the side. Now this guy, they called him "Two Gun". He was obsessed with the Frontier, and things he read, all about fifty years ago and five hundred miles west. He didn't leave the bed without he had a pair of old Cold 45 clunkers strapped to him. He might as well went by with spears, or a bow. What's Civil War weaponry to do against the Tommy gun ? He went everywhere with a galon hat. I don't know what he did about that hat. Musta been glued on with rug adhesive, Chicago gets pretty windy. Everyone held him in great esteem though, because once at the track he punched out a horse, and some other time he got blind drunk and called people out, like he thought it went in Tombstone, Arizona. Far as he was concerned, he saw no big problems stopping traffic on State Street for half an hour while he and some other jokers take potshots at each other down the road a block.

A black stud, went by Mickey Mack, thought he was a pimp but I never seen him with two broads, lost a bundle in Two Gun's game. The stud had a black LaSalle, brand new, in mint condition. He was desperate for cash, so he dialed in. I wasn't so desperate for cash. When I hung up with him I asked where's Ophelia at ? Phyl said she's sleeping, I said go get her. She gave me the "Daddy, she's tired, let her sleep, she's been out working all night" but I told her not to make me put my boot in her ass. She dragged Ophelia over eyes half closed and I said to her "Bitch, take these six bills, hop in a cab, go over to Louie's joint by Navy Pier and bring back the LaSalle." She nodded then hung around for a beat, like I'd give her cab fare or something. I said "Bitch, you ain't got a cab fare saved up ?" She nodded and huffed out of there. An hour later she told me she parked it on the curb and should she do anything with it ? I said she can do anything she wants with it, it's her god damned car. That put her on her ass. I told her first thing go cop a driver's license. Harvey knew a place that did it without a test for a sawbuck under the counter. I gave her the saw, and told her she'd better not wreck it neither, I ain't getting her another one. Then I looked at her from the side of my eye and said "See, bitch ? You were right, ain't no whore worth her salt can't get a sucker buy it for her." That year's hogs went for fifteen to twenty bills, that LaSalle was a cinch for twelve, thirteen easy. We had a laugh out of it, anyhow.

Then there was this Sweet joker, giving me good advice on three-whore stables like that's what I had under me. Like he didn't even know the first thing about my operation. By then I had the Heaven going for more than a month, lots of people knew. Over time I got to where I knew his well enough, too. Bitches run into each other, and they never stop yakking like their life depends on keeping the flaps moving. Who knows, maybe it does. I figure he should've known better. Much better. Maybe his old bitches were worthless, or maybe he didn't even have anything. Maybe there wasn't any convent. I knew he didn't have any old bitches worth the name later on. Maybe it's not that they cut out. Maybe his whole thing from the get-go was just the young broads. That sure ain't what he rapped about, though. He says not to pair like broads, and new broads together, then does just that ? The whole cop and blow angle, it ain't ever how it worked for me. It'd have been though, it'd have had to be, if I just paired pretty broads with short mileage and prayed for rain. Sweet's bitches were great in the sack though. Lots of technique, all of them. Maybe the crazy stud just didn't figure there's a deeper game to pimping than piling a bunch of six month old angels that could make a sucker squirt his swipe whether he wanted or not in a large car and driving them around town like that.

I thanked him anyway, and then I said "I'm going to drop by Glass Top." The girl was running short. Those first two pieces I took off of him early on were long gone, what I copped since running dry. I didn't let the bitches snort mostly none of it. The tricks though, they had a thirst up their nose like you couldn't quench. I was thinking maybe we park more cars together, but he said "Man, you ain't heard ? Top's pinched on a narcotics rap. The federal heat tricked him into a four-piece sale to an undercover agent." I flapped my lips silently like a black stranded fish. "Say what ?!" I couldn't get my head around it. "What you rappin', nigger ? Glass Top ain't never dumb enough to dump four piece on some stud he don't know. No-way no-how. When I bought from him first time, new in town, I still sent a bitch over to cop." It's true, too. No stud but pigs buy by the piece. If a stud's got enough bankroll to chip a grand or two offa it, that stud can afford a bitch. The heat ain't got no bitches to send on a cop, at least none who don't look just like those square broads at Sweet's party trying to get out from under their pile of duds. Sweet sucked his tongue in his cheek. "Hype" he said. The god damned horse, the greatest bang there is. The worst for business, too. In his own way Glass Top had hipped me alright : after mink comes sable and after sable comes dropping four piece on the pigs in exchange for a fin bit in the special pen. I said "Man, I gots to see him. Poor Glass Top. Where's he at ?" Turns out they had him downtown for the Grand Jury. Sweet said to drop by his place after, he got a thing to rundown. I had some too, I mean with Top gone where the hell to cop ? I was hurting for an angle, I didn't think it's even possible to run a dry house just like that. I could have a riot on my hands in a few days, when it's run out for good.

After I got off the phone with Sweet I hit on Frank Ibbetts for a lip, and then went down to see Glass Top with that lip. I roused Radell too, I called her back and said "Listen smalltits, I'm taking a trip downtown, to rap with Top. You wanta I take you along ?" She started crying. She'd never managed to get in to see him before. The feds were holding him pretty tight. Poor Radell, she was trying to hold the house down as best she could. She had the crazy idea to tell the rest of his stable that he'd found a way to print money, and that's where he's gone. She got them all lined up, then pratted them with some crazy talk about what a genius poor Glass Top is. That he and some engraver pal of his that used to be an engraver for the government got some plates they just finished, and they already made a half-dozen of the prettiest hundred-slat bills the human eye has ever seen. She picked aforehand through the stash, took out the newest bills, and showed them that. Didn't even bother to get them in serial order or anything, not even from the same bank. She was too out of her mind to think of all that, she said when I asked her. Lucky for her, Top's stable was too much like him to notice that those magic plates are from all over the place. They got excited, they ate it up when she told them they're perfect and even the government couldn't get hip to a difference from real scratch bcause there ain't any. How dumb can a whore get, they're printing circulated bills or what ?

Then she pratted them about small problems and this and that, it was the paper, it was the ink, she figured she could string it out forever. The guy could get busted on another beef. He could even croak while doing his bit. Or they'd be playing it cool, and biding the right time. She was right in that there's ten thousand ways to spin a dumb bitch by the nose, I give her that much. The hard part is to get her to swallow the bait, after that it's all smooth sailing. Glass Top was tearing up. He held Radell up like she's at least a real genius. I didn't say anything about it. I didn't want to spoil his time any. Behind those bars, what else's he got ? I could tell he didn't leave himself any outs. I coulda asked what sense does it make for them bitches to keep humping if he'll just print the bills, or what happens if anyone but a dumb whore under Radell's spell should hear of this story. All it took was to hear of his rap, it'd have fallen in place well enough for any pimp worth half a slat.

I said to him, "Glass Top honey, here's where it's at. First things first, here's a grand." I pressed ten bills in front of me. I said "Free and clear, just because I'm the kind of sucker to love you. You take it or Radell takes it or you tell me what you want done with it. It's yours." That broke him up. Then I said "Now, if you're happy with Radell's prat I ain't got no bother there. Those bitches you got waiting for a beach and a mansion in Hawaii will flow to the winds in a month, if that. Clear as day, but it ain't gonna be me to open their peepers for them. Poison can do it well enough, or any of six dozen pimps out there hungry for a cop. I ain't looking to cop. I got bitches in line, waiting to get in." I looked at Pepper. She looked back at me. Then she looked at him. I could tell he could tell she's in my corner all the way. He said, still teared up, "Iceberg, you're a real pal. I believe you like the good book. Any pimp can put Pepper on the street like you have can't never hurt for no pussy, no matter what." I said "Alright, nigger. You wanta put those bitches you got down with me, there's another bill coming your way, each week, each girl, as long as they don't split. And when you get out, if you still got the urge in you, I'll give you two of mine, to help you start again. Not raggedy bitches neither. Pretty enough and skilled enough to start your stable going again with them. A month or two you give them back." He started crying in earnest, now. Pepper turned to look at me. She gave me her "Stop being crazy, kid" look through her peepers smoldering green. I turned to face her. "Heel, bitch. He's my pal. He helped me when I was hurting for some help. If I can't help him when he's hurting I ain't got no use for all the scratch in this world. You take it all and go drown in it." She shook her hand. Radell was bawling like a country girl found out she's pregnant the first time.

I got out. Pepper followed, head down, like a bitch on heel. We talked to Frank's lip. He said it's airtight, ain't no way short of shooting the agent that'll crack it, and even that likely won't. He said it ain't worth bothering with, two bit mack man can do his fin. He can push some levers make it lighter for him, three-four year he maybe gets parole anyhow. I tried to drop a bill on him but he wouldn't take it. Said Frank's taken care of him and ain't no way. Radell was waiting by the car. I said "Where to, bitch ?" She looked at me like a kid caught in the cookie jar. "Daddy, anywhere you say." I looked at Pepper. "You got room on the bottom ?" She shook her head. "Ain't no way." I told her to run it down for me. "In A there's Betty, Dora, Joan they call Hoan and Patty. In B you got Shirley, Nancy, Betty, Ruth and Virginia. In C Marylin, Lizzie, Carol, Nancy and Pat. In D Lois, Norma, Evelyn, Gloria and Ruby." I shook my head. How in hell she remember all that ? I turned to Radell, "Bitch, how many you got ?" She said it's her and five girls. I said "I gotta figure something out. I guess I didn't think things through so well when I talked to Top. I'll take you back there, you hold the house down. I'm going to figure something out." She deflated visibly. I said "Don't go soft on me, bitch. I said I'm gonna figure something out." She nodded "Yes, Daddy." Pepper shook her head. I said "Motherfucker." Radell just looked at me.

I said to Pepper, "Which of those bottom floor bitches you wanna push uptop ?" The thing of it is, that morning Pepper had run down on me about vents. She came in when I woke up and said "Daddy, we gots to talk about vents." I thought she's had one too many farts or something, but what she had in mind made lots of sense. She said "Daddy, lotta bitches in the street hump their asses off to star. They do that to move up." I nodded, yeah bitch, I'm hip to that. She went on "Where's they from floor one move on ? At first it looked like maybe you'll move them up a floor too, but that ain't happened yet. It ain't ever gonna happen fast enough anyhow. Young whores with ambition, lots of them. Sooner than later they're bound to get salty." She had a point. I turned it around on her now. "Bitch, when's the last time June whored out at the Heaven ? Like two weeks ago ?" She nodded. "She wanted to go with the girls, yeah." I said "Then there's Ophelia, that lanky bitch with the big ass, the pretty redhead bitch, Miriam or what's her name." She nodded. I said "We get swank pads all over the nice parts of town. Nice pads, two-three bedrooms. We put them down there, two or three to the pad. We kick up six whores from the first floor now. We kick up six from the bottom floor to the first. We take this raggidy bunch in. There's your vents. You want one too ?" She gave me her slinking look she got when she'd like something I dangle before her face, and she thinks she earned it too, and she hopes it's alright to bite. I said "That's what you do today. Get me a four bedroom pad. You, Phyllis and June bunk there. You split the Junebug between you two. I'll crash there now and again too, so make it nice for me. Then get three more with two bedrooms and two with three. Move the bitches in tomorrow. Don't let none single. Got that ?"

She did it, too. By noon next day the bitches were moved out. The mugs on them were something else. Like they got college degrees or maybe flew on their own power to the Moon, every last one of 'em. I guess in a way they had. Pepper scared up a nice little house out in the suburbs for us four. It had a pool and everything, sat on twenty acres of orchard. How bad is that ? The bite was pretty terrible to go with it, though. Twelve for the house, and that without furnishings, just the fireplaces and things like that. She copped the pads in new buildings that did the condo scheme, she blew another nine grand and change on the five. The worst part of it was, the resale value wasn't even as much as she paid for it, the first time we ever did anything as dumb as that. To spend over twenty-two thousand bucks on something that's maybe not even worth the twenty, that was a new concept for me. I felt like whupping her guts out of her. I didn't do anything, I didn't want her confused. Besides, she did good, just as I told her to. But hot damn...

The way we worked it out, the girls did rotations. They'd work out of their pads half the week, they'd come in for two-three days at the Heaven to stay trim and track fit. That way keeping even two dozen girls bunked on the first floor wasn't hard : most of them weren't there in the first place. If you figure it out, twelve girls doing two and a half days a week only comes to about four girls doing the whole week. We emptied the first floor out, whore by whore, all the while filling in from the bottom. Now we had vents alright. A new girl freshly copped would spend a while bunking four whores to the room, often with a fifth in the tub. She spent her day walking the street, turning for ten, twenty bucks. Between the walking and the tricks, she'd go to bed beat. If she made her chops and got to the first floor, she'd be with just another whore, and often they were friends, very close friends. She'd get to order food, not beg the girls above for a bite. The tricks would do the walking now, to come to her. They paid better, they dropped reefer and small gifts on her. She'd have her pick of vines, both from storage and going out to boost. They always loved doing that, like it was an adventure for them. She was sure hitting the gravy train now ; but if she made her chops again, well go-ly! Her own room, was that fancy! A much better class of punter, too. The girls in the plush pads had a lot of very upscale trade. The way it worked out they'd end up with a short stable of tricks from the offices around, real top tier stuff. A girl could clean out like that, and very many did. They bought their own cars, and their own minks. The tricks were tight with them in a way the tricks coming to the Heaven never got. They treated them more like daughters they loved dearly, not so much like daughters they just wanted to fuck. Like I told Pepper one day, "Your vent idea's making a bunch of small Peppers out of all these dumb bitches all around". It was, too.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 19 : Gotta Piggy Bank

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 21 : The Combine »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 07 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 2 : To The Grave ; And Beyond

I tell you, when we finally made it to the big black Dodge and the whole ride through my thoughts were spinning madly. As it turned out yes poor Henry's fears had foundation. Solid brickwork. Mama never loved my stepfather, for all his merits he never made the slightest dent in her. This kind, wonderful man never rose above being a tool of convenience in her eyes. She went and fell in love with the snake all right, and do you know why ? Henry never made her do anything. Steve did nothing else. That's how they met, after all, he had her do his nails for him. The thing about women is they can't take men seriously that love them. Those ain't never gonna be two shits in their eyes. Only the guys that put them to work stand out in their eyes, they never fall for anyone else. I know you know better, which is to say that's what you think, anyhow. But take it from ole Bobby here, who's had his foot up more ass than you've ever seen from a distance, and up all the way to the ankle, at that. Black ass, yellow ass, pale white an' ivory ass, it dun make no difference anyhow, they're all the same. So go buy yourself a set of hoops, set them on fire, and have that bitch practicing her prance jump. Starting tonight. There ain't no other way.

Steve's plan was to cop Mama and split for the Windy. The dirty bastard sure as sugar took me for excess baggage, but the way Mama was gulping his con he figured he could get rid of me later. He was wrong, of course. Two bit hustler from Nowhere, Alabama. What did he know ? A little bit of nothing much, though only years later, after finding my place in the world, did I figure out Steve's whole plot, and how stupid he really was. Leave alone how you never wait from a strong hand to cut the barb loose : here this fool had a square broad with her own business infatuated with him, and her progressive square-john husband blindly along for the ride. Her business was getting better all the time. Her sucker husband was loveblind enough the money from his business was wide open to her. If Steve had been clever he could have stayed right there on top of things and bled a big bankroll from both his and hers over a year or two. Instead he pushed the angle that didn't need pushed and waited on the line that you don't wait on. I bet if you gave Steve some shoes to shine he'd have shined the hell out of those laces, you know ?

He could've easily pulled Mama out of there with a helluva bankroll, and then done anything with her. He could've turned her out no problem, if he knew what anything is. He could have sent her back to Tennessee to come back with her younger sisters for it to boot, I tell you she was that hot for him. She had to be insane over the asshole to walk away from all that potential with only twenty-five hundred in cash, which is what they gone and did. Steve blew it in a Georgia-skin game, which is the dumbest form of gambling game anyone ever came up with, and by a margin at that. The whole thing's betting on whether the card in front of the other guy gets matched before your own card is matched. That's all, rank and suit don't mean nothing, everything's face-up, it's a game that only exists so beginner mechanics and people too dull to sharp still have something to ply their miscraft on, like amateur night or politics. Cutting unshuffled decks' still more akin to gambling than to being idiots. It comes as no surprise then that halfass-Steve didn't know any of this as he didn't know any of fuck-all else, and so he found himself two thousand five hundred slats lighter within the week of alighting on West Harrison. That twenty-five hundred though... money's different things to different people. For the rich junkie twenty-five might be what he got from the jews for a pile of jew-elry he stole from his Momma, an hour's work of which most was driving down to pawnbroker row. For the jailhouse punk it might be a whole lot of just his kinda fun, enough to last him the year. For the chilli pimp it could be two-three weeks or so of his one nag busting her busted ass. For Steve though, it was the firesale price of two of Rockford's premier businesses, which he let go at less than two percent. Hell, poor ol' Henry'd have fetched twenty-five big-easy if the year was last century and Steve sold him down the river. He was large and strong enough to pick his price back in cotton within three years nehow.

One scene in my life I can never forget came by that morning when Mama had finished packing our clothes, while Henry lost his inner fight for his manhood. He fell down on his knees and bawled like a scalded child, pleading with Mama not to leave him, begging her to stay. He had welded his arms around her legs, his voice hoarse in anguish, as he whimpered his love for us. His eyes welled 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." I can still see her face then as if it was right before my eyes. Cold as Winternight stars, kicking and struggling to get loose from him. Then she said with an awful grin, "Henry honey, I just want to get away for a while. Darling, we'll be back." In his state I'd say she was lucky he didn't gone killed her and me and buried us in the backyard halfway somewhere. But then again I guess she knew her customer better than I did. Only later did I find out just how many town Mommas out there back then took just this sorta break every year or two, to come back a week or two later ripe with the gift from sweet baby Jesus nine months in the wrappin'. Whole neighbourhoods were populated just this way before the second attempt at a Great War, it was how they went about things back in those days. A guy explained it to me once, he said it's all in evolutions, and it's better kids if there's a lot of dicks fencing inside the woman until she's so full it comes out at the seams and they just push each other's spunk out of her. He said that's why pricks are shaped that way, even, to push the previous guy's spunk out better.

I don't know about any of that, though for damn sure it's still what the party girls do, today just like back then, so maybe there's something to it after all. As the cab drove us away to the secret rendezvous with Steve sitting in his old Model T, I looked back at Henry on the porch, his chest heaving as tears rolled down his hopeless face. There were too many wheels within wheels, too much hurt for me to cry. After a blank time sauced in distance we found ourselves in Chicago. Steve had vanished, and Mama was telling me in a drab hotel room somewhere about the Southside that my real father was coming over to see us, and to remember that Steve's her cousin. Steve was stupid all right, but cunning in his own way, like farm animals and old-timey Niggers get. These days it's farmer whiteys doing the same stupid shit, it must be in the land somehow, the smarts of stupidity coming into them from the very earth they bother all day long, like farts from eating beans. Mama, you see, at Steve's instruction, got in contact with my original father weeks before, through a hustlin' brother of Mama's just out of the calaboose. Maybe it was Dearborn, I don't remember.

When my father came through the hotel room door reeking of cologne and dressed to kill, all I could think was what Mama had told me about that morning when this tall brown-skin joker had tossed me against the wall. They didn't talk about any of that, though. Mama was all smiles, not speaking much. He took a long look at me. It was like looking in a mirror. His deep down guilt must've puffed him, he grabbed me and squeezed me to him. I was stiff and tense in the stranger's arms, but I had looked in that same mirror too when he came in, so I strung my arms limply about his neck. When he hugged Mama, her face was toward me and stony, like back there with Henry. My father strutted about that hotel room boasting of his personal chef's job for Big Bill Thompson the mayor of Chicago. He told Mama and me, "I am a changed man now. I have saved my money and now I really have something to offer my wife and son. Won't you come back to me and try again? I am older now, and I bitterly regret my mistakes of the past."

Like a black-widow spider spinning a web around her prey, Mama put up enough resistance to make him pitch himself into a sweat, then agreed to go back to him. My original father's house was crammed with expensive furniture and chunks of gilt silver posing as art pieces. He had thousands of dollars invested in rich clothing and linens. This somehow made sense to him, though I wasn't around him for long enough to partake in the wisdom of it. After a week, my hustler uncle brought Steve to visit us, and to case the lay out. My father bought the cousin angle and broke out his best cigars and cognac for the thieves. It was another week before they took him off. At the time of course I had no idea as to what really was going on. I would learn the shocking truth only after we got to Milwaukee.

On that early evening when it happened Mama was jittery as we prepared to visit some white friends of my father. I had a wonderful time getting acquainted with the host's children, two girls around my age. It's a wonderful thing nobody knew about back then, but children were all but invisible in those days. We had a blast playing ponies together, where I rode on their backs all around, first on one, then on the other, then back again. They were falling all over themselves and each other for praise and to be prized ponies, like they do. Too soon it was time to go home, and then it was always too late to ever come back again.

In my lifetime I have seen many degrees of shock and surprise paint themselves on the human face. I have never seen on any face the traumatized disbelief that was on my father's when he unlocked the door and stepped into his freshly emptied house. His lips flapped mutely. He couldn't speak. Everything was gone. Everything. All the furniture and drapery, all the vases, bowls, statuettes, everything. From the percolator to the pictures on the wall, even my Mama's belongings. They took her underwear, her slippers, she stayed in her party dress because there was nothing to change into, and nowhere to change anyways. Wouldn't that have been a sight though, to clean the house bare except for her things. I guess Steve was lucky he had a partner with a little more experience this time, otherwise who knows.i

Mama stood there in the windy house clinging to him, comforting him, sobbing with real tears flowing down her cheeks. I guess she was crying in joy because the cross had come off so beautifully, because she was finally off the hook. Mama missed her calling. She should have been a film actress. All she needed was a bit part to turn an Oscar season into a lead-pipe cinch for her. Mama told my first and maybe real father we would go to Indianapolis and stay with friends until he could put another nest together. Can you imagine the cheek on her ? That bum of hers had nothing to say to this, no "Bitch, get on your hands and knees and make that fucking nest for me out of your god damned hair if it comes to it, strand by strand", nothing at all. She would've, too. If only he knew what to say, and when, to whom, and how.

When we got to Milwaukee by train, ninety miles away, Steve had rented a house. Every square inch of that house was filled with my father's things. Those lovely things we spent a little while crammed in with did us as little good and brought no happiness. Steve, with his newfound mania for craps, liberated us of it all within a few short weeks. He sold everything, piece by piece, and lost it in back alleys on his knees. Mama worked long hours as a short cook, which is what people do in a restaurant kitchen that can't really cook. Mama's just the sort of woman to take a maid job in a brothel. Her ministrations to her half-assed approach to life left Steve and I by our lonesome quite often. It must be sweet to always have someone else to blame. It must make life so easy. He'd say to me "You little mother-fucker, you. I'm going to beat your mother-fucking ass. I am telling you, if you don't run away, I'm going to kill you." and I always thought if he did, he'd fry for it, not her. They weren't going after the top mobsters in those days, and they're still not going after the bitches, nor I guess will they ever. They should, though. Over the years many mamas, mine and others', kept asking me when I'm gonna quit pimping, with those airs of invincible superiority they put on because nobody ever fries them no matter what so they end up figuring their farts must come up roses or something. I always told them : when they strung up the last one of your lousy kind by the guts of her dumb mother, that's when. I was right, too, though I guess I'm never gonna live to see that miracle with these two eyes. Maybe you do.

Meanwhile Steve was outright cruel to me and everything reminded him of me in any way. Mama brought me a little baby cat one day. I loved that kitten, which pushed Steve to discover he hated animals. One day the cat, being a baby cat raised by Niggers who don't know any better, did his business on the kitchen floor. Steve said, "Where is that little mother-fucker?" The little kitten hid under the sofa. He grabbed that kitten and took it downstairs where there was a concrete wall. He grabbed it by the heels. I was standing (we lived on the second floor) looking down at him; he took the kitten and beat its brains out against that wall. I remember, there was a park behind our house, concrete covered. There were some concrete steps. I sat there and I cried until I puked. All the while I kept saying like a litany, "I hate Mama! I hate Mama! I hate Mama!" And, "I hate Steve! I hate Steve! I hate him! I hate him!"

I know my lousy old man deserved what happened to his goods. Everyone ever does. I guess Mama got her revenge, must've been sweet and all that, but it was bitter for a little kid to know his Mama had her part in it. After that cross Mama just didn't seem like the same honest sweet Mama that I had prayed in church with back in Rockford and, come to think of it, no building ever seemed like a church either. I went to her grave the other day and took a piss. I go now and again to do that, maybe two dozen times all in all. That was the last time, though. I told her while I did it, I said "Mama, you were a dumb country girl when you was born, you were a dumber town mama when they buried you. What a waste of a lifetime supply of chickenfeed!" It's true, too. I sometimes think of Henry, lying rotten, forgotten in his grave. He had no close family. He had no one, and who's to blame for that ? He should've beaten her to death.

As for me, I was already playing Steve's favorite game in the alleys after school. I wasn't nearly as bad as he was, but that's because the dumb asswipe couldn't make a pass to save his life. I made out okay, a buck or two here and there, but mostly because playing with kids it's easy to avoid bad beats by welshing out of them. That's really all you need to score over time. A mother's game, too, that's all they do all day long : stay out of playing bank against others' long odds, stick to the middle range by and large, taking up the long odds against another's bank now and again, when they judge it soft enough to cry their way out of a loss if need be.

Dangerously, I was frantic to sock it into every young girl smart enough to go for it. I had to run for my life one evening, when an enraged father caught me on his back porch astraddle his daughter, whom he rightly deemed a virgin. I do believe it was not for lack of foregoing attempts, but because she was so leathery thick and hard down there, I had to cut her open later to finally do her in. That was a sight, I stuck that knife in her like gutting a fish. It was all honey and milk riding her ass from there on though, and I especially enjoyed how much she bled, and how bad she said it hurt her. She wouldn't stop though, she'd just cry and complain, but beg me to keep on at her too. It made me so crazy I couldn't spend, we were at it for hours and hours until she was so tense and taught I couldn't even move inside of her anymore. Then we passed out.

With that, the slide was greased. I was starting in earnest my long plunge to the very bottom of the grim pit they call this life.

———This is a brilliant idea for general practice, though. Empty the place except for one room, and let them figure it out. [↩]

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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Wednesday, 24 February, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 18 : Happy Birthday!

When I woke up, it was one P.M. I turned on my side. Two big brown eyes were looking at me. I closed my eyes. The mouth that went with them started kissing my eyelids. She licked the dried out snot in the corners of my eyes. I held my forehead. There were three or four trucks crashed into each other in a parking lot inside my head. They couldn't agree who crashed into who first, so they kept backing out and doing it again. "Who're you, bitch ?" I mumbled. She giggled and whispered in my ear "Daddy, I'm Ophelia. Phyllis said to come put my nose up your ass." I felt her straighten out and then there was a warm softness caressing and drowning me. I fell asleep.

When I woke up again, it was still one P.M. Ophelia was still kissing my eyelids. She said, "Daddy, you're so pretty. You got eyelashes just like a bitch's. Phyllis took Chris to visit some sucker in the shit-house. The boss bitch took that pretty young one out somewhere. It's just us here. Daddy, I don't like eating ass so much. May I kiss my candy instead ?" I said, "Christ in Heaven. Ain't I got a whore in this family without a hot jib." I spread my legs, turning on my back. "Go on, bitch. Then get your kit and trim my toenails and paint 'em. We're all going to get pretty for my birthday party tonight." She clapped and giggled. She asked "How old are you, Daddy? I bet you're nineteen." I tried to look at her but it was asking too much. I said "I ain't nineteen. I ain't even whoreteen. I don't got no clue what I'm at. I just got a pretty baby face, that's all." She said "Daddy, I didn't know it was your birthday, but I got you a present anyhow." It took her a good minute to get it all out, taking breaks every other word to kiss my dick all around.

When Chris and the runt got back from scarface hornblower storage, it was still one P.M. A gauze of light purple was just starting to close down the sky. Night's gonna fall in less than an hour at one P.M. ? I hooked an elbow under my still pulsing head. "That clock right ?" The runt looked at it and shook her head. "Twice a day." Chris had a serious look on her face. I laid into her, "Where the hell you've been, stray bitch ?" She rapped like Glass Top drives : "Daddy, when Leroy heard I'm back on the street he got in a fight. He punched the square that let him know. I never seen him punch no one in his life before, Daddy. That one he hit, was twice his size. Would have stomped him into dust but other people held him back. Leroy was still snarling and clawing at the guy when the beat cop took him in on a disorderly. Then downtown he slugged the guy booking him. They ain't figured what to do with him yet. He wasn't drunk. Maybe they drop it. They would, if he talked sense to them. As it is he might go for even a fin." I called her over with my hand. When she kneeled by the bed facing me I put my hand around her throat. "Well, how did he take the news? Did he hang himself from the bars before your eyes?" She started weeping and said, "Daddy, he fell apart. He would have killed me if he could have reached me. He cried like his heart was broken. He said he was going to kill you wherever he saw you. I feel bad, Daddy. He really upset me. I'm going to lie down." I thought, "She's a dumb broad alright. She ain't got that sweet whore honey in her, where she makes it better for the chumps she's with. This bitch is straight poison, she fucks them up." I made a mental note to tell Delaney when he showed next ain't no good reason for that Leroy chump to walk.

The three whores crowded into bed with me. They were stroking and kissing me all over. By the time Glass Top called it was one P.M. I said "Sweetheart, if you'd have given me your number I'd have called you myself. What's up ?" He laughed like I said something funny. Then later when I reached into my vine pocket and pulled out the paper he had written his number on I got the joke I didn't know I made. I came back to me, how on my way out he slipped it to me like a square broad in Sunday school. "Here's my phone number in case you wanta ring me for something." No matter, I didn't want anything. He did, though. "Kid, Sweet said he wants to take a better look at you. He said for me to pick you up. I'm going that way anyways. You good to pick up ?" I said "Man, how about give me till one P.M. ?" He laughed again and hung up. I turned around to Phyllis and said "Damn." "What's the trouble Daddy-o ?" she warbled back at me. "Those jokers want to sit down, and I ain't got but the one vine from last night. They'll laugh me out of town." Ophelia bounced out, gurgling "Hang on, Daddy. Hang on." as she went. She was back in a flash with a flashy vine alright. "This is my present Daddy, how you like it ?" I said "What's your story, bitch ?" The runt filled me in. Ophelia and her met in school, but she'd been turning tricks for most of the year, and she was a slick booster, too. She picked up the vine on their way over, to tribute me.

I said "Bitch, you've got to hip these other dogs to doing that trick. We're raggedy as a pack of shipwrecked rats over here". She nodded "Yes Daddy. Though it's not for everyone." I said "Now bitch, bend over and let me put my foot in your ass." She turned her back to me, legs straight, hands on her knees. I went over and got my belt out of my pants. I looped it in my hand in front of her. I said "Now bitch, after every whack, you say 'Thank you Daddy for hurting me. Please let me be your whore, Daddy, and hurt me more.' You got that ?" She nodded, trembling with fear or excitement, I can't tell them apart. Phyllis went over and put Ophelia's head on her belly, holding it in her hands. I craked her a good dozen stripes, and pretty hard, too. She wanted to take her hands offa those knees, but didn't. She said just like I told her, but she was tearing up. I walked over to the nightstand. I said "You're a good whore, Ophelia. You can stay. Here's a saw for you." Chris went woo-hoo but the runt frowned. "Daddy, how come you didn't crack on my ass like that ?" Ophelia was whimpering in her lap, but the runt drove hard. "Look how pretty it makes it!" and grabbed those welts on the young whore butt. Chris winced. Ophelia howled. I said "Bitch, I turned you out with all those jokers. It ain't the same for everyone." Chris was struggling with herself. Eventually she won the battle that she lost. "Can I have one, Daddy ?" I nodded my head. "Not right now though. That freak's coming to pick me up."

When he showed up Glass Top was pretty well cooked out. He stopped by a chicken joint three blocks down damn well near driving flush on top of an old Buick parked at the curb. "Sweet move ?" I asked him. He shook his head, his eyes straight ahead. I sat there a minute observing the sounds of silence with him, then I cracked "Hey Top! What's up ?" He turned his dreamy eyes to me, "You got it ?" "Got what, you beautiful cocksucker ? I ain't got anything I didn't have before." He nodded. "The chicken. Did you cop ?" It was freaky, like a reefer dream. I didn't smoke any, but maybe those bitches going at it with eight mouths between the three of them got some in me anyhow. "No I didn't cop no chicken. What chicken ?" He bristled as much as a hype cruising steady ever can. "Go cop it then! Ain't I told you fifty times Sweet said he and Miss Peaches got a taste for some of that barbecued chicken down there in Hell ? He said to bring some with you when you come, so git!" I jumped out of the car, thinking to myself ain't no way in blue heavens he told me fifty times. Forty-nine I could've even believed, but fifty straight up ain't no way.

A black stud in a tall white cap was stabbing chickens onto a turning spit in the window. I went in. I came out with two birds. Peaches might be really hungry for barbequed chicken. It made solid sense to brown-nose Miss Peaches. As we drove a while he came back to his senses a little more. Not that much, though. At one point he turned to me, leaving the hog to howl down the empty road all by itself. "Say listen, kid, don't ever forget to keep that rundown on Sweet under your lid. I'm the only stud he told. He'd twist my skull off and play soccer with it." I said, grabbing the wheel with my left "Now Top, that's a helluva crack to make. Do I look like the kind of rat square that would cross a pal? Now keep an eye on the road, or you've decided to make this hog a plane for real ?" As we pulled by Sweet's place there was no doorman anywhere. I thought to myself "Shieet! This crazy nigger's gonna try to park by himself, and when Sweet comes back home it'll be three floors shortened and the whole block mowed down." Just when I was scraping my skull, desperately trying to come up with an angle, Glass Top said "Kid listen, I ain't got it in my heart to park. You mind putting the kitten in the garage and come right up ? I gotsa go take a leak." I sighed my relief. "Sure, pal. Anything you say." He got out of the hog and started walking down the street. He went past the awning and kept going. As I was easing into the garage he was crossing over to the next block. Now a Hog's not exactly a bitch to drive, that's true, but it does help if you ever drove anything before. Even a rowboat I guess would help. Me, I ain't driven even my dick anywhere long as I could remember, I always let the bitches to the work. Took me a while to figure all the sticks out you could pull, and tell the truth maybe it wasn't arranged inside exactly how it started out by the time I was done parking it ; but all in all I think I did okay. A little crooked maybe, and the engine did make some noises I ain't ever hear it make before, or anything outside a junkyard, but I still think it was a damn sight better than anything Glass Top'd have managed on his own. Who even knows where he had walked himself by the time I got out. He could've been half way to Michigan the way he walked stubborn straight, waving his arms about like it helped with the paddling.

Just as I was about to spit in delight at the job well done, something took to crushing my jaw. A blinding spotlight burned off my eyeballs. I heard a fog-horn voice blasting, "Police officers! What the hell you doing, god damned crazy nigger ?! What's your name? Show us your identification." I couldn't answer with my jaw crushed in a vise. To tell it true I wasn't even sure what an identification is, right then. I was dazed, I couldn't remember my name. It wasn't Prissenberg, was it ? I knew it was with words in it, I just didn't remember which damned ones. I lowered my eyes below the inferno of light. I saw a white brutish wrist, like an animated anchovy going for my throat, thick black hair bristling on it. I saw muscles cord and ripple across it as the vise tightened around my jawbone. I thought maybe it's for the eggs ? I said "I didn't have any eggs this breakfast, officer." It came to me maybe I croaked while parking and didn't know it. Maybe this is just how Satan goes. Though I still didn't have any eggs, honest I didn't. I couldn't figure out what the beef was about.

The wrist let go of my jaw, spun me around and pushed me to the car. I hit my head against the frame. My wet palms skidded on the top. Somebody punched me all over from breast to ankle. An finger like an octopus salad poked inside my shoe. I felt a tickle in the arch of my instep. I sneezed. I said, "My Albert Thomas' name. Is it ?" They stopped. I said "I wasn't doing anything, just parking. I'm here for my uncle. He's lost. He walked down west and then he's gone." I didn't get to finish what I was saying, whatever it might've been. A galaxy of shooting stars orbited my head. It was like a flame-hot poker was imbedded in that sore bump at the back of my skull. I heard the tinkle of glass against the hood. I puked and nosedived to the hood. I felt the warm stinking mess against my cheek as I lay across the hood gasping. Glass splinters sparkled happily on the hood. I thought "Good thing Glass Top ain't here to snort any of that, we'd never make it back alive." The two blue whales went inside the hog. They were frisking it, too. One of them propping me on my feet so I don't slide over said "Nigger, you got a sheet downtown? Whatta you do for a living?" I said "I don't care what I do for a living, I'm a beautiful dancer." He shook his hat with his head in it, "You nigger-black conning bastard. How in the fuck do you know what a sheet is? You been mugged, nigger. Stand up straight. I'm gonna take you downtown. You can jig a few steps on the 'show up' stage."

That's when I heard Glass Top. He said, "What's the beef, officer? This is my nephew and that's my Cadillac. The kid was parking it for me. He's clean. We're here to see Sweet Jones. You know Mr Jones ? We're personal friends of his, you dig ?" The octopus in a hat let go of me like I'd gone a thousand degrees and it burned his mitt. I dutifully slid to the side and fell lengthwise by a wheel. The burnt whale rapped on the windshield. I saw a demonic starch-white face peer over the rear seat. They clambered out of what was left of the Hog. Someone said "Looks like we made a slight mistake, Johnnie. These gentlemen are pals of Mr. Jones. Mister, all your nephew had to do to beat the roust was mention a name. Christ, we have to do our job. There's a cat burglar operating in this district. The lieutenant is riding our asses to nab him. Sorry about the whole thing, gents."

They walked away. I tried to count their legs to see if they were chickens or what. I think it musta been three of them. All three both climbed into a black Chevrolet and gunned it away. I thought to myself it's going very remarkably straight for a car. They should try that in a Hog sometime. I took a handkerchief from my back pocket, and wiped my face. Glass Top was gazing wistfully upon the bits of loose glass and all the puke on the hood. "Christ, nigger!" he said at last. "I asked you to park it, not redecorate it." I put my finger out like to say something, but my eyes closed and I fell like a lug. My elbow went through the back window. The glass sparked happily like small cold fireworks. I said "Listen Top, if it gets any rougher on this track, I'll be punchy before long. Maybe I better take Preston's advice and go back to the sticks."

He dragged me upstairs by my collar. The Filipino broad popped it back down on sight, then took me into a bathroom and hosed me down bit by bit for half an hour. When I came out the floor was in its right place again. I saw Glass Top over towards the other end of the room. I said, "Jeez, Sweet sure has got pull. It was like magic when you cracked his name." walking towards him debonaire and at ease again. It wasn't that bad, I could walk at least as good as I could park, if not a shade better even. Sweet bellowed from behind me "Magic your black ass. The only magic is in that C note a week Sweet lays on 'em. Every copper in the district from Captain down greases his mitts in that lard bucket in Sweet's pocket." I turned to him, and that's when I walked over where the livingroom sunk. I wasn't hip it's sinking until it sunk me. I groaned, stretched out like an eager corpse on his soft shag. They came around to me like lumberjacks around a fallen pine tree. "Mary, mammy of Jesus, you stink. You shat your pants, Grinberg ?" I said "It's Icepick, Mr. Sweet." He shook his head. "You sure getting funky breaks, kid. Too bad you couldn't handle Red Cora. She's one of the fastest thieves in the country."

I said, "If that crazy bitch had a tunnel straight into Fort Knox, I wouldn't fart in her jib. That cat she drags behind her scares me." They laughed. Sweet said "That's a chump crack. After you get hip to the pimp game you'll take scratch from a gold-toothed, three-legged bulldog with two heads." I nodded. "Show me the three headed pimp with a gold-game toothed three bull doglegs on its heads. I'll take the scratch. How come Red Cora ain't got a pimp ?" They looked at each other. Sweet cracked "You done him like this ?" Glass Mop shook his top. "He was this way when I picked him up." Sweet poked me with his stomper in the rib, lightly. "What got into you, kid ?" I said "When Glop Tass colled I was with my bitches celebratin'. Today's my birthday." Sweet shook his head. "Ain't that so! I bet you turn ten years old!" He whistled and next thing I know Lulu and sweetslit were dragging me towards a bed somewhere in there. I blinked out.

When I woke up, musta been 1 P.M, I heard a squad of rats or something in the direction of the closet. I turned and looked. It was the runt, on her knees in the closet, scraping and pulling suitcases and shoes around. The back of my skull was sore and throbbing. I touched it, and felt a crusty cap over the bump. I thought as I watched the runt's rear end, "What the hell is she doing? And what she do to her ass ?!" I said, "Damn bitch, can't you put a damper on that racket? I gotta aching skull. I wake up, the first living thing I pin is the rusty black ass of a dizzy whore. She's digging a ditch in the closet. Now there's gotta be a prettier way to start a day." She snapped her head around and said, "Sorry, precious. I didn't bank on you being in bed. Who're you, anyways ?" I said "I'm Iceberg, pleased to meet you. What the hell got into you ?" She said she's Suzy. Then it all came to me. She wasn't the runt at all. I wasn't home, either. This is Sweet's joint. Ow!

I stood up and took myself in. Other than the green silk robe, I seemed mostly the same. That head bump sure hurt, though. I paddled out, past the bathroom with the urinals and back into the livingroom. Sweet bellowed when he saw me. "Well, whatta you know, if it ain't Grinning Slim. You still got that one whore or have you grinned yourself whoreless yet ?" He was in a good mood. He was wearing only a pair of polka-dot shorts. Two rollers from Sweet's precinct were drinking and horsing around with two of Sweet's yellow whores. Sweet told them I was his son. It tickled them witless when Sweet told them what the two pigs had done to me. They told me not to worry. They would remember me and would wire the other precinct rollers not to roust me. They finally got crocked. The whores took them around the Chinese screen into bedrooms.

I said, "Sweet, my one bitch is falling apart. She's playing dead. If you don't pull my coat I'm gonna starve to death. You gotta help me, Sweet." He said, "Nigger, you ain't cracking to nick me for scratch, are you ? I don't loan my scratch to suckers who got whores and can't pimp on 'em. I ain't gonna support you and that lazy bitch." I said, "No Sweet, I don't want scratch. I mean I'd take some from a three-niggered bullhorse with two dogs, but I don't want any scratch from you, that's what I mean. I want you to run the game through my skull. I gotta get my coat pulled before I tap out." My ticker was pounding like June had walked in the door naked pushing a bale of a million dollars in slats and fins.

Mimi the blonde was coming up from the cage towards the pit. She flicked her green eyes across my face. They were cold as a frozen French lake. She passed me. She looked like a fancy French pastry in her sable stole. I wondered if I got the stupid courage to turn down her freak off for real. There ain't gonna be no roust up to get me out of it here in Sweet Jones' penthouse, that's for sure. Miss Peaches came slinking by. She looked at me, got close, then came in to lick my face. It was like a rotissery chicken smooched me out. Sweet said "Kid, your map sure looks like that bullshit bitch you got is been shooting you through hot grease. I like that look you got today. Maybe you're getting hip the pimp game ain't for grinning jackasses. Get over here and sit on this couch. Rundown you and your whore. I wanta know where and how you copped her. Tell me everything you can remember about her and what's happened since you copped her. Rundown your whole life as far back as you remember. It don't matter which is first."

I ran down for him, leaving out some parts. It took me a while. One by one his whores came in, sitting their asses around the coach. Sweet leaned back on the couch. He put his bare feet on the top of the cocktail table. Mimi took to rubbing them lightly. She'd stop now and again to give his size 24 stompers a tiny little kiss. He said, "Sweetheart, you a lucky nigger to get your coat pulled by me. I love you, but you ain't got the hate to pimp. You ain't got the drive. Flap your horns good and remember what I'm gonna spiel to you. There are thousands of niggers in this country who think they're pimps. The pussy-weak white pimps ain't worth mentioning on top. Don't none of them pimp by the book. They ain't even heard about it. If they was black, they'd starve stiff. There ain't more than six of 'em who are hip to the book and pimp right. You won't find it in the square-nigger or white history books. The truth is that book was written in the skulls of proud slick Niggers freed from slavery. They wasn't lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man's cotton and kissing his nasty ass. The slave days stuck in their skulls. They went to the cities. They got hip fast. The conning bastard white man hadn't freed the niggers. The cities was like the plantations down South only worse. Jeffing Uncle Toms still did all the white man's hard and filthy work. Those slick nigger heroes bawled like crumb crushers. They saw the white man just like on the plantations still ramming it into the finest black broads. The broads were stupid squares. They still freaked for free with the white man. They wasn't hip to the scratch in their hot black asses. Those first nigger pimps started hipping the dumb bitches to the gold mines between their legs. They hipped them to stick their mitts out for the white man's scratch. Them first nigger pimps and sure-shot gamblers was the only nigger big shots in the country. They wore fine threads and had blooded horses. Those pimps was black geniuses. They wrote that skull book on pimping. Even now if it wasn't for that frantic army of white tricks, nigger pimps would starve to death. Greenie, the white man has been pig-greedy for nigger broads ever since his first whiff of black pussy. Black whores con themselves the only reason he sniffs his way to 'em is white broads ain't got what it takes to please him. I'm hip he's got two other secret sick reasons. White women ain't hip to his secret reasons. The dumb white broads ain't even hip to why he locks all niggers inside tight stockades. He'd love it if the nigger broads wasn't locked in there. The white man is scared shitless. He don't want them humping bucks coming out there in the white world rubbing their bellies against those soft white bellies on his wife an' daughters. That's the real reason for keeping all the niggers locked up. To show you how sick in the head he is, he thinks black broads are dirt beneath his feet, but still his balls would bust if he don't sneak through that stockade, to those half-savage, less than human, black broads. You know, Greenie, why he's gotta come to 'em? The silly sick bastard is like a whore that needs and loves punishment. He's a joke with scratch in his mitt. As great as he thinks he is, he can't keep his beak and swipe outta the stink of a black ass. He wallows and stains himself. The poor freak's joy is in his suffering. The chump believes he's done something dirty to himself, that's what he likes about it. He slips back into his white world. He goes on conning himself he's God and niggers are wild filthy animals he has to keep in the stockades. The sad thing is, he don't even know he's sick in the skull. Greenie, I'm pulling your coat from the bottom to the top. That rundown on the first nigger pimps will make you proud to be a pimp. Square-ass niggers will try to put shame inside of you, but you remember ain't one among 'em wouldn't suck a mule's ass to be a real pimp. They can't, because they square, and a square ain't nothing but a pussy. He cons like he lets some square bitch pimp on him, but that ain't the truth. He makes her to, where she didn't wanta in the first place. Now you, you gotta pimp by the rules of that pimp book those noble studs wrote a hundred years ago. When you look in a mirror you gotta know that cold-hearted bastard looking at you is real. Remember no whore's scratch ain't never longer than a pimp's cold game. You gotta have strict rules for a whore. She's gotta respect you to hump her heart out in the street. One whore ain't got but one pussy and one jib. You got to get what there is in her fast as you can. You gotta get sixteen hours a day outta her. There ain't no guarantee you going to keep any bitch for long. The name of the pimp game is 'Cop and Blow.' It's better to have no whore than a piece of whore, so when any one gets lazy you take a wire coat hanger and twist it into a whip. Ain't no bitch, freak or not, can stand up to that hanger twist. Maybe your foot and fist can't move that young whore anymore. Maybe she's a freak to them. Believe me, Greenie, that coat hanger will blow her or straighten her out. Greenie, you listen to Sweet Jones. You'll be a helluva pimp. Never get friendly and confide in your whores. You got twenty whores, don't forget your thoughts are secret. A good pimp is always really alone. You gotta always be a puzzle, a mystery to them. That's how you hold a whore. Don't get sour. Tell them something new and confusing every day. You can hold 'em as long as you can do it. Sweet is hipping you to pimp by the book. I'm the greatest nigger pimp in the world. Now Greenie, is your skull going to hold everything I told you?"

I said, "Thirty years from now I'll still remember every word, just maybe not in order. Sweet you won't be sorry you helped me. I'm gonna pimp my black ass off. I'll make you proud of me. I'll call you later. He said, "You know kid, I don't ever think I'm gonna grin in your face. I love you like a son. Any time I grin in a sucker's face I'm gonna cross him or croak him. Call me any time you need a rundown. Good luck, Greenie. Call me tomorrow, late. Oh yeah, happy birthday, Kid. That rundown was a birthday present." I walked across the pit. I stepped up to the doorway. I glanced back. Sweet had Peaches in his arms. She was purring like a new bride. Sweet was squeezing her in a lover's embrace. He was covering her laughing face with kisses.

My skull was reeling from his rundown on the way home. The cabbie wanted to rap, but I didn't have it in me for him. When I got back dawn was breaking. The runt and Ophelia were asleep, locked together like Siamese twins. Pepper put me to bed. June was soaking up Chris' tears with her tits. Then after that, I was eighteen years old.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 17 : Sweet Party at Sweet's

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 19 : Gotta Piggy Bank »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Saturday, 06 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 17 : Sweet Party at Sweet's

That was the way the Blue Heaven got, between me and my whores. We got it there fast and it stayed there a long while. Its time didn't come to close down until years later.

The night after Delaney first showed up, Glass Top called in. He rapped like someone had his tab on the wrong speed, 78 on a 45. I thought maybe I should cop a crumb of girl off him, who knows what special space stuff he's got now. "The plans have changed kid. I'm in a hurry. Be outside your joint in fifteen minutes. You got that?" I got my "Yeah" in and he hung up. I went upstairs and gussied up. I only had one vine back then so it didn't take as much. I walked out just as Top pulled in front of the joint in his red Hog. He had his hand over the horn when he saw me. I got in and the Hog squealed from the curb. Everything about him made me think like maybe he was in a hurry, even the harsh whisper of the Hog's tires against the pavement. I asked what happened. He clued me in : "There's a big boxing match tonight. All the biggest pimps and whores in the country are gonna be at Sweet's after the fight. Kinda like a party. All of 'em use stuff. Even with Sweet's cut in the middle I'll still take off at least a coupla grand for my end." I thought "Maybe you should grow tits, and learn to play poker", but I didn't say anything. I didn't want anything disturbing the maniac from paying attention to the road, he barely could keep up with the Hog and I didn't want to end up encased in plaster. He went on "Sweet never goes to fights. He can't stand big crowds, and besides they won't let Miss Peaches into fights. He's there gnawing on his nails, waiting for this stuff. He ain't got none for himself, and he's got to cop some stuff for those birds coming in from the fight." I asked if he cracked anything about me to Sweet. That got him more excited.

"Kid, you ain't hip I'm a genius? He called and I rapped to him this morning. I played you off as my punk nephew from Kansas City. You got wild ideas you wanta be a pimp. I've tried to chill you back to K.C. to maybe hustle pool or even be a broom mechanic. You're a stupid, stubborn punk. I've told you a thousand times you ain't got it to pimp. But no, you got the itch, you gotta pimp. You would eat ten yards of Sweet's crap. You think he's God. You won't believe your uncle is tight with God. I'm Glass Top. I gotta save face even for a snot-nosed punk. Maybe if you hang around the inside of the fast track for a hot minute you'll get scared. You'll wise up, get outta my ass and run your ass back to K.C. Now Kid, don't shoot your jib off at his pad. If he don't remember you from the Roost, don't wake him up." I said, "Don't worry Top. I won't rank us. I'll never forget you, pal, for the cut in. That was sure some beautiful stuff you played for Sweet." He caressed his patent-leather hair. He erected his wide shoulders inside his blue mohair jacket. His pretty bitch face wore that terrible conceit and awful pride maybe of a cute mass murderer who never gets her victims' blood on her. The moon through the windshield shone flush on his face. It was full enough to match him. He said, "Kid, you ain't heard nothing yet. Shit, I done drove three whores screaming crazy with this brain. They in the boob box upstate right now babbling about Pretty Glass Top. Even Sweet ain't shipped but two up there. He's been pimping almost twice as long as me." I said, "Christ, Top, I don't get it. Why drive a whore nuts if she's still humping out the scratch. A stud would have to be slick as grease to plant bats in the skull of a bitch that was sane. I can't dig how a stud could do it. I ain't hip to it."

He said, "Sucker, what you don't dig, and ain't hip to would make a book bigger than this Hog just for the headings. Now you take Sweet, the two he crossed out were young white broads with small mileage. He's sick in the head. He's got an insane hate for the whole white race. He was a crumb crusher of seven down in Georgia when the white folks poisoned his skull for good. His mammy was jet black and beautiful. The peckerwoods for miles around all knew her and freaked off with her every chance they got. Back in those days black bitches weren't hip to the whole pimp game. Those white boys just plied her with moxie and maybe gave her a muslin scarf or a pair of carny earrings to swipe into her. She was just nineteen, his mammy, but as hot as a vixen hellraiser, one of them spirited bitches from down South. Sweet was her first, and only one she had with a black stud. There was a plantation thereabouts called Old Joyce Place. The peckerwood running it was dumb even for a white boy. He ran that thing into the ground. He couldn't find any nigger to eat his lousy porridge, so he bought convicts to work it. One day in May one of them jailbird niggers didn't feel like working any. Whitey whupped the nigger, and the nigger croaked him right back. It put the white folks thereabouts into a downright tizzy. Sweet's daddy's bad luck, he had an argument with his mammy over finding some peckerwood under the bed the day right after that. When he got put in jail the white folks broke him out of there and hung him, to teach the coons a lesson they can't be touching no white folk. Sweet's Mama loved his daddy. She went around screaming and cussing out them peckerwood boys. She swore up and down she'd prosecute they involved for murder. She said it to their face. They'd all fucked her, meaning she'd fucked them all herself right back. They weren't strangers, and the way his mama was, all sass and fire, none of them limpdick white boys stood up to her face. When her back was turned though, they found their courage. Just like dogs, in a mob. They grabbed her, to teach her a lesson they said. They took her to the Folsom Bridge crossing at Little River. They tied her up by the ankles. They hung her upside down from a tree. They did to her body all an angry pimp can think of, then after a day or so doused her in motor oil for an even burn and set her on fire. She was still alive. She screamed her lungs out. Sweet was there through it all, trying to jump up and reach his poor Mama down. As she roasted, some peckerwood boy went at her with a butcher's knife. He opened her belly up. She had a baby in there. It fell down to the ground. It cried. Once, it cried out. Then they stomped it underboot. After that, Sweet was taken in by a share-cropper. He worked the fields until he got seventeen. He ran away and caught a freight train North back in '28. He copped his first whore, a white girl, and drove her to suicide before he got eighteen." He paused. He steered the Hog with one hand. He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He punched in the dashboard lighter.

I thought, "No wonder Sweet's off his rocker. I wonder why Top really gave me that tight rundown on Sweet?" The lighter popped. Top lit his cigarette. He sucked hard. He blew out a white cloud against the windshield that for an instant blotted out the moon. He said, "I ain't insane like Sweet. My skull is clear and cool. I ain't no mixed-up Southern nigger. I was born in the North and I grew up in the North. Had white kids all around growing up. I don't hate white people or any other people. I ain't no black brute. I'm a pretty, brown-skined lover. I love people. When I was a square I was even engaged to marry a white girl. Her parents and their friends brought down the pressure on her. She chickened out. I guess I loved her. Right after we called it quits I went to a hospital for my nerves. I ain't had nothing but whores since. It's like I told you when I met you. Sweet's a Ford and I'm a Duesenberg. He's just an ugly lucky nut." I said, "But Top, you cracked your booby-box score was higher than Sweet's. Those three gibbering bitches upstate sure don't show no love for whore people."

He said, "There you go, fool. A young chump is just like a square bitch. He can't figure nothing out himself. He's gotta have a rundown on everything. Of course I drove those whores crazy, but for a sane reason, sucker. A pimp cops a whore. He cons her maybe if she stays in his corner humping his pockets fat, at the end of the rainbow she's got a husband and a soft easy chair. To hold her beak to the grindstone, he pumps air castles into her skull. She takes all the stable grief. She humps her ass into a cramp to outshine the other whores in the family. At first, it's easy for the bitch to star. As she gets older and uglier her competition gets younger and prettier. She don't have to be no brain to wake up there ain't no easy chair at the end. She gets hip there ain't never even been a rainbow. She gets larceny in her heart. She bullshits herself that if she can drive all those young pretty whores away from the pimp that rainbow might come true after all. If it don't, she'll get her revenge anyway. It's a violation of the pimp book to quit a whore. A bitch like that is a ticking bomb. Every day, her value to the pimp drops to the zero line. She's old, tired, and dangerous. She can rattle a pimp into goofing his whole game. If the pimp is a sucker he'll try to drive her away with his foot in her ass. She's almost a cinch to croak him or cross him into the joint. I'm a genius. I'm hip that after a bitch has had maybe ten-thousand tricks drill her she ain't too steady, skullwise. I don't tip her I'm salty and disgusted. I talk like a sweet head-shrinker to her. Instead of air castles, I pump her full of H. Her skull starts to jelly. I'll be worried as hell about her. I'll start sneaking slugs of morphine or chloral hydrate into her shots. While she's out, I'll maybe douse her with chicken blood. She comes to, I'll tell her I brought her in from the street. I tell her I hope you didn't croak anybody while you were sleepwalking. 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."

By then he had been driving for at least an hour. I had lost track of time and space. I saw no black faces in the streets around us. I saw tall gleaming apartment houses. Some so tall they seemed welded to the night sky. I said, "Yeah Top, you're a cold clever stud all right. I'm sure glad you're yanking my coat. Jesus! Sweet must live in a white neighborhood." He said, "Yeah kid, he lives just around that next corner, in a penthouse. Like I told you he's lucky as a shit-house rat. It's a million-dollar building. The old white broad that owns it is Sweet's freak white dog." I said, "But don't the white tenants blow the roof because Sweet lives there?" He said, "Sweet's old white broad owns the building, but Sweet runs it. At least he runs it through a old squared-out pimp pal of his. Sweet stuck him into a pad on the ground floor. Patch Eye, the old stud, collects the rents and keeps the porters and other flunkys on their toes. Most all the tenants are white gamblers and hustlers. They got young whores running naked back and forth down the halls most of the time. Sweet's got the old ex-pimp running book wide open. The action a week just from the tenants runs maybe five grand. Maybe more. There's always some big event going, like tonight. I'll say it a thousand times : Sweet is a lucky stud." He turned the corner and eased the Hog into the curb in front of a snow-white apartment building. A moss-green canvas canopy ran from the edge of the curb twenty-five yards to the fancy front. A gaunt white stud in a green monkey suit was standing in stooped attention at the curb. We got out. Top walked around the Hog.

The doorman said, "Good evening, gentlemen." Top said, "Hey Jack, do something for me. When you take my wheels to the back see that they's parked close to an exit. When I come out I don't wanna hassle outta there. You got that ?" The doorman nodded, "Yes, Sir. I'll make sure of it, sir." Top patted his back with a fin in his palm, the oldest magic trick in the book. We walked into the green-painted, black-marbled foyer. I was trembling like maybe a hick virgin on a casting couch. We walked up the half-dozen marble steps to an invisible glass door. A broad toasted to the creamy hues of fresh cocoa butter slid it open. We stepped into the green-and-pearl lobby. A tan broad as flashy as a Cotton Club pony sat behind a blond desk. We walked across the quicksand pearl carpet to the front of it. She flashed two perfect dozen of the thirty-two. Her voice was contralto silk. Maybe it was lyrical soprano brocade, what do I know. She said, "Good evening, may I help you?" Top said, "I'm officer O'Flaherty. Danny O'Flaherty. This nigger here's my nephew, Mark Huntleaks. We're here to check on Mr. Jones." She turned to a switchboard and shoved some tiny pricks in some tiny holes. Then she said "Penthouse, Danny O'Flaherty and my cunt leaks." After a moment we got the ivory flash again. The pony said, "Thank you so much for waiting. Mr. Jones is at home and will see you. The elevator's over there, if you please."

I followed Top to the elevators, trying to hold it in. It was harder than any gunion. A pretty brown-skin broad in a tight green uniform zipped us to the fifteenth floor. Top noticed my peeping and said "They're all working, just not tonight. Ain't that right, honey ?" She turned to face him and smiled a perfect whore smile. He faced her close and slid a folded saw right between her pushed together tits. She blew him a kiss upclose. The brass door opened. We stepped out onto a gold-carpeted entrance hall. It was larger than Top's living room. A skinny Filipino broad in a gold lame outfit came toward us. It clung to her so tight it made her look naked, made of polished gold. She was grinning, bowing her head and dangling her tits. The crystal chandelier overhead glittered on her second skin. She took our lids and deposited them on a limb of a mock mother-of-pearl tree. She said "It is Sumi's great honor to welcome you sirs tonight. Follow, please."

We followed to the brink of a sunken living room. It was like a Pasha's passion pit. A green light inside the gurgling bowl of a huge fountain beamed on the enraptured face of a stone woman squatting over it. She was nude and lifesize. The red light inside her skull blazed out through her eyes trained straight ahead. Her delicate hands pressed down and away on the sides of long bamboo sticks crumpling her elongated breasts. From the right place well detailed she was peeing, endlessly and serenely, on the face of an older gent trapped in the fountain bowl. We stepped down to the intricate oriental carpet. Its patterns looked like they could keep a smoked out whore occupied for days. Sweet was sitting across the dim room on a white velour couch. He was wearing a white satin smoking jacket. It made him look just like a huge black fly fallen in a bucket of milk. Miss Peaches lay curled at his side. She was resting her black spotted head on a silk turquoise pillow. Sweet was stroking her back. She purred and locked her yellow eyes on us. I got a whiff of her raw animal odor. Sweet said, "Sit yo black asses down. Sweetheart, you been dangling me. What happened? Did that raggedy nickel Hog break down? So this is your square country nephew?"

Top sat on a couch beside Miss Peaches. I sat in a blue velour chair several yards to the side of Top. Sweet's gray eyes were flicking up and down me. I was nervous. I grinned at him. I jerked my eyes away to a large picture on the wall over the couch. A naked white broad was on her hands and knees, her wrists bound to a stake driven in the ground. A Great Dane with his red tongue lolling out was astraddle her back. He had his paws hooked under her breasts. Her blonde head was turned looking back at him, her blue eyes popped wide open. Her mouth was open too, her tongue out trying to catch some spit. She had a big knot of thick rope around her neck. Behind her some schoolgirls holding hands looked on with awe in their blue eyes. Top said, "Man, that Hog ain't no plane. I got here quick as I could. You know I don't play no games on you, honey." I said, "Thank you, Mr. Jones, for letting me come along."

My voice triggered the Roost memory. He stiffened and glared at me. He smashed his hooks together. It sounded like pistol shots. Peaches growled and sneered. He said, "Ain't you the tinhorn punk that ran off from my bitch ?" I said, "Yeah, I'm one and the same. I want to beg your pardon for that night. Maybe I coulda gotten a pass if I had told you I'm your pal's nephew. I ain't got no sense, Mr. Jones. I took after my idiot father." Sweet said, "Top, this punk ain't hundred percent hopeless. He's silly as a bitch grinning all the time, but dig how he butters out the con to keep his balls outta the fire. He sure ain't got no tender dick to turn down my pretty big-ass Mimi." Then he turned to me "Kid, I love black boys with the urge to pimp. Ain't no surer way to amount to something. Your uncle ain't but a good pimp. I'm the greatest in the world. He wired me he's hoping you'll fold on this track and split back to the sticks. You got one whore he tells me. You could have the makings. This joint is going to be crawling with fast whores in a coupla hours. I'm gonna be pinning you. I'm gonna watch how you handle yourself. Maybe I'm gonna make you my protege. You gotta be icy; understand, kid, icy, icy? You gotta stop that grinning. Freeze your map and keep it that way. Maybe I'm gonna prove to your half-ass pimp uncle that I can train even a mule to win the Kentucky Derby."

Top said, "Shit, honey! You didn't have to go tip him. I'm pulling for his split. I love the kid. I just don't think he can cut the pimp game. The kid raps good, I ain't denying it. He should be maybe a Murphy player or even a mitt man. His ticker ain't icy enough to pimp on this track. I bet he loves that whore of his." I thought, "Top's pad is a pigsty compared to this layout. It looks like I'm in." Sweet said, "Sweetheart, let's go cap up and bag that stuff for those jokers. I'm gonna have old Patch Eye come up here and deal it off. I ain't no dope peddler." He turned to me again "Kid, you can cool it. Have one of my whores bring you a taste, or cop for yourself if you want from the bar over there."

They went around a silk screen hand-painted in gold and through a doorway. Peaches padded behind them. I saw a heavy silver bell resting on a table beside the couch. I rung it once, to see what happens. It weighed half a Hog. The whore that sat on Sweet's left in the Doozy zipped in. "What can I get you, kid ?" I looked her up and down. She had a dress on made of a gauze so thin I saw her every contour underneath. She had the curves of dreams all over her. I asked what's her name. Then I said "Good evening Lulu. Call me Iceberg." She bent over to face me and whispered "What can I get you, Iceberg ?" Her breath was so hot it caramelized my face. I said "That's just the thing, I don't know what to have. If I knew I'd have copped myself. I've never been to a place this hip before." She laughed as tinkly as the bell. She asked me if I like sweet or sour. I said sweet. She asked me if I like to lick a whore or ram it in. I said I'm too lazy to ram anything. She asked if milk's better than lemonade. I said lemonade's much better. She asked me if I stay up late or go to bed early. I said I never go to bed. She asked me black cherry or vanilla ? I chose the cherry. She said she'll be right back. She shook her ass all the way to the turquoise bar across the room, holding her hand underneath to accentuate the bumps as she went. She came back with a tall glass, frosted on the outside. I took a sip. It was divine. I told her so, I said this is the best drink I had ever tasted in my life. I asked her what's it made of ? She said she'll never tell me that, and she ain't ever gonna make it for me again, either. I pouted. She said "Unless you kiss my ass." I said "But angel doll... I'm here tryna be a pimp. Sweet said he's got his eye on me." She nodded. "If I kiss your ass he ain't ever gonna think me nothing but a sucker." She smiled at me "And aintcha ?" "Yeah," I said. But he don't have to find out the first time he lays his eyes on me, does he ?" She smiled at me "I guess he don't." I shrugged with a sad face, "Well... thank you for the drink". She smiled slyly as she went away "Anytime, cutie pie."

I took my golden cool drink and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling glass door. I slid it open and stepped up into the patio. The ice-cream-yellow moon seemed close enough to lick. I didn't try licking it, though. It wouldn't have been pimp enough. I walked to the pearl-white parapet. Head in my hands I looked out at the brilliant sea of emerald and ruby neon bursting pastel skyrockets toward the cobalt blue sky. The stars were all sapphire, pools of cool water. They made me feel a fool. I thought, "Sweet sure has caught lightning in a thimble. He came out of the white man's cotton fields. He's had a brother, died under a boot. He's pimped himself up to this. He's living high in the sky like a black God in heaven with the white people. He ain't no nigger doctor. He ain't no hot-sheet nigger preacher. They're not here, either. He is. He pimped up his scratch passport. That barbed-wire stockade is a million miles away. I got more education, I'm better looking, I'm younger, too, than he is. If he lucked out I hope I'll luck out, but if he did it, I can do it too."

I remembered Henry, and how religious he was. Look what happened to him. I remembered how I used to kneel every night by the side of the bed to pray. I really believed in God then. I thought he existed, like a chump stood up on a date. At first he thinks she's coming, she's coming, any minute now. As the hours and years add up and the broad's still no show though... eventually even the worst chump gets on with his life. You can't wait on the same chair until you're eighty because some broad forgot sometime sixty-five years ago she had a date one night. I know there's some who try, but there's some who try anything that can be tried. I wasn't about to, and now after all these years I can say I've not missed much : the broad didn't show in sixty years just the same as she didn't show in ten. Though, who knows...

Maybe some morning about dawn all the black folks will sing Hallelujah! Maybe God's white board of directors will untie the red tape. Maybe God himself will roll up his sleeves one day and do a spot of work to buy all the salt he's eaten so far. Thing is, I couldn't wait. I con people I'm lazy when I'm not lazy all the time, just most times. I'm lazy like the sky is black, there's still stars twinkle here and there. I never tried to con anyone I'm patient, which I never was. If there were a joker up there or not, it made no difference anyhow. Them white folks doing all the fine living and sucking up all the gravy say they earned it. Fine. I gotta have some of that living and some of that gravy myself. I'll say I earned it too, and who don't like it can go pray to whatever jokers he prefer. I didn't wanta be a stickup man, or a dope peddler. I sure as hell wasn't going to be a porter, or dishwasher. I wouldn't have my whores do that. Pimping's good enough for me, and everyone else can as well go straight to hell.

I looked down over the parapet. I wondered if the undertaker had been born yet who was slick enough to paste a sucker's ass together after a Brodie fifteen-stories down. I heard "Tuxedo Junction" pulsing behind me. My drink was drained. I turned and walked toward the glass door. I slid the door open to a chorus of profanity. The whore scent flared my nostrils. There must have been thirty yapping pimps and twice as many whores lounging around the spacious pit. I stepped down and slid the door shut. An ebony midget of a pimp was sprawled in the blue velour chair. A tawny tan tigress was kneeling before him, her chin rammed into his crotch. She had him clutched around the waist like a humping twodollar trick in an alley. Her dreamy maroon eyes rolled toward the top of her long skull. She was staring at his fat blue lips. The rock on his finger exploded blue-white, frozen fireworks. He raised his glass to curse all square bitches. He was con-toasting all whores. The room got silent. Somebody had strangled the gold phonograph in the corner.

He toasted: "I wouldn't touch a square bitch to push her dumb ass in a ditch. Their slits are funky and their tits picayune. Their star sign's a vinegarroon. They got green puke between their rotting toes, and snot runs from their clappy nose. I know they'll all die syphilitic wrecks, but I hope they slip during sex, fall back through their own assholes, and break their mother-fucking necks!"

It was the first time I'd heard it. It was the first time for most of the crowd, too. They roared and begged him to do it again. Suddenly he turned toward the hand-painted Chinese screen. All eyes turned to Top and Sweet coming into the room. An old black stud wearing a white silk patch over his right eye trailed behind them. Peaches followed him, looking just like a vulture decked out in a gray mohair vine. The cat stood before the white velour couch and bared her fangs. The three pimps sitting there scattered off like quail hearing buckshot. They thumped their rear ends to the carpet a safe distance later. Sweet, Top, and Peaches sat on the couch the cat had conquered. I sat on a satin pillow in the corner near the glass door. I watched the show. I saw Patch Eye go and sit behind the bar. Everybody was in a big half-circle around the couch. It was like the couch was a stage, and Sweet the spotlighted star. He said, "Well, how did you silly bastards like the fight? Did the nigger murder that peckerwood or did his black ass turn shit yellow?"

A Southern white whore with a wide face and a sultry voice like Bankhead's drawled, "Mistah Jones, Ahm happy to repoat thet the niggah run the white stud back intu his mammy's ass in thu fust round." Everybody laughed except Sweet. He was crashing together his mitts. I wondered what madness bubbled in his skull as he stared at her. A high-ass yellow broad flicked life back into the phonograph. "Gloomy Sunday," the suicide's favorite, dirged through the room. She stared at me as she came away. I felt sorry I didn't think to bring Pepper, or at least the runt along. Sweet said, "All right you freakish pigs. Patch Eye's got outfits and bags of poison. You got the go sign to croak yourselves." They started rising from the satin pillows and velour ottomans, crowding around Patch Eye at the bar.

The high-ass yellow broad came to me. She stooped in front of me. The largest thing she wore were two thick leather belts fastened around her thighs right under her ass. Six short throwing knives gleamed their sharpness from their leather loops on either side. I saw black tracks on her inner thighs. The inside of her gaping cat was beef-steak red. She had a shiv slash on the right side of her face. It was a livid gully from the corner of her eye to the corner of her twisted mouth. Her coffee-colored eyes whirled inside her skull. She was higher than the Home Insurance Building, except they hadn't demolished her yet. Not entirely, anyhow. I grinned carefully. Sweet was digging us from across the room, shaking his head in disgust. I wondered if he thought I oughta slug her in the jib and maybe take the carving like a fish. She said, "Let me see that pretty dick, handsome." I said "Let me see your million dollars first, bashful." She gave me one mean stare. "Nigger, you ain't heard of me? I'm Red Cora from Detroit. That red is for blood. You ain't hip I'm a thieving bitch that croaked two studs? Now I said show that dick." I grinned at her stupid name. "Chill it, Detroit. I left my swipe back home. I keep it in the sugar box, with the savings." She put her hands on her belts and scowled at me. "Call me Cora, little bullshit nigger. Ain't you a bitch with one whore? You gonna starve to death, nigger, if she's a chump flat-backer. Nigger, you better get hip and cop a thief." A big husky broad with a spike in one hand and pack of stuff in the other took me off the hook. She kneed Cora's spine. "Bitch, wanna go halves with me on this fine dope ? You can Georgia this skinny nigger later." I watched Cora's rear end twist away from me. She and the husky broad went to the bar and got a spoon and a glass of water. I looked at Sweet. He was giving me a cold stare. I thought, "This track is too fast even for itself. I have no idea what to do. With young soft bitches I'm a champ even by myself, but I really need my main whores with me to square off with these demented jades. I really shouldn't have left them at home."

I sat in the corner bug-eyed for two hours, trying to figure out what gives. Ain't these suckers got any need for money ? I left my whores working to come here and run into all these jokers whose whores apparently don't need to work any. Sweet going around with five fine bitches in his car, neither dropping them off ready to kill nor picking them back up dog-tired, like a farmer chaining up five tractors to each other so he can go around the farmhouse yelling "choo! choo!". Looking for studs to pay double saws to lay them, just like a god-damned freak square. Then all these jokers and dumb bitches... what's Albacora Detroit gonna steal from me with those repurposed letter openers ? They looked like they'd have worked great scraping off the dirt from under some toenails. Now if only I had any.

My ears flapped to the super-slick dialogue. I was excited by the fast-paced, smooth byplay between these wizards of pimpdom. Albacora kept circling me. She was H'd out of her skull, which somehow made her go to the patio and then come right back in again. Each pass she'd crack on me. At first I thought she was kidding about seeing my swipe, but she acted just like she missed out on highschool and couldn't get over the loss. Several of Sweet's whores came in that hadn't been at the Roost with him that first time I saw him. There wasn't a black bitch or a tough thigh among them. I thought it's pretty dumb to have all your whores the same way, but I guess that's how he liked it. It didn't make sense to me any. What's he do with them in a few years, eat them ? If his old whores don't stick with him, why would the young ones ? Just because they're dumber ? He's gotta have something to offer, even if he's just conning them he still got to at least look like he has something to offer. A pimp with all new whores looks just like a car salesman with all old cars. Especially one that's been at it for years. I ended up with a coupla old whores in just a few weeks. I got mine old, I didn't age them myself. What's he been doing ? After cracking my head with it for a while I finally figured he's just keeping his old ones out of sight. These young dumb bitches are just for the bait, and they're not that dumb, either. Glass Top said he has at least one old whore, that owns the building for him. That must be it, he doesn't expose his top floor. I thought I'd run this by Pepper, see what she says. I didn't think she's ready to go into the convent yet, though. That bitch sure loved to hump.

There was a giant black pimp from the apple. Not the big one, the mini one. He had three of his whores with him. He was one of the very few at the party that didn't bang stuff. He spent all night boasting about how he had his swipe trained. He held a glass in his hand, towering over Sweet and Top on the couch. He said, "Sweet, ain't a bitch living can pop me off unless I want her to. I don't care if she's got velvet suction cups in her cat. Her jib can have a college degree, she ain't gonna make me pop against my will. I got the toughest swipe in the world. I got a C note to back my crack." Sweet said, "Sucker, I got a young bitch I turned out six months ago that could blow that tender sucker swipe of yours in all of five minutes. I ain't going to teach you no lesson for a C note. If that C ain't all you got, drop a G with Glass Top and you've got a bet."

The big joker snatched a roll from his side and G'd that C in Top's palm. Sweet eased a bale of C notes from the pocket of his smoking jacket. He covered the bet in Top's hand. A beautiful yellow broad, couldn't have been more than seventeen, kneeled before the standing giant. She freed her tits to the cheers of the growing audience and chomped his swelling dick with their softness. She was a performer alright. She toyed with him, her mouth open an inch away from his rock-hard prick, blowing hot lava on it. She carressed the desperate swipe in front of her mouth like she owned it. After a minute she lifted her beautiful green eyes to meet his, and whispered "Are you ready, lover ?" He was moving in tune with her movements like hypnotized. She gave his dick one sweet kiss on the tip and it shot its white-hot juice all over her instantly. She licked her lips. She was a snake charmer alright. She had won the bet for Sweet, but she humiliated the poor sucker into the ground too. All it took for him to explode all over her was one small little kiss! He stood there for a long moment with his eyes closed and a goofy grin on his face. One of his three out of work whores snickered. He slapped her hard on the jaw. He went to the bar. I wondered how long that poor bitch took to make the grand he invested for her. I wondered if this young bitch will be worth a million just like Pepper by the time she's her age. Sweet was pratting loud "You believe I bought that bitch right from her mammy ? She cost me fiddy bucks!" I thought "The loser's you, Sweet. My million dollar broad ain't cost me a half cent."

I got up and went towards the Chinese screen through the door. On the way over I hissed at Albacora "Bitch, I'm going to take a piss. You still wanna see that dick ? Now's your chance, bitch!" I went down a long hall. I passed three way-out bedrooms. I went into a mirrored john. It was as big as a bedroom itself. Sweet even had urinals on the wall in there. Just as I was undoing my pants that tough bitch Cora darted in, licking out her red tongue, her eyes voodooing in her skull. She was hot as hell for my innocence and youth, a double murderess with a skull load of H and a hot jib. I stood there before the deadly bitch. I said "Sit yourself down in the urinal, bitch. I don't know how to piss unless it's on an ugly whore's face. You dig ?" It was like tickling a leopard with a broom straw right over its itty bitty balls. She sat herself down, feet outside on either side. She took her hands off those belts and put them behind her head. I let go on her face. She opened her mouth. I said "Open your eyes, bitch. It's supposed to go in your nose through your eyes, ain't your Daddy taught you no thing ?" That's when Sweet bulled in. He seized a fistful of her long hair. She squealed in pain. He jerked her away from me toward the door. He cussed her as he drove his needle-toed shoe into her wide caboose several times. He said, "Bull-shit bitch, this chump is in my school. I ain't gonna let you Georgia him. Now nix, bitch, nix."

I heard her high heels staccato against the tile as she fled. He turned toward me. His black face was stone gray. He shouted, "Listen you stupid little motherfucker. You know why that bitch screwed you around? You always grinning like a Cheshire Cat. What's funny? Can't I get the sucker outta you? I can't make a pimp outta a pussy like you. I told you once, do I have to tell you a thousand times? Greenass nigger, to be a good pimp, you gotta be icy, cold like the inside of a dead-whore's pussy." Then he looked around. "What you doin' here, nigger ?!" I said "I came out here to take a leak, Mr. Jones sir. I hope that's alright." He started laughing like I hit him with a big stick o' funny upside the head. He was tearing up, leaning against the wall. He grunted "You out here pissing all over that funky bitch ?!" I said "Well yeah. How's it done on the fast track ? At home I always piss on a whore face, it makes the flow mellow. I don't know I can even go if there ain't a grinning bitch licking her lips opposite. I ain't tried in too long." He looked at his hand. He grunted "Motherfucker" and went to the sink. I walked out.

When Sweet came out I was rapping with the first broad. She came to me, I didn't go to her. She asked me if it's true I took a leak all over Red Cora. I said "Listen prettyful, you fix me a drink I tell you a story." She shot towards the bar and shot right back faster than the speed of spite. I started "Well sweetslit, I..." and that's when Sweet Jones bellowed "Where's that Pissberg, coning everyone he's new on the game ?" Everyone froze. I let out "Right here talking to sweetslit, honey." They were too petrified to laugh. He stomped to me like a steam engine some joker had hitched on legs. Maybe he'd forget I ain't yellow any ? I remembered what Glass Top had told me, about those four murders. When he was face to face he yelled out "How many whores you got ?" I said "I got four at home." Glass Top was striding towards me. Sweet turned to him "How about that ?" Glass Top grinned. "If he conned you then he conned me too, honey." Sweet spat "Yeah. He conned you he's your nephew when he fell outta his mammy's ass." Then he bellowed at me "From now on, you my nephew. Got that ?" I said "Sure Mr. Jones sir. But how's about when you come to my party, we switch around. I wanna be someone's uncle for a spell too." I could tell he wanted to laugh, but he held it in. He spun around. "I smell the funky stale slit on a square bitch. Where they at ?" Everyone looked at each other. Some of the broads living in the building, squared out more or less with their white jokers had snuck in to the party. Sweet said "Ain't it midnight yet ? All bitches step out." Every last bitch there ditched whatever she had on her back. The square broads too, but they weren't fast enough. They had too much on, so for a moment they stood out in the sea of whores like four sore thumbs twiddling on themselves.

Sweet yelled out "Now's time for the turnout game. Entry's for free but what it cost. Who's got the game and the fame ? Step up." Patches had disappeared, but he came out with a struggling white broad. She was barefoot, whimpering quietly, her arms roped tight together. She bit on a round wooden ball, strapped to her pretty head. She had leather patches over her eyes. Her big white girl titties jutted out. A gangly stud plonked a pile of bills in Sweet's open paw and walked up to her. Patch Eye took her eyepatches off. Her black eyes were wild with fear underneath. She darted them every which way and stiffened up. I don't think she was bare with people before. The stud kept pratting her and prancing around her like a monkey on a stick. She just stood and whimpered, Patch Eye holding her by the arm. Glass Top whispered in my ear "Now you believe the ugly bastard is insane?" I asked him what the hell is he doing ? He told me he lines up square broads like that, and any stud that's got a grand can prat them up. If he turns them, he gets to keep 'em. If not, another stud gets a shot. "How long's he got ?" Glas Top shook his head. "Until Sweet says he's had enough." Sweet was quizzing some bitches on the floor. I think he said the joker's had enough, because he yelled out "Who's next ? Step right up !" I asked Glass Top why's he not hit it up ? He shook his head. "You got a lot to learn, kid." I think so did some other studs, because another joker plonked the bills in Sweet's mitt and took to pratting and hopping around the broad.

I fingered for sweetslit. She zipped right in. I said "Can you turn the white broad ?" She said "I ain't never tried, Pissberg honey." I said "Want me to pull your coat ?" She said "I ain't got no coat or anythig, honey. Can't you see that ?" but she kneeled down next to me, ears opened up. I said "You go up to her. You look at her straight in the eye for a beat. Then you grab her in your arms sweetly like the whore you are. You whisper in her ear 'Honey, don't worry yourself. Ain't nothing gonna happen to you. The longer you hold out, the more money he makes from the dumb studs tryna turn you for the fame. The more afraid you are, the longer you hold out. That's why he puts the scare in you. That's all. You got all the power, honey. The pratting stud ain't got nothing on you. He's out a grand and dancing eight to the bar. It's up to you whether he's out his scratch or not. So put that worry out of your mind and enjoy yourself, ain't many times in life you get to do that." She looked at me. "You figure that'll work ?" I smiled like the Cheshire Cat. "If you say it right it's gonna work, alright. You a charmer or not ?" She shook her head. "I ain't got a grand no-how". I grabbed her by her hand and stood up. I dragged her right over to Sweet. I said "This bitch one of yours, unc' ?" He looked at her in my hand. Bitch shivered like he was blowing bootleg air from Canada on her from those gray peppers of his. He turned to me "You wanta piss again or what ?" I said "I pulled her coat to some fine pimp game talk. You gonna let her prat the broad ?" Sweet nearly laughed. He had it in him, but he held it tight. "This I gotta see" he said. Sweetslit walked over, grabbed the broad. A minute later that square bitch was crumpled at her feet, squirting from the eyes and squeezing slit's ankles with her belly and thighs. Sweet stood up. "Well I'll be! The jasper broad turned out alright!"

They had more girls after that, a black bitch with a lot of spit in her that turned out for an older pimp with hair on his face like General Lee, a small Chinese doll, I don't remember what all. Then after a while pratting and strutting around they did the Queen Come. Half the bitches in the joint lined up against the wall, sitting on their ass, knees hooked apart. When Sweet said "Hit it!" they all started rubbing right atop their slits, moaning and licking their fingers. The first one to get herself off with one hand was Queen Come of the party, she got to sit in the middle on a big couch and all the other bitches pampered her like a real queen. It took some redhead broad all of half a minute before she was bucking like crazy. A coupla broads fingered her inside to check her out and they gave her the win. Most of 'em were done before two minutes were out. No wonder suckers come out looking for a turned out whore, I ain't ever heard of no square broad come at all, let alone on a timer like that. Two minutes ? Ain't ever happened, that.

Eventually I had enough. I told Sweet I gots to cop some doss. He said careful not to piss on it, kid. I zigzagged through the snickering whores and pimps. I made it across the pit to the elevator. The Filipino standing beside it, pressing the down button, looked like a friendly brown snake sausaged in gold foil. She reached up and stroked my jacket collar down flat from around my ears. She took my lid off the pearl tree, stuck it on my skull and snapped the brim. I felt the sweat band needle an aching boil. She said, "Good night, Sir. Sammee hopes you had fine time." I said, "Sammee, bitch, it's been a wild night. I'll never forget it." I stepped out of the gilded cage into the lobby. I saw a winking red-arrowed sign in the rear. I walked to the glass door below it. I went down the white stone steps to the street.

I felt hard and lucky as a horseshoe. The little bit I had snorted back there had me froggy, like it had fitted wings on my feet. I felt cool, breathless, and magnificent. It was a balmy eighty degrees. I was glad I'd left the benny. I walked toward a rainbow bouquet of neon maybe ten blocks away. My senses screamed on the razor-edge of cocaine. It was like walking through a battlefield. The streaking headlights of the cars arcing the night were giant tracer bullets. The rattling crashing street-cars were army tanks. The frightened, hopeless faces of the passengers peered through the grimy windows. They were battleshocked soldiers doomed forever to the front trenches. I passed beneath an El-train bridge. A terrified, glowing face loomed toward me in the tunnel's gloom. It was an elderly white man trapped behind enemy lines. A train furled by overhead. It bombed and strafed the street. The shrapnel fell in gritty clouds.

I was too nervous for the combat zone. I whistled at a general in a yellow staff car to halt. He whisked me past that oasis of neon. It turned out he was a mercenary. He shafted me seven slats and a quarter for the evacuation.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 16 : The Blue Heaven

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 18 : Happy Birthday! »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Friday, 05 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 16 : The Blue Heaven

When I came too it was late. All the square stiffs were long at their square stiff trades. The big bright Sun had been conning them into it for half the day. On the nightstand with the roaches there stood gleaming the bellhop's bell from downstairs. I never noticed it before. I made the big mistake of giving it a hearty punch. It let out a resounding ding, like it was a healthy bellhop bell with fine lungs. The whole god damned house came rushing through the door and crashing on my head. I fell ass-backwards back in bed.

Pepper ran it down for me. The place she had set June down was to be for six hundred her end, from nine to three in the AM. June held-up those suckers alright. When Pepper picked her up, towards four, she had eleven bills, plus a whole pile-up of saws and fins. It came to almost two grand. In just one night, a single whore working out. When they say a bitch or other got a mint between her legs, it's June they're talking about. With those big eyes of hers she could turn snot into spun silver. She did, too, just by sitting on it.

The way it played out, after they pawed and sniffed her neat ass a little at first they sat her down to play with them. She'd ante up just her tiddies for her share of the whole pot. The winner'd stick her like he wanted to. If she won, though, then she kept it. She won more than half the pots, and Pepper said they told her that when she'd lost, she'd make like she just wanted that sweet joker's prick in her and lost on purpose just for that. It drove them wild to hear that kinda talk. She said the crazy Junebug'd crawl on the table and stick her tits into the pot for real, then pocket whatever stuck to her hide. Or she'd crawl over and stuff her pussy in the Ace-high joker's face to get him to fold for her pair of kings she held in her blind. She spent more time crawling around on the table than she did sitting down. She did them all the ways there are and some more she came up with, Pepper said those jokers were so happy to file out of there trimmed it was like they saw the Statue of Liberty through the fog that night the first time in their lives. Once when one said that's cheating she cut him off that "It ain't cheatin' unless it's with your wife". It almost made me sorry I missed out.

While Pepper told her story June snuck into bed, nuzzling with me. I had my arm around her back. The other whores sat their asses down around the side. I said "Bitches, this is a sweet set-up going here, and it'll only get sweeter. We just have to let it. Ain't no bitch here get her dumb ass in the way, you hear ?" They murmured and nodded. "There's things to run down. First off, we got to keep book. It can't be written down. Gotta be kept in the brain." Pepper was all smiles and confidence. "I can keep book, Daddy." I waved at her. "No, you do too much. Phyllis." She came right back "Yes Daddy ?" I squinted at her "You fuck it up it'll be your hide. You got that, bitch ?" She nodded. "We do the first rundown together now, then you do it on your own from now on, and if I find there's missing cash or anything God help you. You got that ?" She nodded more. I said "What we got ?" Pepper raced, "There's fifty from Frank, there's four-eighty-five off the street, twenty-eight from the club, nineteen-fifty from June's school night, and what you got from her." Phyllis said "Mama, call me Phyllis the fool, or anything you like to." Pepper's eyes slitted some. "He said you're Crystal." Phyllis nodded. "Well, are you ?" She came back carefully "I'm whatever Daddy says, but before he said it that night I'd never heard it before." Pepper turned her grassy-green burning peepers to me "Because of Frank ?" I nodded. Pepper turned back, "Phyllis, you don't call me Mama. I ain't your Mama, sugar." The runt was getting rustled. She nodded "Yes Ma'am." I looked at her. She closed her eyes, figuring in her head. Then her eyes popped open "Almost five thousand in the street ? That right ?" I shook my head "Hundred." She nodded, then came back "Ten thousand, two hundred thirty-five in." I looked her, then at Pepper. Pepper shook her head. "Fifty grand from Frank." She said. The runt's peepers were wide enough. "Fifty-five-two-thirty-five, then." she said. "You should know, bitch. You counted it." She nodded. "Then twenty-one hundred for stuff, a hundred the booze, four hundred twenty on the joint I'm going to lay on that sucker right now and whatever you bitches been blowing out on coffees and sandwiches, twelve-fifteen grand or so. Scratch that, the booze ain't even in this week, that was before." Phyllis nodded, "Two-fifty-two. Leaves fifty-three sorry fifty-two-seven and change." June clapped her hands. "We gonna be rich, Daddy ?" I nodded. Too rich for sense, if anything.

Pepper was looking at me. I could feel her working herself up to speak. I gave her the time of day. Eventually she said "Daddy, you in the mood for me to lay a crazy trip on you ?" I nodded her go ahead. "Daddy... I've been working since I was a little girl. As young as that hot fresh bitch you've got in your mitt, or maybe a year younger." I patted June's butt. "She's turned fifteen." Pepper went on "A year younger then. I humped my ass off under the stomp of six different pimps, I've seen a hundred stables, it's been twenty-five years minus a fin bit at the end. I've lived my life out on the street. I seen all there's to see twice over, but in all that time there's one thing I ain't ever seen. You gonna give your whores a wage, Daddy ?" I scratched my head "Say what ?!" She speed-rapped "Now don't get angry with me Daddy. You give each whore whatever it is, a fin, a saw. Her kitty for the day. If it's but a single solitary buck, she buys herself a cup of coffee she knows where she's at. She sits in the greasy spoon looking at all the other whores, that wild look in their eye she knows from herself well. They don't know it's alright. She does. Daddy, the best spent buck's the one that lets your bitches be alright."

I said to her "You know what, you worthles old whore ? You're lucky I'm not a real pimp. You're lucky I don't know what's what. You can do anything you want to me with that fast jib of yours. Play me for a fool any way you like." Pepper was quiet, watching me. June crumpled up in bed like the tornado's about to hit. Chris was wild eyed. I walked to the dresser, grabbed a fistful of June's take last night. "Here, a saw a cunt. Line 'em up." They giggled and fumbled about, but in two minutes there were four sawbucks held by the cheeks in four whore butts, lined on my floor. I said "From now on, when we do the wake-up each morning, each whore gets a sawbuck. That way you don't starve if I don't feed you myself. Spend it on whatever you want, and if you miss out one day because you're working, you'll get it the next morning anyhow."

Chris shook her head. "I ain't ever seen nothing like this". Phyllis begged me with her peepers. I nodded her go ahead. "Daddy, what happens if a whore saves her bucks ?" I shrugged. "Are you gonna roll her for her savings ?" I laughed. "Sure, if I feel like it. What kind of purple-gutted sneaky whore doesn't want to give her Daddy all her money ?" She reached behind, grabbed to her sawbuck and held it to me. Then they all did. I said "Naw, bitches, keep 'em. I don't want it back. Make it so I never do, you know ?" Phyllis said "But Daddy... what if a whore holds out on you ? And claims it's savings ?" I shook my head. "Listen, bitch. I don't want you out there humping because you're affraid of a stomping. Any bitch that can't take a beating in the first place's not cut out to be a whore. She's not worth cutting into one, anyhow, not more than straw mat's worth cutting into fine vines. I ain't here tryna turn out silk out of farm-pig niggers. You go out there and you hump because you're good at it, and because no working stiff can all day long and all week long match what you take. You out there make me proud, and make yourself proud while at it. You tell your little girl, that has one, 'You be a whore baby, not a priss. Mama made a million dollars in her time and soon's your turn.' I ain't want my ass kissed by no rusty bitch that it ain't make her proud to kiss my ass. You got that ?" They murmured and then they jumped me. It was a pile-up, and then the bed fell down.

I yelled out "God damn!" and they were all on their feet lined up again. The bed was done in, though, the legs at the foot had broken through, and from the fall under weight it broke more places. I said "This joint sure is rusted up" and they all said "Mmmhmmmmm". I said "Chris, you go work the street, get that soft ass of yours back in shape. Pepper will run you down on the layout." She nodded. "Pepper, you set June down somewhere good, and then you work me out a vine connection and a fixing connection." She didn't get it. "What do you mean fixing, Daddy ?" I said "We gotta fix this place up. There's need for furniture, drapes, many things. You find me good prices for flash, you got it ?" She got it now alright. "Phyllis, you go back to school." She froze. Her lip started trembling. "Daddy, please. Don't cut me loose. Daddy, I beg you" she fell to her knees, batting her forehead against the floor and weeping "Daddy! Daddy!" over and over again. The other bitches had their peepers trained on me. Chris had her arms in her hands, digging her nails into the soft flesh opposite her tits. "Get up, you dumb broad. I ain't cutting you anything. You go talk to all the nappy headed hos you can find, bring them back here, smoke them out on pot. By nightfall I want this house full of college coent, you got that ?" She was trembling like she was in shock. She nodded like electrocuted, with her teeth clenched white. "And don't bring crap, either. I don't want to have to throw out more than half when I sort through 'em." After that they all split, leaving just June to follow me around.

I got the keys out and went through every room. The layout of the place had a stairwell going through sorta off to the side. On bottom floor there was the entrance hallway and Herb's desk to the right hand then a storage room, and on the left four rooms, two either side. On the first floor there were four rooms to the left and a pair to the right. On the top floor the same. It made for sixteen total, but the left hand top floor had a door in between them, so they could open up into a sort of apartment. We opened one up and sat around cooing a little, until Pepper came by looking for June. I slapped her ass and off she went, that old dress on her that I had copped with the runt's glove run threadbare on her ass. Musta been all the slapping she got on it, I guess.

I went out for a walk. The strings of cooking aromas pulled me into the Busy Bee Cafe. Across my flapjacks there was a face all dipped in spackle, with a newspaper twisted like a coif on a head of curls. "What's up, mack ?" I nodded at him. He nodded back at me over his beans. I said "Jack, I see you working. Got time to do a little job for me ?" He looked for the waitress. "Kediqee ? Kediqee ?" like he was some kinda injun. She warbled at him. He said to me "I... take... boss..." like it pained him to speak. Then he gestured with the fork in his fist and then with his two fingers like a walk. I finished my flapjacks, left a bone on the counter and we took off. I followed him through a maze of narrow tunnels like I was going to school for mole. The boss he took me to was an Irish guy looked just like a potato with feet. "What's up ?" I scratched my head. "Mack, I need some work done. Some windows bricked in. You got a man ?" He laughed, "sure" and then he whistled. A kid showed up out of nowhere. I took him over to the top floor and showed him what I want. He looked in and out, then took a string out of his pocket and made some marks on it. We walked back to the potato boss. He asked me what I want done with the windows they take out ? I told him I don't care, they can keep 'em. He asked me if I want it quick and cheap or done good. I said if I wanted a nigger rig I'd have rigged it myself. He laughed like a talking horse told him a jokes. He said "Mister, we have to break down the collar and get to the old brick. Then there's the brick layin' and then the spackle over. I'll do it for fifty today, if you don't want the outside spackled. If you do, it can't be done today. We have to put scaffolding in for a job like that." I figured that's a lock on the left hand set then, them windows don't show from the street. I handed the fifty over and left with three guys after me, one carrying buckets of their building snot, the other two a large pile of bricks in a craddle on their backs. Hank's eyebrows arched when he saw them going in after me, but I waved at him and that turned out to be good enough.

Before the jokers split I had them bring down the wall between the two rooms up top, too. I thought they'd bitch and moan and hit me up for more slats, but they didn't care any. One just knocked it with his fingers, then they put a hammer on it and in ten minutes it was down to dust. I said "Walls sure ain't what they seem, huh mack." They shook their heads "That was just a separator. They're never made too strong, in case the owner wants a door put in or something. You'd best be done having ideas though, because the rest of them around here are double brick. You're never getting through that without a wrecking ball." They filed out of there, two windows and a door on their back. Huey's eyebrows arched even more seeing them walk out like that. I sat down with him. I said, "Listen Hugh, I'm gonna be making some changes around here." His eyes darted all around. "What'll the owner say ? I could lose my job." I patted his shoulderpad down, "That's just what I mean. You just lost your job, mack. It's gone." I whistled just like the potato had. "Good riddance, twenty-two fifty a week that you made from it. But you've been born under a lucky star, making you a lucky sunovabitch. I'm here to give you a new job instead! You know what it is ?" He shook his head. "It's not getting in the way, just like until now. There's gonna be some girls showing up later, too." He said "Boss, I ain't got no beef with that or anything. But think about it, if the owner comes by and kicks you out, I'm out a hundred a week even if I get to keep this job. I don't want that." I said to him, "I ain't getting kicked out, of here or anywhere, you can bank on that. So don't you worry on it sweetie, and keep up the good work." He looked at me as hard as he could. "Well, he's due, anyway. Usually shows up about once a month, goes through the books and things like that. There ain't no way in hell he don't notice what's going on this time around." I patted his back, "Don't you worry yourself, Harvey. It'll play out alright".

That's when Pepper came in. She had been all over the pawnbroker district. Made a few new acquaintances and rekindled some old. Three of them added up to the sixty slats in her hand. She said "Daddy, I said you want fair price for things. I won't give it away and they don't have to give anything away. There's so many things I set aside for you to see." Then, like one of them Indian nabobs, all day long until nightfall I walked by chairs, armchairs and beds, and bolts of cloth, candelabra, bowls and pitchers and every kind of knick-knack in creation, Pepper at my side ever ready to whisper in my ear. All day for the week after that it was nothing but shop boys carrying packages to the Blue Heaven, three and five teams of them even in there at the same time. The bite for it came when all told just a few slats under eight grand. To look at the place though, you could have sworn it cost a hundred thousand. It would have, too, if all the stuff were new and none of it was stolen. As it was, every fence tight with Pepper dumped on me everything too hot to handle in the open. I thought my daddy's kind never dies, who knows how many of Mama worked on his ilk each day ? The Blue Haven looked like the handiwork of at least half dozen of 'em, that's for damn sure. My pad was looking more and more like I'd seen with Glass Top, except I didn't bunk with anyone in the apartment next door down the floor. I had the whole thing to myself. Also mine had a good touch of overstuffed horse hair and shiny brass instead of his funky thick carpets and strange black clay standing statues, but at least my bitches wore no skirts. I didn't think nothing of it : why trouble yourself with swank no one's ever seen and then have to wait for bitches to wake up to it, like him ? Better buy the swank they're woken up to already from their Moma's house on the cheap and not wait anything at all. One thing he had right though. There sure was no sunshine or moonshine coming in through anywhere up in my bedroom. Brick's better than double thick for that kind of job, ain't no burglar ever made it in there in one piece, through three floors full of Miss Peaches on two legs. I didn't want no ocelot for myself. They don't smell so hot.

All that whole week while the chaos went on the runt kept bringing bitches in. While they set everything down and done the place over I musta seen six dozen college broads between me and Pepper, though often we did it together. By when the dust settled down, the house was stuffed. On the upstairs was my bedroom on the side, and the girls bunked all together opposite : Pepper with June, Phyllis with Chris. Then on the other side of the stairs we had the counting room on my side, and a storage room on the other. It was getting so all the stuff didn't fit the old closet all that well, and besides I wanted some real doors put in, and strong bars on the windows too. I had a huge safe lifted up to my room on a crane. The craning cost me more than the strongbox, I got it for that cheap. Then dragging it through from the closest window, now that was a show, six boys laboured most of a day to inch it through, it was so heavy I thought it might cut the floor right through. It was an old piece, meaning a sharp with the right tools could cut through it in half an hour tops. I wasn't worried about that. As long as nobody could up and run off with it, I wasn't worried any. Not like it was next to the window, anyway.

The second floor was where the best girls worked their asses off. There was some coming and going, but for a long time the runt had little trouble keeping six to eight to the floor just from her old alma matter. It was soft enough, all of those bitches dreaming themselves singers and dancers and actresses. A buncha circus freaks. They went through a can of reefer a day between the lot of them, but square white tricks were sure glad to freak off with them. They still got their saw regular, though they almost never saw the light of day enough to spend it. It had to be in credit, because by the time noon rolled around and they'd start opening their eyes the first round of suckers was already batting down the door. It went on until three, four in the morning even. It's not good business to kick a joker out of doors holding his prick, especially if he paid good money to get it dipped and it's still wet. While one'd be in the tub soaking herself the other'd be on her back in bed turning a trick. Some of the jokers wanted privacy, but most liked the company and the girls threw each other freebies all the time. Between the six doors and the even whole dozen whores working behind them some weeks, the second floor cleared six-seven grand each day. I don't remember it was ever so low as five, not one week out of a whole year. The sucker's end went for 25 slats to the half hour at first, more than anyone else by a damn sight. A few weeks later it went up to 30, because of the demand.

The bottom floor was bunks, for the girls working in the street. Four rooms, four girls to the room, though sometimes Pepper had even two dozen crammed up in there. They bunked and shared beds, and toughened up those thighs. Most girls worked up a lather worth fifty at the least each day, though most of the time they went closer to the bill. The whole bottom often crossed into another two grand a day, though more often than not it was fifteen to eighteen or so. It doesn't sound like much, but even so it took a lot to qualify for that bottom floor. It wasn't anything like a bum's crash, most girls working on the street dreamed of making the Heaven bottom floor one day. Not all those bitches counted for full whores enough to get a saw, either, but many times the true blood whores upstairs let them have a buck or two of their own or more often sent down their half eaten special order lunches and dinners.

The swankiest restaurants in town lived off the special orders and takeout at the Heaven, because besides the fucking going on there wasn't anything a joker couldn't get extra. He wanted liquor we had it. He wanted gangster or girl he had but ask his bed partner. He wanted food she'd order for him, the phone downstairs got so busy we had to get another line put in. All this added up to a decent bite too, because a plate of fancy steak or sauced fish or what it was that sold in the restaurant hall for seven or ten we had for five, or eight, and it ran the sucker fifteen or a double saw to eat off of the butt of some whore while another ate his bait. The girl came in at eight to nine hundred a piece and went out six and seven to the cap, meaning as high as three grand. The girls didn't stash slats so much, but gangster was the bomb, they all had cans stashed everywhere, under the beds, inside their closets, in pockets, up their butts no doubt. If a trick wanted a smoke they'd charge everything they smoked themselves to him, and then on top of that they peeled everything they could offa the runt. Those bitches were crazy for the stuff. I think most days we still managed to sell more reefer than they smoked, though. To make a long story short, the day when the Blue Haven didn't clear ten grand wasn't to be found in the book, and often enough it went well over that.

Of course, I didn't know any of that early on, before the joint was sorted out, the first night the runt had some of them Tuskegee bitches over smoking up a room. That's when the heat came in. I was downstairs chatting with Hrupert. I'd never seen the pig before in my life, but he walked right up to me like he knew me all his life. He said "You're wanted at State and Madison, Icebeck. The Harp. Go through the back." Then he turned around and left.

I flagged a cab. The Harp was the warm beating heart of the nigger hatin' back in those days, but I made like I'm with deliveries and went through the kitchen. A sharpie waiter grabbed on me and hussled me down some stairs, where they kept the potato sacks. I wondered if he wants to show me some waitress on her back. Maybe it was a pick-up job, the whiteys figured I'm like a kinda exterminator, but for pickaninny varmints instead of plain black rats.

He knocked on a wall between two shelves. It was too dark to see the door, but it didn't need to see itself to know it's a door. It opened alright, as silent as the grave. I think they kept that bitch well oiled, anyhow. There I was, with a half dozen white jokers looking tough. Cap'n Mahoney and Frank Ibbetts among them I already knew, the rest I didn't. A joker sitting like he owned the joint saw me and went straight for the thrill : "You the crazy coon they been talking about ?" I nodded. "Guess I must be, sir. Though I don't seem crazy to myself none." They laughed. "Well, that's the sign" muttered out one of 'em. He let me have it point blank. "We talked it through. We'll let you go at it. The rent is seven a week. You mind the ice you're walking on yourself, you got that ? If you make your colored ass worth more dead than alive you'll be dead, not alive. You catch my drift ?" I said "Yes sir." The cap'n said "I'll send a boy over to collect tomorrow." I said "What's he to do tomorrow, cap'n ? I ain't even started operatin' yet." The boss guy looked at Frank, then back at me. "You don't say." I shrugged "I guess you dun best shoot me now, then. I ain't got what I ain't got, unless some hen's found to lay advance eggs. I ain't found it yet."

Frank said "Let me talk to him" and dragged me out of there. Once we were back with the potato sacks he hissed "What the fuck are you doing ?! You crazy or something ?" I looked at him. "Well Frank, I didn't know you gave me that dough to just hand it over to them. I figured if you wanted to do that, you could've done it yourself, didn't need me for it. That right ?" He shrugged. "It ain't worth the hassle for a few grand. They're blockheads, they go by the book. It irks them to have a small thing out of whack. They'll straighten your fork and knife for you if you go out to eat with them. Forget the seven grand." We went back in. I said "I'm sorry I spoken out of line. Frank's gonna help me with a loan. It'll be the first week tomorrow." Then I said, "If he wants to come every morning after that it's fine by me. Might be easier that way to carry all that dough." They all laughed like it was the funniest thing they heard all day.

They took me up on it soon enough, too. Who else shows up the next day, around eleven or so, than Delaney ? He said he volunteered for it, "He knows that crazy coon Icebeck, he busted him the first time." so they let him do it. While he took a load off, one of the runt's new cunts wrapped between his legs to help along with the unloading, I dumped a pretty bundle on him. I think they were all thinking nothing but C bills, but that's not how a house works. Most of the money the girls take in is fins and saws. That's what I had for him : eleven bundles of fins, one bundle of saws for a grand and five more bundles of straight bones. I asked him if he wants to count them first. He said sure. I lifted the lid off of one of those silver trays and started pushing the slats his way. By the time I had him fenced in three bundles deep he started shaking his head and waving his hands. I looked straight at him and said look Delaney, what do you want me to do ? Go to the bank first ? Every day in and out, changing money ? I might as well put it in the newspaper if I do that. He saw it my way alright, but he sure wasn't prepared for the pile-up. He thought he'll just stuff it all in his pockets. That's the beef with government clerks, they think money's just like that, a number on a piece of paper, something come from the air, like a fart. They don't understand some whore's gotta shake a leg for every bone in every slat pile each time. None of it just comes in the door like it does for them. After that day, Delaney was there every morning around eleven, pocketed a bundle or two and went on his way. He didn't even bother the girls any most days, though I asked him every time.

One of the first girls Phyllis dragged in was a young whore that was a whiz in the street, and hip to boosting. She got along great with another one working the second floor, I don't remember her name but she did it for a long time. Before the month was out she had hipped the lot of them, they'd go downtown and come back with shopping bags loaded with fine dresses and underclothes for themselves and all the sisters. They filled the storage room with nothing but beautiful vines, and they wouldn't stop, either. It got so bad I had to hit Pepper's fences in the jew section almost each week with a new load just to try make some room. It was great for the girls though, because if they didn't feel like working one day they'd just beg for a downtown pass. I gave those out like candy, at first because the girls had a dozen dresses between the lot of them and no underwear. A raggedy whore's bad for business, and there's nothing that pleases a young whore as much as a fine vine on her back, or a closet full of them to choose from. But even once the Heaven was soaked through it stayed good business. They'd come back with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, which even figuring the fences rake still came out about even with what they made on their back.

The girls traded those back and forth, it was funny to listen to them rap sometimes. A pair of silk underwear that went for three dollars for the square kittens downtown went four or five to the buck inside the Heaven. A front-and-center display window dress that some wife saved thirty or fifty dollars for was good for maybe four slats among the whores. It was like communist paradise. Nowhere in America did the dollar go as far as inside the cold prison of vice sucking young women's life and hope away, as the preacher lot called it.

It made picking up fresh blood stupid easy, too. After the runt ran out of prospects, or rather after she was so well known they came breaking down her door, we started going for trips in the boonies around, looking for barefoot princesses in the hillsides. Most of those girls never saw a pair of ladies' shoes in their life, to say nothing of silk panties or anything. They jumped into the first pair we dangled before their wide open eyes no matter what gold chain they came strung with. And they were right to do it, too.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 15 : Dust Girl Breaks Pepper, Skeleton Girl Breaks Phyllis

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 17 : Sweet Party at Sweet's »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Friday, 05 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 15 : Dust Girl Breaks Pepper, Skeleton Girl Breaks Phyllis

I hailed a cab two blocks down from Glass Top's. The short walk had licked me clean. I came to some by the time we made my roost. The joint sure looked shabby after spending time at Top's fine establishment. As I staggered into the lobby, Harry was on the phone. "He's right here Ma'am" he chirped, then handed me the phone. It was Pepper checking in. She said to me "Daddy... Big Daddy wants to keep Daphne. You mind ?" I sat my ass down on the joker's desk. I really needed the rest. I growled in the receiver "Naw, bitch. Let him have her, he can wash his head with her." Pepper didn't exactly sigh her relief, but I could hear it across the wire just the same. She whispered "In that case Daddy... Ima be back there in two shakes of a lamb's tail." She was, too. I barely had time to say "Well Henry... how you keepin' up these days my man ?" and for ol' Homer to burble something I don't remember back at me that she was right there, shooting through them doors. She carried me upstairs and clued me in.

She told me she got on the phone to get the dollies play dates for the afternoon. Some jokers she knew had a small blind poker game out in the swank district they wanted a whore for. They didn't want all three of them, and she figured June's a perfect fit anyway just by herself. She said to me "Oh Daddy... I didn't want to bring her down again, that's all" with a twinkle in her eye. She couldn't find anything that'd work well for Daphne and her together, and she wasn't going to go by herself or put Daphne down by herself, so she figured the best thing'd be to drop in on her old man, work the square bitch over and learn her some whoring there. The way she figured it she'd drop Daphne off there, then take June to her game twelve blocks away, then go back and spend the night at her old pad until the time rolled around to pick up the other whore and head back. The way it played out, Frank and Daphne hit it so well together, she figured that prissy bitch is mostly worthless anyway. Why not throw a rock where there's two birds already ? I patted her sweet ass and ran her down. I said "You mangy old whore, here's what you're worth : I was just shooting the breeze with a pimp fresh off the top shelf. He's making five grand in three days, working a half-dozen whores or more raw over at the Franklin Arms." She said "You mean Glass Top ?" I nodded at her. "Well done, bitch. There's a prize at the end waiting for you. Now get this : he's paying a bill for grease each night. Per girl." Pepper giggled. "You don't know this, but that's what I offered the pigs after copping June, back before we met : a bill a block. By the week, for the whole precinct. Comes to seventy-six a week. They wouldn't deal, let that aside. Besides cutting me in you cut the price, too. Frank's five grand tops' a thirty-five percent discount. Ain't that right ?" She giggled more and she nodded. "Yeah, that's right." I grabbed her by the hair again with my left mitt, and reached my right far out. "That's right, you worthless bitch. He's paying 30% to some bellhop on top of a bill to the girl each night. I got a 35% discount off a bill a block each week, all because of your dumb ass. What do you deserve for that, bitch ? What's fair ? Huh ?"

Her eyes rolled far inside her head. "Beat me up, Daddy. Beat my ass. Hurt your poor Pepper bad." I brought my hand in slow and caressed her face. "I ain't gonna hurt you that way, baby. I love you, don't you know that ?" She purred. "Hurt my ass with your big thick rod, Daddy. Please Daddy, put it in me where it hurts the worst. I'm so hot for you, Christ! Make Mama bleed for you. Please Daddy! Hurt your old dog down there lovey dovey Daddy baby!" She was going crazy. She was driving me crazy right along with her. My swipe was like a baseball bat. When I was done with her she walked like a cowboy after six days of posse. I sat up and counted twenty-one hundred out of Frank's pile. I said to her "I'm not done punishing you by a damn sight. Get this : you're going to Glass Top's. You know where he pads at ?" She knew alright, once I said six west of the Roost she knew the rest. "You give him this scratch. You get two crumbs of girl and six cans of reefer. You come straight back." Her eyes opened wide. "Did you have a taste ?" she asked me. I shook my head. "I've never had anything like he's got. I don't know what pie crust pre-mix you've been having me snort, but Glass Top's girl can raise the dead." She shook her head. "Frank's always too cheap to buy his stuff." I stopped. "Say, what ?" She shook her hand, like "Don't ask." I couldn't figure it at all, the same guy that'd drop fifty on a kid he just met wouldn't drop a coupla on some real crack ?!

I said to her "Now Pep, you ready for your punishment ?" She put her smoky peepers on me. "You're worth a million bucks before counting in the clothes. That girl's two grand. I ain't gonna let two grand worth of girl kill a million bucks worth of whore for me." She muttered, "Good grief!" I went on. "You ain't gonna pig out. You're gonna have a little now and again. Not every day. Not all the time. Now and again. Not a lot. Not just a little more. A little bit, that's all. I'm buying it to store it, not to snort it. You got that ?" I could tell there was nothing I could've said that'd have put the hurt more on her. I walked up to her and kicked her lightly in the shin. She crumpled on the floor. I put my stomper on her throat, not pushing down any, just resting there. I said "Can I trust you to do that or do you have to ask permission every time before you touch the stuff ?" She was crying. After all this time together, after all the game we'd played, I finally had her broken down. She whispered "You'd better make me ask you for permission, Daddy." I took my stomper off her throat. I said "Alright, go cop and I'll cut you a line. You've earned that much you beautiful black bitch." She touched up her make-up and flew out of there.

Half hour later she was back. The broom closet upstairs that we were using for hot storage was starting to get full. Between all the liquor, enough fine cocaine to make somebody's tombstone in plaster of it, cans and cans of reefer and all the stashes of scratch it was starting to look more and more like the evidence room downtown. She said "He threw in a bag of yellows. Did you tell him he can sock into me ?" I nodded. "He's wanted to for as long as I known him, did you know that ? When he saw me at the door he got excited like I'd run away to him. Then when he saw the dough he got wise. He told me you said you'll send a whore, and he could lay her if he wants to. He said he didn't get the joke then, but he gets it now. I think he thought you're showing me off, to pull his chain." I smiled at her. "What did you do ?" Pepper caressed my hair and went on "I told him if you said so I'm his to lay. I leaned into him on his couch, but he couldn't do anything. He was too loaded up I think." I started laughing like a maniac. Pepper looked at me like maybe my cork's blown. I said to her "When we were there, he figured me for some kid, offered up Radell, if you know her. But then he got a call and sent her off to work the Arms. He said to me sorry kid, that I've missed my chance. So now..." Pepper was laughing too. "Poor guy", she said. "He's always missed on all of his." Then she looked up at me serious. "You gotta be careful mixing yellows with C, Daddy. The yellows make you sleep, they're good to catch some doss if you bang lots of C. They're bad though because enough of them can kill you dead. They make it so you forget to breathe. They're opposite one another, too, so if you're on C you don't feel the yellow. But the bitch of it is, cocaine fades faster than they do. It's like pulling the rug from under you. If you go to bed with a load of yellow in you that's too much to live and enough C to make so you can't feel it, by the time the C's gone you've bought a one ticket out of here. It'll take you with it. And don't take them with liquor, neither."

Then the runt came in, with a new face in tow. That new bitch rolled her lustrous eyes at me. Her sly hot smile made a flat statement, "Please, try me out for size." The runt says "This is Chris" and got herself out of her glove. Chris followed suit without looking at her. The runt had prepped her alright. A white jacket fringed in a rich purply blue and its matching skirt came off, not frantic fast, not too slow either. She stood there a moment in just white stockings held up by a nude belt and white satin panties over them. Then she ditched the panties. Her cat was trimmed neat and close, just a thin line of hair left to go up from the slit. I turned to the runt "You taught her to trim out her cat like that ?" The runt shook her head. "No Daddy. She taught me. Before you made me whore Chris made me lez." I turned back to Chris "That so ?" She nodded. Looked me right in the face bright eyed too, as she did it. "Yes, sir." I took her in. She was pretty, and looked close enough to brave, too. I said "Chris, do you smoke pot ?" She nodded. Phyllis got excited. "There's pot ?" I nodded and said to her "Bitch, go to the closet pick a can. I don't know about that crap. Get something mellow we chill out." She bounced out of there. By the time Pepper had a newspaper sheet in thin strips she was back holding a can of black gunion. "Daddy, this smells great!" She took a strip and rolled a bomber, licked it to give it even burn and, matchbox in hand, held it for me. "You light it, bitch." I said. I didn't have to say it twice. She reached the gleaming, bulging paper cigar to me. I took a puff of it like it were a cigar for real. They started cracking up. I looked at them like "what the fuck ?" and puffed again. They lost their shit. They were laughing so hard it coulda killed them, mostly from trying to hold themselves in. Chris teared up, the runt was rolling on the floor. Eventually Pepper broke out, "Pretty Daddy, you ever smoke a joint before ?"

"Not in this life" I said. "Why, could you tell ?" That gave them hysterics. It was the funniest thing in the world to these three bitches standing on the stained cheap carpet in my crumbling pad. They explained it to me then, that the idea is to hold the smoke in, for as long as you can. Oh, I said, thinking of Rotten Tooth Jimmy. "I thought that was just an old gangster myth." They started snort-laughing like idiots. I passed the spiff to Pepper, who drank it in like a sponge. We got comfortable. Pepper laid her bloodied asshole out in bed, leaning on the side. I lay my neck on her belly. The runt kneeled at my feet, then went on her ass to the side and slowly found her way to rubbing them for me. Chris sat on the floor, her back against the wall, facing towards the runt's side. She asked how many whores I've got. Pepper giggled. The runt said "Nooobooody knooows" in a booming, spooky voice like on a radio play. Chris gave her a lingering eyelick, desperate for support. I was trying to figure out if they're conning together, making like they're apart and the show a put-on, or if the runt's turned solid and they just never prepped this far. The runt coached her some, clear as day. It's how the bitch knew to step out of her duds. But did she coach her on how to please, or did she coach her on how to get one through ? Whose bitch was Phyllis, anywho ? She said to the runt, "Ooh, when he looks at me like that!" She turned to me "I know you can read minds. You give me the creeps with that look. It's like you're Svengali or that crazy Russian Monk I read about." She giggled. I could hear the thrill in her voice. The whore was alive and thrashing inside her. She had done more than screw on the fire escape at high school, that's for sure.

I said "Drop the lids on those pretty peepers in your skull and make with the jib. Spill your story, bitch." She closed her eyes and said "I'll spill. Anything you want from me, I'll give it up, whatever it is. Don't put the pressure on me. Please don't. I get nervous.". Phyllis looked at me. I nodded at her. She grabbed my hand and spelled out words in it, with her finger, letter by letter. It took her three or four tries before I got what she was saying to me. Chris' voice came softly, like from far away. "I'm married. Leroy plays the horn and bugle. He saved my life, really. He's been wonderful to me. He used to be good looking. He didn't get so insanely jealous until after his accident. We've been waiting over two years for a settlement. My life is so screwed up. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to tell you. Would you believe that you're the first people I've talked to in over two years, other than Phyllis?" Pepper gave a start. I sent my left hand overhead, to squeeze her ass and settle her. "I don't love Leroy." Chris gave a shudder. The runt grabbed her by the hand and pulled her in. Chris leaned in and rested her head on the runt's thighs. She wasn't opening those peepers come what may, that's for damn sure. I lifted my feet to let her in, then brought them back down, resting my heels on her tits. The runt kissed my toes a little then went back to rubbing. Chris' nostrils flared. She went on, "I remember nothing but good until I was eleven. That's when my mother died. One wet Autumn day they put her in a box. My father was a kind, good man. He always worked. He was a good carpenter. That changed quickly after Mama died. He took my bed down. He said he wanted me to sleep with him. He told me how lonely his bed was after all those years with Mama. It was nothing at first. When my little girl titties first came in, they hurt a lot. The bumps were sore all the time, and tender to the touch. They itched and hurt at the same time. One night I had a nightmare. A wild ferocious animal with barbed wire teeth was on me, suckling at my breast. It was terrible, the pain of it drove me crazy. It woke me up. Papa was on me, sucking on my bud. I screamed. He slapped me, hard. His face was all twisted. Hateful. He looked like a crazy stranger. I sobbed quietly until I blacked out. When I came to Papa was crying and begging me to forgive him. I forgave him. He was so sad. His sadness made me sad. It never went away, that sadness never went away. Then later I dreamed about the evil wolf again. I didn't want to wake up. After a while I would just lie there, numb, and let him use me. I wanted to hate his guts. In school I had the crazy feeling all the other girls could see and feel my shame and filth. I barely made it to fifteen, more skeleton than girl. By then he had me doing everything to him. I'd lay flat on my back while he moved over me, thinking him dead in Hell. Papa, the beast, was killing me. I was so nervous I couldn't wash dishes. I broke dozens. I wasn't eating enough to keep a bird alive. I collapsed one day coming from the grocery. I woke up in a hospital. My system was shot and I was pregnant. They kept me in that hospital a month. I stayed at Papa's two days and one night after getting out. I took some money while he slept and left Tulsai with the clothes on my back. I came here and got a waitress job. A flashy young pimp named Dandy Louee took to picking me up when I got off. I thought he was a millionaire. He dressed me up and turned me out. He was a cruel black bastard. He liked to beat me, and then screw me. He said it's not right to put his swipe in a whore that's not hurt for it. He liked to give me bruises with his belt and then grab on to them and pinch them while he fucked me. He liked to hear me squeal in pain."

The runt leaned over and kissed her mouth. Chris kissed her back, then with a grit of her teeth went back to her tale. "He worked me in a house run by one of his whores. He kept his foot in my ass all day long, or she did it for him. She liked seeing us other whores suffer. Funny thing, I made money even when my belly was stuck way out. A lot of tricks who came there wanted specifically a pregnant girl. The baby came out while I was turning a trick. Stillborn. Dandy got five years on a white slave rap a few months later. The other whores turned on the house boss. Pulled out all the hair from her head. They beat her up with his belt, black and blue. I got a bar-maid job. That's where I met Leroy, he was playing a gig. I was a sick girl. I fell out twice while serving the bar. The second time the owner fired me. The place was crowded, I had twenty dollars worth of drinks crammed on my tray. Leroy took me in. He nursed me back to health. He's always been good to me. I needed someone who cared. He wanted married so we did it, just four months shy of seventeen. I went along on a string of one-nighters in the Midwest. We couldn't afford a room most nights. We had his old Ford model T. The group broke up in Youngstown, Ohio. We were stranded, without a dime for gas. It was cold out. Leroy got a job in an industrial cleaning plant. The second week a boiler exploded and... you've seen his face ?" She wanted to open her eyes, but didn't. "Maybe you have." I asked her if he's playing at the Roost these days ? She said he had a gig there past week. I said then yeah, can't be there's two of him. "We came here once he was out of the hospital. His lawyer says we can expect a ten-thousand dollar settlement any time now." she said. "He's been saying it for more than a year. Leroy is driving me crazy with his jealousy. He was maybe a little jealous from the get-go, but ever since his accident it went worse and worse. I spend all day locked in the house. Half my time I answer questions, about people I don't even know, I've never seen. It's not a life. Phyllis has been the only one in my life this past year since we came here. When she cut out last week I thought that's it for me. I don't have anyone else. I don't mind hustling. I'd live here if I may. Do I have to put out for Daddy ? What should I do?"

Nobody said anything. The runt rolled out another bomber. She was nodding like someone who's taken their friends to see a freak that'd move Barnum even. I said, "Poor Chris, you've had nothing but heartache. I feel sorry for you, baby. Suckle my toes and tell me how you ain't nothing but a low dog." She mixed her tears and spit on my feet, slowly, hopelessly. She said she's nothing but dirt, that nobody'll ever love her. She said she can't look at a man like women can. She doesn't hate the jokers, but they're to her nothing besides misery and the remembering of misery. They're like the wall of tears of the Jewish people. The ash to rub in your hair, and on your face, the ash to chew instead of food. I asked if the runt's her bitch. She shook her head. She said "I love her, that's all." The runt teared up a little, but didn't let on. Then she asked "Can she stay, Daddy ? I'll do anything if she can stay. Anything." I turned to Pepper. "What do you say, Mama ? We keeping this bad luck bitch ? Find out if maybe lightning strikes or meteors drop or something to fuck it all up for her sake ?" Pepper didn't say anything. She just reached out her arms, and called for Chris. "Come here, broken birdy." I let her get into bed and in the Pep's embrace. They were kissing and hugging and crying together in bed. The runt was weeping quietly sitting on the floor. What a drag! Three naked whores, a can of reefer, and enough wailing for six funerals. Nobody'll ever figure bitches out.

I thought outloud "Weren't you supposed to get June back from school ?" Pepper jumped up like touched with hot coals. "Hot damn!" It was five after three. She jumped in a blazer with nothing underneath and flashed to her car. Three minutes later she was speeding down the avenue. I could feel my skull go into a dreamy float. I got one brilliant thought after another. The trouble was, each one I tried to hold long enough so I could put a saddle on it stampeded. It was maybe like the painful irritation a drunk wrangler suffers trying to corral a herd of greased mustangs. Gangster was sure a whore's high. That reefer confusion was no good for a pimp's skull. I dreamily drifted into bed, where Pepper had warmed it with herself. The runt and Chris got in on either side of me. They caressed my arms and chest. Once I fell asleep they cleared out.

———This originally (ie, from the date of publishing until April 24th) read "Wichita", as in "[You're not in] Kansas [anymore]". Nevertheless, the fascinating case of the Tulsa chief of police during the 1920s burning of the foremost black district in the country, one John A Gustafson -- who not only ran a chop shop, but also had incorporated his own "detective agency" which he used not only to rack up large if fake bills for the police department to pay, but also defraud citizens out of various fees and contributions, such as the case of blackmailing the guy who repeatedly (and notoriously) raped his eleven year old daughter -- makes Chris' relocation seem inevitable. It is even possible, strictly speaking, that the girl in the original Pimp biography and the eleven year old in this historical account are the same.

Not that Kansas was any different from Oklahoma or anything. [↩]

« Only country in the world...

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 16 : The Blue Heaven »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Thursday, 04 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 14 : Choice Chances And Passing Up

"Frank says you operate for him."

"That's right, sir."

"You don't look like all that much."

"That's maybe because I'm not all that much, sir."

He said "You don't say" just like that hawk-headed judge had. Maybe they go to the same school to teach them to say the same things like that. Then he sparked me with his cinder-black peepers and hit me with "How come Frank knows you ?"

"It's on account of Pepper, sir."

"Pepper ?! How come you know her ?"

"Pepper's my whore, sir."

He started to say "You don't say" again, but stopped before the whole don't. From what I hear it's rare for pigs to stop before the whole don't like that. He took me in, up and down. "You the nigger arrested coupla weeks back for kidnapping that girl. What'd you do with her ?"

"She's my whore too, sir."

"How'd you get Judge Whitmore to drop the case like that ?"

"I just said I didn't do it, that's all."

"You just said she's your whore."

"Yes, but saying is believing sir. You believed she's my whore and the judge believed I ain't done it."

"It's all starting to make sense now. Alright kid, what do you need ?"

"I need there's no house calls, for one thing."

"How many houses ?"

"Three or five."

"Which ?"

"From time to time, Cap'n... you know how it is."

"I'll have to know where they are."

"There's no policeman that'll be without a warm meal in my watch. No sargeant no cap'n no respected visitor have any trouble to bunk by his rank neither. But some'd be secret, that's the course. We have to work soft together, them houses bud slow and it's nothing like waving a magic wand."

"We have to make arrests."

"Oh, Cap'n... I think you'll make more and better than anyone ever has. I'll see to that myself."

"What else ?"

"How's you stand on horse ?"

"No horse."

"Girl ? Gangster ?"

"I don't care. No horse, you hear me ?"

"I don't talk twice. On what we shake, that's what'll be."

"What else ?"

"Girls on the street."

"Keep it light. And clean."

"Girls gone from school."

"No white girls, if you've got half a coon's sense."

"Maybe a little yellow..."

"Don't start a fire you don't put out."

"Cap'n, the best thing in the world for a young girl is whoring out a spell. Builds character. All them cobwebbed prisses gone from sunday school to prayer house bringing this great country down. All that damn fool prohibition trouble they brought on. The time's nigh for a little prostitution now to wash the stupid out."

If I opened a secret trap door in his own office and showed him his Mama freaking off with Miss Peaches he wouldn't have been any more surprised. He didn't have where to put it on his face anyway. Then he just shook his hand like the judge had done and said "Get the hell outta here". I walked away, all the coppers in the whole precinct just peeping me on the dummy. It was freakish, like I put a spell on the whole precinct. I didn't know then but I found out much later, they had a big pow-wow all day long that day. Didn't arrest nobody or nothing. After I left the Cap'n got his detectives in his office, all of them, by clumps. He made like he didn't even know he was to sound them off. Maybe he really didn't know. He told them what the crazy nigger coon had said, like for laughs. They saw it like he said it, crazy nigger coon. Then one'd say maybe there's something to it, and they'd all warm up to the idea by degrees. Crazy nigger coon's alright, but wouldn't hurt anyone getting them preaching choir muffled out a notch. The way it worked out it was ten or twelve notches, but that's some later on. Then the detectives clumped up the sargeants, and by night time every two bit beat copper knew there's a new wind broken in town.

They didn't even offer me a ride back or nothing. I didn't flag a cab, I just walked down the street. A whore three blocks down gave me the come-on, but another with her flagged her down. I could make out their whispers, "Honey you don't know who that is ? That's Icebeck, he's the new pimp in town. He had Sweet Jones in a hold, up at the Roost." The clueless one protested I don't look like much. but another one said to her I'm kinda cute. That she'd freak with me anytime. The first one said "Oh yeah ? How come he's walkin' then", but by then I had walked too far to hear what they said. I heard a drugstore man tell an old rounded gent once that walking's the best thing for constipation. I don't know how true that is, I never get my gut stopped up. But let old Iceberg tell you straight, if you've got a head of thoughts rattling everywhere and won't come out, a mile's stretch's the best thing for it, get that stopped brain shitting and farting right again.

As I rounded the corner back towards the Roost I saw the white broad that was hot to freak off with me. She was holding the door open. Sweet and the rest of his menagerie filed out, his whores and the cat strutting out behind him all the way to that sweet Doozy on the curb. I somehow didn't want to run into them outside like that. I turned around sudden and pushed in the door to Nick's craps joint. The door smacked Preston a hard shot in the forehead. He had been peeping through a slat in the door blind. He rubbed his head. He looked scared. I almost leaped out of my hide. I didn't expect him there. His peepers were ballooning, looking past me to Sweet on the other side of the street. He said, "Kid, I told you he's nuts. You keep it up, a ground hog will be your mailman. To play it safe you better give me your Mama's address. I gotta know where to ship your corpse. Where you going now?" I said, "Look Preston, I didn't cut into him. He cut into me. Hell, I ain't no head-shrinker. I couldn't handle the maniac. I'm splitting to my roost, to think."

A tall brown-skin joker with a gleaming head of processed hair got out of a red Hog just then. Sweet's stable had already packed into the Duesenberg. The shiny-topped joker and Sweet took to rapping on the sidewalk. They pounded each other on the back. They looked like boon buddies. Miss Peaches stood lashing her tail at Sweet's side. When I looked at Preson again he was sucking air like a mackerel on the beach. He was fumbling a rusty owl-head twenty-two pistol in his paws. He was trembling like the zero second had come to assassinate maybe F.D.R. Wouldn't that have saved the world! He said, "Kid, you sitting here hating him, ain't you? You despise his guts. I saw the way you was looking at him. A bastard like him ain't got a right to live on God's green Earth. Do yourself and the world a favor, Kid. Take this rod and walk sneaky like down that sidewalk while he's rapping to Glass Top. Stick the barrel in his ear and pull the trigger. Then quick, blow the cat's brains out. It's easy, Kid. You can do it. Every nigger in the country will love you. Kid, it's your chance to get great. Go on, Kid, do it now. You ain't never gonna get a choicer chance."

I said, "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 on the other hand... you getting old, Preston. You can't cut no kind of mustard. Not dent it, no how. He screwed you around a thousand times worse than me. You can't lose for winning. Why don't you be the hero and croak him. Look Preston, take that tommy gun and split. I like you, but give me a break, huh? I've had a funky night and my skull needs a change." He flustered. "Kid, you think I ain't got the guts?" He started working himself up. "He ruined me, Kid. He destroyed me. He's just another nigger. He ain't no bear, and that cat ain't no tiger. I'm going over there right now and cash them out." Old Preston sprang out. I watched him all the way. That game leg had him tilting from side to side. He looked like one of those doughty "Spirit of Seventy-Six" jokers on the posters around the Fourth of July. I wondered if he was tanked up with enough rot-gut moxie to really fold Sweet's dukes across his chest for good. Preston was on the other side of the street only twenty feet from Sweet and Glass Top. His mitt was rammed into his benny pocket keeping the rod warm and ready. Preston's shoulders and back were stiff and straight. Sweet's back was toward me. He was facing the sidewalk. I thought, "The old dingbat may do it. He sure had reasons. Sweet put the hurt to him, at least to hear him tell it through. Will there be much gore? Will Sweet croak right away or flop around on the street like a chicken with its head wrung off? Will Miss Peaches leap up and cut Preston's throat? If Preston croaks him I'll have to cut into Poison. I'll bleed his skull then, if he'll be top pimp. Maybe a couple of all those whores Sweet's got will go for mine. I'd be some kind of sonuvabitching young pimp in a Duesenberg."

Preston came abreast of Sweet. He had slowed to an amble. I could see his yellow mitt easing out of his pocket. He got maybe three feet past Sweet and stopped. He was going to do it! He was coming back for a fatal flank sneak. At that instant Sweet turned his buffalo head and looked down at Preston. Miss Peaches stiffened. Old Preston bowed his bald head. He staggered back toward the Greek's joint. His shoulders were sagging. His back was a stooped slouch. Old Preston had missed that choice chance at glory he had tried to ply on me. I just sat watching Sweet and trying to plot a way to cut into him. It looked hopeless. Finally, Sweet got in the rear seat of his Duesenberg. The cat leaped into his lap. One of the white broads roared it away. I wondered where they're going. I saw Glass Top pat his greasy dome as he turned into the Roost. It came to me, that glossy-top stud with a face like a pretty whore's might be the tunnel into Sweet. I got out of the craps joint and walked towards the Roost. Inside, the joint was getting crowded. The married broad came to a skidding stop, elbowed a sucker, and pointed me to his now empty stool. The beautiful joker was on the stool right next to it. I sipped my Planter's Punch. I drummed my Stetsons against the stool legs. Hamp's "Flying Home" was rocking the joint. A kid could have been June's classmate killed it on that tenor sax. I heard later his name was Illinois Jack.

A pack of white broads had a booth behind me. They looked like they had come from a P.T.A. meeting. Their perfume sent a medley of sexy odors through the joint. They were flirting their cans off. I guess they were writers, doing maybe urgent research on "Sexually Baiting the Black Male" for their bridge club monthly. I wasted no time. I was afraid the pretty joker might split any moment. I snatched my eyes from the excited pack in the mirror. I turned my head toward him and touched him lightly on the sleeve. He sure was a wrong doer all right. He frogged at least three inches off his stool. It was like I'd stabbed him square in the butt with a red-hot poker. He turned his mug to face me, his long-lashed peepers popped wide in alarm. His ticker raced like maybe a cute nun's caught barebutt in the courtyard by Mother Superior. I said, "Jeez, excuse me, Jim. I didn't know you were in deep thought, I'm sorry I hit on you like a square. Are you the fabulous Glass Top ? It would be a boss honor to me if you let me buy you a taste." He looked me up and down, and snarled. "Who're you, nigger ?" I nodded at him and said "I'm Iceberg. I'm friends with Preston. He clued me in you're in town."

He patted his shiny mop and said, "Yeah, I'm Glass Top. What's your stupid story? You young studs sure ain't got no finesse. It drags me to get hit on like that. When somebody touches me I like to be digging it and facing the stud, don't you know that much? But I ain't salty. I dig you ain't nothing but a punk that needs his coat pulled to social polish and class. I ain't no lush. You can spring for a Coke if you want. Tell her to sugar it heavy." The Mexican broad spooned sugar into a glass and brought his Coke. He stirred it with a straw. He raised the glass to drink. I noticed ugly black streaks tracing the veins on his light-brown mitt. No lush maybe, but he was a junkie for damn sure. He'd know where to cop C for the Pep, and probably gangster for the runt. He was also a pal of Sweet's. If I was gonna throw a stone, why not throw it towards where's two birds, anyhow ? He said, "So, you know Preston? What's your racket? You tapdancin' tills or maybe gone all out. Huh?" I said, "I been knowing Preston since I was a kid. I used to buff his stomps back when he was pimping upstate Illinois. I'm no snatcher or burglar. I just mack a little on the side. I know you must be pimping on the top. I saw you rapping to the best pimp there is." He said, "You mack? I ain't never heard of you. Where you been, Siberia?" He took a drag off his slush. He looked up at me again. "Sweet ain't the best pimp there is. I am. Pimps are just like cars. The best known ain't no real yardstick to the best car. It's like I'm a Duesenberg and Sweet's a Ford. I got all the quality and beauty. He's got all the advertising and all the luck." I looked at him scratching my head. "Ain't he drive a Doozy ?" Glass Top looked at me like he couldn't decide if I'm dumb or just pulling his leg. "So he got more whores than I got. Better looking, too. A whore's looks ain't where it's at, and he ain't working them half as hard. He's got no discipline with them. These whores in town ain't hip to how great I am just yet. When they wake up to me I'll have to fight 'em off with a baseball bat. How many girls you got?"

I looked at him with a shit-eating grin pasted on my face. "My girl, she freaks around. When I catch her I make the joker I catch her with pay up." I said it serious but my eyes were laughing the whole time. He laughed, banging his mitts against the counter. The tamale zipped in by his side. She thought he was banging for her. Glass Top bellowed out "I betcha love her, too." I looked at him said "Sure, man. We're gonna be married, too. One day." Reached up to my nose from both sides and pulled on it. "Just look how open my nose is for her." It gave him fits. He laughed and laughed, then batted me on the shoulder. "You're alright, kid. You're alright. I'm going to go take a crap."

Through the mirror I saw him go out. When he walked past them that panting pack behind me turned as one. It was like Gary Grant had walked out. I had the tamale bring him another drink. I told her to doctor it for him, just fill the whole glass all the way up with straight sugar and then pour a teensy bit of coke to make it look alright. I saw him turn left towards the Greek's joint. I knew he was going to Preston to check me out. That tenor sax was moaning gut-bucket blues to raise the dead. Some joker was singing "Going down slow; Don't send no Doctor; Doctor sure can't do no good; Please write my mother, tell her the shape I'm in; I'm going down slow." I remembered it was my father's favorite record. He had kept it spinning on the rich Victrola. I remembered his shocked face there in the doorway when he discovered it and everything else gone. I wondered if he were alive and still in town. If I ran into him I sure wouldn't know what to say to him after all these years. I saw the silk chicks crane their necks toward the door. I switched my eyes left in the mirror. I saw Glass Top coming back in. Those chickens were clucking when he sat down. I said, "Jack, aren't you afraid those silk broads back there follow you in the alley and rape you raw?" He said, "Shit, if you stripped and searched all of 'em you wouldn't find a C note. You wouldn't find enough to stitch a C note together. They ain't nothing but square housewives. They sick of that half-ass screwing at home. They laying to swindle chump niggers outta their youth. They know enough on each other to keep all their jibs sealed. Ain't a chance for their husbands to tumble to what's going on. So what if some white joker who knows 'em made this scene and saw 'em? Everyone of 'em is just slumming out with the girls. Jack, what they got is a secret sex club."

I said, "Top, I'm frayed. I sure wish I had a snort of girl. Can you score?" He told me, "Ice, I believe you are a down young stud. I love you 'cause you got heart. I got news for you. You can score right with me. I got the best girl and boy in town. Even my reefer is dynamite. How much and what kinda stuff you want?" I said, "What's the bite for girl?" He came back on a string, like he'd said it a zillion times that way. "A fin a number-five cap. A sixteenth for a C. A piece for a grand. I got a cozy pad around the corner if you want a taste. You can fly to the moon there, buddy mack." I said, "Let's split to your pad. If your girl is mellow I'll maybe go for a piece." I dumped a saw on the log. The Mexican showed me her choppers like I was her dentist. Glass Top shook his head. "Kid, what you doin' ? I had a coke. You had a rye, I saw you when you came in. A buck or two's enough for that." Her smile was gone. She laid out a fin with three bones on the log. I copped with my right mitt, passed them under Glass Top's nose into my left, and while making like I'm stuffing them in my pocket I plonked them right back on the log where they had started out in life. I wasn't gonna stiff the broad out of eight slats for her five loads of Coke sugar and clearing out the stool I wanted for me. Three square black studs were standing, rapping to the purring pack in the booth.

We went out and got in Glass Top's Hog. The Hog shot from the curb like a red torpedo. Eckstein's syrupy "Cottage For Sale" oozed from the radio. I wondered what the runt's doing with her cop, and Phyllis with the young kittens. Glass Top padded in a plush apartment building. It had all the jazz. Technicolored lights spotlighted the exterior. Fake rubber plants stood tall in the foyer. We took a chrome-and-brass elevator to the second-floor. Thick red broadloom carpet wall to wall in the hall. Fresh black and gold paint sparkled the walls and ceilings. A Polynesian-type dream bare up top took our bennys and my lid in a small silver-mirrored entrance hall. Glass Top sat down. I sat down too. She was back and kneeled going for my stompers. I thought maybe she'll shine them with her tits ? She got them off my feet, then Glass Top's too. He walked off and I followed, my feet sunk to the ankles in the soft lavender carpet. I could hear the deep-throated boom of a console phonograph. The Ink Spots' lead tenor was parfaiting "Whispering Grass." I followed Top with the olive-tinted beauty in tow all the way to the womb-like living room. Double heavy lavender drapes covered the windows. Not a beam of street light or sunshine could violate this pimp's purple lair.

Top and I sat on a long gray sofa. The ceiling was lowered with silver lame fabric. The only light in the room came through the glass-topped cocktail table. It gurgled and flashed a pale green light. A score of yellow, red, and orange tropical fish streaked inside the table. It was like an acquarium. If you set your fingers on the glass top sometimes the streakers came to try take a bite. The broad's eyes were dreamy. She slunk herself on her knees at his side. Glass Top put his mitt on her head. She purred just like a real pussycat. The table's moving lights played and tricked with her itty bitty nipples. She didn't say anything, just gazed far away. Glass Top said, "Bring a coupla outfits and some caps of girl and boy. Oh yeah, Iceberg, this is Radell." She said "Welcome to Paradise, Iceberg" in a voice like a hush, then wiggled that awesome round ass of hers past me where he sent her. The big white phonograph in the corner was booming out a novelty tune. "When your pipes get dry then you know you're high. Everything is dandy. You truck on down to the candy store but you don't get no peppermint candy. Then you know your body's sent, you don't care if you don't pay rent. Light a tea and let it be if you're a viper." I thought "This pretty gowster is sure pimping his ass off, but he's the craziest gowster that ever lived if he thinks he'll con me into banging any H, or for that matter shooting anything." I said, "Jim, you sure ain't jiving. Your layout is a sonuvabitch." He said, "I got five bedrooms here. These whores on this fast track dig front and flash. You can't pimp here unless you got 'em. Jack, this C I got ain't going to let you split for awhile. You may as well shed your threads and get in the groove." I said "Glass, man, I'm not about to shoot. I'll take a snort, if you got something worth the snort. If it's to my taste I'll send a bitch later with the grand for a piece. I trust you, man, that it'll be a piece of the same stuff I tried out, and that you won't cop my whore. You can try her out if you want, a line for a line. I'll take your word for some gangster for the stable, too. I don't know cardboard from reefer myself, but they old nags love chewing on that hay, you know ?"

He opened his mouth to say something just as Radell came in with the outfits, a spoon and a dozen white and brown caps. She put them on the cocktail table bending from the ass, back straight, knees straight. I could smell her fresh scent through the thin skirt on her. He said, "You want to try this bitch out ?" I reached out to pat the plump behind she was putting under my nose. I said "I'm sorry, man. I've been sampling schoolgirls all day. None of them half as pretty as Radell either, and a bitch to break through that shit they put on their pussies when they're born. I couldn't get up for Jezebel herself. I wish I had known aforehand and saved some to put where it's worth putting, but then Glass Top my man, them's the breaks. You never know what you gonna need it for later, when you give it up." The broad turned her pretty oval toward me. She gurgled a pearly laughter through her half-open lips, her eyes still distant. Glass Top was laughing his ass off. He said to her "This joker's been this way all day, I'm getting the splits in my sides from him." Then he turned to me and said "You do what you want like you was at home, Ice. I got the merchandise, you tell me what's what." She helped him out of his duds, leaving him in candy-striped silk shorts. She sat herself in between us. She hooked her skirt all the way up and lifted a leg over Glass Top's left and another over my right. She put her arms flush along the back of the sofa. She had her cat wide open for a grab. I cupped her titty just to be polite.

The phone on the end table beside Glass Top jangled. He uncradled it and said, "You've reached Paradise, what's your desire? Oh yeah. Yeah ? Yeah. Ok. I'm on it." He hung up and said, "Rad, put something on and get to the Franklin Arms. Say hi to that guy Angelo, the head bellhop. Dimples and the rest are in over their heads. You gotta help turn some of that action. Take the kitty and get there fast." The broad zipped out of there like fireworks. She sure liked getting her man some money. He turned to me, "Sorry Jack, you've missed your chance." I said "Those tricks at the Franklin are going to give their swipes a treat as sure as sugar". She smiled at me again on her way out. He ran it down for me, "That's a good young bitch I got there. I copped her in Hawaii a year ago. There are twenty-thousand white suckers in town for a convention on shoe shining. They got a double saw in one hand and their swipes in the other, every last one of them to a man. Radell just copped some doss, my other whores ain't had no sleep in thirty-six hours. I can't miss a five G score for the three days even with Angelo's thirty percent off the top. Ain't but a C a day for a girl in oil for the heat." I thought back to my magnificent cocksucker, and how she got me almost four grand in one night, no oil for the heat no nothing. Then thinking about pigs it came back to me how she got me a discount off my first offer, and how it's by the block a week, not by the girl a day. I thought Pep's worth about a million in cold hard cash if she's worth a buck, no question about it.

He got up and whistled his belt through the loops in his pants. He walked back and started to coil it around his arm just above the elbow hollow. I said "Look Top, you've been a perfect host, but don't cook for me." He said, "Kid, I ain't squeezing your balls to hip you that after Mink comes Sable. Ain't nothing a greater blast than horse. It's your privilege to wake up slow if you want. Horse is what puts the ice in a pimp's game." He upended a cap of girl on the table, and cut it up into thin lines with the Ace of Spades. "You got a horn ?" he asked. I shook my head. He gave me a stout ivory one, flaring out at the business end. I felt my blood smashing against the tight coils of my skull. I saw blue and purple veins balloon and blow up through the dimness on the walls. The sharp, sicklysweet odor of girl hit me then. My palms were dripping sweat. I turned my head and closed my eyes. I bit down on my bottom lip waiting for the crazy glow of the nose drip. From far away he echoed "Damn! You alright kid ?" I shivered. That was some god damned fucking girl this nigger peddled. I had thought Pepper's was the best on account of never having had anything else, but hot damn! I opened my eyes and looked. The whole air floated around like yellow jello. Then it was like a ton of nitro exploded inside me. My ticker went around itself. I could feel it clawing up my throat. It was like I was June, with a million swipes fucking me in every pore from head to toe. It was like they were all popping off together in a nerveshredding climax.

I was quivering like a joker in the hot seat at the first jolt. I tried to open my talc-dry mouth. I couldn't. I was paralyzed. I could feel a hot ball of puke racing up from my careening guts. I saw the green, stinking puke rope arch into the black mouth of the wastebasket. I felt the cool metal against my chest. I saw Top's manicured fingers pressing it close to me. He was saying, "You'll be all right in a minute, Kid. Don't worry yourself. You thought I was bullshitting when I told you I had the best stuff in town, huh." 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. I thought, "It was a cinch that any stud as beautiful and clever as me would become the greatest pimp in history. What bitch could resist me? I turned and stared at the ugly stud beside me." He said, "Did you hear those chapel bells? Ain't they a bitch, Kid?" I finally could speak again. "Yeah man, I heard 'em loud and clear. I guess I'm married now. Your girl sure is the bang. The only time I'll talk to anyone else after this is when you make yourself a monk." He said, "Ice, you sure know how to butter a side of toast. Just don't forget where to cop. The more you buy, the cheaper I'll make it for your wanna-be chili pimp ass. Something tells me we gonna be tight."

He had a time trying to score for himself. He was only around thirty-two, but most of his veins had folded. He finally hit pay clay in his inner right thigh. He kept the needle in, pumping the horse into the vein then drawing it out. I said, "Jack, why the hell do you screw around like that?" He said, "Man, you ain't hip? That's where the thrill is. When I jack this joint off the horse kicks my ass groovy." His eyelids were coming down heavy. He was coasting. I thought, "Now's the time to crack on him to see about Sweet. I gotta phrase it right. This joker envies Sweet." I said, "Top, I was thinking how much more common sense and cool you got than your pal Sweet." His hands froze. His eyes beat his mouth to the question. I guess Preston hadn't told him all that much. Maybe his chicken act blocked Sweet out of his mind. Top shot, "You know Sweet personally?"

"I met him in the Roost, that's all. He said that tall blonde made of legs of his wants me to freak-off with her. He offered me a double saw to do her kitten in. The heat rolled on me just then. I guess now I have blown my chance to get acquainted with him, huh. I don't suppose anybody in town is strong enough with him to square me and cut me into him. As foxy as you are Top, I wouldn't be shocked if you couldn't cut it. After all, the man is complicated. He don't make any sense to me, but from what I hear nobody'd want a crazy enemy like that. So Top, say the word if it's over your head. I'll forget it, try and stay out of his way. I'll take my chances that way. I love you Top, I don't want anything to happen to you on my account." He gobbled it raw and whole. Horse is good for something after all. He flung his girlish head back and rolled off the sofa to the floor. He held his elbows against his belly and laughed like I'd told the funniest joke human ears had ever heard. He was gasping for air by the time he finally came to. He patted his mop. "Sweet ain't more dangerous than those fish, sucker," He stopped to press the clutch in his throat, gearing up. "He ain't never croaked anything but yellow Niggers. He's croaked four of them in the last twenty years. He ain't croaked nobody in over ten. He's ninety percent bull scare. He don't kill nobody, even if they bad mouth him. Maybe if a joker tried to muscle his whores and hurt one bad, if that. But he sure hates white folks. He pimps awful tough on white whores. When he puts his foot in their asses he's really doing it to the white man. He says he's paying 'em back for what they daddies done to black folks. His brain is rotted from hate. Sheet. He probably wouldn't know you if he saw you again. There's no way he's salty with you for being rolled on. Even a square from Delaware should know this much, you poor boob. I tell you what. I gotta take him some stuff this weekend. I'll buzz your crib to let you know just when. I'll stop on the way and pick you up. I'll take you with me to his pad. He ain't nothing but a big ugly nigger with a filthy loud mouth."

I said, "I pad at 29th and State, in that Blue Heaven dump. Just tell the clerk you want me. Top, you gotta overlook my dumbness. I told you I was just a kid in darkness needing some brain to light the way. Top, I sure appreciate your coat-pulling. See you later, Pal." He asked me if I'm taking off. I said, "Top, I gotta split. Remember me now, I want two pieces of that girl. Not one, two. A can of reefer too." He asked me "Which kind ? I got light green pot from chili gut country, that'll make a whore mellow and any stud a whore. I got black bronze reefer from Tenerife that'll make a square bitch forget her home. I got..." he droned on, drowsily. "How many kinds you got, man ?" I put out. "Six... seven... eight" he started counting, eyes closing and opening halfway again. "One can of each. What's that, the can ?" He nodded at me. "Twenny the can. Six to the bill". "Ok Top, two pieces of that girl and six cans of reefer, different kinds. Your pick. I'll have a whore over with the dough later tonight. You call me on that other deal, alright ?" He nodded. Then he opened his eyes wide. "You remember me now, Top ?" He said "Don't worry about me, kid. See you around." clear as a bell. I walked into the entrance hall. I looked around, found where Radell had put my stuff. I got my shoes back on and split. My ticker was speeding inside my frosty chest like I had ran a mile in two minutes to get to the elevator three doors down. I flinched before the stark street lights.

It musta been nine, nine-thirty. The sky was a fresh, bright pitch. This first April night had gone whore for some sucker that gifted her with a shimmering bracelet of diamond stars. The fat moon lurked like an evil yellow eye staring down at the pimps, hustlers, and whores hawking for a mark or a cop. I felt the raw tenderness of first April winds lashing at the hem of my white alligator. I felt the birth stirrings of that poisonous pimp's rapture. I felt powerful and beautiful.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 13 : Almost Fucked But Not Even Arrested

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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Thursday, 04 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 13 : Almost Fucked But Not Even Arrested

I woke with a start. Pepper and June were standing by the door, decked for the track. They were watching me. "The hell ?!" I coughed out. "Good morning Daddy!" they both chimed. Then they kinda elbowed each other and eventually Pepper chipped in "Daddy, you want us out on that track ?" I held my head. "Baby, I told you..." June cut right in. "We didn't know what to do, Daddy. You said you don't want us back there but you didn't say where you want us and we didn't know what to do!" I looked at Pepper like "You're the adult, explain this insanity". She explained it alright. They got up. I was asleep. They didn't dare wake me. They didn't know what to do. It was getting towards noon. They figured get dressed and wait by the door. If I wake up and I'm on the side of why the fuck aren't they out there, it's not too late to cut out in a hurry. If I wake up and I'm on another side, they're still there to get the wire. They figured if they just split it'll be trouble, but if they just lounge around it won't look good either. This was the sort of thing I had to put up with from these two crazy bitches back in those early days. I told them, too. I said "No pimp young or old since the slave days had to deal with this kind of thing in all of carnation!" June was spooked, but Pepper chuckled and said "Say it like it's a bad thing, Daddy!" then grabbed her hand and said "We'd do anything for you Daddy. Ain't that right June!" and June nodded all broken up.

I said "We gotta figure out a better angle. I don't want you out there on that street with all the mangy dogs and two-dime crazies." Pepper raised her hand, like she was back in school. I looked at her. "Daddy... since I've been square lotsa studs wanted to freak with me. I was never game until today. I bet they'd like to hear." She ran it down for me. She could make party dates for the pair of them and really clean out. At least five hundred for the half a night, maybe a grand the whole night through. Maybe more, who knows. She said she knew some upscale players alright. "June's hotter merchandise than I've ever seen" she said. I nodded. I said "Go downstairs, the both of ya. June take that joker somewhere and do him dead while Pepper steals his phone. Then fetch some breakfast. Get me a rack. Get yourselves whatever you want. Daddy loves you broken down used up whores."

I stretched out in bed. I dozed off. The scent of hickory-fired ribs woke me. It was the damndest thing : June was naked, face up, her feet and palms on the floor pushing her body up right next to the bed. She was making like a table with herself. Pepper was laying out the rack of ribs on her belly, from her cat to her tits, sauces and everything. It was the god-damned best rack of ribs I ever ate! I nibbled her own set some too, and mauled and suckled the tits of the other freak, hunching and dangling herself over the table. Pepper moved on to eating me before I was done eating off June. She taxed me a good ounce or maybe two. I called them one pair of crazy whores, then Pepper clued me in. They had a party date set for nine o'clock, to go to some jokers' club and hang with them. It was an "all-night" deal, and the take ? A grand. For like twelve-fourteen jokers, that's all. Upscale folks, some athletic thing like faggots do, tennis or crochet or god knows what. That grand by the way ? Not for the pair. By the head. I fell back in bed. I said "Pepper you magnificent cocksucker, if you weren't so mangy I could kiss you." She jumped me, and tried to pin me down. I made like she almost had me, then pushed her some but let her get her upper hand back again. Through it all we both kept asking for June to help, until we drove her into a tizzy. She kept running from one to the other, tickling now me now Pepper, pushing and shoving and eventually Pepper pinned me with her ass, her cat in my face. It was like breakfast desert.

We had some time to kill, so we cleanned up nice and smooth, piled up in her Ford and went cruising. It was the early years for that Nat "King" Cole Trio. They were playing for a two-buck after work dance at Liberty Hall. I plunked down a bill like it was gum stuck to my sole. It got us a neat table in the balcony, overlooking the crowded dance floor. Every nigger in that joint was yellow with the jays for me with my two whores. I had them take the drinks from the waiters and serve them to me on their knees, just to drive every boy there ape. I think it sent the whore wire to at least five dozen young broads thinking of squaring out. I understood for the first time what Henry must have felt like, back in his good days. I didn't feel so bad for him anymore after that. Most jokers go to their grave without anything like it to show the worms. We had a great time, I don't think anyone remembers the band's performance from that night. Everyone was too busy dancing with their peepers trained on us like we was the the twilight's last gleaming.

We got out of there about half past eight. You could hear the joint lose pressure behind us with a woosh. We made it two blocks in the car when I spied none other than Miss Jackson. She was walking down the street just by her lonesome. I had Pepper pull the Ford to the curb by her, chatted her up nice and offered her a ride. She prissed some, but took me up on it. In the car I started talking up the party we were headed for. Pepper fell right in line, like we had been selling bibles door to door together our whole lives. I could tell Daphne's interested plenty, so I gave it to her on a silver platter : why not come along ? She's in no hurry to get back home anyhow, it'll just be half hour at the most, just the same time she's saving not having to walk. She hesitated plenty, but I could tell hearing June's fifteen cinched it for her. I didn't gorilla on her or anything, just the most mellow thing in the world, all but let her follow us in of her own, once we were there.

This party was the strangest thing. Plenty of swank all around, all marble and gold leaf and rich brocade and things. Crystal glasses like I'd never seen, they made a sound if you twinkled them like no silver bell can touch. Fourteen jokers just standing around or sitting down, holding up glasses and yakking at each other like boredom's their religion. At least at a prayer meeting they chant, or roll down on the floor like they found fleas where they didn't expect them, or jump up and down like drowned monkeys. At least it's something. These jokers didn't as much as that, they just stood still like scarecrows in low wind. Not a broad among them, either, calling their thing a party's like calling a spade furry. Once we got there they peeled off Pepper to show her something or the other they said, and that's the last I saw of her until we took off. She told me later they just piled into her in one of the bedrooms upstairs, with all their clothes on and in the dark, one at a time. They got June and Daphne drinks, and then this joker that must've been their captain started working on them so smooth like I'd never seen. He just kept pratting them, and even though he didn't even know at first that one's a whore and the other's square or which is which, half hour after he started on them Daphne was showing everyone her titties like that's what they did every day in school. She was a little boozy but far from drunk, mostly giddy with excitement. The joker flattered her and worked her nice and slow out of her duds one by one until she was buck-naked, prancing around all them dressed white suckers like a sheared black lamb. I was taking notes after him like he was Houdini giving pointers how to open safes. Whenever her or June managed to get one of the jokers hot and bothered enough he'd go take out his aggression on Pepper. I tried to steer them towards just doing the deed on the girls right there under the candelabras, but they were stone cold to the idea. I was a little disappointed, because June's such a pretty sight being worked over, but like the man said : can't put a pistol on a sucker. I think he faggots were just affraid of seeing one another's pricks, like a clued-in priest's affraid of seeing baby butt.

It wasn't even midnight by the time they were done, overdone and over-overdone. I left through the front door, thirty-eight fresh bills as clean as if they had been steam-pressed in my side. I didn't even need a fence or anything. It wasn't night-time burglary, from five to ten. Just business between best of friends. The fare coming to ten bills a whore, and I having showed up with three, that made three grand. Then another bill for each garment, as we agreed, because I wasn't about to let Daphne walk back a schoolgirl out of there. The gents were more than keen to buy their clothes for a memento. June only had the dress on her, so she only marked a hundred. They wouldn't take the shoes, they said it's ungentlemanly to force a lady barefoot. Bare butt's okay, just as long as it's not barefoot. Some twisted jokers alright, these were nigger bitches we were talking about. They somehow didn't seem to see it that way. I sure wasn't going to say anything out of line, nothing like "suckers, these bitches were barefoot all of this morning sucking me off". Daphne had seven things on her, including three different kinds of step-ins. Her cat was layered under like maybe she thought it is some kinda book. I explained to her that these jokers are crazy and no negro girl I don't care who she is or who her daddy is can't pass up a chance like this. She didn't take much to see it my way. Once we were in the car she didn't take much to see where she's going my way, either. I mean, I wasn't against dumping her back where I found her, but the way she found herself she thought maybe it's best not to. We left it that I'll safekeep "her" seven hundred dollars, seeing how she didn't have as much as a side on her to keep 'em in, and that she can have some clothes bought in the morning, but until then she's crashing at number 10. I sent Pepper to work her over while she slept with her, figuring it's not wise to let a young priss like that all by herself on her first night a whore, and went to bed with June.

It was nice to be only a little tight for once, to tell the truth. I hadn't had some decent sleep in what felt like whole weeks. I was out like a wetfarted candle. In the morning Pepper showed up with a postcard. It had the Golden Gate on one side and the neat scribble of a schoolhouse priss on the other. Daphne wrote to her parents "My Dear Parents, I am gone to be a whore and suck all the dick I can and turn tricks all the time because that's what whores do. Good-bye." Imagine getting that in the mail, a week after the fact. A postcard, even, bitch couldn't be bothered to as much as make it a telegram. Years later I heard that her parents went all the way to San Francisco in California to look for her, because maybe they didn't know to read post stamps or something ? Pepper just had the hotel clerk mail it. June came in with a pile of food and we sat down for breakfast. Daphne mostly had tears, but I gave her some chocolates and June hugged her so she seemed to feel better about being naked. When I told her it's only for the rest of her life she even giggled. Just about the time we were done the runt broke down the door. Then she froze in her tracks, looking from Daphne to me and back. Eventually she asked "How long have I been away ?" June told her it's been a coupla days. The runt nodded, then Daphne asked who is she ? June said "It's his cousin", pointing to me, but I said "No bitch, she's your cousin, remember ?" June looked at me confused, and that's when Pepper said "No, she's my uncle." I said to Daphne "go kiss her cat to welcome her in". She just turned all red and wouldn't say anything. I asked her if she's never done anything like that ? She shook her head no. I said that's pretty lame. Pepper said "just a little square". June said "She doesn't have to if she doesn't want to. Ain't that so, Daddy ?" I nodded, but Phyllis ditched her glove like back when she was Crystal at Pepper's pad and said "Sweet baby, come give ol' Crystal a kiss. Pretty please ?" They kept haranguing her until Daphne walked over and kissed the whore's mound. Pepper elbowed me and whispered "That jasper'll turn her out alright."

I said loud, "That so. You a jasper, bitch ?" The runt came up to me and said "Daddy, Big Daddy says to say to you that it's in, and you'll hear word today, and to be ready for it." I nodded and then said "Don't dodge the question, bitch!" She looked at me and then the other girls and then said "Daddy, that's the other thing. Back at my old pad, I had a neighbour. Her name's Chris, and Daddy... I miss her. You gon' let me go and try the cop ?" I took her in from head to the closeby toe. Bitch's been here all of five minutes she's already got a cop in tow, figuring weight for brawn she's like an army recruiter only better. "Alright", I said "Get going then. You want some breakfast first ?". She did, because she had peeled out of there as soon as she heard and had no time to eat anything. Frank kept her up all night poking at her. "He does that sometimes", Pepper chipped in. "Fair is fair" I said, "You can eat what we left on the plates, bitch." Daphne helped her a little, apparently her appetite wasn't absent, only slow. They licked those plates clean, between the two of them, while we made fun of them. God damned jailhouse whores doing the dishes with their hungry dick-ragged tongues. Then Phyllis split and I cleanned up. Pepper asked what now ? I said to her "Hold the house down. Babysit those two dumb bitches, and bring them up to par." I was putting on like June's a fresh cop just like the other one, and June was smart enough to play along. Pepper told me later she helped her oodles with breaking down the dumb one among them. I went downstairs to shoot the breeze with Jack, whose name really's Harry, and after a spell took off for a slow walk in the general direction of towards the Roost. I told him if there's a roust to send them there for me, anyhow.

I walked most of the way there without any trouble, but stumbled half a block up from the Roost. The guy that stood in the center of the sidewalk... I looked down at him. He stood a good foot shorter than the runt. He looked like a black baby grown up on ugly pills. His head was the size of a giant pumpkin. His voice was a squeal like a clappy joker makes when the croaker rams a sound down his dingus. He squealed, "Shine 'em up, Hot Shot. If I had your hand I'd throw mine away. Get on the bigtime. Shines ain't but a dime. Shine 'em up." I looked down at my stomps. They could stand a gloss all right. I followed the pointing, gnarled finger to the miggit's surprisingly large open-air stand. It sat at the mouth of a gangway between two buildings. The red fringes of its tattered canvas top rippled in the breeze. I climbed into the chair. The dwarf doled out the polish with large gestures for little squirts. A thin stud with at least a half a grand in threads on his back took the other chair. He was wearing silver nail polish like maybe he thought he's a kitchen appliance. He was reeking with perfume enough to pay for fifty potted plants. A gleaming butterscotch-colored custom Duesenberg eased into the curb in front of me. The top was down. My peepers did a triple take.

A huge stud was eased in the back seat. He had an ocelot in his lap dozing against his chest. The cat was wearing a stone-studded collar with a long golden chain strung to it. This stud had two spectacular high-yellow whores on either side of him. His diamonds were blazing. Three gorgeous white whores sat in the front. He looked exactly like Boris Karloff in black-face. He was rapping something. All five of those whores were turned toward him, listening and paying attention like he was God almighty telling them the secret of how angels piss. He could have been running down a safe place to hide because the world was coming to an end just as well. I asked the miggit who the hells is that. He said, "You gotsa be from outta town. That Sweet Jones. He's the greatest nigger pimp in the world that's ever been." The thin joker chipped in, "That spotted cat, that's Miss Peaches. It's the only bitch he cares lives or croaks. Shit, them whores you pinning ain't half his stable. If they got nigger pimps in outer space, he's the best of them, too. He's gonna take them whores into the Roost and pop some. He's lugging twenty G's in his raise like he's got a buck. Ain't no heist man crazy enough to stick him up though. He croaks niggers for his pass-timin' recreation."

I couldn't believe my eyes. Those Duesenbergs, they cost a fortune. He must have been the only black pimp in the country who owned one. My peepers jacked off just watching him and those high-powered whores. It was as exciting as maybe Christ making his encore. The dwarf was done shining. I held a buck over his head and he spent a while jumping for it. When I had enough of watching his big head bob like a Halloween head stitched to a bulldog I let him have it. He made change. I didn't take it off of him. I sat there a while and watched Sweet Jones and those whores get out of the Duesenberg and walk toward the Roost. The black-spotted cat slinked beside him. I thought, "Tonight I got to cut into him. I got to be careful so I don't blow him. The cut-in has got to be in the Roost. I'll go in and cook up something in there." I got off the stand. I saw old Preston trying to shoo two marks into the Greek's joint. Just as I turned into the Roost he bucked his eyes and jerked his thumb at me. He was tipping me Sweet was in the Roost. I nodded my head and went in. It was the combo's off time. The jukebox was grinding out "Pennies From Heaven." The joint hadn't crowded any yet. There were maybe a half dozen couples in the booths, some left over from last night by the looks of 'em. Sweet Jones and his whores were the only people at the log. Sweet sat just on the chair I sat when that slick pimp made his fast cop. The damndest thing : she was still there, though the slick joker was gone. The pretty Mexican broad, Miss Bet I Get Ya, was standing at attention in front of Sweet like she was asking for permission to tear her dress offa her titties. The cat was licking her paws beneath Sweet's stool. I sat at the log near the front door facing him and the stable.

Sweet bought the house a drink. She served his party first. She glanced at me, remembered my drink, brought me a Planter's Punch on Sweet. The floor waitress loaded a tray from the log and served the couples in the booths, all on Sweet. I sat there studying him. He looked about eleven feet, but had to be at least six-six. His face was like a black steel mask. Not a flicker of emotion played over it. He kept smashing the heels of his brute-sized hands together like he was crushing an invisible throat. Even at a distance it made me edgy. I guess it kept his whores on the brink of peeing on themselves. If he had smiled maybe they would have dropped dead from shock. He sure made pimping look nothing like a charm contest. Those whores lit his cigarette. They took turns feeding him sips of his Coke. If he farted I bet they fought to ram their pretty noses up his ass. I froze. One of the white broads was whispering in his ear. Those unearthly gray eyes of his in their ebony sockets moved to staring at me. I raised my punch to thank him for the taste. I could hear the thud of those meat sledges from across the bar. I thought, "Christ Almighty! Mama darling, I hope my double hasn't put the muscle on this broad for some snatch or scratch. Please don't let this broad bum-finger me!"

He slid his terrible pearl-gray peepers off me. I saw him pound the bottom of his glass against the log. The Mexican broad expressed to him like pistol shot. He was rapping to her. She was nodding her head and looking down the log at me. My stomps on the stool rung were slamming together like the heels of a Flamenco Dancer. The jukebox was sobbing Lady Day's beef about her mean but sweet man. I wondered if I'd see the runt again. I wondered if I'd see any of them again. I wondered how soon they'd get their asses kicked if not. The couples in the booths were bug-eying the arena. It was maybe like when they fed the lions on fresh Christians. Who knows how many of them feed Christians never read the good book through either ? The cute tamale danced slowly toward me. She wasn't dressed in black and she had lost her scythe, but to me she looked pretty grim for once. Her face was tight and serious as she stood before me. She carried pity in her peepers. I guess she opposed capital punishment on the same grounds as eating people. She said, "Mr. Jones wants you to come to him. Pronto."

She turned and walked away. I staggered to my feet. I started hoofing that thousand miles to Mr. Jones. As I got close enough the overgrown cat snarled from under the stool. It pasted its yellow eyes on me. I jerked my eyes from the cat, and kept them riveted to the floor instead. It made me less dizzy. I was afraid to look into Sweet's glowing peepers up close. I knew I'd crap my pants. He whirled around on his stool, his back to the log. I glued my peepers to the tapping tips of his needle-toed patent leather stomps. I flinched at each crash of his huge hooks. He whispered, "nigger, you know who I am? Look at me when I'm spieling to you." I said, "Sure I know who you are Mr. Jones. You're the black God of the sporting world. Ain't a nigger alive, unless he's stupid and deaf, that ain't heard your fame and name ring. The reason I don't look at you is because I remember what happened to that sucker in the Bible that snitched a peep." His whores broke out into gales of laughter. Miss Peaches wasn't a lady. She broke wind and grinned. Those patent-leather toes stopped tapping. Could I be selling it?

He reached out and grabbed my chin. He held my head up and cupped it in his giant hook. I flexed my belly to take up the slack in my bowels. Those deadly gray slits almost slugged me into a dead faint. When he opened his jib I saw spidery webs of spit for an instant bridge his fat lips. He said, "Little nigger, who are you and where you from? You kinda look like me. Maybe I layed your Mammy, huh?" I said, "Mr. Jones, I'm nobody trying for somebody. Could be my Mammy went for you. What bitch wouldn't? She went for lotsa fellows." He laughed. Then he said, "nigger, you like fine white pussy? This dog of mine wants you to lay her. I give my whores what they want. You going to lay her for a double saw?" I looked the way he turned my head. The dog wasn't so doggish. Tell the truth, she was one fine looking broad. Legs to her neck, with perky titties and a slant eyed smile. I said, "Mr. Jones, I don't have that much on me." I looked like I was real sorry for it, too. They laughed like I was both Stanley and Oliver all rolled up in one. Sweet said "You'd be getting the saw, nigger. Not payin' it." I straightened myself out. "In that case Mr. Jones sir, how many times ?"

He was about to come back with something, to the tune of the peals of laughter spreading to the booths, when two rollers burst in. "Which one's Icebeck around here ?" hollered the fat one at the poor tamale. She shrugged with her palms away from her apron'd ass like she'd never heard of him before. Everyone was looking at each other. Sweet let go of my jaw, his eyes soft and searching now. "That you, little nigger ? Icebeck ?" I nodded. "How come every wanna-be mackin' nigger's saying his name by himself fifty zilion times before anyone asks for it, but you ain't said it yet and here's they looking for you by it ?" The policeman nodded to Sweet, then grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around, my back to the log. "You Icebeck then ?" he quizzed me. "That's right." He nodded to his partner then said to me "Come along now. Cap'n Mahoney wants to speak with you." I followed them out, leaving behind a stunned silence. Before the doors swung open I heard Sweet behind me, "Motherfucker ain't even arrested".

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 12 : Trippin Down Memory Lane

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 14 : Choice Chances And Passing Up »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Wednesday, 03 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 12 : Trippin Down Memory Lane

After parting company with Pretty Dumb Preston I made for the Roost. An old church tower struck six. I thought to myself "Nice going so far, Iceberg. By three you'd done nothing for two hours, but by six you put in the ground along with three more hours a good hundred-plus slats to keep 'em company. Those two bitches humping their asses off of them out there in who knows what sewer and getting their ears cut off of them by these genuine injuns around here ain't got a prayer in hell to keep up with that rate between the two of 'em. That's progress for ya, and getting better by the minute. Let's see if you can do yourself better before midnight. Maybe get your head cut off, or maybe some new holes for your dumbass nigger hide. Won't that be tops!" But really, I was gonna keep my mind like a sponge, and use my eyes and ears like suction cups. I had to find out everything about crosses and whores. I had to find out all the secrets of pimping, and fast. I didn't want to be a half-ass giggolo lover like the white pimps. What I wanted was to control the whole whore, like at the cannery : everything up to and including the squeal. I wanted to be the boss of her life up to and including her thoughts inside her skull. I had to make it like that Lincoln never freed no bitch slaves.

The Roost was really jumping now. I copped the one open stool at the middle of the bar. A Mexican broad in a red satin cocktail dress brought me a pink Planters Punch. The combo was speed riffing "Tea For Two." Through the barlength mirror I could see an ugly nigger stud playing stink finger with an angel-faced white broad in a booth behind me. He was playing pocket pool with his other hand. The broad had her eyes closed. Her rhinestone tiara looked like a phony halo. She was biting her bottom lip like maybe she was taking a pussy-first heavenly trip right there in the booth. My ear cups started sucking. The dapper joker on my right was whining to the stud on the other side of him. "I want my three bills back. That pretty bitch ain't turned three tricks since you sold her to me. That bitch is dying. She's falling apart. She can't walk the street." The seller wasn't buying. He said "Jack, I sold you the package as is. I ain't responsible for divine acts." The buyer came back with "Divine my ass. You knew that dog was rotten inside and needed a grand's worth of carving. Give me a yard and a half and take the bitch back." The seller said, "You a stick-up man? The bitch was whole when I sold her. Maybe you trying to play con on me. Maybe you stomped on the package. Maybe you put the bitch in bad shape. I got more bitches than I know what to do with, that's why I sold the one to you. I ain't buying her back if you only wanted a slat for her, not anymore than you can sell liquor right back to the bar." The buyer shook his head half-resigned, and feeling plenty sorry for himself, too. "Ain't this a bitch? I went for the okee doke. I'm out three bills for a black dog with a foot in the grave."

The seller said, "Jack, I'm pimping on my own. I ain't got no time to pimp on yours. But just to get you off my ass, I'm going to rundown for you. There's a whore house upstate with all Spic trade. They don't spend but a fin, but there's a zillion of 'em. On weekends they line up on the sidewalk. All you gotta do is cop some pills. Patch the bitch up and take her up there. There ain't no walking up there. She can flat back, so long as she keeps breathing you'll get some scratch. Jack, she may even last long enough so you can invest the scratch to overhaul her, and still show a profit. The bitch is black and pretty. She ain't got much mileage on her. Them Spics are wild for black broads. Jim, I been running down the out for you. If you go for it call me at noon. In the meantime I'll contact the joint. Me and the house broad are tight. It's a cinch you can place your grief tomorrow." The buyer finally saw the light. He went "Jack, you know I deserve some cooperation. I'll try anything to break even on that dog. I'll call you at noon. I ain't salty with you now. Let's split and make the scene at the lair. I'll pop for a coupla rounds." The buyer stood up. He knocked his knuckles against the log. The cute Mexican broad came toward him to check him out. She stood before him. She was smiling.

The seller drained his glass and stood. He leaned across the log staring into her bosom. I was digging the action from that trap door in the corner of my eye. She said, "Both tabs come to twelve dollars. Yours is seven. Your friend's is five." The buyer said, "I've got 'em both. Here's a double saw. Keep the change Miss Bet I Get You. Say girl, was that bum your father who brought you in when you started to work here last night? Ain't you afraid I'll salt and pepper you and eat you raw?" She said, "No, not my father, my husband. He's no bum. He had his work clothes on. People are not good to eat. It's not nice to eat people. Thanks for the tip. Come back soon." The buyer hurled his beak toward the ceiling and laughed. Flakes of grayish white dust clung to the hairs in his nostrils. He had snorted a good skull load of cheap horse, cheap enough maybe to be more hearse than horse. Her mouth was still smiling, but her big black eyes were slitting in Latin fury. She turned away toward the register. She punched it. She came back. She stood staring at the buyer. She had a fin and three slats in her hand. She was crushing them into a missile. In the mirror I saw the seller shaking his head as he walked out the door. All the while all I could think was "If even this joker has a twenty to spare..." Preston had pushed hard on how many slick pimps ran around these fast tracks here, and how mindbending slick they were, but somehow I had yet to see one. Between the cop pimp croaking his own whore like some god-damned maniac, this smooth operator burning through the Cs and Preston himself, the fast track looked more and more like the State Home For Special Children.

The buyer looked at the Mexican broad like the eight slats had made her his indentured slave. The four-carat stone on his left hand flashed like neon as he caressed his fly. He said, "If that tramp was your man I'm stealing you. Shit, I should kidnap you right now. You ain't got no business juggling suds. Bitch, you got a mint between your big hairy legs. I'm gonna show you how to make a grand a week. I ain't never wanted nothing and didn't get it. Bitch, I'm gonna get you. I'll be back at four to pick you up." Just as I was thinking "Well, maybe he didn't get his three hundred slats back that he wanted, but I bet he gets what he's wanting now, and soon enough" a massive black bulk with a face like a rabid bulldog snuck into the scene. Somehow he looked just like the joint bouncer. He stood himself several feet behind the buyer, grinning like a starved croc shown a trainload of cows. He was hunching his shoulders. The Mexican broad was shaking. She fired the missile. It struck the buyer on the tip of his beak. I guess she musta had some practice doing that. The wizard of words threw his hands across his face. She hissed, "That's some of the dumbest shit I ever heard, and I hear a lot of dumb shit around here. Take your life savings and blow, ugly." The bouncer streaked toward the buyer like a human torpedo, although I don't think they make torpedoes twice the size of the boat they get sent after. He vised the buyer's rear end through the tail split in his topcoat and the scrawny neck with his other, giant paw. The buyer was airborne almost. The tips of his shoes did a tap dance against the floor on his way to and through the door. The joint was silent. The buyer swiveled his head back toward the angry tamale. Just before he skidded toward the sidewalk he screamed, "You square-ass greasy chili-gut bitch. I'm gonna triple-cross you." A lanky stud stood up from a booth and yelled "Let us pray, brother." The joint blew up in peals of laughter. The combo started to riff "Mood Indigo" and the joint got back on jump time.

I thought about the runt. The Mexican broad had her hands on her hips. She was looking at me. She wanted me to say the buyer was a down and out nogood bastard. She didn't know I was up as a pledge in his club, and I didn't want to clue her. I put a deuce on the log and walked out. It was about ten at night. Preston had been right about one thing. The little black whore Poison had crumpled was standing, on her own feet somehow, in front of the liquor store. She hit on me. That terrible beating she took sure hadn't done much to cure her bad habit. She laid right into me "Hey Slim! Give me ten and sock it in. I won't put the rush on you, handsome. Cop a jug and let's go freak off." Though I had a quick vision of Poison's thirteens giving me a butt ache, I couldn't help myself. "If I cop a jug you come with me where I'm going ?" She nodded her head while she said "Anywhere, sugar." I copped a quart of cheap bourbon and flagged a cab. I took her to an old run down theatre twenty blocks away. We sat in the dark, toward the middle of the hall. There was almost nobody there. I handed her the bottle and said "Babe, I ain't got no ten and I ain't gonna sock it in ya. I just want to rap." She looked at me. I made like I was a lonely heart, same lame June trip I laid on Mama. I could tell she ain't buying it any, but a whore's no roller. Makes no difference to her if your story checks out or not. Just as long's you got one's good enough for her. After a few hearthy swigs she reached for my fly. She had a soft touch alright. I stopped her, told her I ain't got no ten or nothing, sorry. She said "Don't worry handsome. I ain't gonna want nothin'."

She knew a lot more than Preston, that's for damn sure. She gave me the rundown of the whole town. She knew all the cops in twelve precincts by name, when they started, what they did, everything. She was like the national library of whoring. She knew all the pimps, she knew all the whores. She knew there's a coupla new girls out on the street today working together, one young the other old. She didn't know their names but she knew the old one was a whore back East and squared with the policy wheel guy. She musta ran off. There was a burglary at their house, maybe the guy kicked her out. The young one had been out before, showed up maybe a week or so ago. She's got a bullshit pimp, if she's got a pimp at all. The rollers noticed her, it's a wonder if she makes it a few days more before getting the can. They'll probably lock her up in a reformatory. She's eighteen like I don't have another ten, she said. I chuckled in the dark. She chuckled with me. As she moved past the median through the bottle she started talking more about herself. She was come to town as the singer with a small band. She'd run away from home with the tenor sax. It broke up, so she joined another. One day while singing at a private party a guest shoved her in a closet and made a woman out of her. She hadn't given it up to the tenor. She was saving herself up for marriage. She was a twisted broad alright. The bill that joker dropped on her bloodied dress went further than the seventeen bucks that was her share of their fee. Even figuring five dollars for the dress. She went to more and more parties, less and less to sing. She played the flute more and more instead. Then there was a beef, but she got it suspended. Then there was another beef. Poison walked in and suspended it for her, and that was it for her : if she walked off of him, she'd get a fin. She didn't like him any, though it was obvious enough from her story his nose was well open for her. She didn't see a way out for herself, so she drank. I sounded her for ways to break up that Poison joker. She came up empty. He was too tight, too well connected. He had been at it for more than five years, and put some respectable roots down. She fell to snoozing by the time she had put most of that quart away. Just a few sips left on the bottom, and not her kinda sips anyway. I split before they rolled the credits. I don't even know what they put on.

Years later I met an old con philosopher, an old Drag man with his bit drawing short. He laid on me the old fighting fire with fire trip. He'd say, "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." Then he'd go down his favourite path from somewhere back to nowhere. He'd say "I picture the human mind as a movie screen. If you're a dopey sucker, you'll just sit and watch all kinds of mindwrecking, damn fool movies on that screen. But Sonny, there ain't no reason 'cept for a stupid one for anyone to play on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. Your daddy's name might not be Shubert, but you still own one stage in the world. You're the one boss of it, and that whole show going on in your our mind. You're even the one writes the script each night. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest." I told him, "Humphrey my man", that was his name, stupid whitey names like they got, "I ain't even known what they put on." He died the day after that. I never told him I was thinking of that little witch bitch asleep holding the bottle up those years ago. I wouldn't have told him if he lived out to be my age, anyway.

I wandered the streets a long while after that. Walked with my thoughts. At first I had thought there's others out there. I figured there's this book, and some got it. Read it, too. I figured there'd be cruel players who go by the book. When I went to Tuskegee I thought so sure enough. I was so sure of it I didn't even think about it, like a given that there's nothing there to think about. Those jokers sure as sugar had no clue. They was no better than any other, only they didn't think so. But deep down weren't too sure of it, either. They showed each other how to not be sure of it all day long, and that was it. It wasn't any learning, just worrying and wondering and fret. Just like the bitches do. They hadn't a leg up on Preston like he had no leg up on them. Only, they didn't think so. But they all had their yes Mr. Nick sir. And if they somehow didn't for five minutes, they went wild looking for him. I thought to myself "I bet you I can make that Poison be my bitch. I bet you I can make all of them. Every last one of them. This fast track ain't no faster than that fast track. No better, either. No different, only thing making it fast is the fret and that new wardrobe in your trunk like you're going somewhere new. There's ain't somewhere new to go."

By the time I got back to my whores it must've been after three. I twisted my key in the lock and stepped inside. June was wide-eyed. She leaped from the bed. Pepper had dozed off but she sat up too. They had on red baby-doll pajamas, both of them, see through but for the fringe. June leaped to the door and squeezed herself hard against me. She acted like I had been gone a year. She yelped, "Oh Daddy, I am so glad you're back. I was worried like hell. Where have you been? Do you love me as much as I love you? Did you miss me? I'd die if anything ever happens to you." I gritted my teeth. Her pretty love con had resurrected sad old scenes. I saw poor black Henry. He was on his knees blubbering his love for Mama. I saw his pitiful eyes begging Mama not to break his heart. I saw Mama kicking herself free of his clutching arms. I saw that terrible look of scorn and triumph on Mama's face. I thought about the worms that had a bite of his flesh, in his cool, lonely grave.

I sat my ass down on the warm bed between 'em. I said to June "You didn't miss me that much while I was turning this whore out". She cried a little. "Yes I did, Daddy. Yes I did. Every night," and she broke down. I nodded to Pepper. "What's your story, bitch ?" She pointed to a pile like a bale o' hay. It was all slats alright, but not a bill among them. Not a fifty either, I don't think. Just fins and bones and now again a saw. There was no way to count all that without taking a bath in it. "How much you got ?" Pepper pointed at June. "This crazy bitch's at two-forty-five. I'm at two-forty. She's had me by a fin." She shook her head. "That's forty-four tricks between the two of us since noon. Daddy, you want yo Mama dead ?" I shook my head. "That ain't so much. The night I turned old Crystal out I made that much off her, and it was only three hours. What you been doin' all day ?" Pepper grabbed her own hair. She asked me what am I talking about ? I ran it down for them, how I'd turned Phyllis out. Pepper was holding her head like from bursting. "That was both of you working, and with a car ? You made two-forty-five off of her, where was your end ?" I lifted my right hand at her, like to give her a deafening slap. She just looked at me. I said "Bitch, I made my end from her titties. Then I made her end from her ass." June leaned over and put her cheek in my extended palm. She looked up at me. "Daddy, don't beat her. She's good." I said "O yeah ?" and she broke down again. "Please Daddy, don't beat her. I love her." I chuckled. "She likes being beaten, baby. She's a freak for it. Ain't that right Pepper ?" She looked at me, those smoldering snake eyes of hers defeated. "You want us back on the track ?" I laughed.

"No bitch. I don't want you back on that track. I want you back on a better track." They were both taking me in, peepers the size of saucers. "You worked it hard tonight. That's good. There ain't no other way. But now you gotta start working it smart." Then I turned to Pepper. "Yo wrinkly old ass brought this bitch down. You know a whole week she worked by herself she made twenny-eight ? That's just by herself, it comes to more than you two got together all day long." That cut her down. She turned to a wailing ball of tears, snot an' despair right there in the bed. I kept after her. "I got you in to teach my whore and to lift her up. If I wanted her cut down, I coulda done it myself, cut a leg offa her or something. Though natural like this bitch is, that might've not even done it, she go on the track with two legs under her, bring in four hundred. She go with one leg bring in five." Pepper was beating the sheets down with her pretty fist, the size of a small plum. June had her hand over her waist, facing me and tearing up. "Please Daddy. We worked it so hard. She taught me so many things." I slapped her cheek soft and light three-four times. "I know she did, sugar butt. Thing is, the tricks liked you better when you didn't know. They wanna trick with their little daughter they left abed at home, not with their used up whore of a wife. From now on, whatever you know, you don't let on any of it. You getting me ?" Her mouth was open. I don't think anyone ever told her before a woman's better off not knowing, and if she knows not letting on. Whoring's an education for the young girl, that's for damn straight.

I grabbed Pepper by her hair and pulled her face up. "Why you so useless, you good for nothing bitch ?" She had her hands over her face, then swallowed hard, bit down and pushed them away, together, right in front of me. Like a prayer, she opened herself up for me. Opened herself up for the stomping. She didn't want to, with every strand screaming in her body she didn't want to. She promised herself she'd never let herself fall down in here again. Yet there she was, and there she opened herself up for it. Her eyes closed, she mouthed silently "Please, Daddy." I shifted my weight like I was about to crack the living daylights out of her, between my left holding her hair in a vise grip and my right flying in all the way from Detroit. She mouthed "I love you". I kissed her. She opened her eyes with a start, awash in tears. I laughed at her. "That remind you of anything, bitch ?" She fell to groveling, and kissing my feet. I sure had her alright. In my mind I thanked all those bullshit pimps she had, for all the work they did. They didn't get paid for it the half that I was going to get, that's sure as sugar in the bank.

I stretched out between them two and was asleep in all of two minutes.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 11 : Something Old, And Something New, And Something Blue

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 13 : Almost Fucked But Not Even Arrested »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Wednesday, 03 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 10 : The Golden Fix And The Double Cross

When the door opened she jumped to her feet. "Daddy! Daddy! I'm so happy to see you!" I gave her a cold stare. "O yea ? And why's that, bitch ?" She mellowed out and went on her knees. She mumbled "I don't know, Daddy. I'm just happy, that's all." I went around her and sat my ass down on the bed. She turned and crawled towards me. She started taking my shoes off. "How do you like this dump ?" She lifted her eyes to me, then back down all bashful. "Oh, I like it Daddy. You're here. But..." I frowned at her. She glanced long enough to see it. "But what, bitch ?" She was playing with my shoelaces like a primary school priss caught without her homework. Eventually she mouthed off, "All my things are in the car. What should I do with them ?" I put my foot on her face. "That's easy, Phyl. You take them all next door. Here's the key." and I threw it in her hair. She reached for it with her hand, but didn't move her head any. On the way over I had seen in a window all sorts and manner of candy. I bought some of them, chocolates and things. Now here I was, tempting her with a delicious dollop. She took it in the mouth from my hand, then went back to my socks. She took in a deep breath. "Them socks stink, bitch ?" I prodded her. "Kinda" she giggled. "So why don't you wash 'em ?" She peeled them off, jumped to her feet, then turned to me. "The sink's over there", I pointed. "Yeah, but... should I do the socks first or the car first, Daddy ?" I pushed my pants down. "Do the socks first. Ain't yo Mama taught you no thing ?"

I was in the shower while she bawled over my dirty socks in the sink. She was quiet enough about it, just her shoulders shuddering now and again. I think they wash better in salty tears. Maybe they don't, I don't know. I still like mine done that way best. When I was getting out there came a rap on the door. It was none other than June, and you'll never guess what she said. It went like this : "Daddy! Daddy! I'm so happy to see you!" I said to her, "I'm happy to see you too, baby." She closed the door and spun herself around me. Looking at me all serious she said, "Daddy, Pepper wants you right away. Her old man's there, you're going to sit down and talk it through." I took a step back, right into the door. The idea kinda gave me the chills. What kind of set-up is this, anyways. "How did it look, baby ? What's he like ? Did you trick with him ?" She smiled slyly right back at me. "Oh, he's nice. Kinda old, like a teacher or something." Then she giggled. "He's not... you know. He likes for me to kiss it a lot." I scratched my head. "So he wasn't angry or anything ?" She shook her head. "No, no. It's like a business thing."

I sat myself down on the bed. She came to me, which is when she laid eyes on the other one. She looked back and forth until she got herself to ask, "Daddy, who's in the bathroom ?"

"Oh," I said, "don't mind her. That's my cousin."

"But why is she in the bathroom ?"

"She had a big argument at home. Big argument with her folks. She needed a place to stay. You know, until things cool down. Since you weren't here..."

June paddled all the way to the runt, but carefully, like the first Indians went to check out the first Spanish no doubt. Like how dogs meet, though she didn't sniff her ass. Instead she said "Hi! I'm June." The runt shot back "Hi June. Nice to meet you. I'm his cousin." June looked at her unconvinced. She came back to me. "Why is she naked ?"

"Oh, that's the rule around here. Girls gotta be naked. Why are you dressed ?"

She eased herself out of her maid's uniform, slowly. She had a headful of thoughts. Eventually she broke out, "Daddy... is she a whore ?"

I chuckled. "Naw, baby. She ain't no whore. Just a fake ass professor from them University is all."

That was just about all the runt was going to take. She whined like she was about to cry. "Don't say that, Daddy. Please don't."

I was out and out laughing by then. I said "She's a whore just like you, baby. She loves me and she'll love you too. Now go over there and kiss your whore sister's cat."

June went back towards the bathroom sink. She'd never done anything like it before in her life ; but Phyllis eased her into it and helped her along. She's a professoral teacher and all after all. I shot at her "You a jasper to boot ?" She asked me what's that. "One of them lazy beans" I said, and it sparked it for her. She didn't say anything. I figure she was a virgin one of them, she'd never had the chance to do anything about it before is all.

Once they were done I said "June baby, you go fetch the man downstairs and empty the yellow Ford parked on the curb. Me and her have to take a short ride, so you bring it all back inside now, you hear ? You put it all next door." She heard. Then I asked her if she's had any lunch. She said sure, they treated her real nice at Pepper's. They cooked it together. I turned to the runt. "How about you, bitch ?" She shook her pretty airbubble head. "No daddy. I ain't had a bite since you gave me breakfast this AM." I shrugged. "I guess you can starve just as well. Wouldn't hurt your fatass any, that's fo' sho'." June looked at me like what's the joke, but the runt bowed her head in shame. That's just how bitches are made, some things they always take to heart.

Once the short was cleared we took off, leaving June and Jack to haul all the shit inside. There was a damn lot of it, too! On the way over the runt was stiff, a million thoughts rushing through her head. Halfway there she warmed up enough to start the third degre. She asked me how many whores do I have again. I said now I've got three. "How come ?" she asked me, ignoring the road altogether. "Look where you're driving, bitch. What are you, psychic ? I thought this bitch and the one we're going to see now ran off together." That put her on the flat foot. "You mean, she came back ?" I nodded. "And the other one's got a pimp ?" I looked at her. "Babe, the other one's squared out, she has some rich white joker she squared out with. Now she wants back in." The runt was crying. Eventually she said "You know Daddy, that's the first time you called me babe or anything besides a bitch ?" I laught. She didn't even get it right, it wasn't the first time. Then her thoughts caught up with her. "How do you know it's not a set-up ?" she asked. I shook my head at her. "I don't. Pepper's previous pimp is still doing the bit this guy laid on him when he got Pepper away from him. For all I know all that's waiting there's ole Tommy." I could see it gave her cold chills. "Why are we going then ?" she asked, all bothered. I didn't say anything. She was working herself into a fever pitch "Want me to turn around ?" I shook my head at her, like what's wrong with her. I said "Drive, bitch. We're going to find out."

We found out alright. When Pepper opened the door she nearly fell on her ass. She whispered in my ear "You damned fool, what are you doing ?" I just slapped her ass a loud one and made for her livingroom. Her old man was there. I could tell he shat it when he saw me. So far so good, maybe it's really all about business. He said "Ah, you must be Bobby. I'm Frank." I went over to him and shook his hand. I said "Iceberg." I don't know why I said that. He said "Oh, of course. Iceberg." He poured me a drink. By this time Pepper and Phyllis caught up with us. I said "This is Crystal. She's new, I only started her whoring yesterday. That's how come she don't know she's supposed to be naked. Bitch!" The runt was out of her glove before the echo died out. I smiled widely at the guy. "Feel free to use her whichever way you want. That's what she's for."

Pepper's eyes were shooting daggers at me. Her old man looked at her and mumbled "Tough kid, huh." He turned to me and said "I understand you've already done Pepper that way ?" I looked at him and said "Mr. Ibbetts, I don't know what to say. I don't mean no offense." Pepper had enough of it by now. She waved her hands like "lay off you two!". She flopped her pretty titties out of her top, then said "I don't know what's gotten into him tonight. Every other time he's the other way like it's his religion, fifty bucks in his pocket he'll make like he's got nine cents. Now he's banging two dimes together trying to make them sound like the Bank of England." She turned to me. "Shut up, junior. Come put your face in my cat instead, like a good boy."

I said "Yes Mama" and walked over there. The runt's mouth was hanging open to about her knees. The guy wasn't that far behind. I gave Pepper a sweet kiss on her pretty bud. I missed her plenty. Then I said "Bitch, maybe you wanna hear me out first. I got some news." She looked at me. I spilled the beans on the whole Weeping cross, the whole thing as I had heard it. What I had to say sure put her old man in a spinning frenzy. He picked up the phone and dialed like his life depended on it. "Who's that ? Yeah, listen McKay, send some guys over. No. Yes. No, plainclothes. Three squads. Tell 'em to bring shotguns. I have no fucking idea. Yeah. I'll explain it to them once they're here. Step on it."

"You figure that's a thing ?" Pepper was a little pale. Her old man was pissed off. "No it's not a god damned thing. It's the dumbest story I've ever heard. It makes no sense whichever way." Pepper shook her head. "So what then ? Hit the house ?" Her old man nodded. "They just want you out of here. Amateurs." Pepper turned to me "Come on, Daddy. We're getting out of here." Her old man cut her short. "Wait a minute." Then he turned to the runt. "Can you drive, gorgeous ?" She looked at me. I answered for her "Sure she can drive. She's got a short, too." He nodded. "Alright, you go with Pepper. Go to a phone booth, put the call in, then go to the hotel they want you at, put your time in, then have fun." He turned to the runt again. "You're driving me. I'll be between the seats so it looks like it's just you if anyone's looking." I thought that'll be a tight ride for him in her short, but what was I going to say. The runt looked at me. Pepper's old man snapped his fingers at her. "I'm your Daddy now, bitch." She wasn't paying any attention to him. I finally said "Alright Big Daddy, have it your way." I told the runt, "You do what he tells you to like I was telling you to. Don't embarass me, you hear ?" I turned back to him "I'll want her back, Frank." He nodded his head. "You'll get her back. What's the Big Daddy stuff ?" I stood six foot two, but I was as scrawny as a hound back then. He stood six feet or so, but he had a hundred pounds easy on me. I smiled sweetly and I said, "Well Frank... you're the biggest one here, aren't you.". Pepper dragged me by the hand out of there, her titties still flopping in the breeze. Before I knew it we were in the car, driving away. I sure hoped Phyllis was gonna do alright.

She did, too. There wasn't anything to it, she just drove him around and then back. We went to a drug store down the road. I called Weeping. He told me to maneuver Pepper's face toward the head of the bed as much as possible when we got into the act. We took a booth so I could watch the clock. At eleven twelve Mr. and Mrs. Barksdale picked up the key to their pad. It felt like walking on stage. The room looked like they had made it with Wyatt Earp in mind. Overstuffed horse-hair living room, gleaming brass bed, giant cherubs on the wall, Gideon Bible on the marble top bedroom table. There was a midget efficiency kitchen cubicle. We laughed at all the Milwaukee square couples come to Chicago for a luxury one-weekend honeymoon. Young square bitch demonstrating her pancakes to her enraptured captive audience. "Oh honey, I betcha nobody had pancakes this good". Nobody except for the next sucker, and the previous one.

High on the wall over the bed were the two gold colored cherubs. Their eyes were holes, their mouths popped wide holding the light fixtures. When we got into bed we got the show on the road, like playing an off-key brass band, all percussion. I was almost sure some steamed up joker in the adjoining room had his gizmo focused on the carnival through a drilled hole peeking from a cherub's empty eye socket. It made me kinda hot, but in a different way. Pepper wasn't much in the mood, I could tell, but she took her pounding like a champ regardless. We were all together again before midnight. Only difference, the pigs had a great cop in their craw : five people wanted in sixty states between them, plus a truck, tools, a whole pile-up. Turns out Frank was dead-right. Weeping's story was through and through bullshit. The whole thing was a burglary set-up, they were going to empty the house. He said the take'd have been maybe three maybe four hundred thousand that night. I had to sit down. "How much you say, Frank ?" It was his turn to chuckle. "Who do you think you're talking to, boy ? Some jealous geezer with an old whore in tow ? Don't believe everything you hear." Pepper was smiling her half-eyelid smile to the side. "Can you fix me up ?" came out of me like oil from a freshly dug well in rich Texas. He laughed. "Yes, I can fix you up. Can you stick to it ?" I nodded. "You're not some flash in the pan ? You've got talent, it's obvious, but it takes work to get anywhere. You gonna stick to it ?" I raised my right hand, like in a court of law. "I swear."

It was all gravy from there. His idea was to bankroll me, and split the whole thing halfway. I didn't go for that. Pepper said "I told you he's got scratch stashed." Frank chuckled. "How much you got, kid ?" I told him about five grand. He worked it out for me. The fix itself was going to run five a week. Less, he said, but it's better to figure it high and find yourself with spare cash than to figure it tight and then blow up. I'd need to get whores, I'd need muscle to keep the drunks and two bit gangsters in line. To make that kinda fix worth it, I'd need a certain size of operation, I'll be running on 20, 30 grand a week at a minimum in expenses. Yes the profit's gonna be three, four times that, if I know what I'm doing. But I don't know what I'm doing. I'm learning, or trying to. Yes Pepper's there, but she's never run an operation in her life. She's an artist in the sheets, he said, but she's not wise. She's not even smart. She'd like to be, sure. Maybe she'll get to be. But for now we're the blind leading the blind. Going at it with less than four-five week's capital's just wasting our time on skid row. That's at least fifty in cash and another hundred in the background. He had a point with all that. Then he said sure, I could get it together myself. Take me who knows, a coupla months maybe. If I'm lucky. If nobody croaks me by then, if I want to run the risk, I can cut him out of the deal. "So the question comes down to, Iceberg, who do you hate and how much do you hate 'em ?" he said. Because if I hate his guts enough to risk taking a bullet just to cut him out of some scratch he doesn't even need for anything, he's got no problem shaking my hand and wishing me a happy time of day.

I turned to Pepper. "There's no way to say no to this man." She was all smiles. "What do you say, Mama ?" She nodded. "Do what he tells you, baby." I stuck out my hand. "Alright Frank, what Mama says Iceberg does. You've got yourself a deal like you say." Then he did the damndest thing. He reached behind one of the armchairs and pulled out a suitcase. He set it down on the table and opened it up. It was piled with dough. Now my mouth was hanging down by my knees. He smiled at me. "Fifty. You wanna count it ?" I shook my head. "Naw, man. Let that bitch over there count it. Who knows, maybe she gets the idea and it's an inspiration to her." Crystal shimmied over and got busy counting C notes. I told them the story of how I took her roll, and how I told her she can crash once she's matched it. Frank was laughing his ass off, but Pepper was just shaking her head. "So" I said, "From here I take this bitch out to the docks. Chain her to the pier, come back in a week, she if she's fifty full or still some short." Phyllis was counting the same stack over and over again ; but Frank found the story hysterical.

We were on our way out. I asked him if he wants either of the whores stay back with him tonight ? He picked the runt. I told her, stay back and live it up a little. And if Pepper's pad's in any shape other than how she left it when you're out, I'ma cut both your thumbs and your big toes off, and switch them around. Everyone took a moment of silence to chew through that one, and then we split.

On the way back I needled Pepper some. "I didn't know you weren't even smart, bitch." She called me a smart alleck and told me to kiss her black whore ass. I had her pull over and did just that. Man I had missed that sweet behind on her like nothing else.

June wasn't back yet. We got back into the car and cruised around looking for her. Eventually we spotted her getting out of a big white Packard, just like I had dreamed of. She looked smack drag like a good whore at two o'clock in the AM : mussed up and tired. She fumbled into the car, her eyes half-closed, like a robot. I said, "Well, how goes it baby?" She dug in her bosom and pulled out a damp wad of bills. I counted it while Pepper drove. It was a fin short of a C. June whined about it. "Sorry Daddy, it's been rough out tonight. Coupla jokers played me for the money. Another one pulled a knife on me. Lucky it was early on and I didn't have much. He hurt me, though." I petted her matted hair. "How did he hurt you, baby ?" She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Can I stop now, Daddy? I'm tired and nasty, and my shoulder and ass ache. I would like a pastrami and coffee and a bath. Is it ok if I call it a night ?" I rubbed the wad in Pepper's face, right on her nose and all over her mouth. "Reminds you of anything ?" She shuddered. "Tomorrow you go out there with her. I want you on the street at noon, that clear ?" Pepper gave me a glance from the corner of her eye. "Yes, Daddy!" they both muttered. "You show her. Teach her everything." I looked at her. "It's a damn shame, a poor kid by hereself in the street like that. You wise her up, you hear ?" Pepper nodded. We stopped at an open-air kosher joint. June kept squirming on the hard wooden bench. Her butt must have been giving her fits. She was silent until she cut through that sandwich and coffee.

Then she said, "Daddy, what's it all for ?" She took a sheepish glance at me, then said "Please don't misunderstand me. I like doing it for you. Doing anything for you." I scratched my head. "Baby," I said, "You know how there's preachers, and they say what to do and not ?" She nodded, confused. "But then it's all bullshit, and not what anyone does, anyway ?" She was looking straight at me. "That's what it's for. Too much lying, too little livin'. Enough of that old bullshit." Pepper parked the car. We weren't anywhere near home yet. She just looked at me. Then she drove off.

Once back at the old place, June went for a soak. I sat and talked with Pepper. Then we all went to sleep in the small bed, squeezed like sardines. Neither of them wanted to go to another room and be comfortable by herself.

« The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 9 : Funeral, Reformatory and Sunday Dinner

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 11 : Something Old, And Something New, And Something Blue »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Tuesday, 02 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 1 : Twist, and Shout

Her name was Maude and she Georgied me around 1921. I was only three years old. Mama told me about it, years later. The memory of it made her almost tremble as she told me, all high-strung and bothered, as emotional perhaps as at the time when she surprised us : her panting and moaning at the point of orgasm, with her massive black thighs viselike around my head, my tiny little baby head wedged in there. Mama worked long hours in a hand laundry like they had back then, and Maude was the maude, at fifty cents a day. She was a young widow. I don't remember how her husband died. Maybe they never told me, or maybe they never told anyone. She had a reputation in Indianapolis, Indiana as a devout Holy Roller. You'd think this is strange, considering she told Mama she's done the same to all the babies, because it's what you're to do, because it's good for them, so they learn and get used to it and live happy in life. She said it's the holy blessing and anointment and never in this life will one be happy but through it. It's not strange even a little bit, though. It's obvious. All the church people are in the same way, just like salesmen : they don't mean what you'd expect by the words they say.

Mama asked her if she'd done to her babies too, but Maude said she ain't got any. That's right, said Mama, and kicked her out of the house. But then she came back the next week, because ain't nobody take the job at fifty cents a day, and Mama couldn't stay home from the laundry no more, and she said I cried and cried like at the second weaning while Maude was gone. Mama said I was really bad when she took the tit from my mouth, some kids are better than others but everyone she showed it to said I'm the worst they've ever seen, even old crones who saw the slave days and knew Lincoln. But this was worse ; so I asked her if she took a discount because of me ? And she told me she said "I guess I did, son" and I asked her then isn't that like pimping ? And she told me "Bobby, ain't nobody living in this world but they be pimpin' or whorin' and don't you forget it now boy!"

Many things through the years I've forgot, but look that not that. I must've been maybe nine or ten when she told me about it, I don't remember but her words. I have tried through the years to remember Maude's face, but all I can remember clearly is the funky ritual. I vaguely remember, not her words exactly, but her panting excitement whenever we were alone. I remember more vividly the moist, odorous darkness and the bristle-like hairs tickling my face and most vividly I can remember my panic, when in the wild moment of her climax, she would savagely jerk my head even tighter into the hairy maw. I couldn't get a breath of air until later, when like a huge black balloon she would exhale with a whistling whoosh and relax, limply freeing my head. I remember her sweat, pouring down her thighs, dripping off the back of my neck, and the ache and the strain, especially at the root of my baby tongue. I remember other things, too. I remember running away from home, the first time, that day. I ran out, there was a bike somebody left propped against a pole. I jumped on it and pedalled away, madly, like a blind frog. I was pedalling like I were running away, and in fact I was running away. From her, from those emotions, from the dreams, from the memories. From everything. I thought I must forget ; for many years I thought I had done it and forgot. But today, that I am old, today, as all my life's used up, although I've known so many women that begged to be remembered and yet I've forgotten them all, today still there's her. The one I can't truly forget. Maude!

A man from Columbia told me last week writing was invented by young women because old men forget. Speech, he said, was invented by young men, to better hide their thoughts ; then writing came around, to work differently than memory, and all the better make a mess of it. I thought as we were talking, you know what ? I'll write it all down! and then we'll see. Maybe you read it and tell me ; though by then I won't be here to hear it any longer.

Mama and I had come to Indianapolis from Chicago. To hear her tell the story, ever since the time when she was six months pregnant my father began showing his true colors : a black bum in white spats. It's sad when it comes out true colors aren't even true colors in the first place. Mama's story went in the usual way : a no-good bum in disguise stalked a beautiful and innocent virgin in some small town in Tennessee that happened to be their home town. He conned her into marriage. That she was getting married and knocked up no matter what, that bum or any other bum... such was never mentioned. Instead, as her own story went by her own mouth, he had conned her. It just so happened to be what she had already set herself to, as hard and stubbornly as an old sourdough miner. Do you suppose the very mountains con those sad, strange old men into digging at them their lives away ? Maybe they do, the mountains just sit there, quietly, conning poor old men all the while. She was as dumb as a doorstop, but that's not what she saw, looking back. Instead, she turned around and called it innocence, like molding shit in gold brick shapes and pretending like you carved serials on them, too. A shitbrick of stupid, which she called an innocent virgin, who was beautiful it so happens. She didn't know anything, not anything useful anyways, she couldn't do anything, besides of course getting married and detecting the bum in whoever had conned her to do the only thing she knew how to do, the only thing she was going to do anyways. And she was beautiful, of course, whatever that means. She was beautiful, and call it good.

That they're all beautiful in the same way at just about the age they're getting ready to get themselves conned in the cunt... that, she didn't notice. That the bum, whichever one, will be detected and discovered a bum, whatever he might've been, for being married to her, and that she'd be the very one to make that discovery, somehow... none of that found a place in her story. Instead it was her parents, you see, who with a big great sigh of relief gave their blessing and wished them the best in the promised land up North in Chicago. Mama had ten brothers and sisters, and her marriage meant one less mouth to feed, so maybe not nearly as much conning as Mama always said was truly at any point involved. Maybe it was more of an act of mercy on his part, or maybe it wasn't her that was being conned. Who wants a beautiful innocent mouth to feed, and what do they ever want it for ? She didn't come right out and say it, but she meant it, oh how she very much meant it : it was their fault. Her Mother and Father, I know nothing of them besides of course it must've been their fault that Mama was poor growing up. Not hers. What can a child ever do ? But then, it wasn't her fault later, that we were poor. God knows she did all she could, and that should be good enough. It was that bum she married, it was his fault. He was no good, as she discovered herself. Not her fault. His. She always did just fine by her own lights, there was always ample supply of credit right on hand, readily extended to herself as her own story went ; yet somehow everyone else around always turned out to be some kind of bum. That's how all her stories always went, and everyone else's stories that I ever heard, it's like they're all in court. But this... this won't go anything like that.

I know what I am, and who. I don't need to try and find it out, discreetly, hiding out, watching everyone carefully, like a gambler trying to divine his own standing by the way all the others hold their eyes. I've known as many gamblers as I've known whores in my life, and each to the last one were the same way : every whore with a story just like Mama's, that unlike Mama she had seen through ; and every gambler a little boy, trying to do the same everyone else does, only do it cheaper. Ole Bama told me one time, he said, "Iceberg, everyone's always gambling. My old man used to gamble when he worked the field and hoped for rain. I figure, if a man's gonna gamble, he might as well do it without ploughing." Bama was more straightforward than most, though that didn't make him any more honest. Everyone's soft, though you gotta be tough, and so everyone gets banged up and crumples up inside and soon enough everyone's crooked like corkscrews and nobody knows what to say anymore, or how to say it, for no straight words fit any curled ears anymore. But I know it, I know it all, I've lived my life out and in that trade that's what I get : I know it all now. Six men sit down around an upturned crate, and they're all the same now. That's the big deal, the true reason why they gamble : equality. They're now and finally the same, nobody's as equal as the man sat down before a hand of poker. Unequality there's a real crime, which they call cheating, and will shoot each other for it, just as good as in any war anyone's ever had. Nothing Phoney about it. They're equal, for a moment ; and then the first card hits. Well... they ain't equal no mo'. Not now, not no mo'. Who's who, though ? The card's a queen or a three, of diamonds or clubs. It hits their eyes. They don't look around, though of course they do. Who's who ? They stab each other in the eyes with little colored bits of prick, to find out who's who. Not for me, though lots of little boys stuck going around as if they were grown men do it their whole lives. But then again, they've never had their maude growing up. Or maybe they did and she was no good.

My father's father was a skilled cook, Mama said, and he passed his know how to my father, Mama said. I don't know about that, I can't cook to save my life, and I never could ; but my Dad, he scored a chef's job at a huge middle-class hotel shortly after getting to Chicago, so there must be something to the story. They put Mama on as a waitress, too. Mama told me that even with both of them working twelve hours a day, six days a week they couldn't save a nickel or buy furniture or anything. She said my idiot father had come to the big city and gone sucker wild. He couldn't stay away from the high-yellow whores with their big asses and bitch-dog sexual anticsi. I didn't ask her then, what did she mean by that ; or what they got she ain't got, or why does she think any of that. I didn't know how ; but I don't think she believed much of it herself, because she added that whatever they didn't con him out of he lost in the cheat crap joints. Why'd any man go to cheat crap joints ? Take it from old Iceberg : whenever there's a backup in the story, the teller's tellin' it. Say you're... I don't know what you might be, a school marm, maybe ? Yeah, alright, I'm going with that. You're a tighly wound up tomato, unreasonably affraid of seen and therefore unreasonably attracted by it. I'm not the first one to have tried this approach, right ? Fine then, buckle down and listen : on comes a kiddy up to your desk one day, and it turns out he didn't do his homework. If he says he did it, but it fell down a well he might even be telling true ; if she says she did it, but the dog ate it and then she was also out of pencils, you know she's lying. They're all lying, of course ; the little boy just doesn't know how, that's all. And neither does the little girl.

One night at the hotel he vanished from the kitchen, and Mama finally found him thrusting mightily into a half-white waitress lying on a sack of potatoes in a storage room, her legs locked around his back. Mama said she threw everything she could lift at them. This story too, I'm sure. They were unemployed when they walked away from the shambles. I didn't know to ask her if she locked her legs around his back too, or why didn't she kiss the whore. Who can afford to throw things at people who love them ? There's never that many, and if you love them back what sort of mind you need to throw things at the people who love them ? There's not that many of those, either, so if you ever find the man you love thrusting mightily into a woman that's got her legs locked around his back, you walk right up to her and kiss her. And don't you forget that! The way she told it instead, my father tearfully vowed to straighten himself out and be a man, but... after my birth he got worse and had the stupid gall to suggest to Mama that I be put on a Catholic Church doorstep. Mama wouldn't have it, so he hurled me against the wall in disgust. I survived, and miraculously uninjured, but he left us, his white spats flashing and his derby hat at a rakish angle. I don't believe a word of it, of course, but that makes us even : you don't believe a word of mine, do you now. Yet in time you'll find out belief isn't nearly as necessary in this life as you at first make out to think.

For us it was the beginning of a bitter Winter that year. Mama packed pressing irons and waving combs into a small bag and wrapped me warmly in blankets and set out into the bleak, friendless city to ring door bells, the bag in one arm and I in the other. Her pitch was something like this, "Ma'am, I can make your hair curly and beautiful. Please give me a chance. For fifty cents, that's all, I will make your hair shine like new money." At this point in the pitch Mama told me she would slip the blanket aside to bare my wee big-eyed face. The sight of me in her arm on a subzero day was like a charm. She managed to make a living for us.

Then in the Spring, with new friends of Mama's we left Chicago for Indianapolis. We stayed there until nineteen twenty-four, when a fire gutted the hand laundry where Mama worked. I don't remember anything about these friends, nor do they figure in her tales, so I'll venture a guess and say they conned an innocent but still beautiful black woman with a child in tow and no father anywhere, and then turned out to be bums. Because that's what they were, and had been all along. By coincidence there also were no jobs in Indianapolis. Not for Mama, not for anyone else. For six months we barely made it on herii meager savings. We were penniless and the pantry well bare by the time a tall ugly angel visiting relatives in Indianapolis came into our lives. He fell instantly in love with my lissome beautiful mother. His name was Henry Upshaw, and I guess I fell as hard for him as he fell for Mama.

He took us back to Rockford, Illinois with him. He owned a cleaning and pressing shop there, the only Nigger business in downtown Rockford. In those tough depression times a Nigger in his position was the envy of most Nigger men. Still Henry was religious, ambitious, good and kind. I often wonder what would have happened to my life if I had not been torn away from him. Sometimes it seems like your life's all you, and it'll play the same regardless what anyone throws your way, like the organ wails the same no matter who grinds it. But then some other times and especially late at night it seems more like there's no you, nothing of yours in there at all. Just a half nutshell floating a little while on the open sea, akin to any other and soonly sunk like all the others. Or maybe it's not like that at all. Maybe it's not like anything at all. Maybe it's just a thought, just like a dream, maybe there's nothing there at all until you bend to look, and then you see whatever you feel like, just like Ma. Maybe my life didn't turn out at all, it was someone else's all along and I just didn't know about it. Maybe a woman I do not know asked a man I do not know whether he often rewrites auto-biographies, and that's what it was all along, an autobiography without an author, waiting to be written out so it could then have existed though at its time it had not. Everyone's life's his own except yours, because that's the only time you'd know. The others you just assume, like little niggers trying to swim over. Nothing of yours, no boat, no hovel, no tool of any kind nor even the mental sophistication that could divine what a tool'd look like. Bare arms and legs, such as they are, and the great sea to be crossed on just that. The little nigglets still left on the shore readily assume the grown niggers long left swam, and did not sink. Once it's their time to be that nigger and swim they soon discover the realities of the situation ; but somehow as if by magic they still believe all the others swam, and did not sink. It's more objective that way. It's more naive, more empowering in that manner of naivite, to think your life's your own even though plainly enough nobody else's life ever was their own that you can point to. And yet...

Henry treated Mama like she was a princess. Anything she wanted he got for her. She was a fashion plate now all right. Every Sunday when we all three went to church in the gleaming black Dodge we were an outstanding sight as we walked down the aisle in our fresh neat clothing. Only the few Nigger 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.

Mama had a dream. She told it to Henry. Like the genie of the lamp he made it a reality. The dream was a four stall, opulent beauty shop. Its chrome gleamed in the black-and-gold motif, just the very thing an out of work Nigger whore would get for herself ; but Mama was no whore, just a lousy Princess, so Henry had to get it for her instead. It stood in the heart of the Negro business section, and it flourished from the moment its doors opened. Her clientele was for the most part whores, pimps, and hustlers from the sprawling red light district in Rockford, the only ones who always had the money to spend on their appearance and the sense to see why they should. The first time I saw Washington he was sitting down, getting his nails manicured in the shop. Mama was smiling into his handsome olive-tinted face as she buffed his nails. I didn't know when I first saw him that he was the pin-striped snake who would poison the core of our lives. To be honest, I didn't know much of anything when I first saw him. I certainly had no inkling that was to be the last day at the shop as live billows of steam hissed from the old pressing machine each time Henry slammed its lid down on a garment.

Jesus! It was hot in that little shop. Steamy and crowded, yet how I loved every minute of it! That's what young bitches mean when they say they'd rather starve with the man they love. It was school-vacation time for me but I worked in the shop all day, every day. I'd jump up in bed every morning like never before, like never since then, brimming with excitement. Today's the day I'll be helping my stepfather! I was in love with him like any puppy ever was in love. People like to think it matters if you're a boy or a girl, but that's because the truth scares them. Up until sixteen or so everyone's a little girl, inside, deep down inside. The little boys and the little girls too, all the same. They might as well all wear skirts, because that's the kind of same they are : the kind that goes best in a skirt.

That one day, just like every other day, I was the happiest black boy in Rockford. As I saw my reflection in the banker's expensive black shoes, as I applied the sole dressing, as I hummed my favorite tune "Spring Time in the Rockies" I was, without a doubt, without possibility of parole, without hint of a hope of revisitation or ever encountering it thence or ever again, the happiest boy that ever lived. The banker stepped down from the shine stand, stood for a moment as I flicked lint from his soft, rich suit, then with a warm smile he pressed an extravagantiii fifty-cent piece into my hand and stepped out into the broiling street. Back then they still had the Coolidge dollar, shines went for a dime. What a tip! I've dished out many tips since then, hundreds of thousands for sure, maybe a million different tips. For small things, for big things, for nothing at all, I must've doled out a million dollars in tips. A million dollar, easy. Tips in paper dollars, in these days' dollars, nothing dollars. I'm a man who's pushed out a million dollars of confederate money in tips, bribes, gratuities. Maybe it adds up to that half dollar all in all, or maybe it does not. Some days I think it does. Some days I think it must, it's just too much time, too many tips to not sum up to one single tip, one single moment in a life. Some other days though...

I didn't know back then that the banker'll never press another coin into my hand. That for the next fifty and more years this last day'll be there, to be remembered, vividly remembered as the final day of real happiness for me. I'd live to press five-dollar bills into the palms of shine boys, for shining my handmade shoes that in name only cost at least the thrice whatever the banker paid for his. But my shoes'd be Roosevelt shoes, New Deal shoes. Pressed shit shoes, nothing shoes, I doled out paper pretending to be money to some kid pretending to be shining my bare feet pretending to be shoed and all the while everyone pretending to be happy though nobody ever was. We didn't know anything back then, neither did I nor anyone else. As far as all could see there was really nothing out of the ordinary about that day. Nothing during that day that I heard or saw preparing me for the swift, for the pile-up of confusing events that over the weekend slammed my life away from all that was good to all that's forever bad. Now, looking back, remembering that last day in the shop as clearly as if it were yesterday, my stepfather, Henry, was unusually quiet. My young virgin mind couldn't grasp his worry, his heartbreak. Even as a ten year old I knew that this huge, ugly black man who had rescued Mama and me from actual starvation back in Indianapolis loved us with all of his great, sensitive heart. I loved Henry with all my heart. He was the only father I had ever really known. For his sake he could have saved himself an early death from a broken heart if instead of falling so madly in love with Mama he had run as fast as he could away from us. For him she was little more than brown-skin poison in a, by then, size-twelve dress.

That last night at eight o'clock Dad and I flicked the shop's lights out as always at closing. In an emotion muffled voice he spoke my name. "Bobby." I turned toward him and looked up into his face tense and strained in the pale light reaching us from the street lamp. I was confused and shaken when he put his massive hands on my shoulders and drew me to him very tightly just holding me in this strange desperate way. My head was pressed against his belt buckle. I could barely make out the rapid flow of words in his low, plaintive tone. He said, "Bobby, you know I love you and Mama, don't you?"

His stomach muscles were cording, jerking against my cheek. That's how he said it, too. "You, and Mama", it's what he said. I knew he was going to burst into tears. I said as I squeezed my arms around his waist, "Yes, Daddy, yes, Daddy. We love you too, Daddy. We always will, Daddy." I'm so glad I said that. Of all the things I ever did or said, sometimes in their own time, sometimes out of place, that's the one I'm glad to have gotten right. He was trembling as he said, "You and Mama wouldn't ever leave me? You know Bobby, I ain't got nobody in the world but you two. I just couldn't go on if you left me alone." I clung tightly to him and said, "Don't worry Daddy, we'll never leave you, I promise, honest, Daddy." What a sight we could've been, the six-foot-six black giant and the frail little boy holding on to each other for dear life, crying there in the darkness.

———I sat and thought upon this matter ; and we discussed it in the harem. 'Tis muddy at best ; but do you suppose a black woman who spent 1918 pregnant and throwing things at sacks of potatoes actually said those words, those exact words, to her son at some point during or maybe just after the Great Depression ? Why would she think that ? What do you suppose she sees, admitting she did say it, in her mind's eye ? The accuplation described's plainly vaginal, the girl on the sack of potatoes isn't taking it in the ass nor is she sucking cock, they're there doing intromissive missionary like since the dawn of time, the position upon which the Americas were built. What, is this guy's momma some kinda Boston Protestant from a small town in Tennessee ? Does she take offense at the other, normal girls being too straightforward, too directly earnest about the cunt between their legs for her elaborate tastes ? I don't know how you say farafasticuri in your language, but is that the problem, is it that she's not an animal, she's a human being, as proven by the fact she can't touch it, let alone spread it in her hand for a man's visual inspection like normal people ?

Or is it rather that the book, the original book, being written in the 60s, about events from the late twenties up until the early fifities but written in the mid-60s, falsifies liberally, disrespectfully butchers the stories such that the minced meat remaining's entirely a byproduct of the "American" notion, as reconstructed televisionally (and out of disparate, and mostly very diverging reality), nothing authentic (or for that matter true) remaining ? It'd be just like the tv age, of course, but then... [↩]At first I was tempted to change this asyntactic barbarism towards a more aetolian possessive pronoun or something ; but then it occurs to me it's actually quite flavourfully descriptive as it stands. It's not her savings, it's the savings, little Obama's fully grown inside and if you build a business...

Come to think of it now I have to change it, my Iceberg's not their liceberg. [↩]He sounds just like fucking Elliot, what the fuck can I do, opulent lissome etcetera. Hot damn... [↩]

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The Re(al)-Pimp, Chapter 2 : To The Grave ; And Beyond »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Wednesday, 24 February, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Problem

The notion that every two bit nobody is called upon -- as if by phenomena embodied, or the very gods themselves, ridiculum dictu -- to "figure things out for himself" and "come up with his own answers" to life's all questions, big and small alikei, is something beyond description. Undisputably it's the dumbest nonsense ever proposed, for it's self-obviously the dumbest nonsense possible.ii Yet anyone who's ever read the Greeksiii is not going to be much surprised to discover that the worst possible is also existent.iv

Of course, they'd think they accomplished all that, wedidditreddit etcetera ; and yet, for all the layered ludicrous in there, the subject's not merely an exercise in impossiblity. It's an outright pointless exercise in impossibility!

Pedalling on the stationary bicycle is pointless in the limited sense that it won't take you anywhere ; but it's still good for you. The mere act of exercising the muscles is healthy, it promotes blood flow and virtuous metabolic cycling, it's wasted effort, evidently, but wasted constructively.

Exactly contrary to that, the exercise whereby the herd of nobodies acts as if they were their betters -- just like that, just by themselves (or else through the magic virtues of an obelsik engraved to "reason", if you prefer) -- isn't constructive. It's not constructive at all, not to the faintest degree. It has no positive effect whatsoever -- in the absolute, definitive and complete sense of negation.

It certainly doesn't take them any step closer to lordship ; for all the broken china everywhere the elephant's not any closer to being a Chinaman, let alone a china shop owner. Not any closer at all, in any perspective, to any degree. There's just nothing there ; and in the same way the replacement of the white man's accumulated wealth of tradtionally-maintained knowledge, constructed, patiently, painstakingly, over meaningful and recorded centuries, like everything elsev is in the old world, with the cheap plasticrap of "I don't see why" and "hell no we won't go" etcetera comes at a great civilisational cost.vi

And that is the problem : out of shit this weak, the highest tower that can be constructed is not very high indeed. The greatest turmoils, the deepest longings, the fiercest calls, the anything most-est available in this sprawled, generalized, planetary-sized traditional African villagevii aren't very notable. The world's flatlined drearily, for having been put in the limp hands of limpdick Michael Ceras everywhere, to do with "as best they can figure out what".

The problem of other people, perhaps ; but the problem nevertheless.

———Nor are they all that different, in fairness. More a matter of perspective than substance informs these considerations of problem size. [↩]I don't mean conceivable, there's a a difference, there's plenty of negative space between the potential of stupidity in the sense of what people can conceive of and the potential of stupidity in the sense of what actually is available, as a factual matter ; and that difference's of the sort of scope relating a galaxy to the very universe. [↩]No, this isn't a collective noun, in your manner. They're not "the Greeks" like you are "the Americans" (in your own parlance) or the UStards (otherwise). It's an after the fact summation, naturally and intrinsically exonymous -- and for that very fact valuable. Because it discusses them niggers as a white man would. Not "empathetically", but externally. As through the eyes of Mr. Bultitude, sr. gazing upon his spuriously idiotic son. Not making any allowance whatsoever for the central idiocy of womanhood that's saying "you didn't live my life" as if the having of some particular form of "an experience" is not merely needed but an outright required ingredient to its understanding -- and therefore meaningful, important and establishing.

To illuminate that over-dense (even by Trilema standards) last sentence we'll have to proceed by parts. In a footnote, of all places, we have to proceed by parts -- but such is our fate, not for our faults and sins but for existence's intrinsic evil, and so then... that's what we'll do! Firstly, that "establishing" in there is the old churchly Romanian (it's not really Romanian other than in the sense of being preserved in there for three thousand years untouched, because the Romanians are blessfully much too stupid to meaningfully touch anything -- and until recently they knew this, too!) "ziditoare". Its eminent formulation is "suferinta-i ziditoare", which roughly translates to "suffering is [the only known way of] establishing [god's world]. A deeply feminine view of phenomena and therefore existence, whereby thalassa's powerful, yes -- not because it breaks all things, but because it carries all things -- and therefore endurance, perdurance and withstanding are virtues (to the necessary exclusion of all else, as they're the virtues of feminity ; that all esle including everything, everything whatsoever, from mere movement to making sense all the way to civilisation). Nevertheless, female appropriation of fundamental concepts doesn't mar them ; the notion remains, and even shines (after the guts are washed off of it).

Secondly, the philosophically feminine -- and feminine irrespective of whether any genetically female humans now hold, or ever during millenia uncounted did hold such views, explicitly or otherwise, to any degree of rarity or majority, just as a photon's aroma's unrelated to your tasting light in any way whatsoever -- misperception of existence, whereby it doesn't have to make sense, or ever be recounted to any standard, being instead entirely driven (as in extreme cases it actually is quite plainly driven) by the cunt as a ready substitute for any recounting. The cunt that ever spawns, an endless dropper, a spigot of the great sea of monstrous thanatoi beyond. Ten trillion ovopositors dripping, day by day and moan by moan, all horrors conceivable, leaking all misery from beyond into actual existence, impervious to any consideration. They "just come", what, and you're more than welcome to wash your head with them. The biological woman, the original software "engineer", making no promise of quality, value, or even fitness to any particular pupose -- such as, living. Or living here. Or anything, really, anything whatsoever at all. Completely irresponsible, immune by incomprehensible social convention to any criticism, "I told you to make a boy, what the fuck is this shit" or "I wanted blond" or anything whatsoever ; and in any case absolutely impuissant, entirely unable, as paragon of unskilled discapacity, of affecting any change whatsoever, any improvement over any length of time through whatever approach ever attempted or even just imagined, anything.

The Greeks, you see, the actual, the living people walking some lands had to believe the woman a mere vessel, in which the man puts self-same little babies (that grow as in an oven and so she's not sole to blame) to keep them from simply butchering the lot (by the same device through which Socrates' students tried to keep anyone from objecting to their tyranny -- equitable guiltification). It wasn't mere "mistake" on their part, scientific naivite, cluelessness. It was naught besides socio-political necessity, rude and nude, absolutely unyielding. "The Greeks" believed in Plato's obstetrics model in the same way you believe in "covid" : your society such as it is needs that, absolutely needs it, to barely keep things together. A man flying in a helicopter has more liberty to unhinge the Jesus nut than you have to touch the covid narrative ; and in the same way modern man has to believe all cuntsquirt&spurt greatly good and equally so and wonderfully etcetera. Because, otherwise, they'd hang all the preggos ; and even with that flimsy deflection natality ain't ever gonna recover. That's why there's no romcom scenes in which a mother and a father look upon their baby and carry on a perfectly reasonable conversation along the lines of "Gee, Marge... it's pretty ugly." "Yeah, isn't it ?! I don't know, it's been a lot of work, but honestly I think we should just re-roll." or anything even remotely like it -- because, if this were on the table at all, the species'd be long extinct.

Thirdly, and finally, the debris of all this, in its non-coincidental accumulation : the very substance of good, the very core of what makes anything important that's important, the entirety of sense, and sensibility, and all things of zoon (as contrasted to mere bios), they all come from a certain unfriendly, both disinterested and unpersuaded, view upon feminity and its conceptual descendents. The rejection, both of feminity as a philosophical approach (that is, a pre-constructed set of answers to the problems of existence), and of its natural defenses (such as, the in and of itself false proposition that having had the child establishes some sort of relationship to it ; and therefore by extension that having had the experience creates a secret little sorority impenetrable to outsiders, as if experiences could ever be new, novel, or personal in that sense) and consequences (such as the proposition that new life is by its novelty welcome), is the necessary condition of ever having anything like human life ; which is why the exercise of that male gazing upon the female struggling is, not merely enjoyable in itself, and for its effects, but actually constitutive, of meaning (and everything else deriving from it, such as importance, or a life of the mind, or outward civilisation), which is what "establishing" there means.

I hope we now understand each other : it's not enough to call the fatties fat ; though it's as decent as any other start. [↩]The fact of the matter is, we've long known the world was made by idiots -- the best possible excluded from existence, without exception, quite reliably ; while the worst possible ever included in all systematisations however construed. Wouldn't it be nice if for once the stupidity equation didn't have any real roots ? Or at least if its largest weren't real ? But alas... [↩]Take food, for instance. How do you know bread, or pickles, or cheese are food ? What instant examination upon the-item-itself, yields this determination ? What's a DOC, and why is it ?

Centuries upon untold centuries of regular interaction selected some bacteria from others, created microsystems (and mycosystems), all this evolved. It wasn't made ; it was proposed. It was proposed and death itself chose winners, out of large swathes of hopeful potentials -- and that's how come peaches aren't corcoduse, too! [↩]This isn't to say such accumulation is beyond revision ; it's merely to point out it may only be revised by great men. Never by parliaments, for fuck's sake!

This is however to say that all traditional societies aren't equally good, equally virtuous, or equally societies in the first place. Not merely for being "just as societies", nor "made by walkers who are just as much people because all walkers gotta be just as much people because it says so on our obelisk", nor for "having aged just as long" -- everything that's currently here has "aged", after its own fashion, sui generis, for equally as long ; but this says nothing of the equality of wasps and rabbits -- nor for any other reason. There can not be such a thing as reasons for equality for the simple if directly obvious reason that there can never be such a thing as equality in the first place.

The choice is very simply (and just as strictly!) between man and woman ; it's not a free choice, nor is it a choice between equal options. It's what it is. [↩]Because yes, that's what happens : if you "liberate" yourself from the white man's traditions... you just fall back through history, fifty or eighty centuries, into the nigger-rigged nigger man's traditions. What, you thought there's escape outright available ?

Ahahah. [↩]

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Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Thursday, 29 April, Year 13 d.Tr.

The pranks that are great

"Yeah ? Oh, you must be Hebrewdiah! Ellen's in the shower. Would you like to come in ?"

"I would... but I didn't think to bring a towel."

She laughed while turning, with her entire body somehow, lilting and feminine. None of those big, coarse "ha's." Do you know those ?

Her turning made it plainly obvious she also possessed many of those other qualities prized by the Superficial Male, and was well aware of it, and not exactly unfamiliar with their being put to good use. He followed her into the tiny living room of the small two bedroom apartment, self-obviously intended for the warehousing of the indistinct, indescriptly overabundant, small and adaptable "nuclear family" of 1980s poverty. Nominally it had been designed for the affordable confort of the pair "for the first few years", while that period lasted during which the female was still nuliparous, perhaps tenuously extended into the first few years after her first parturition in the (ever more common) case of means-tested couples ; but meanwhile they had been repurposed, "under persistent economic pressures", for the temporarily-perpetual storage of "room mates", which is to say girls in that dubious social situation where the passage of time has inexorably differentiated them away from normally developed humans. Throughout highschool and four years of college the byproducts of socialist fermentation manage to more or less credibly pass for normal human girls, on the strength of the particularly low expectations human society has always put on that particular demographic ; but as the 22nd birthday comes, and goes, as "more study" slowly yet inescapably degrades into an ever more transparent proxy for "there's no useful work she can do, let alone wants to do, to say nothing of how there's no-one wanting her to do it, or even interested in allowing her to try"... the Desperate Decade, harbinger of a lifetime steeped in post-socialist horror, horrifyingly dawns. "Living life to the fullest", they try to distract themselves, "in an urban environment", as if the sad villages left behind the demise of Cafe Society ever had or ever could be confused into having anything in common with urban spaces. "The many fascinations and attractions of town", they try, soaking up "inexplicable" tears inexplicably springing in bed at night, the mini-apple outside ever more mini, ever less apple.

"Would you like something to drink ?"

"If you're having something."

"Sure. Whiskey ?"

"Uhh... I'm intolerant to cereals."

"Oh. How about... rum ?"

"Bacardi ?"

"Yeah."

"That's... Cognac ?"

"Brandy."

"Anything from fruit at all ?"

"I guess... wine ?"

"Yeah."

"Merlot ?"

"But of course", he let out with the emphatic exasperation of "But of course that's what you'd misguidedly come up with". She took it as the much lighter direct, and within a minute he was stuck nursing a glassful of Cook's equivalent, but "Merlot" instead of "Champagn". "It's big on the US market" has always meant something quite akin to "it's popular with the livestock" in the Denominazione di Origine Controllata lands.

He surveyed the meagre surroundings a mini-minute. She was smiling on the couch, her left leg folded under the right thigh, her feet bare, her jeans standard, tightly fit, her white blouse common, her blonde hair ordinary. She had the great smile, the big blue eyes and the big fat titties of corn-fed midwest, Kansas, Arkansas, who even knows all the Injun denominations of controlling origins. His gaze made her slightly uncomfortable, and as this realisation shuddered its way under his very eye through the larger part of her nervous system, to her entirely subconscious, it made her unhappy with herself. She didn't, subconsciously, approve of herself in that role ; to mask the process she offered up a sacrificial goat : "Oh, I didn't even introduce myself. Hi! My name's Laura."

He nodded, like you'd encourage a shy, perhaps slightly retarded nine years old. "Hi Laura." he offered neutrally. She smiled again. His eyes fixed on hers, and as her smile faded he offered "Do you like pranks, Laura ?"

She shuddered again, plain visible this time, and catching herself she nodded vigurously. "Oh yeah! Pranks are great!"

"Take your clothes off." he said, lightly, a smile starting to form in the corner of his eye.

"Seriously ?!" she inquired, shock and desperation intermingled in her voice. She knew she was going to do it, she didn't know why, or where it'd end. Where it'd lead. That's what thrilled her so about it, though she didn't know to think about that. Not yet, at any rate.

"Definitely."

She extracted herself from her blouse and the strappy harness underneath, dangling her loving, welcoming bosom coyly about, the corner of her eye trained on him as she reached for her jeans' oversnap.

"The panties too." he said, as she was settling herself.

"Everything ?!" she begged, a nine year old's voice squeaking out of her mouth three times that age.

"Everything."

She sat, uncomfortably, painfully unsure of herself, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them.

"Separate your feet a little more, yeah, to either side. That's good." he said, just as Ellen froze in the entranceway.

The little hallway uniting the two tiny bedrooms and the tinier bathroom with the minuscule livingroom, two feet wide by perhaps three feet long, had wall to wall carpeting, which is how they misrepresent a pile-up of plastic fibers entirely indistinguishable from industrially processed garbage in real estate commercial communication. Very luxurious, wall to wall carpeting ; and, according to the lengthy and involved legal verbiage reglementing the activity over however many tens of thousands of pages, at least five square feet of hallway were enough to qualify for the appleation. Six, or almost six in any case, definitely qualifies for that "at least five" qualification, and therefore there she stood, dripping discreetly on socialism's own carpet, which was "wall to wall".

"I... I see you two made each other comfortable..." she hissed.

The man stood up and moved to the couch, jettissoning his Beerlot in the process. He grabbed the blonde on his left by the scruff of her neck, and pulled her closer towards his chest. He reached his free hand and, after separating Laura's knees such that her left remained vertical but her right came to rest almost horizontally against his own thighs he said "Quite the little slut, isn't she." Then, as a marked pinkish hue expanded its domain from the girl's scarlet-red, burning cheeks over her throat and down in the valley, her tiny, salmon-pink nipples standing to an almost painful attention like two little peas, he rested the very same right paw on her pubic mound, for some reason shaved smooth. His eyes fixed the other's, as she stood there, across the six feet of "room", still dripping. "Are you two sexually intimate ?" he inquired matter of factedly, as his knuckles started a slow, comforting circular motion with a definite downward component, slow yet overpowering like a flood of molasses. Blondy shook her head violently, her eyes closed, a slight purr inside her throat somewhere. Ellen started towards them, on unsure footing, before his firm, even gaze stopped her dead in her tracks. She dropped her towel, exposing her toned, trim body wrapped in the brown paper her parents had on hand way back when, two decades and some odd years ago. Her mother, mostly, as it happens.

She came on invisible wires starting somewhere on that iridescent waterfront covering his eyes in dancing shadows and meaningful glimmers. She came just like a cable car, just like any other industrial puppet brought to some motive semblance of life by force and electricity, though she was very much made of flesh. Doubtlessly flesh, yet still mechanically animated somehow. Inches away from her room-mate she stopped, and, resting her own foot high up on the side of the couch she reached down between herself and took to copying his hand movements with her own. Laura's eyes were still closed, but her nostrils flared, violently, betraying animalic eagerness. Something she smelled, though no scent was perceptible in the narrow, constrained space of their threesome intimacy. Even smaller than the efficiency apartment, even more compact than the impossibly contradictory needs of that nuclear family of ages past allowed. As a droplet of dew began to form in the cleft of brown skin, his left hand pushed the blond's head closer, slowly, definitely, until her lips made cuntfall. He moved the limp head up and down slowly, and soon Laura's lips were suckling, her tongue following the general pattern. He rubbed the other's abundant font on his captive's nose, deliberately, enjoying the shivers it sent through her back every time. His own hand carefully teased, expertly avoiding the yearned for explosion, the familiar release. He had her spinning endlessly on the very cusp of the drain, tense, sweating, desperate yet, on some deep level, resigned, accepting, and throughout obedient. Suddenly Ellen turned, bending her knees, forcing her backside into the other's face, firmly, demandingly. Laura's eyes popped open as his grip became steely. He whispered "put your tongue inside her, deep, deep inside her, reach deep inside her" and Ellen shuddered, then collapsed to her knees under the unbearable burden of cataclysmic release. His hand dropped Laura into the black hole, and then chased her, forcing her to continue despite her own habits, rubbing her through her orgasm to shattering, multiplying endlessness. She tried to squirm away, to fight him off at first, but after a few brief moments her spasms became much too disorganised, much too complete, utterly complete to arrive at any definite goal, besides perhaps the stretching of her soul upon her stretching bones like new hide on a drum.

He pushed her neck forward firmly, sharply, losing her balance for her, sending her drained body like so much debris piling into the open arms of the other one still writhing on the floor ; then, as they kissed and curled tightly together in a ball of bliss and love he rested his feet on their collective body.

The end.

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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Wednesday, 02 June, Year 13 d.Tr.

The organized organization and other orrors.

Motto : No, she didn't, she couldn't have had.

To have fun you need to organize it, and who was to organize it for her?

We're going to the beach, of course. The car's shiny black, freshly washed ; the bimbo's powdery slut. I don't know how to better describe it : she's had her hair died pink, shiny, glaring, explosive pink like she's the powerpuff ho. Then there's the pink dress, short and sleeveless and with one of them fake bootfronts where the tits go, all strings and shit. And the shoes and the nails and of course her cunt's pink too. Did you know this, by the way ? There's a fucking reason pink's such a slut's color.

She even smells like powder. Slut powder, you know... hm. I guess that reference's lost on anyone not intimately familiar with working girls of the dancin' kind, but anyways. We can't always write with nine year olds in mind, or for that matter the stupid cunts that spawned them, and then proceeded to go right ahead and rob the thesaurus of obscure Italian words forgotten since the days of that bad man Byron to "literatedly" an' "cultivatedly" diss whatever in their barren environment might be in the slightest danger of passing for strong male presence. And speaking of strong male presence an' the sad cunts of the motherly persuasion : how about all y'all collectively do the world (and yourselves) a favour and quit with the unsympathetic depictions of rape and rapists ? We get it already, there's this one case where the dood's a total slob and the chick's this hottie from your math class in Can't Hardly Waiti and you'd totally do her. In actual reality, however, most rapes occur between dudes whom I'd readily hire and chicks that nobody'd ever fuck -- as proven by the fact nobody ever even considered trying, even with all the beer, which is how she even has such preoccupations in the first place. You realise normal human females don't get raped because they have sex, and the two are mutually exclusive in practice, right ? Like, my car got broken into while it was parked out in the wild, but it doesn't get broken into when it's parked in the garage under the bank ? Same exact fucking thing, the only practical way to get raped is to have no friends, no sex life, no nothing & nada. I get it, the shit you read on your favourite fantasy support platform doesn't say that ; but then there's a reason fictive worlds are fictive worlds, okay ?

Anyways, my slut's counting money to pay the peajeii and complaining about all the small coins getting in the way (five and ten colones, a penny and twopence worth) when Hannah offers her dusty sparkly silver coin purse to try and help and the idea strikes me : take the coins out of there, and fill it with tens! The 820 colones fare coems to 82 coins, she works a while fishing them out and counting them (the while perhaps all the while enlengthened by my talking to her during, but hey) and then I lay the egg on her : when we're at the booth, you get out of the car, do a little Peggy Bundy dance, and deliver the purse over to the moonstruck clerkiii.

A minute later indeed my MERKELEY??? fantasyiv is enacted ad idem : pink slut as depicted, with a sparkle-silver coinpurse fulla shiny silver coins, futzing and fretting on the asphalt, bothering the shit out of the minimum-wage "earning", Jennifer Lopez-worshiping moms all about.

I win the tall toll trophy tale championships and that's all there is to it. And then, to make all this impossible, I get the idea!

Would you like to hear my idea (which is mine) ? Well, I'll tell it to you then : if I were in a market catering to highschool disposable incomev I'd make single-kernel corn poppers as a pencil add-on. You know, where the eraser extensions go. Isn't that fucking genius ?

Yeah, that's it, that's me, the life and times. I'm having fun ; ceea ce va doresc si voua.

———90s something, and a terrible fucking flick, for the record. I had no fucking idea that dumb bitch trying to impersonate a young horse actually has a name, I thought it genuinely must be Neigh McLipClop or something stupid like that. Also I realise now I must've seen a spoof for it long ago without catching on, because I have a clear recollection of some dweeb passing "a letter" to the bitch in question and she retorting with "oh, you don't expect I just go to bed with any dweeb just because he gave me a letter ?" "you don't ?!" "hell no. I just give them blowjobs." followed by the excited if muted nodding of the dweeb involved.

And speaking of handjobs, you know you only involve those in your sexual menu if you've had a very sexually frustrated adolescence, like Dave Chapelle. Right ? If you fucked instead of drooling in your teens you don't think handjobs are a thing, buncha weirdo UStardian fetishists. What the fuck's a handjob even supposed to be, the cheapest blowjob you could find ? [↩]Road toll. Comes from peon. [↩]Yeah, they have actual living, breathing humans inside the tool booths here, it's like living in an enchanted land of the past century. Radio Shack's doing a booming business still, too! No kidding. [↩]"Alright, Markley..."

"Hey, he posed for it. I live it." [↩]I feel quotes are in order, though I'm not sure where to start. [↩]

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Category: Zsilnic

Thursday, 18 February, Year 13 d.Tr.

The onion butt and the bunion twat

What a title, huh!

Anyway, we spent a pleasant evening walking about the quarantruins occupying a space previously occupied by a subhuman attempt at making a town out of locally sourced inadequaria, cute if inept as it meaninglessly found itself at some point. I suppose it's "better" after a fashion to cvasi-ruin a never-quite-was town than to truly ruin a genuine city ; or for the same money it's "worse". For "better" or "worse", the same damn thing in any case.

Towards the end of it I decided to throw a little business the way of some threadbare attempt at turning a bubble of urban blight into a cafe. A few months ago, when I first did this, it was completely, stone cold empty ; but as it happens whenever I decide to bless with harem ass the seating anywhere, business picked up for seeing us there, and while not making enough to grow fat I suppose they must've been making enough to not outright starve. It's something, the sort of something you'll soon enough find no way of escaping anymore.

This time some obnoxious fuckwad very much in the Argentine fashion kept importantly parading his jeans-and-only-jacket arrangement back and forth with that Pantalonesque air of entirely insubstantial yet somehow belicose self-infatuation that so markedly caracterises the contempocuck. It irritated me enough to yell at him "Get the fuck lost, loser. What the fuck are you even doing here ?", which he obviously "did not hear" (because, if you've been following along the contemporary narrative fictions, he has to agree it happened in order for it to have "really" happened). Nevertheless (and very much not for that reason, ok ?) he moved a few steps further out, plausibly-deniably derping up and down the sidewalk outside rather than the courtyard inside, so really, nobody could accuse etc, to my acidic jeers of "that's right, fold those shoulders in and get the fuck back to your submissive posture".

After that Hannah's omnistare kept him from returning into the danger zone, until I went to the bathroom. After that, the dorky schmuck went over to pester the server/bartender/barrister/whatever, an inefectually overanxious kid of well over 40. You know these losers, their life just about ready to begin at the ripe age their pubic hair's turning gray ? Anyway, he told me I've to wear a mask to go to the bathroom! Fancy the cheek, seriously now. I've yet to wear the dumb things at all, as in ever. I've made doctor visits, I buy shit regularly enough, I am very much using my deep pockets to pressure the varmints : shops that cater to me get $$$, shops that don't get... whatever it is they think they're getting, not like they stay in business long enough to count it anyways.

I gave him the hand gesture, you know the one, "get the fuck outta here". He actually had the impudence to come unbidden to my table, to tell me that "they've had visits" from whatever government clerks. I told him that he's to tell them exactly where to shove it, I ain't about to care what they say. He told me "they can't do that". This kid that doesn't have enough sense to figure out on his own how to stock San Pellegrino, given that the only account worth the mention in his nickle-and-dime shop's inquiring now and again, this kid somehow nevertheless summons the unmitigated audacity to tell me what's what!

The eagerness and ease with which this spurious generation of redditards replicates contemporary US fascism for the ruin of their non-US homes is nothing short of staggering. Imagine that : this peanuts government has exactly nothing it can do to force me to wear a muzzle, under any circumstances. So they go around talking to businesses they also have exactly nothing they can do to. Because, self-obviously, if the stance is "I ain't paid, and I ain't interested, in enforcing whatever random bullshit you came up with, go do it yourself, it's your fucking job anyways", it'd... end there. But no, this moron has to pick it up, as if the government's paying his salary, and do this half-ass cvasi-enforcing whinefest. He's gonna tell me what he thinks he read on facebook the government (of facebook) wants him to do. 'Cause that's why he's on this world. Not to bring his sister over to suck my cock, who knows, maybe I take her in, no, of course not that. He's there to tell me what's new on facebook!

I told him I'm not about to discuss this with him, and if he keeps pestering me I'm simply not going to come back. To which self-obvious if completely unexpected course of events (wow, how could I not wanna play his version of reddit larping ?!?!) he retorted that "He's sorry to hear that" or somesuch and made himself scarce. I, on the other hand, took to throwing the cashew nuts Hannah set out on a plate before me at the Argentine twat's 1990 Italian fashion eyeglasses hairsprayed upon his 1990 Italian fashion hairchunk. He didn't notice, you realise. I finished the plate, and then once the plate was finished I had the woman walk around the table to the motherload, and reload. The peanut landing pad kept "not noticing", until eventually the kid came back, this time to ask me to please stop throwing nuts. I guess it was noticeable enough from the opposite direction.

I smiled sweetly at him and asked for the check, strictly to bring the relationship back in its normal pattern : he's a fucking servant, and very much not some kinda master of ceremonies at the wedding of a future cuck with a future whale. He left to fetch, but three steps in found whatever he misrepresents as his dignity, I guess. He stumbled back, to tell me the order's on the house. Fancy that! What, you think they have the thing open to make a profit offa overpriced cups of coffee ? To hell with all that, the cafe's open to let people know what the government thinks on things and matters! That's its true raison d'etre, everything else is frosting & peanuts. They're not in business, they're just tryna please Mommy is all.

So we stood (me fetching the remainder cashews off the plate) and walked over to the dweeb. I said into his happy smile "Here, have some cashews", threw the load in his face, and walked off, a "Schmuck!" over my shoulder summing up his life better, or in any case closer to actual reality, than any epitaph ever will manage in actual practice.

On the way back to Castle Popescustein we saw the lulziest of scenes : a kid walking a dog. The kid had a muzzle on his kid mug. The dog didn't have a muzzle on its dog snout. The bimbo inquired if the dogs are gonna start walking the redditards anytime soon. I have my doubts, though the reversal's out and out hysterical, what can I tell you.

Anyways, this is how I entertain myself these days. Twenty-some years ago the place'd be firebombed right about now, leaving the schmucks involved to spend the next few weeks walking up and down the street sandwiched within their apologies plaintively spelled out in 20cm font (for fear of being shot) ; but then again twenty-some years ago I cared a lot deeper about the place I found myself in, and cashew nuts are way the fuck cheaper anyways. In fact, cashew nuts are almost cheap enough to match the utter worthlessness of the contemporary schmuck (though the way things are going I might be stuck moving down to actual peanuts soon enough).

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Category: Zsilnic

Wednesday, 10 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Needed

In all this Cuban business one man stands out on the horizon of memory like Mars at perihelion.

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was found desirable to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountaineous vastnesses of Cuba -- no one knew quite exactly where, as is generally the business of insurgents. In any case no regular mail or telegraph message could reach him. Yet the President would secure his co-operation, and quickly. What to do!

Someone said, "There is a fellow by the name of Rowan. He'll find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

Rowani was therefore sent for, and once fetched was given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia -- are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a manii whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing -- "Carry a message to Garcia."iii

That general Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias still surviving ; no man who has at least once endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed has yet to be well-nigh appalled by the imbecility of the average man -- the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.

Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference and half-hearted work seem the rule ; no man succeeds at anything worth mentioning unless by hook, or crook, or threat he forces or somehow bribes others to assist him usefully. Mayhap God performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Cunt for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test : presuming you are sitting now in your office, six clerks within your call (and if you aren't, get the fuck off my page and get to work, shithead), summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio."iv

Will the clerk return "Yes, sir!" and go to the task ?

On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and profer one, or more, (or all) of the following inanities that for no conceivable reason in his addled mind nevertheless pass for questions :

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don't you mean Bismarck?

What's the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shall I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?

What do you want to know for?

...and so following!

I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered myriad "questions", and explained how to find what's to be found, and where, and why you want it, and overall spent with it at least twice the length it'd have taken you to do the damned thing yoursef, then and only then will your clerk -- whom you feed and clothe with a wife and all her children, by him or anyone else -- will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia, then come back and tell you there is no such man, but in such guarded terms so guardedly expressed that should Garcia walk into the office right then, it still wouldn't have been his fault. Of course, I may lose my bet with you ; but, according to the Law of Average, that momentary loss will soon be made good over all.

Now, if you are wise in the manner river rocks are smooth, you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Correggio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will smile very sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself.

This incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift -- these are the things that put socialist dreams so far off into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for that vague naught that's "all" ? If anything besides empty talk is sought, a first mate with knotted club seems necessary ; the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night is the glue that holds the worker to his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate -- nor do they think this any great impediment. After all, they applied chiefly to get the wage paid for the position, and that part they'd do just as fine as you'd like. But can such a one carry my letter to Garcia ?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy idly expressed for the "downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment" (a purely fantasmagorical construct) ; with it all go many hard words for the men in power -- as is to be expected, seeing how such is perdurantly, predictably the principal object of the idle excursions in verbosity of the comfortably idle. Their interest in the (deservingly, always deservingly) poor reliably extends only insofar as that pretext might be used to pester Daddy (or, more properly speaking, to project upon men in power the unfriendly estimation their own conscience makes of themselves). Absent that pay-dirt, who even cares about them downtrodden searchers (besides, of course, the man who tried to apply them toward some useful purpose, and from whom they ran off, and with some portion of the credit earlier extended still not repaid).

Nothing is to be said for or about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving with "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is continually sending away "help" of the very nature of his critics, spurious items that have, of and by themselves, shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business of human life. Others are being taken on, of which most will be as useless as the weeds making their way through the stones in the yard.

No matter how good times are, this sorting continues. If times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer ; but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best -- those who could carry his message to Garcia, as shown by the happenstance that indeed they do.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else. He is worthless to anyone else because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending, nebulously conspiring in great darken circular schemes, to oppress him ; and he is incapable of managing his own business because his cleverness, however amply supplied, still is not equal to the part his disease casts upon it : to nebulously conspire, in great darken circular schemes, to oppress, in the strangest of fashions, to... He can not give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, poor Garcia might end up assassinated, unexpectedly, for no clear reason ; or perhaps a new alphabet invented, to better notate future messages to Garcia ; or... truly, my own cleverness, however short supplied, still will not get the part of describing idiocy in detail. It's not a good part for it.

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular, ambling Mire of the Damned, within which all's soon lost. He is impervious to reason, elaborately impervious ; the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot. Sadly his eagerness to work thus engendered dwindles rapidly after the application that engendered it, and there's truly fewer able toes than deserving arses. Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple ; but in our pitying let us drop double the tears for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whatever it may be, the truly great and only deserving men whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their presence, would presently find itself both hungry and cold.

Have I put the matter too strongly ? Possibly ; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who isn't ever to be found in any slum. How is it, that all creeds and colors can always be readily turned up in the slums, except for the man who succeeds ? The man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it : nothing but bare board and clothes. All kind and manner of worthies by whichever system of ex-post-facto worthification can indeed be turned out of the gutter, scared up from abject poverty : alleged intelligents, supposed paragons of virtue, illustrations of misfortune, male, female, white, black or purple, and not one among them, not one among ten thousand or ten million successful.

Yet have this unique being come before the court. Joe the Drunk, Amelia Bedelia, Sally Knownothing von Talkalot, poor old widow Bynne E. Safiebine, the noted firebrand Jeremiah Cloudwalker, Michael McNojob and his eight brothers that've had fifty-nine jobs between them this past fortnight, all these and more are there, and ready to swear, and give testimony, and extend their views, and their applause, and vote for the sheriff, and the judge, as if by virtue of misuse of language and misapprehension of human culture they, too, stand just as tall, vow just as strong, matter just as much as the successful man. They've never had a mouthful but in some form or other by another's charity ; he's never in his whole life been able to eat all he himself made, not if he tried. They've promised ten times to his promise, each of them ; they never kept a promise though always he kept his, so in the sea of thousands of promises they're all together drowning... well, "most" are hollow -- though none of his and most all of theirs, nevertheless, "averaging" averages work this way : each average manwoman has one boobsticle on either side.

The heart must go out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is in. The heart must go out to the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it. The man who, inexplicably, never seems to get "laid off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. There is no room, there oughtn't be any room for feeling for the failures. Civilization is one long, anxious search for great men, not for the gutter's scum ; and it is both scandalous and a transparent fraud when shameless tricksters and con-men, under a flimsy pretense of "high-mindedness" attempt to hijack that natural feeling towards such inappropriate targets as might best line their own pockets. Human life's the quest for men for whom the heart must go out. Anything such a man asks must be granted. His kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village -- in every office, shop, store and factory ; and, ultimately, in every home, and in every heart.

The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly, the man who can carry a message to Garcia ; as for the needy, let them rot in the gutter. The world is of, and for, and by the needed.

———The historical character the name references, a certain 1st Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, has nothing in common whatsoever to the fictitious character constructed for the purpose of... well, why do you dream of my women, when you look at yours ? So then.

The historical character's a contemptible cur who did indeed ask all those questions. He was smuggled into Cuba by Cubans he was given to by his superiors, just like a sack of potatoes, and carried on horseback across the insular "vastness", the horses and everything else similarily provided to the tourist. Contrary to his orders, which were to stay there, observe, and dispatch, he told Calixto Garcia he's there to take his order (as in, "would you like fries with that ?") and convey it to the US military ; he was shipped back the same day, ladden with a bill of trade, and shared the purpose of his mission (along the contents of his imagination) to the press en route (his return trip consisted of a few miles in a Cuban boat the Cubans sourced and worked for him, and the rest to Florida on a passing steamer). This made him extremely popular with the imbecile public, which made it impractical for his superior (the "Someone" in "Someone said", major Arthur L. Wagner of America's first intelligence unit) to hang him, as he intended and was adequate. So America gained another Bufallo Bill, and sense lost another nail. [↩]From experience, there is always and without exception a woman. I can't remember when I've last seen a man like that ; but women exactly fitting the bill I've spoken two pluriously on this very day. [↩]A good fucking whipping is what they need, preferably to death. If some escape -- if some escape -- then thereby you'll have some men. [↩]de Corregio, Parma school, vigorously sensuous. A fine choice of illustration. [↩]

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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Tuesday, 25 May, Year 13 d.Tr.

The merchant from Aiud

A merchant from Aiud went to the large market, like every Michaelmas. There he met with a merchant from Gloj who caught his eye. Before the market closed they were properly introduced to one another, as merchants are, by two other merchants who knew each other as well as each of them, independently. Then they exchanged vows, as merchants do, by carefully taking the print of each other's seal ring for their own records, in front of the merchant priest in the merchant church of Trader Michael Of The Heavens. Then they were forever united together by the invisible wiring of the same trade network that covers the entire world and emanates from Tradess, the Great Spider, herself.

As part of their merchantly intercourse the merchant of Aiud pledged the shipping of a cartful of picioci to Gloj, upon receipt of which the merchant of Gloj pledged to return a cartful of lumbered wood. Thus the great Gloj picioci famine of 7914 was narrowly avoided, which is why it is not recorded anywhere -- but had it been recorded, had the merchant of Aiud not sent the cart he promised, then the recording'd have blotted out all other such recordings for that'd have been the greatest picioci famine yet, if only it were to be. Which it wasn't.

As time went by and the Gloj cart of lumbered wood was not ariving, the Aiud merchant took worry. It is impossible to tell from a distance the difference between a cart that's not arrived yet and a cart that merely doesn't exist ; yet he thought perhaps the Gloj merchant's faith is false, which greatly saddened him. To set his heart at ease, his friends the other merchants of Aiud proposed he visit the gypsy crone of Aiud, an old woman who provided solace to all the merchants and all other notabilities in town through her own, secret ways.

The merchant sought out the gypsy crone, in her strange hut standing on chicken wire strung between three poles somewhere past the unfashionable bend of the wrong side of the small stream struggling within Aiud's neighbourhoods and surroundings. As the merchant went in through the curtains hanging over the entrance, a young warrior went out. He was the greatest warrior ever to be born, not merely up until that point but simply forever. He could have easily defeated the entire list of history's most able, limber and skilfull one hundred warriors, were they arrayed in a small army of fabled heroes before him. He could have raped a dragon raw, just as easy as the average workman can ravish any sixteen year old princess selected for her being worth a ravishing or two : he'd have grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, and thrown it to the ground ; then, as the poor dragon'd try to squirm away, on knees and elbows (such as dragons have) the warrior'd have put his weight to bear (in the sense of, dragon), and parted -- what parted, ripped -- the prone dragon's secret, intimate folds with the driven might of his warriorly shaft. Then he'd have been remembered for all time, his great deeds an indelible, inextricable part of recorded history, written down as well as sung aloud for all eternity : the first and only warrior to not merely defeat, but actually own a dragon.

As it happens, there were no dragons then alive, whether in a subconsciously amorous disposition they were from themselves denying or otherwise, nor any worthy foes. The next-best warrior then present in the whereabouts of Aiud was a fellow not qualified within the first zillion heroes of history, which is indeed a very large number. Defeating him wouldn't have gained much glory for the best warrior ever, a circumstance the best hero ever was well aware of through the happenstance that he defeated the inconsequential louse biweekly to little effect. Nobody else was interested in a challenge, and so the best warrior ever slowly grew old and surly. What fault of his that the kingdom's been at peace even before he was born, and all the dragons previously killed by lesser warriors who, innured to the notion that they should perhaps try fucking them, didn't even have the foresight to understand that if the 2nd best defeats the 3rd best, that leaves the best only the 4th best available to defeat, and so now the 2nd best is in fact "he who's defeated the 3rd best" whereas the true best is merely "he who's defeated the 4th best" and so less of a better than he should be! Then the 2nd best dies of natural causes centuries prior and the true best's left holding the bag!

But the merchant went in not knowing anything about any of this, as he was a merchant, his interests strictly circumscribed by Michaelmesses rather than disembowelment, or any other kind, of messes ; and besides the kingdom's peacefulness was predicated upon its prosperity, the laziness of all the neighbours brought about and polished to a shine by the constant outflow of shiny dubloons, thalers and other anal beads of solid gold and sparkly moonsilver -- so as the merchant rendered the warrior irrelevant metasyntactycally, just so in person, equally. And besides, the merchant was concerned about the other merchant, not about other things.

The crone smiled a crooked smile, as if she'd penned all of this, although she didn't, being illiterate. She found letters distracted her from her true calling, which was the studency of human moves ; and besides, all cakes are lies anyways. Instead, she grabbed some beans from an open sack behind her, sorted forty-one on the short, three legged wooden table before her, and just as the merchant pondered how very much better that table'd be had the wood been lumbered she began her scrying :

"Forty-one beads, well you know and well you guess, were it well and by the mind drop by nine, karavai on the threshold and joy in both hands, but otherwise, drop by ones and twos and whither away." she mumbled, rubbing the small pile in her right hand on the right side as the Sun turns about, threatening and beseeching the little dry imps as she went. Then she split them in three piles, counted them in lines and arrows, separated them by fours and counted some more. Eventually she had enough mumbling and she told the merchant that his way is locked and the matter hue'd, there's no bead of commings so he'd better take his mind off the whole thing and buy himself a pretty girl instead. Would he want one ?

The merchant didn't want one, because he already had more than he knew what to do with. They spun threads and nonsense scattered about the upper floor of his house, coming up with insane twists and tangles merely for the exquisite pleasure of having something to unknot laboriously. Because of them he had to make terem out of his house, because if he just let them go out and intermingle with normal people they'd take all of five seconds before finding something somebody said to them, or even within their earshot, that they couldn't bear, as if that's how bearing works ; and so, in preference of always finding themselves at war with the entire world, the merchants of Aiud simply locked the women upstairs where there's nobody they can be bothered by except for each other. It seemed to work well enough, they kept each other busy enough if not happy necessarily, and everyone else could go about their business in peace.

The merchant ordered his horse readied, took two of the youngsters loafing about with him, and made out in all haste for Gloj. His wife saw him spin through the courtyard and then gallop away, and a tear dropped from her eye. He never even came to say goodbye. She asked the logothethe if the master had left any message, but he hadn't. He hadn't even left any message. She broke out in crying, for she understood exactly where the problem lies ; and she tried, every day tried, every morning woke up praying she'll manage just one day, and every night crying herself to sleep over having, yet again, failed. Yet she understood precisely where the problem lay ; but somehow that understanding never seemed to practically help anything. She promised, to herself, or rather to the wind, to no-one, that she'll do better this time, like so many times before she promised. Then, like so many times before, she thought of all the many times she's promised, and cried. Yet she'd do better, she wanted to, she yearned to. What's in a promise ?

She wrung her hands and sent for the merchant's foreman, from which she learned that the foreman's busy and doesn't have the time to be bothered with her petty nonsense. She then sent for her husband's factor, from whom she learned that the merchant had left for Gloj, to see after some wood that's long in the arriving. Indeed the men dealing with money are more amenable to playing cat's cradle than they dealing with objects, because money's no kind of object. Then the first concubine's mother told her that she heard tell that the merchant had visited the procuress. The old woman said no more, thereby saying that the merchant must be smitten with young love for some young filly, which of course bothered the merchant's wife, so she started crying, which bothered her, so she promised she'd stop, which bothered her because she wasn't stopping which meant she wasn't keeping her promises and so all she could think of was sending for the gypsy crone.

The merchant meanwhile took the wrong fork in the road, arriving by nightfall to an unknown place where people spoke an unknown tongue. He was taken before the sultan-al-alekhum of that place, who was very entertained by the merchant's clothing, as well as the clothes on the backs of his minuscule retinue. They were fed something that tasted objectionable and looked rather like dried octopus suction cups, then were taken to the Chamber of Dawns, an octogonal room with translucent doors on each side. They went out through one and presently were somewhere else. It wasn't even night anymore, nor were they ever heard from again.

The wife was too skillful to let another old woman know her business, so obviously the old crone knew exactly what's going on. She kept up the pretense, and laid out her beads again, to scry and blather. She told the crying wife she needn't worry, for the merchant's gone on business, nor will he find there a woman he likes. Strangely this did not set the wife at ease ; but it did set a shiny coin in the hag's palm.

More things then happened, involving the duke of Aiud and the countess of Gloj, none of which are discussed here.

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The naturalistic "fallacy" »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Saturday, 29 May, Year 13 d.Tr.

The many things I couldn't give less of a shit about

I looked over "the news", for the first time in... must be half a year, at the least.

The last clear memory I have of such an attempt comes from back in Spring, back when I left Europe behind and every dork out there was falling all over themselves in their #BostonWannabe standard pantsuits t-shirts.

I can't conceive who's seriously reading that crap. A few days ago, while entertaining myself at the local Bistrot de Paris over some fluid du Cotes du Rhonei and navarin d'aigneau (or maybe it was beef bourguignon ? I forgetii) my eye was caught (after spending the due time following the proper contours of all the young slutsiii depicted on the walls) by a very strange book indeed. Large and gilt, with a title impossible for a book. I lifted it to see its insides, whereupon i discovered it wasn't a book at all. It was just an empty box shaped like a book, a decor element, a McGuffin. That's the fucking "news" in its current Pravda 2.0 reinstantiation, nobody reads it because nobody can read it because there's nothing there to read. It's not for reading, it's for keeping around the "house"iv. Not even yakking about it importantly, just exchanging "meaningful" looks and mournful sighs "about it". As fucking if.

Traim decenii de impliniri marete went the old refrain. In these decades of grandiose accomplishments what used to be news, readily accessible (to every comfortable white male with a woman or two under coverturev, some friends and some business associates, some books and some horses etcetera), a quarter or whatever, became "national security briefs"vi. What used to be gossip, namely a bunch of self-important know-nothings yakking their inconsiderable bullshit as if god's own army of angels was right there, right over the horizon, listening in intently... that's now the news. It's all it is, 100% of what you take for "the news" is read by the people who made it, want to start making it, think they could make it and no-one else besides. Exactly like food only the cooks are eating (also known as shit), these "news". And, self-obviously, gossip's gone the way of the guy playing guitar at a partyvii, to rest inside the pages of books discussing coverture and other "mid 19th century by which we mean 1972" topics. Who has the time for maintaining a social circle, having friends, throwing parties, are you kidding me ?! There's a boatload of Netflix to watch, while trying one's darndest to not notice that these deranged sitcoms they now pretend are movies took off sanity a good while ago, and are proceeding on their own terms into the vacuous voids, bizarre convention built upon bizarre convention and all the while the chasm between anything like people and their odd misrepresentations ever growing unchecked.

Occasionally "the competition", namely the sad sorta resourceless male who plays the fiance role in setups like "oh yeah, my slave was engaged when I took her" attempts a littleJ on me. Perhaps there's something we can talk about ? I mean, we're both people, right ? There must be some basis somewhere.

The problem is that between the news, the netflix, the furnishings of the tank there's exactly nothing that interests me. Da fuck do I care what some cuck said about some other cuck's sayings in the matter of cucky mcuckerson's cuckolding party ? I could give less of a shit, I'm sure, I've just not yet figured out how.

Basically the things I don't give a shit about are everything, as you understand it. (The sentiment's not mutual, of course, which is why you read meviii and I don't read you.) The only question remaining is how the fuck aren't you in jail ?!

The answer, of course...

———The wine guy came over upon my ordering to excuse himself : they only have it at room temperature. To my retort that good for them, that's precisely how they're supposed to have it, and while at it do France a favour and take the rest of the red wine out of the freezers he responded (in French) with his blessings, and the footnote that inasmuch as they want to stay in business, they've gotta be in the business of catering to the whims and "tastes" of the world's stupid cunts, rather than any kind of sense. Which is both very good sense on their part and perfectly laudable as such, but still perfectly lamentable in totum.

Eat Shit And Die, World Moms United. [↩]In fairness what I do is, I eat off everyone's plates like I own them (which I do), so meals become somewhat confused in my mind. [↩]Do you know how I know they're sluts ?

Because their activities are adequate to womanhood, that's how I know!

They fucking dance, in the sense of artfully exposing their cunt. They don't listlessly go around in "comfy" shoes and drab sweaters reaching past their wrists.

They work each other, instead of bumping into the designated servicing unit whenever they feel themselves in need of servicing. At which juncture I should probably explain that I find little more disgusting than the sight of the subhuman female / girl rubbing into her cuck for servicing.

You know how you've been trained (to some slight degree by yourself even) to have a certain reaction when a loser-looking dude smiles a certain way at a bare six year old's bottom ? That, very much that. What you're trying to emulate & repurpose is in fact the very natural reaction of nauseating disgust coming as very necessary response to your lamentable reproductive practices.

It's not even there for reproduction! It's for sex! They ain't the god damned same thing, not even by a longshot. Not the same ballgame. You've got the bits attached to make art with them, not to make more philistines just like your stupid mother did. What could possibly be not self-obvious about that ?

There's already enough philistines drowning us in their repugnant drab all around. There's enough of their regrettable ilk to not only last out all eternity, but actually to make reproduction appear a regrettable misfortune. So badly and utterly have you misused the cunt to date, for dribbling tadpoles out of it instead of dancing with it, that the sum total over the whole population now comes out negative!

More work less princess, get it through your thick skin already. [↩]Not that any of the battery chickens have houses anymore, but what am I to do, say "keeping around the housing" ? [↩]Look this up sometime, then explain to me how come you never heard of it ? Your mom lived under it, except I suppose if you're an uppity little tadpole, in which case your granma definitely lived under it. How come you don't know about the state of the world so recently as within living memory ? Is all that "just the facts" related to any facts anywhere whatsoever at all ?! [↩]Something you don't have access to, because the bar's now slightly higher than anything you can touch, of course. Not that anyone'd tell you that, why the fuck would they. After all, school used to be for equipping you with the arms of supremacy ; now though, it's just for equipping you with the fetters of bondage. Sorrynotsorry or w/e they say. [↩]Do you remember this, by the way ? At some point prior to the grandiose and the accomplishments, there were people, you could throw a party, there's chicks who spent the whole sixth decade "of the previous century" in the buff, nude from party to party. Or what, you thought what TV shows you of the 60s is what the 60s were ? Really ? [↩]No point denying it, you don't matter in any personal sense, Trilema's by far the most read anything on the web and that objective truth's all that matters. [↩]

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Category: Zsilnic

Thursday, 25 February, Year 13 d.Tr.

The Last Picture Show

Bogdanovich's worldview is this very simple, narrow thing. To his (mis)fortune he's run into objects in his immediate environment amenable to abuse towards his schematic misunderstanding of phenomenology, and in sufficient abundance to... uhm... nigger-rigi a kinda-sorta something out of them even. Thus Cybil Shepherd's his perennial Princess Preciouscunt, Eileen Brennan's time and again the frumpy-but-"real" Columbine, Duilio del Prete the castrated "exotic" cicisbeo... the whole thing's like an old timey farmstead : mortgaged to the hilt, creaking in the Dustbowl winds, just about ready to fall over ; and yet within it, there's the milky farmer's daughter, and daddy's chair at the table, and where the hunting rifle goes, a dedicated space between the flour sack and the caulk bushel. All the whole pile's waiting for is you, Hero McHeroson, to shotgun wed the dumb bitch and spend some of your lifetime spinning around like a top on their pre-arranged if very flat whirligig. The story's to a large degree pre-decided by the failings, shortcomings and inadequacies of the pre-selected most-of-a-cast (all of which are misrepresented as qualities, detail, flavour etcetera of course, and this merely because in turn they're driven by the failings, shortcomings and inadequacies of a half-man incorrectly assigned a role in the world that's not for him). So he takes his stable and goes about town looking for a leading man to sock into it, and make yet another self-same film about jackshit in peculiar. If their collective name were Half-Man-Riding-Half-A-Lame-Rabbit I'd be much surprised, however, because English ain't ever been quite that usefully expressive, to say nothing of its intrinsic tendency to incorrectness.

The Last Picture Show -- 1971, with (a very young) Jeff Bridges and (a barely legal) Cybill Shepherd -- is the one case where the foregoing works out best, in the sense of coincidentally veering closest to somethingness.

Time's been very unkindii to the woman. She's never again managed to land this close to herself ; instead her self-image slowly but monotonically veering into an impossibly stiff, utterly uninteresting imaginary of "propriety" or "acceptability" or whatever idiotic bullshit "the other dumb bitches won't call me the bad" poisoning her loneliness. She does manage to poke fun at that alienation convincingly enough on occasion (like say in At Long Last Love), but there's quite the difference between dancing and paresis victims exchanging quadriplegy jokes.

Time's not been nearly as unkind to the man : his glimmers in The Last Picture Show polish out well and by degrees, yielding a top caliber actor steadily working himself closer to his own self.

I'd say this film's an interesting basis to make the fundamental point : female society is not actually workable, and therefore neither useful nor important. Watch if you will a talented teenage actress and a talented teenage actor as rendered very plainly by a very simple director in 1971 ; then watch what "doing her best" on the basis of female culture yielded for her over half a century versus what "doing his best" not on the basis of female culture yielded for him over the same interval. If this doesn't make the point I'd say the problem's not outside, to do with arguments and examples, but squarely inside ; and if it does make the point I suppose I don't need to explain what changed from the early 70s to the late 90s such that Edward Norton and Angelina Jolie both went the way of the failure.

———A incropi ? A injgheba ? It's really not my fault your only language's not practically usable without nigger references. [↩]Time's got exactly nothing with it, of course. [↩]

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Category: Trilematograf

Monday, 15 March, Year 13 d.Tr.

The great tension

I. Humans, like any other living things, possess an instinct for self-preservation. Humans, unlike all other living things, possess the capacity to represent to themselves, in their own mind, their own unavoidable, impending, inexorable destruction. These necessarily produce a conflict, that is strictly unresolvable. This is the great tension.

II. The great tension takes place in the human mind, and in the human mind alone. Both mice and men have their careful preparations uprooted by the phenomena now and again (or not, for the exact same money) ; but for men alone, and not at all for mice, this means something. It does not denote but it does connote. It symbolizes, it recalls to mind. Why must there always be some problem ?

III. The only approaches available towards the great tension are absolutely limited : escapism, and culture. Neither of them resolves it, nor can there possibly be a third.i

IV. Escapism is the attempt to reduce the human mind to animal functionii. A car forever parked may share with other cars the property of sitting on four wheels ; but it does not share with them the property of being able to be crashed into anything. If it doesn't move, it doesn't crash. If the mind is permanently distracted from itself, its associated flesh could perhaps live undisturbed the life of any other mammal.

V. Culture is the attempt to ease the tension by controlling the moment of death.iii For obvious practical reasons the controlling of the moment of the death of another is both more popular and more appealing to popular interest ; but the two interplay even if one's much louder.

VI. Social hierarchyiv is the proxy of culture ; equality is the social proxy of escapism. Concrete societies organize themselves at the interplay of culture and escapism. The fundamental, inescapably fundamental importance of white people to the history of human life is that they are the first, and so far the only to have constructed a non-escapist svago for the fundamental tension.

VII. Morals, in the sense of a general, theoretical discussion of right and wrong, good or evil, ultimately an attempt of producing a hierarchy of oughts, as well as ethics, in the sense of producing answers to specific, statedv questions, that are coherent with a given system of morals, are strictly concerned with condemning escapism, and propounding culture.

VIII. Scientific research, in and of itself, is purely escapist, which is why it so readily alliesvi with equalitarian social views and so readily comes into conflict with any formulation of either morals or ethics. Yet it is the inescapable condition of scientific research that it must always proceed on a paradigmvii, which is how, and why, it manages to delude itself into escapism in the first place.

IX. There are no proxy solutions any more than there are direct solutions. The lesser minds, for whom the opportunity cost of escapism is low enough, will embrace some formulation of an escapist solutionviii ; the greater minds will either control the escapists' moment of death or drown in a colorful sea of incomprehensible meaninglessness (the two meanderingly alternating in various proportions over the endless centuries).

That's all.

———Though there can be such escapism as an escapist pretense to culture, as well as such cultural approach as a cultural pretense to escape, yet neither can possibly constitute "a third way". There isn't such a thing as an alternate parity anymore than there can be such a thing as "an alternate gender". Numbers are either odd or even, genders are either passive or active, that's the end of the matter. [↩]Usually carried out through function and not substance, though "medical science" has in the past half century made significant progress towards actually mushing up the human brain enough to fit a squirrel's. Currently chemical approaches are favoured as the profit margins on the mechanical are lower and market penetration drastically limited by the need for surgeons, while electricity didn't work out. [↩]There is nothing else in human culture, at no point, ever. All that's culture flows from this same top node, inescapably. There isn't another font of human culture besides the killing. [↩]Last century's happenstances such as for instance S. Freud's purely cultural misidentification of "sexual impulse" as the principal driver of human activity as well as internal life are readily explained by the social hierarchy situation in his immediate social context : after a thousand years' worth of Holy Roman Empire, 1800s Vienna was so utterly stuffy, internal life found itself so thoroughly crushed under culture, it seemed to the youthful, aspiring escapists some version of masturbation's maximally the most they could get away with, much like generations of starving jobbagy might produce kids who imagine stealing some not yet ripe fruit from the boyar's trees is the outer limit of "sticking it to the man". It certainly explains why black kids in the ghetto can't really think of what to steal above and beyond "the pretty girl manning the counter in Whitey's supermarket", a superlative version of a sack full of soap bars. [↩]I can't now find where in the logs I explained the US Supreme Court will not consider putative questions, though I'd like to link it here. [↩]The converse should not be regarded. That socialism's imbeciles will readily misidentify anything as their ally is well documented already. [↩]Scientists don't usually talk well with children, because children tend to ask "why ?" indiscriminately, and the scientists don't want to question their paradigm as (subconscious, but rock-solid) foundation for their continued escapism. [↩]"Technological progress" in particular has absolutely nothing to do with it ; the same hordes drooling while clucking at the dumbphone now were just as much drooling, but while looking out a physical window for as long as they had those ; and otherwise looking into the fire, for as long as they had that, and so on. Exchanging camps around open pit fires for walls with holes in them is technological progress, of course, yet it has entirely no bearing in the discussion. [↩]

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Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Friday, 28 May, Year 13 d.Tr.