Pimp: The Story of My Life

Now a fugitive, Slim moved all across the Midwest with his workers in order to evade the law. One woman who worked for Slim, Helen, was particularly skilled at pick-pocketing wallets. She was eventually caught and arrested, but not before a full year of plying her larcenous trade unnoticed. Slim moved to Detroit after hearing there was a lot of business there, and managed to rebuild what he had lost. (It was with these women that the incident described in the Prologue, in which Slim got angry at one of the women for asking him to come stay with her, occurred.) During this time, Slim regularly took heroin with cocaine, and he eventually bought two houses in Ohio. He was 30 years old when one of the women, Serena, attempted to stab him with an ice pick. Slim managed to escape the situation the first time, but he later found Serena in the house with the ice pick again. She claimed that she was going to kill Slim and all the women. Slim shot her, and her breast tissue prevented the bullet from reaching her heart. Serena survived and fled.

Slim spent a week hiding out at his mother’s house. He reconnected with Sweet, who was getting old and had just recently evaded a murder charge. Slim managed to have one last wave of success as a pimp in two different cities, but he began to suspect that one of his women was planning to leave. In order to keep her quiet about his activities, Slim set her up for murder and made it seem that he didn’t know the man would die. Slim managed to hire a man to hide the murder, and his ruse kept the woman from exposing him.

Slim’s mother had met a man and moved to Los Angeles, and she kept asking Slim to come stay with her. Slim thought about the prospect but had heard that business in LA was terrible. One night, while buying some stolen clothing from a man, Slim found Phyllis in the man’s bedroom, passed out. While the man was out getting the clothes, Slim put some cologne in a syringe and inserted the needle into Phyllis with the intention of killing her. However, the man returned, so Slim removed the vial without injecting the cologne. Slim then went to LA for a while, then went to Seattle to find Glass Top. They spent a few days together, and Glass Top then died shortly afterward. Later, Sweet died by suicide, and Slim enlisted the help of a de-licensed doctor to ease him through the withdrawal symptoms of quitting heroin.

In 1958, Slim was unknowingly approaching the end of his life as a pimp. He met a man named Bet who became a good friend. At this point in time, Slim maintained two sex workers, each in different cities. When Slim went to visit one of them, he was found and arrested under the charge of having escaped prison. He then went to jail for the last time and had a transformative experience.

While in jail, Slim was attacked, harassed, and fed spoiled food. Listening to the guards torture the inmates at night, he often wondered when it would be his turn. Slim was visited by his mother, who was severely ill and barely able to make the trip. They cried together as she held his hand and told him her fears that the last time she would see her son would be in jail. Later, when Slim found out that Party Time had been murdered with laced heroin, this was the last piece of information that he needed to convince him that pimping and using drugs were no longer the life for him. He also thought about his mother and realized how deeply he had worried and disappointed her. Slim thought about what he could have done with his life if he had stayed in school, and he also wondered what it would be like to try to live a stable life now. Slim finished his time in prison and was released a new man, prepared to atone for his past.

Slim was 43 years old when he was released and went to stay with his mother for the last six months of her life. He spent every day with her, talking and just being together with her. Slim’s mother told him that she wanted him to lead a better life, get married, and have children. Before she died, she apologized for her mistakes in her young life, and Slim told her that nothing was her fault. He cried by himself, grieving her loss and all the pain that he caused her.

Now, Slim sits finishing his autobiography while his wife and two children sleep across the hall. Ever since creating this new life for himself, Slim has found it challenging to break into the “regular” world, and he has experienced several instances of blatant racism while applying for various jobs. Slim looks back on his life and realizes that he has had few true friends, but he is grateful for those he did have. He looks forward to writing another book about this new life someday, and he muses on the fact that the “Iceberg’s” heart has finally warmed.