Pimp: The Story of My Life

A key moment in Slim’s life as a pimp comes when he is officially named “Iceberg Slim” by his friend Glass Top. While Slim earns his companion’s respect for refusing to flinch when he is almost shot in the head, the moniker of “Iceberg” shows that Slim is now officially a cold, hard pimp and has earned a respected place in this underworld community. Notably, the motif of “iciness” comes up time and time again throughout the book, depicting admiration for a maladaptive attitude that champions true masculinity as a deliberate suppression of emotion. As Slim’s own demeanor comes to closely resemble this description, he loses touch with himself, and his increasing detachment continues to highlight The Relationship Between Crime and Trauma.

During the peak of Slim’s pimping career, he has several women working for him, though many of them come and go over the years. However, although he manages to obtain money, power, and status, he also remains vulnerable to the ongoing issue of Systemic Racism in the 20th Century. Specifically, Slim eventually discovers the flaws in his assumption that becoming a pimp would free him from the metaphorical shackles of being a Black man in the 20th-century US. Instead of shaking off the systemic oppression that has plagued him all his life, Slim only succeeds in plunging himself into the trap of substance abuse and actively perpetuates The Cycle of Sexual Violence and Exploitation. Ironically, he is still unhappy despite having obtained everything he has worked for, and he must now contend with the realization that his so-called success as a pimp is hollow and empty. This fact is further reflected in the stark reality that the women who keep him company only do so because they are toxically dependent upon him. As a result, Slim fully becomes “Iceberg Slim,” disconnecting completely from the empathetic side of himself. His decline into immorality demonstrates that circumstances, trauma, and the wrong decisions can combine to lead decent people to commit immoral acts. The apparent paradox of Slim’s life therefore represents The Capacity for Good and Evil that exists within all people.

The flaws in his lifestyle now become more readily apparent. After the peak of his career, Slim’s success experiences an inevitable decline. As he begins to age, he becomes paranoid, and he realizes that years of drug use and living on the edge are taking their toll. As matters begin to cascade, Slim loses control of the women who work for him. They begin to lose patience, and Phyllis and Ophelia’s departure forces him to reckon with the fact that he is not quite the ice-cold tyrant he had styled himself to be. As Slim drifts in and out of prison and moves from state to state in an attempt to keep himself afloat, he is forced to rely upon women that he does not trust, but his unwillingness to give up his lifestyle in favor of something more stable reflects his need to cling to The Cycle of Sexual Violence and Exploitation that has dominated his life.

His stubbornness in this regard arises from his insistence upon romanticizing the idea of the streets, both for his own sake and the sake of his workers. As his autobiography relates, “I […] took her hand. I took her to the window overlooking the city. I held her against me. I said, ‘Look out there, baby angel. Out there is where you work. Those streets are yours because you’re my woman. […] Baby Bitch, this family is like a small army” (203). By referring to his worker as a “baby angel” and his corner of the sex work industry as a “family,” Slim glosses over the inherent brutality of his demeanor toward his workers and desperately tries to craft an illusion of power and prosperity. However, as time goes on and things start to slip, Slim begins to doubt himself, saying, “I had a vague disturbing doubt in my skull. Was it possible I wasn’t even a poor imitation of a God? Maybe I was just a sucker black pimp on his way to a third bit in the joint” (216). Though he must first experience years of this lifestyle and survive several more traumatic experiences, this passage makes it clear that Slim is gradually becoming aware of the state of his life and gravitating toward the need to change. Combined with Slim’s own dying business, World War II puts a strain on the sex industry, and Slim has no choice but to start considering other options.

The world-weary tone of the older Slim’s retrospective narration shows that his younger self’s past is starting to come back to haunt him, and he is finding it more difficult to outrun his guilt and grief. A prime example of this pattern occurs when Slim encounters his biological father and feels an overpowering sense of anger and pain upon seeing the man whose cruel actions laid the very foundation for his life of violence. In his typical fashion, Slim turns to cocaine after the incident in order to regain his sense of power, revealing a more personalized aspect of The Relationship Between Crime and Trauma. Slim also starts to worry that both his women and his friends are going to betray him. However, only when he speaks to a therapist in prison does he make the important discovery that pimps often “have deep mother hatred and severe guilt feelings” (235). This realization applies to Slim directly, for he feels betrayed by his mother and also feels guilty for leaving her. As Slim gleans this vital insight, he finally begins to come to terms with his mother’s many mistakes.