Pimp: The Story of My Life

“I was sopping up the poison of the street like a sponge.”

Here, Slim combines metaphor and simile to create a powerful image of the process of being corrupted by street life and the sex work industry. Slim refers to the ideals of the pimping world as poison because he believes that this setting infected his mind and transformed him into an abusive, hateful man. Slim uses the sponge metaphor to describe the impressionable nature of his youthful mindset, and his use of alliteration adds a poetic flow to his prose.

“He didn’t pass out an instruction leaflet running down the lingo of that cane. If you misunderstood what it said, the dummy would crack the leaded shaft of it against your skull.”

In a darkly sarcastic tone, Slim explains the experience of being on constant alert in prison, relating the grim fact that inmates were frequently abused by the guards. His account sheds light on the widespread effects of Systemic Racism in the 20th Century, making it clear that this issue was particularly severe in prisons, where guards often took the opportunity to brutalize inmates with impunity.

“He couldn’t understand how a boy with a score of one-hundred and seventy-five could do a stupid thing like peddling a girl’s ass on the sidewalk.”

Slim briefly mentions his IQ to emphasize the potential that he had as a young person. While narrating his autobiography, Slim looks back on his life and realizes that he could have spent eight years becoming a doctor instead of 20 years being a pimp and getting nowhere. Unfortunately, his younger self did not have this wisdom and became tempted by the illusion of a “fast track” to success and wealth.

“I sure missed that convict philosopher. The wisdom he taught me took me successfully through my bit.”

In prison, Slim is taught to see his mind as a movie screen and to only allow helpful thoughts to pass through it. While this mentality does delude him to some extent in relation to women and power, it also allows him to survive difficult experiences such as going to prison. With this technique, he refuses to lose hope or to believe that he is going to die.

“Stay cold and brutal. Cop your scratch first. Don’t let ‘em Georgia you. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll cut you loose like a trick after they’ve flim-flammed you.”

This statement by one of the pimps Slim meets in prison contains heavy use of slang, creating flow and building the words up into a riddle that must be sleuthed apart by those who do not already understand the terms. “Cop your scratch” refers to taking money, while being “Georgia’d” means to be used for sex without being paid. To be “flim-flammed” means to be fooled or taken advantage of.

“The rundown had only boosted my desire to meet the slick, icy Sweet. If I had been smart I would have jumped in that Ford and rushed back to the sticks.”

While many people might have been scared away from the pimp lifestyle upon hearing about Sweet’s tendencies toward violence, the young Slim becomes even more eager to meet the man in person. The regretful tone of this passage introduces an implicit contrast between the young Slim and the man that he will one day become: the man who will write this autobiography. In this chapter, the young Slim is at a highly impressionable age, and Sweet influences him into becoming a brutal, hardened pimp.

“It was ten-thirty. The sky was a fresh, bright bitch. This first April night had gone sucker and 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 hawk-eyeing for a mark, a cop.”

In this passage, Slim creates an incongruous combination of vulgarity and poetry, blending curse words and slang with elegant prose. His style of writing reflects both his intelligence and the harsh culture in which he was raised, and he also has a tendency to transform dark, ominous moments into something that bears a tinge of romance and beauty.

“I was still Black in the white man’s world. My hope to be important and admired could be realized even behind this black stockade. It was simple, just pimp my ass off and get a ton of scratch. Everybody in both worlds kissed your ass black and blue if you had flash and front.”

Slim sees pimping as a way to overcome Systemic Racism in the 20th Century and gain a measure of power amidst a world that is designed to leave him powerless. However, he fails to realize that the pimping lifestyle only serves to further oppress both himself and others like him. Slim mistakenly believes the lie that as long as he is wealthy, he will be respected and treated well. Instead, he continues to be abused and targeted even as he gains wealth and power.

“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.”

As Slim takes cocaine, obtains control over women, and wears fancy clothes, he begins to feel as though he is the king of the world. These false feelings of godlike power instill in him a dangerous demeanor of dominance and disrespect. Slim’s harmful attitude toward women manifests in all forms of abuse, and it also prevents him from seeing the destructive nature of his choices.

“It was like walking through a battlefield. The streaking headlights of the car arcing the night were giant tracer bullets. The rattling, crashing street-cars were army tanks. The frightened, hopeless black faces of the passengers peered through the grimy windows. They were battle shocked soldiers doomed forever to the front trenches.”

In this metaphor, Slim compares Black people working in the US to soldiers who are going off to fight in a war that will inevitably claim their lives. As he watches people through windows, he sees the looks of disillusionment and hopelessness on their faces and reflects on the fact that every day, they are fighting for basic human rights and for survival.

“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.”

Slim uses a grisly metaphor to describe the process of manipulating and breaking a woman into a state of submission. By lying to his workers and making false promises of a brighter future, Slim entices women in vulnerable positions to do what he demands. He also refers to women as having “beaks,” as though they are nothing but animals in need of training and discipline.

“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.”

Sweet Jones lays down a harsh reality for Slim and tells Slim that a woman’s attempt to rape him was his own fault. In Sweet’s mind, women have a submissive position in society, and men are meant to dominate. Because Slim failed to dominate this particular woman, Sweet sees Slim as weak and submissive and warns him that he must project a tougher persona to become a successful pimp.

“I’ve stepped out of your dreams. I’m alive and real across the hall from you. Get over here, I’m gonna turn you on.”

Slim’s harshly direct yet aggressively seductive way of talking to women and manipulating them emphasizes his cold nature and his ability to turn his emotions on and off at will. As he seeks to fill the role of a successful, dominant pimp, he becomes a skillful actor who knows just what to say to get women to work for him and obey his every whim.

“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.”

Sweet’s theory about the origins of Black pimps in the United States comes from his own experiences of Systemic Racism in the 20th Century, and his words in this passage refer to the intense oppression that has bred hatred in his heart and fueled his desire to seek vengeance against those who have kept him and his people from living free lives. Sweet therefore glorifies the pimp lifestyle and describes it as liberating, playing down its demoralizing and dehumanizing aspects.

“Sweet was right, she got out of bed all right. I wonder if those slavery pimps invented the hanger whip.”

Slim executes his most violent attack against Phyllis one night when he takes Sweet’s advice to whip her with a coat hanger. The brutal scene depicts Slim at his lowest and coldest point, emphasizing The Cycle of Sexual Violence that exists within his world. Because the attack motivate Phyllis to work harder, Slim starts to believe that these types of abuses are necessary to keep women “in line.”

“Only I and the several peddlers I copped from knew that my icy front was really backed by the freezing cocaine I snorted and banged every day.”

Cocaine makes Slim feel powerful, brave, and numb, granting him falsely positive emotions and masking the unprocessed feelings that lurk at his very core. He therefore succumbs to this addiction, using cocaine to avoid dealing with his guilt, shame, and anger. Slim’s women do not know about his addiction, because in Slim’s mind, it stands as a vulnerability that would make them less likely to obey him.

“I made a bad mistake. I shoulda maybe used Top’s jellied skull technique to get rid of her. Instead I left-hooked her as hard as I could against the jaw. There was a pop like a firecracker going off. She fell to the carpet in a quiet heap. I kicked her big rear end a dozen times.”

When Slim describes his brutality against women, he does so with complete honesty and without euphemizing or omitting any details. The young Slim’s perception is still warped at this time, and he only regrets using the wrong form of abuse, rather than regretting his abuse of the woman at all. Slim also creates powerfully visceral imagery by describing the sound of his fist hitting the woman’s jaw.

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

The motif of ice resurfaces again as Slim describes the inevitability of the loss of power that comes with pimping. Slim’s career has experienced a gradual rise, peak, and decline, followed by a plummet to rock bottom, when he finally made the decision to leave that lifestyle behind. The idea of fame as fleeting also emphasizes the meaninglessness of pimping, and it is clear that Slim wishes he had done more with his life.

“Ice, you’re a helluva actor and you can rap good as a con man.”

Iceberg Slim is so named for his ability to hide his emotions and keep a straight face in the most stressful of situations. Slim uses this skill to manipulate women and maintain power over them. This is a celebrated skill in the pimping world, and one which Slim utilizes to its fullest extent as he takes advantage of The Cycle of Sexual Violence and Exploitation.

“One thing they can’t deny in their cruel secret hearts. I outsmarted them. It’s gonna hurt ‘em to the rotten quick that a Nigger did a black Houdini outta here.”

When Slim escapes prison, he sees it as a direct form of defiance against Systemic Racism in the 20th Century. Each time Slim goes to prison, he is treated with cruelty and seen as a lesser human. As a result, he takes pride in knowing that he has found a way to prove his intelligence to those who viewed him as less than human.

“She was young, fast with trick appeal galore. She was a pimp’s dream and she knew it. She had tested me with her beef. She was laying back for a sucker response.”

Slim’s consistent use of slang and casual language gives his prose a natural flow and a unique tone. This quote also reflects the sexist views that the younger Slim held of women during his years as a pimp, and his casually contemptuous tone shows that he views them only for their potential as sex workers.

“Confidence flooded their eyes. I finished my briefing and my instructions. I had built my shining castle in the air.”

Slim uses the metaphor of a shining castle to describe the lies that he tells his women in order to command their continued obedience. These lies serve to placate their worries and make them believe that their life of sex work will eventually amount to something more meaningful. Slim describes these moments with an air of pride, because although he does not condone those choices now, his powers of manipulation made him feel godlike at the time.

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

Though the teenage Slim was too young and naïve to see the issues with his choices, his older self can look back and realize with great clarity that his life was always destined to fall apart. By entering a life of crime, the young Slim only sets himself up for further oppression and degradation, and he loses any chance to live up to his potential. The passage also suggests that because pimps use abusive tactics to control women, it is inevitable that one day they will face retaliation.