The Art of the Pimp: One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money Read Free

could have the place, and the next day,when I went back with the deposit and the first month’s rent, she took the money and said, “I want you to fuck me.” I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, but she repeated it. “If you want the apartment, you’re going to have to fuck me.” So I fucked her. And every month, when the rent came due, I fucked her again.
    Shortly after we moved in, we were over at my wife’s parents’ house for dinner. They had a son, Shirley’s older brother, who worked for the phone company doing house calls and repair work and such. It was a good job, a job that could lead to an office job, and they thought it was more respectable than working at a gas station, so they made some calls and arranged an interview. I wasn’t happy about it, but when I tried to discuss it with my mother she refused to listen. “It’s an excellent job and I expect you to do everything in your power to get it,” she said.
    Later that same day, I approached my father and asked if we could go for a drive. I told him I didn’t want to get locked into being a telephone person for the rest of my life, climbing poles for eight hours a day. And I said that even if it did lead to an office job, I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the idea of sitting behind a desk for the next forty years. I said I wanted what the kids at West High had, big houses in Encanto Park and enough money for the good things in life. I said I felt my work at the gas station could lead to a gas station of my own some day, and maybe to bigger things beyond that. “I want to make my own way,” I told him.
    My father, God bless his soul, said I should listen to myself; that I shouldn’t let anyone make my decisions for me. And with tears in his eyes he told me that he still regretted taking that job as a mailman, because he knew he would have been much happier renting bicycles to tourists and running a business of his own. “You’re responsible for your child, and for your wife,” he said. “You’re the guythat has to earn the money to take care of them, so you’re going to have to make the decision, right or wrong, and live with it.”
    I was crying, too. I was crying for my father, and I was crying for myself. It was fucking heart-wrenching, but I went back to the guesthouse and told my wife that I wasn’t taking a job with the phone company. Then I had to go tell her parents, and that was hell. They beat me up verbally. What is wrong with you? We are handing you this great opportunity, and you turn your back on us? And what’s this crazy idea about someday having a gas station of your own—no self-respecting man works in a gas station. Everybody was down on me. My wife, her entire family, my own mother. The only person who didn’t say a single negative word was my father, and his message was clear: Be your own man. That message really shaped the course of my life. To this day, I’m happy to listen, and I listen to everyone. But I’m the guy who makes the final decision, and if things go south I have no one to blame but myself.
    We had our first daughter in 1964 and a second daughter, also unplanned, four years later. I couldn’t believe it. At the age of twenty-two I had a wife and two little girls, all because I’d wanted to get laid.
    Still, I didn’t complain. I was a good husband, a good father, and a good provider. I was putting in fifty, sixty hours a week at the gas station, and the owner took a liking to me. I was always well groomed, I was polite with the customers, I was honest, and I was a good listener. These were things that had been hammered into me by my mother: “Look people in the eye when you talk to them!” “Pay attention!” “No son of mine is going to wear blue jeans!” etc. I hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but my good manners and good attitude were paying off.
    I had started off pumping gas, moved up to working in the shopwith the mechanics, and when the boss was away, I was pretty much running the place.