Pimping My Ride - Part 1

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit now that in between ceasing to be a performing musician, to overstate the case, and resuming my career as one of the English-speaking world’s most beloved writers about music, I worked for five unforgettable months as a pimp.

I owed my knowing a lot of whores to my exercise regimen. Living just around the corner at the time from Carlos ‘n’ Charlie’s, where men in shirts with very long pointed collars and golddigging gals with Farrah Fawcett hair did lots of sniffling, I ran every evening up to Fairfax, and then down to Melrose, down to La Cienega, and back up to Sunset, commonly, thanks to the miracle of radio headphones, to the beat of Irene Cara's "Fame." As any visitor to West Hollywood who drives a stick shift knows, the La Cienega hill is very steep, and running up it made me feel full of what Tom Wolfe has described as rude animal health, the auto exhaust emissions be damned. I'm going to live forever; I'm going to learn how to fly!

There would commonly be a pride of whores at the top, standing around in their excruciating footwear hoping for passing motorists to invite them to the prom. A couple of the more sarcastic ones took to applauding each night as I staggered gasping and drenched into their midst, and one Tuesday evening, when my girlfriend had plans to go out amyl nitrate dancing with gay friends, I asked if they might want to grab a cup of coffee or something. Sha’quwan’aa, the most truculent, urged me to get the fuck out of her face before she whupped me upside the head; she was offended that I’d expect them, whores though they may have been, to want to be seen with someone so disheveled from exertion. Three others, though, said why not. It wasn’t as though Tuesday were one of their big nights.

We went to the coffee shop adjoining the Tropicana Motel down on Santa Monica Blvd., I and Jeanette, Barbara (whom I was to call Babs, as everyone did), and Temp’Este. When I asked the latter if Temp'Este were her real name, she sneered and said, “What are you, a cop?” All they wanted to talk about was how much they disliked their respective pimps, whose integrity they questioned, and whose expressions of love they’d come to doubt. “How can me and Jeanette both be his No. 1 Bitch?” a tearful Babs wondered. Apparently their pimp had bestowed this honorific on both girls, out of each other’s hearing. They had no weeks paid vacation their first, or any other, year.

Temp’Este was by far the least attractive of the three. Her face suggested a partially melted candle. She had a very weak chin, and rotten posture. I assumed she’d reached her adult height of around 5-10 early in adolescence, when to stand out was to be ridiculed, and had taught herself to slouch. Because of her height, she wore the least sexy shoes, and I couldn’t envision her being a terrific earner, but how could I invite the other two to let me step in as their business manager without asking her too?

All three young women were excited about the idea, especially on discovering that I was perfectly happy with my Austin Marina, and had no interest in a Cadillac in a color that doesn’t occur in nature; my understanding is that MTV hadn't yet invented the expression “pimp my ride.” The girls seemed unable to believe their ears when I revealed my plans for profit-sharing, full medical and dental insurance, and child care; between them, they already had five children. Temp’Este got tearful as she recounted the savage beating her pimp had given her when she implored him a little too insistently to let her put a My Child Is an Honor Student at [Withheld] Avenue School sticker on the rear bumper of his '77 El Dorado.

Speaking of Irene Cara and rude animal health, by the way, imagine my delight on discovering that Richard Butler of Psychedelic Furs isn't our only lapsed pop star here in Beacon. Cara, who, in a good light, looks only a few months older than when her name was on every American lip, is now the most popular server at the new Dominican restaurant on Main Street, in spite of often being too busy signing autographs to get folks' dinners in front of them while still piping hot.

To be continued!

[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]