Pimping My Ride - Part 2

My first night of professional pimping, a Wednesday in October, would come to be fraught with embarrassment, but for the first hour was devoid of event. My new clients just strutted around provocatively with the usual gang on the southeast corner of Sunset and La Cienega, complaining about the unreliability of babysitters, the unreliability of the drug dealers on whom the addicted among them relied, and, in the case of all but the three who’d signed with me the evening before, the brutality and narcissism of their pimps. I just stood there in my traditional running outfit — Puma shoes, shorts, T-shirt, elasticized headband, and radio headphones from Radio Shack — trying to appear newly arrived from the bottom of the La Cienega Hill.

Finally a guy in one of those spectacularly ugly cars AMC was designing so prolifically at the time — a Gremlin, if memory serves — pulled over and waved to Jeanette, who seemed nonplussed when I hurried over to his car with her. I said, “Howdy, I’m John,” and offered him my hand, which he seemed oddly reluctant to accept, even though I’d hoped to establish an atmosphere of enabling informality by not specifying my surname. “I see you’re interested in Jeanette,” I said, “and who can blame you? She’s clearly one of the most attractive escorts you’re likely to come across tonight.” I beamed proudly at her, but you should have seen the censure in her eyes; if looks could kill!

I persevered regardless. “So what are you into?” I asked Mr. Gremlin. “Fellatio? Half-and-half? Around-the-world? Around the world with a three-hour stopover in Singapore? Something a little bit to the left of center; whips, chains, other small hardware?” I’d made up the three-hour stopover in Singapore bit to amuse “johns,” to help them feel relaxed, but this guy seemed actually to be less relaxed for a second. He glanced in his rearview mirror, muttered, “Oops, bus coming,” and sped away, laying rubber. There was no bus in sight.

If life gives you lemons, my motto has always been, make lemonade; I took the opportunity to ascertain why the ordinarily cheerful Jeanette had gone pissy on me. She explained that it was traditional for girls to conduct their own negotiations with prospective “johns.” Indeed, it turned out she wasn’t even sure what I was doing up there on the corner with them. Did I see any of the other pimps?

It had honestly not occurred to me that I hadn’t. I told Jeanette it wouldn’t feel right to take a portion of her earnings if I weren’t even around to help out. Her colleague Sha’quaw’naa, overhearing, snorted, “A portion? Shit!” She pronounced the latter word as though it had two syllables. When Jeanette explained that I’d be expected to take 100 percent of the profits, I wouldn’t hear of not sticking around, in case of a medical emergency or something. I promised, though, that I’d allow the girls to strike their own bargains.

Jeanette left briefly for two “dates,” and Babs for one of her own. The unfortunate Temp’Este, she of the rotten posture, melting-candle face, and lugubrious affect, seemed invisible to passing motorists. When Babs was summoned for her second date, I felt so bad for Temp’Este, whose eyes brimmed with declining self-esteem, that I headed across Sunset to the liquor store where the perpetually deeply tanned guy with the saddlebag visage worked, who is probably long dead of skin cancer by now.

The place was deserted except for him. I pretended to be comparing different brands of vodka. I found one, brewed right in LA, that was distilled from asphalt. A guy with floppy lank hair and the wary, haunted look of one who did freelance writing for airline magazines came in and headed for the cold beer. I intercepted him and asked if he wanted to get laid. He seemed to think I was offering myself, and arched his eyebrows as though trying to decide if he would be able to continue to feel manly if he didn’t hurt me physically in one way or another. I spared him a lot of agonizing deliberation by pointing out that he would actually be partying with one of the prostitutes whose pimp I was.

He sneered. “Hey, I’ve never paid for it in my life, and I’m not going to start now,” he said. Almost all men will tell you they’ve never paid for it, just as most will claim to have lost their virginity at 14. Studies show, though, that close to 20 percent of American men lose their virginity after age 35 with a paid sex worker, commonly named Tawni or Marci — you know, something with an I at the end. In any event, I told this guy the whole thing was my treat, whereupon he wanted to know if the girl I had in mind was cute (people didn’t say hot back then). I assured him she was. When he wanted to know her measurements, I said, “Jesus Christ,” in exasperation. He didn’t ask if she’d had a checkup, because there wasn’t yet such a thing as AIDS. Noble bastard that he was, he finally shrugged and said, “What the hell. I’ll help you out.”

Back across the street, though, I found out from Babs that Temp'Este had quit the business during my brief absence. She'd asked Babs to tell me she’d had enough of rejection as a middle school student who’d sit there and sit there and sit there at school dances while everyone else got asked to dance. She apparently intended to become a driving instructor, or aromatherapist. When I explained to Mr. Floppyhair that the girl I’d had in mind was no longer available, he graciously pointed at Sha’quaw’naa and said, “I guess she’ll do.” Whereupon Sha’quaw’naa predicted that if he was anywhere near her by the time she finished counting to 10, she would cut his motherfucking face off.

[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!]