Live Like a Pimp: An Uncommon Guide to Uncommon Success

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Live Like a Pimp: An Uncommon Guide to Uncommon Success by Max Vance Easing himself out of his gold Cadillac in his silk suit and fur cape, swaggering with a walking stick and platform shoes, and lording it over a stable of prostitutes in short, tight skirts, the pimp is the stuff of legend. Some would argue that the flamboyant pimp of the blaxploitation movies is largely fiction, but even if the colorful ghetto pimp is no more than an urban legend, he appeals to men at an instinctive level. In his heart of hearts, every man wants to be a pimp. Every man longs to walk proudly, to

call attention to himself, to hold fistfuls of cash, to command a harem and the respect of his peers. Men want these things, and want them desperately, but as Thoreau observed, they never talk about or act on their secret longings. Men will go from cradle to grave working their asses off, paying for sex, and secretly envying the audacious pimp. Ignore the clown pimp, the cracker who dresses up for Halloween in a “pimp” costume. I am asking you to take the idea of becoming a pimp, a modern pimp, seriously. What do I mean by a “modern pimp”? The pimp has a lot to teach men about getting what they want out of life, without excuses. The pimp is able to create the life of his fantasies out of nothing.

Poverty, lack of education, high unemployment, discrimination, age, physical appearance, government opposition –none are obstacles to the pimp. If a man at the very bottom of society with everything stacked against him can live the life every man dreams of, then so can you; but first you must want it, and you must know how. This book tells you how. Keep in mind that the point is not for you to wear a yellow jumpsuit and employ prostitutes in the ghetto –the objective is for you to live large the life of your secret desires, whatever form that might take. So the pimp serves as an inspiration and a metaphor, although you probably never expected to see the word “metaphor” in a book titled Live Like a Pimp.

To those of you who are ready to consider something as outrageous as living the life you want to live; I wish you all the best. To those of you who are offended by this book’s “misogynistic attitude and perpetuation of the rigid sexrole stereotypes of an oppressive patriarchal white society,” I offer you a sincere bitchslap. A lot of crackers think it’s funny to dress up like a “pimp” on Halloween or for a frat party. Ha fuckin’ ha. Come on, Jimmy Swaggart looks more like a pimp than you do, whitebread. So you chuckle with your drunk friends, but tomorrow you’re right back at Hot Dog on a Stick, which is a sadly accurate description of your life. So cut the jokes, get rid of that goofy costume, and think for a moment

about what it means to be a real pimp. Brace yourself. If you are reading a book to find out how to be a pimp, by definition you are a ho.’ I don’t say this to insult you, but to wake you up. On the streets the ho’ works regardless of the weather, late into the night, being degraded and abused by johns. Yet a pimp who has done nothing takes a cut of her money. The ho’ is working hard, but the pimp makes easy money, because he takes a piece of someone else’s earnings. You don’t have to be black, female, or even poor to be a ho’. A ho’ has no control over her life, and there are millions of middle class men who are little more than ho’s. You are working hard only to have your money taken from you, and even worse than the street prostitutes, your

money is being taken by a gang of pimps. You are being pimped by your financial advisor, who has conned you into investing money into an overvalued stock market, only to see the values of your stocks plummet. You are being pimped by your car dealer, who is selling you a car that will lose almost half of its value in several years. While your boss is making the big money “supervising” in his luxurious office, you are working hard, enduring harassment by fat cats who are skimming your wages. Your credit card companies are white slavers who will have you making minimum payments, mostly interest, for the next twenty years.

The tax pimp knocks you upside the head every April, taking up to half of your income. Your wife pimp has got you working to pay the bills, including bills for walnut coffee tables and other nonsense you don’t need or even want. At any time of her choosing your wife can leave you, taking your kids and half of your income with her, and continue punking you for alimony and child support payments long after she’s gone and you no longer have visitation rights. Look, you are either in control of your life or you are not. And if you are not in control of your life, then someone else is. There is a mob of pimps out there looking to step in and take control of your life; you are like a crackhead whose addiction leaves her vulnerable to a pimp willing to

take control.

Chapter 1: The Choice 1. In life you are either a pimp or a ho’. 2. Ho’s work for pimps, but pimps work for themselves. It is easy for you to continue in your “discomfort zone” where you are working your ass off, only to have a gang of pimps steal your money. You just never can seem to get ahead. Money is tight month after month, and there always seems to be some sort of financial crisis just when you get any extra money. It is easy to blame your boss, the management at work, your wife’s spending, the president, the banks, credit card companies, the economy, etc. But

ultimately, you are the reason why you are struggling. You struggle because you’re a ho’. Make a choice; you can either continue to surrender control of your life and your money, or you can change your life, take charge, and begin making and keeping your own money. Every day your job is stripping you of your dignity, plus the pimps are knocking you down and taking your hard-earned cash. It is time to wake up and feel the bitchslap.

3. Every man wants to be a pimp. A website posted a photo of Evil Knievel with his wife and another woman. The caption read, “You’re never too old to be a pimp.” When Evil sued, claiming that the caption defamed him, a judge

ruled against him, commenting that the caption was intended as a compliment. If someone as clueless as a judge can grasp that being a pimp is a good thing, then it must be obvious. (And I have lost respect for you, Evil. You are not a pimp. Change your name to Dudley Doowright and go back to your haggard wife, who’s the real pimp in the house.) The pimp image is popular because every man wants to be a pimp, even though most only secretly want to. Why would a man want to be a pimp? A pimp has money. He is the lord of a stable of women. He is proud and commands respect. The pimp is the Natural Man. In the animal kingdom the dominant male is colorful and fierce, fighting to win several females and to

control the best territory. The Alpha Male does not cling to just one aging female for the rest of his life. The Alpha Male is not afraid of asking for too much. There is within every downtrodden, middle class drudge an instinctive desire to fight and to win, to seduce many women, to swagger with pride, and to grasp fistfuls of cash. But this secret desire lies dormant, only surfacing in dreams. What man wouldn’t give up the nagging wife and the perfunctory sex for a bevy of women? Who would rather stay in the cubicle performing rote tasks than step into the freedom of the streets as a selfmade man? Could anything other than insanity explain a man choosing to give up cold, hard cash for the overtaxed paycheck that is spent before it’s even

deposited?

4. A pimp doesn’t go to church –unless he’s the preacher. 4a. Pimps don’t tithe. To keep you under control so that you will continue to whore yourself for a paycheck, you must first be brainwashed. Since a man’s yearning to be a proud dominant male is indelibly stamped at the cellular level, it takes a very strong force to cow him into submission, to browbeat him into deluding himself. So the church enters the picture, backed up by Pimpmaster O.G. (“Omnipotent God”) who will eternally bitchslap any man sinful enough to want money, sex, or

respect. The church creates the contradictory image of a God who creates man with desires, only to punish him for them. On the other hand, a pimp doesn’t turn a bitch out and then punish her for turning tricks. It is hard being a ho’, losing your selfrespect, earning a subsistence wage with your body, taking abuse, and having your earnings stolen from you. So you go to church looking for answers, only to be told, “don’t be an uppity ho.’” Who are you to want money? What do you mean; you want sex with more than one woman? Who put that fool idea into your nappy head? A skank like you wanting respect? The church boy is a ho’ who believes he is working for God. The religious strumpet mows the preacher’s lawn,

scrubs the pews, passes the plate, and writes his monthly check to the church. The minister in his pimp threads gets a largely tax-free cut from that hard-working chump. But what work does a preacher do? I suppose it is just a coincidence that the more the church boy works for God, the more money and prestige the preacher gets. Malcolm X observed the storefront preachers who were nothing more than another form of ghetto hustler. Congregations of elderly women lavished their money and affection on the pretty boy storefront preachers, supplying them with fine clothes and Cadillacs. The tradition of the glamor preacher continues to this day, with the Reverend Al Sharpton living the high life of luxury hotels, room service

and limousines while “running for president.” Then there’s the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a pro-choice Baptist minister (If only I had a nickel for every pro-choice Baptist preacher out there!), without any congregation, yet still making millions of dollars. He, too, ran for president. Jesse took his pregnant mistress to the White House when he counseled President Clinton on adultery, perhaps offering less moral criticism than “how-to” tips. And then there’s the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who discovered that the church was an unlimited source of available women. At one point he described his mission as “f---ing for God.” It is enough to make one think the term “reverend” is derived from the

Hebrew word for “pimp.” Sadly, white pastors get the money, but they have no sense of style. Jimmy Swaggart had to pay prostitutes, while Jimmy Baker had to force himself on Jessica Hahn. Robert Schuler can’t do any better than a multi-million dollar crystal cathedral, which is okay as a pimp’s crib, but he comes across like warm milk. What can one say of the ineptly named Oral Roberts, whose parents were no doubt struggling with Freudian issues? He claimed that Pimpmaster O.G. was going to kill him, yet I would say that given the list of scoundrel preachers, Oral would be one of the last that the good Lord would bust a cap in. Reverend Ike was a well-dressed black man with slick hair, and he was the

star of his own Sunday morning TV show. He preached, “You don’t want that pie in the sky by and by when you die; you want that pie now, with ice cream on top.” You see, the reverend had an outrageous idea: God wants you to be rich. So many imitators have followed in Ike’s footsteps that it is hard to grasp how radical Ike was. But the reverend went a step further... In order to lead by example and to show that God lavishes riches on the faithful, Ike wore expensive suits, preached from a velvet throne, lived in mansions on both coasts, had a different colored Rolls Royce for each day of the week, and hinted at numerous women in his life. The fact that Reverend Ike was totally up-front is what set him apart from his

imitators. “Lack of money is the root of all evil,” he preached. And, “The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them." How can a preacher get away with directly asking for money and flaunting his lavish lifestyle? It seems that Reverend Ike by living large would reveal himself as a fraud, but the opposite is true. As he became rich and famous he became a symbol of power. The reverend became what his followers wanted to be, and they were drawn to him for fulfillment in their lives. People want to follow a minister (or any another leader) who is rich, powerful, and well-known. In one of Reverend Ike's publicity photos he is dressed in a graduate’s robes. These robes imply that Reverend Ike had a

formal education, and they pump him up as an educated man. The only catch is that Ike awarded himself his degrees. Reverend Ike had the true pimp mentality. He wanted money and women. He wanted to live in luxury. He attracted attention to himself. And he did all of this without apology. The pimp lifestyle of the straightforward, free man is a magnetic one that commands respect and admiration. But why would people send him money? Although Ike may have peaked long ago, it is estimated that decades later he raked in as much as a half a million dollars. His followers (a millions of other Americans, both in and out of church) understand nothing about success. They think that they can become rich by

wishing. They think that they can become successful by sending someone else money. The suckers who send money to Ike believe that they can accomplish something in life by magic instead of hard work. Looking at the photos of the congregation, most of Ike’s followers are women who are little more than ho’s giving money to their pimp. The real way to live large is not by sending a check to Reverend Ike, but by doing what he did. At one point he was no one but Frederick Eikerenkoetter, with nothing. He started with an outrageous, sacrilegious idea: that God wanted people to be rich. Nobody appointed him to anything or certified him; he set himself up as the Reverend Ike, founded his own church and his own religious

organizations. He worked for himself and answered to no one. A church provides limitless pimping opportunities, but my conscience prevents me from recommending that anyone stoop so low as to become a preacher pimp. Choose something more honorable like law, politics, or used car sales. Yes, there is a God –the world is too comical and ironic to be anything other than a cosmic joke, but you don’t need to get pimped by a preacher to experience the divine.

5. Ho’s don’t pimp themselves: You must decide that you are going to become a pimp. Until now, you haven’t known any

better. Everything that you have been taught regarding “being a man” has done nothing but turn you into a soft-stepping ho’. You were taught to go to school, get good grades, get a job, get married, have kids, and go to church. The brainwashing ingrained the idea that a “real man” pays the bills, buys everything for his wife and kids, supports the church, funds the government, and then goes on credit and/or takes a second job when the weight becomes unbearable and he doesn’t know where the money for the next bill is coming from. The indoctrination says that you need a job, that work isn’t supposed to be fun or self- fulfilling, and that your role is to follow the orders of those who get paid far more than you for supervising, organizing, and managing.

Non-stop propaganda was drummed into your head that you’re not supposed to have exciting sex; you’re supposed to grow up and get married. You work 9-5 and when you get home, it’s as though you’re still at work, only now it is family work. Constant work on the job and on your marriage is what it means to be “mature,” “responsible,” and “adult.” Now you know better. You can either continue as a ho’, which means that you are always working for someone else, or you can become a pimp, working for yourself and living the life of your desires. But you must know that if you continue as you have, you will always be a ho’, regardless of how much money you make or any other circumstances of your life. Even if you are a pimp in training, an

apprentice pimp, or a struggling pimp, you are magnitudes better off than you were as a ho’. It is not enough to dream of being a pimp. Just as the crackhead needs pipe dreams to make it through the day, the working class ho’ clings to fantasy to make it through the day. But if dreaming accomplished anything, you’d already be rich and waist-deep in bitches. The key is action. The first step to freedom, to pimpdom, to life, begins with a conscious decision that you are going to become a pimp. At this point you may not know how to get there, and you won’t be able to shed all the habits, obligations, and the brainwashing accumulated over your entire life, at least not overnight. But you can decide that one way or another,

whatever it takes, you are tired of being a ho’, and you are going to change. In the moment you make that decision to be a pimp, with the determination to act on it, you will be free, and for the first time in your life you will feel hope. Right now, I want you to get up off your knees. Take off your vinyl miniskirt and halter top. Repeat after me: I’m a pimp, and I’m proud. I move through the world without apology; I make no excuses for my desires as a man I work for myself. I control my life. I deserve sex, money, and respect.

Chapter 2: Pimps Unlimited 6. Pimps don’t make excuses. At this point something may be holding you back from deciding to be a pimp, and that something is an excuse or excuses. Seduction expert David DeAngelo teaches that most men have a “secret reason” for failure. The secret reason is a man’s belief that he is too old, too young, too ugly, too poor, too untalented, too fat, too short, etc., in order to seduce women. Whatever his particular secret reason, it serves as an insurmountable obstacle that keeps a man from even trying to approach women. This secret reason rationalizing, which is just an excuse, applies to all areas of life. Be aware that the pimps who control

your life want you to have excuses, and education pimps write entire books and lecture endlessly on a whole litany of excuses that they have elaborated in great detail. The system is stacked against you, there is no economic opportunity, the economy is in a slump, it takes money to make money, you’re just not management material, you didn’t graduate from college or high school, you don’t have an MBA, you need to think of others and stop being so focused on yourself, America is racist, sexist, homophobic, this life doesn’t matter, it’s the afterlife that counts, winning isn’t everything, etc., are all excuses designed to keep you in check. The sad truth is that excuses are necessary in order to live as a ho’. Ho’s thrive on excuses. If you thought you could

actually do better, that there was some possibility that you could be a pimp, then why would you continue life as a ho’? Excuses must be manufactured so you not only believe that it is unreasonable for you to be anything other than a ho’, but it would be impossible for you to be anything else even if you tried, so why bother? Ask yourself, what do I think is holding me back from living the life of my dreams? You need to confront this head on. Recognize it as an imaginary barrier. As real as it seems and as strong as your fears are, there really is no monster under your bed. Consider the pimp. He is typically black, poor, with little education, living in a ghetto. If anyone is entitled to excuses, it

is the inner city pimp, yet he is able to live a life that other men envy. Malcolm X tells of Sammy the Pimp who died with $25,000 in his pockets (in 40’s dollars), despite the fact that he lacked an MBA. Malcolm also knew Cadillac Drake, who was born in Kentucky and got a girl pregnant there. Rather than stay and slave away his whole life, Cadillac Drake moved to Harlem. He had a string of a dozen black and white prostitutes, who were scrawny and unattractive. With women like those, how could Cadillac Drake possibly hope to succeed as a pimp? Malcolm and the other hustlers asked Cadillac how his girls even managed to feed themselves, let alone earn him any money. “Bad-looking women work harder,” he replied, which was true,

and he thrived. Rather than feel ashamed of his big gut, Cadillac Drake referred to his stomach as “the chippies’ playground.” Excuses are death to a pimp. A pimp has a can-do mentality and thrives on results.

7. A pimp makes money from nothing. How is it that a pimp can abide a noexcuses policy? Consider the ghetto from which the pimp originates. The pimp typically has little or no education. He has no job skills and no start-up capital. He lives in the poorest part of large cities where there are few jobs and the buildings are rundown. And if America is the oppressive racist nation that some people

believe it is; how could a black man possibly survive, and thrive, in such circumstances? The pimp has a mindset that enables him to make money from nothing. Malcolm X documents how, despite the crushing poverty of the ghetto, there were still those who thrived economically. Run entirely by blacks, the numbers racket was an illegal gambling business that brought in huge sums of money, yet the capital outlay was nothing more than pencils and paper. West Indian Archie was a bookie who wrote nothing down, but remembered the bets that were placed. He literally made money with his mind. Imagine you are a poor black in the ghetto, and the rent is about due. How

could you possibly get the money to pay the rent? Rent parties. Ghetto residents would throw rent parties, in which they would charge for drinks and food as dance music played. Creole Bill threw afterhours parties at his apartment, where he served heaping plates of his wife’s delicious Creole cooking. He had even removed a wall in his apartment to make room for all of the customers. Creole Bill was so successful that he was able to open up his own restaurant with the money he earned from his parties. Crack addicts in the ghetto make money to support their habits through what is known as a “basehead rental” –they rent their cars out for the day. Although you wouldn’t want to do it, a prostitute is an example of someone with no skills, no education, no

capital investment, and little else in the way of economic opportunity making money out of nothing. When Malcolm’s younger brother Reginald came to visit, Malcolm decided to set up his younger brother with a scam that he could profit from. Malcolm finally hit upon a clever idea. Carrying a suitcase, Reginald would nervously approach someone and ask if they would like to buy some merchandise at a discount. To all appearances, Reginald was selling high-end stolen clothing. In reality, the quality used clothing was legitimately purchased at a second hand store. In their greed, customers paid too much for what they believed were stolen goods. If stopped by the cops, Reginald had a sales license and a receipt for the

merchandise. Even though he was successful with the scam, Malcolm later found that his younger brother no longer worked the used clothing hustle. Reginald had found a woman referred to as an “old settler,” an aging woman who would lavish all her money and affection on a younger man. Supported by his older girlfriend, a pampered Reginald no longer needed to work. Although I wouldn’t live that life, it shows how it can be advantageous to profit from someone else’s hard work. When Malcolm worked for the railroads he discovered that he could use his pass to travel for free. He had also met many musicians and knew that they were fond of marijuana. Then it occurred to him that he could travel by train from town to

town, selling reefer to musicians he knew and moving on before he became too familiar to the cops in any particular city. No one had ever heard of such an idea, but Malcolm was very successful with it. I am not suggesting here that you sell drugs or do anything else illegal. This example merely shows how a person can make money by seeing opportunities where none supposedly exist. The Autobiography of Malcolm X provides a firsthand account of Malcolm’s life among the pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and assorted hustlers in Harlem. Malcolm not only knew pimps, but he knew women intimately. He lived among prostitutes who revealed to him the tricks of the trade, as well as the psychology of johns and pimps.

One pimp Malcolm knew, Cadillac Drake, had a devious technique to get a woman to turn tricks for him. Cadillac would date a girl at her apartment. He would go out to get dinner, and while he was out he would duplicate her door key. Later he would come back and steal everything in her apartment, totally cleaning her out. Desperate, she would turn to Cadillac Drake, who would take advantage of her dependency on him. Another pimp Malcolm knew, Sammy the Pimp, believed that a woman who was carried away dancing would reveal her “unconscious, true personality.” Sammy discovered a gorgeous white woman with an enticing Southern drawl who became an all-star ho’. He was able to spot her standing at a dance just by the expression

on her face. Malcolm, like a true pimp, wasn’t just talk; he was ready to back up what he said. Once at a poker game he checked in two guns. When someone tried to get funny, Malcolm pulled a gun. Oops! You been clowned by Malcolm!

8. A ho’ works with her body, a pimp works with his mind. 9. A pimp is an entrepreneur, a ho’ is an employee. All of your life you have worked with your body. Being a ho’ means trading your body for money. Men who risk killing themselves on the job driving big rigs, serving as soldiers, cops, dockworkers, men who constantly get burned, fall off of roofs, get skin cancer from overexposure

to the sun, and so on, are all trading their bodies for money. Other symptoms of selling your body for a paycheck are: constant fatigue, headaches, back aches, indigestion, insomnia, and an overall feeling that you have no energy and are aging too quickly. You now must learn to work with your mind. If you get money from your physical labor, your income is limited by how many tricks you can turn. There are only 24 hours in a day, and there is just so much work you can do per day. But if you work with your mind, creating a business, a book, a website, or a song, you can sell and earn money in your sleep. A songwriter earns money when his song is played on the radio, or performed live, and every time a CD or download is sold,

long after he’s written that song. Elvis kept making money off of his music long after he died. If you make money from other people, you are not limited by how much you work. A ho’ does what she is told, and gets money from her own work, after the pimp takes his cut. But the pimp creates his own job, his own business, his own ideas, and gets money from other people’s (i.e.. ho’s’) work. The pimp is his own boss. A ho’ flips burgers, but Ray Kroc, founder of Mac Donald’s, made millions of dollars 24/7 because he profited from an idea and got a cut of others’ work. The recipe is simple: flip burgers and you will be a poor ho’ for the rest of your life; create your own restaurant and get a percentage of millions of hard-working

ho’s, and you are a Big O’ Pimp for life. This is how ghetto blacks made money from nothing, not by being employees, but by finding ideas that they could leverage into money. Kinkos Copies started with little other than an idea to provide convenient copying and printing services to college students. Starbucks began with the simple idea that people would be willing to pay more for a quality cup of coffee. The lady who invented white-out began by making a white paint correction fluid, which she later sold to a large manufacturer for millions. And Bill Gates, the richest man on the planet, had the idea that computers would be in every home. The key is that he had the foresight to see how universal computers would eventually become, at a

time when that was far off into the future.

Chapter 3: A Gang o’ Pimps The problem with being a middle class ho’ is that you are being played by a mess of pimps. If you were a street walker at least you would have your freedom, but as a working skank you are at the mercy of a gang of pimps who control you and your income. What follows is a list of scanless pimps and how to free yourself from them. Remember, you are either a pimp or a ho’, so every time you free yourself of one pimp’s control you move one step further away from prostituting yourself and one step closer to pimpdom. Remember the words of financial advisor Dave Ramsey: “Your largest wealth-building asset is your income. When you tie up your income, you lose. When you invest your income, you become

wealthy and can do anything you want.” Your aim is to keep as much of your income as free as possible.

The Boss Pimp You are paying a price for the “security” your job provides. The boss not only looks over your shoulder constantly and belittles you in order to justify his existence, but he takes the lion’s share of the profits. If a MacDonald’s nets several thousand dollars in a day, that money isn’t split evenly among the employees –they are paid the minimum wage and the owners and bosses keep the rest. The Car Pimp Other than a house, a car is the largest investment you will make. According to

Dave Ramsey, in just four years a new $28,000 car will plummet down to a value of just $11,000! If you are dumb enough to purchase a new car, you might as well roll a $100 bill into a joint once a week and smoke it, because that is how much money you are losing. If you smoked the money you would at least get something more tangible from your wasteful purchase of a new car as opposed to its invisible depreciation. The wealthy do not buy new cars; they buy cars approximately two or three years old, so that some other fool is paying for the car’s rapid depreciation in value. The wealthy did not get rich by being stupid. It is best to buy directly from the owner. When you buy from a dealer, the middle man’s costs are added to the transaction.

Do not make payments on a car! Even if you have to start by purchasing a broken down hoopty ride, save the car payments until you can afford to trade up to a better car. If you repeat this process, you will eventually wind up with a genuine hoochie wagon pimpmobile. If you buy a new car, it will be old next year, but if you buy a classic Impala, it will always be a classic, and all you need to do is to add a new coat of paint or new angel fur every now and then.

The Credit Pimp The credit pimps are the most scanless pimps of all, who are involved in little more than legalized slavery. Why do you get so many credit card offers in the mail? Because it is a sure-fire, pure profit, set-

for-life scam. Your monthly charges will be set just above the interest fees, so that you will continue to make payments until O.J. Simpson finds Nicole’s real killers. The easiest path is not to get into debt in the first place. Picture two guys earning identical incomes: one guy, Mr. Debt, buys things on credit, while the second guy, Mr. Cash, pays only cash. At first Mr. Debt will outstrip his rival and amass a pile of cars, boats, snowmobiles and big screen TV’s while Mr. Cash saves his money. Yet soon Mr. Debt will find out that all of his money is tied up making payments, and that much of those payments goes to interest, which buys nothing. In the meantime Mr. Cash has kept his income free, and by paying in cash is able to get better deals than his rival. Also, people

who pay cash are less likely to make impulsive purchases. So in a real life replay of the tortoise and the hare fable, Mr. Cash, by steadily saving and paying cash, is financially better off than his soon-to-be-bankrupt neighbor. If you are currently in debt (And who isn’t?) a first step is to build up a $1,000 emergency fund. This emergency fund will allow you to stop making credit purchases, which is the next step. Next, pay off the smallest debt until it is gone, and get rid of that card if it is a credit card. Throw yourself a party and celebrate with some ho’s. (Who said debt reduction has to be all drudgery?) Apply the payments you were making to the first debt to the next smallest debt, and repeat the process. Once you are debt-free, start

on a cash fund of several thousand dollars.

The Death Pimp Do not buy pre-paid funeral plans or life insurance. You are supposed to buy an insurance policy worth several hundred thousand dollars that pays in the event you die, but think for a moment –do you really want to give the bitch yet one more reason to kill you? Look, when you die, it’s over. Anybody who is unhappy with the arrangements you’ve made can take it up with you then. Don’t make plans for your death; make plans for your life. But you will be asked how your wife and children are going to survive. You are working hard now to pay all of the bills; is it too much to ask them to pay their own damn bills after they’ve

worked your ass to death? But even more importantly, you must ask yourself why you would agree to assume financial responsibility for a whole gang of people. If you really like kids and want to help them, hand out money to kids in the ‘hood. This way you aren’t obligated to give money when you can’t afford it, nor will anyone be indignant that once you have expired as a cash cow, you neglected to make prior arrangements to sell your corpse to the glue factory.

The Fitness Pimp It is sad how this country started years ago with a straight up fitness pimp like Jack LaLane and wound up with a chubby mark like Richard Simmons and a bald skank like Susan Powter who blew a sure

thing because she couldn’t “Stop the insanity!” in her own fool head. At least 40 billion dollars a year is spent on diet and fitness products, yet everybody you see is as fat as ever. In order to get into shape, you must first have a vision of yourself as a pimp. There’s little sense in working your ass off just to become a slimmer ho’. Despite all of the diets out there, you know full well you shouldn’t be eating chitlin’s, as well as all that other mess you’ve been eating. Don’t cut them out entirely, just cut back on them. Blacks were better off when they lived on collard greens and black-eyed peas, but once foodstamps entered the picture, it became too easy to stock up on Twinkies and moon pies. The key is eliminating

carbohydrates. Get rid of corn, potatoes, bread, and sugar. (Also see HCG Diet Recipes: More Taste, Less Hunger , by Max Vance.)

The Drug Pimp It is too easy to work for your next 8ball when you should be figuring out how to live like a big old pimp. Again, you’ve got to see yourself as a pimp living large, because as long as you’re nothing but a ho’, you might as well be a drunk ho’. Drugs come in all forms, most of them legal. Why is crack illegal, but you can buy a swimming pool full of malt liquor, when many a brother has drowned himself in the stuff? I’ll leave the black helicopter theories to the crackers (Why is it that the scary helicopters are black?) but there’s a

gang of people making a mess of money off your hard-workin’ broke self, and they want you to have something to keep you going to pay their bills. Of the legal medical drugs, are you taking blood pressure or diabetes medication that you could eliminate by getting into shape? Are you going to get ganked for the rest of your life by the pharmaceutical companies just so you can effortlessly continue to live as a sloppy ho’? Every time you buy Viagra you’ve been took. You need Viagra because you’re trying to have sex with the same old big black mama you’ve had sex with for the last 40 monotonous years. If you were knocking boots with Oprah when she was Miss Tennessee, Viagra would be the last thing on earth you’d need. If you were

trying having sex with Oprah twenty years from now after you’ve been doing her for the last 40 years, you’d need a fifty gallon drum of industrial strength Viagra.

The Jewelry Pimp If ever an idea came from Lucifer’s crack pipe, this is it. You are supposed to spend two to three month’s salary just to get married. How could the economic nature (that is, despite the hype, you are merely paying for sex) of marriage be any more obvious? If you break off the engagement or get divorced you will lose your “investment.” In fact, even if you are never divorced and she wears the ring until you die, what have you ever gained from those thousands of dollars? If you had invested that money you would at

least have earned interest for the length of time that you are tied to the old hag.

The Lord's Pimp Some churches teach tithing, in which a church boy ho’ gives 10% of his money “to God.” Of course, that money must travel a circuitous route to God, wending its way over the preacher’s hands, across his wallet, and through his new car, with the last vestiges limping on to do the Lord’s work. The Church hits a ho' with a simultaneous double bitchslap --not only are you losing money, but you are also losing status. You are supposed to play the role of menial ho' at church, the pew bench warmer who looks up adoringly at the preacher pimp while putting your hard-earned money into the plate.

The Numbers Pimp Whether it is a casino, a numbers game in the ghetto, or a lottery, gambling is a sure loser. It has been said that the lottery is “a tax on the innumerate” (that is, people who don’t know jack crap about math). The rich don’t gamble because they know that it doesn’t pay. If you want to take a risk, gamble on yourself. Starting a business and stepping up to the plate as a pimp entails an element of risk, but when you bet on yourself you build confidence and daring. If your enterprise is successful, it will pay off big time. The Slumlord Rent Pimp Renting is sinking money down a

rathole. Start with a small house that is no more than 25% of your take-home income. If you are uncomfortable with the house you can afford at first, tough it out and keep saving until you can move up. The problem with middle class ho’s is that they buy things that rapidly depreciate in value. What you need are assets, things that you buy that retain their value. Perhaps a home isn’t the world’s greatest asset, but it’s a start, and it beats renting any day. Too few men give any thought to this area of their lives. Some will take on larger house payments in order to write off the interest, but this is a foolish strategy. Remember your goal is not to tie up your money. It helps to get the professional advice of a quality

accountant and tax lawyer. If you are conscious of everything that you spend and keep track of your budget, you not only keep from wasting money, but will be able to save on your taxes.

The Marriage Pimp I will talk about this at greater length later, but suffice it to say that you must be out of your nappy fool head to get married. When you tie up your money you lose, and marriage is the single biggest commitment you can make to a lifetime of servitude. Harriet Tubman did not take a skillet to the side of the head just to have you throw it all away by getting married. Your wife pimp can saddle you with redheaded stepchildren by another man, then leave you and take half of everything you own, plus

payments for sugar daddy’s babies. If you die, she gets it all, and don’t think the idea of helping you along hasn’t crossed her mind. Maybe you’re wondering if spending your money somehow makes you a ho’. No, it doesn’t; Pimps buy things all of the time. But a pimp buys things with his eyes wide open, making a fair exchange of cash for something of equal value. But whenever you get ganked and pay far, far more than what something is worth, whenever you buy something that obligates you long term, whenever buying means that the seller now has long-term control over you, you’ve just been pimped.

Chapter 4: Livin’ Large 10. Get outrageous. Live large. Now is the time to get out of bounds. All your life you have lived as you were told, and the result is invisibility. Ralph Ellison wrote the book “Invisible Man” about the metaphorical experience of being a powerless black man –it is like being invisible. Malcolm X had similar experiences when he worked in hotels where white women would undress right in front of him, feeling no more conscious of his presence than if he were a dog or a parrot. The hard-working beta male is nondescript, non-threatening, and faceless, since he is interchangeable with every other working drone on the planet. When it comes to women and to recognition either

socially or in the workplace, he is invisible. The beta male ho’ is doomed to work and to die in obscurity. The pimp says “#@!% that” to invisibility. The eightball walking stick, the fur lined cape, and the three foot wide afro are signs of a man who will not be ignored. All your life you have been told not to draw attention to yourself, not to be too proud or too loud, to put others first, yet in nature the male is colorful and proud. The lion and the bull elephant do not pad meekly through the jungle, but loudly lay claim to females and dominance. Oscar Wilde dressed outrageously, and although he meant it as an outward sign of an inward devotion to a life of art and the mind, he signaled he would not submit to an anonymous life of

drudgery. Get outrageous. Believe that you have the God-given right to good sex with hot women without the obligation of marriage. Assume that you are worth six figures. Take it for granted that menial volunteer tasks such as washing dishes or staying extra hours at work are for some other chump, not you. (Indeed, when you are a beta male ho’, public service consists of mowing lawns, washing cars, and building houses, but when you are a big-time pimp “public service” means giving speeches and showing up to have your picture taken.) Start breaking rules; you have my permission. Of course you must be careful not to break rules that will end you up in jail. The point here is not aimless: the

point is to break yourself out of the ingrained habits of timidity and inaction. George Gilder cites a study showing that women want “a man even more active, self-oriented, and aggressive than the men were or wanted to be.” What this means is that in order to get into a zone in which you are brash and bold enough to score women, you will reach a point where every inner voice is screaming at you to stop. Take those shrill voices as your cue to go even further. Ear-biting, wife beating, rapist Mike Tyson may be slowwitted, but even he realizes that his outrageousness is a key factor in his success.

11. A ho’ is a ho’, but pimps are unique.

11a. There are no off-the-rack pimp threads. As you think along the lines of being outrageous, of drawing attention to yourself, you will be led on a path in which you become increasingly more unique. In order to move up to the next level, where the money, respect, and the chicks are, you must find a unique persona. Your unique persona, or personal brand, is merely an amplification of your individual traits. Consider highly successful men , like Woody Allen, William F. Buckley Jr., John F. Kennedy, Will Smith, Jack Nicholson, Donald Trump, Malcolm X, and so on. Despite their common fame and success in life, each man is easily recognizable. Bill Cosby has invited starting comics

to do every line of his act. He can do this because the individual jokes are not what make Bill Cosby famous, but the unique personality that comes through in his appearances. Many people could say Woody Allen’s lines, but who could actually be Woody Allen? And if you think that a nerdy, neurotic intellectual can’t score chicks, look at Soon Yi Previn. Michael Jordan did not start out as the greatest basketball player of all time, but at some point latched onto the almost blasphemous idea, that he would dominate every other player. He was able to ride that single outrageous concept of himself to fame. There have been many talented basketball players, but how many are as memorable as Magic Johnson or Dennis

Rodman? Each man’s vastly different persona was an integral part of his success. The key is that it is not what a man does that makes him great, but who he is. You have to trust that within you is a kernel of greatness that is sufficient to give you a life beyond your dreams. You can continue to live in the shadows, going through the routine on autopilot, but the very act of wanting something more will lead you to your greater self. If what I just said seems too melodramatic, just forget what I said and become a pimp. There is no standard, one-size-fits-all path to success. You must find something within that resonates as being truly you, then amplify it until it becomes larger than life. Even if it’s Donald Trump’s awful

grotesque comb over or Strom Thurmond’s carrot-colored orange hair, it makes you recognizable, and that is worlds beyond invisibility and inconsequence. That magnified inner you is coupled with sacrilegious excesses – you are a ladies man, a high roller, a big time player, the life of the party, an unstoppable pimp living large. The pimp’s colorfulness draws attention –and business. Dull people with drab lives secretly yearn to be something more. What Walter Mitty male working in a cubicle like a veal calf doesn’t want to be James Bond? Hence the popularity of the Bond books and movies. As you begin to live out the dream you will attract people to you, people who see in you the fulfillment of that which they only

fantasize about. You will become a symbol of the power and adventure that so sadly are lacking in their lives. Of course they will want to do business with you, buy your books, hear you speak, share your bed (women only, I hope) –because they want the aura of the magical to rub off on them and charm their lives.

Pimp Style Guide Ignore the old, stereotyped image of the pimp in the mink coat, with several pounds of jewelry and a fur-trim hat. Your goal is to come up with a style that commands respect and draws attention, not laughter. You must update the old image to modernize it and to make it fit you uniquely. Everything that you wear, every part of your environment, must

reflect style. Style is conscious and premeditated, not accidental. Does your house or apartment look like a pimp’s crib? Or is it messy, haphazard, littered with empty Bud-lite cans and cardboard pizza boxes?

Pimp Threads Going in and buying clothes off of the shelf, even if they are expensive, quality clothes, is not enough. Avoid what is common. Look at old-fashioned clothing like spats, wing-tip collars, wing-tip shoes, cuffed pants, vests, an ascot, cummerbunds, etc. Consider Asian or western style clothing. A bolo tie, a vest Perhaps a zoot suit, or a modernized

version of one. What colors suit you? Can you add bold colors without looking like a parakeet? A hat is a crucial element that sets you apart (assuming it’s not a baseball or ski cap) and conveys character. A scarf adds color and style, as does a pocket handkerchief. Whatever you wear, make certain your shoes and belt are of the highest quality. Accessories Engrave items to personalize them A pocket watch with a chain A walking cane A knife A gun (get a concealed weapons permit) A flask

A monocle A leather briefcase or portfolio A crystal old fashioned drinking glass A stirrer A money clip

12. Fake it until you make it. It’s a long way from where you are now to here you want to be, and the gap between who you are and who you want to be may seem insurmountable. You must start by acting as if. A pimp in his first day on the job has never been a pimp before, so it will feel new and strange. Now you can sit on the sidelines and say “No, I can’t be a pimp / actor / author / entrepreneur,” or you can step into the role and push past the awkwardness until you feel right at home. Trust me, although

at first you will feel dizzy, and your head will whirl with thoughts of “What in the hell am I doing here? Who am I kidding?” eventually if you continue you will reach a point that confirms this was the life you were meant to live. Act as if. This means if your goal is to become a bodyguard, you must act as if you are one. You will work out, get professional clothing, training, a gun, etc. You will get your own website and hang out with bodyguards, subscribe to Bodyguard Monthly, join Bodyguards of America, and so on, all the while ignoring the voices of doubt within your head. Malcolm knew Dollarbill, who carried a “Kansas City bankroll,” which was a hundred dollar wrapped around a roll of paper slips cut to the size of

banknotes. Malcolm explained, “In order to get something you had to look as though you already had something.” The rule of life is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If you wear a sign that says “Pimp Trainee” you aren’t likely to get any business. If you act as though you need a woman, you won’t get any. Banks don’t lend money to people who need it. If you have a mindset of neediness and insufficiency, you will repel people, but if you have a mindset of abundance people will be drawn to you. I am not spouting naïve “anything is possible if you just believe” nonsense. Life as a beta male lackey has accustomed you to rejection, to failure, to scorn and condescension. Rather than becoming inured to the daily blows, you become

sensitized to them. You begin to cope by withdrawal and fantasy. You avoid rejection by rejecting yourself, and by helping people to reject you. “I know you’re probably going to say ‘no’,” you begin, with your slouched posture resembling a boxer who avoids exposing his chin. Without being aware of it, you project a negativity that is poison to others and destructive of anything you dream of accomplishing. On the other hand, if you begin to project the aura of a winner, you will begin to win small victories that will embolden you to take even more positive action, and you are on your way to pimpdom.

Chapter 5: Black and Proud 13. The difference between a pimp and a ho’ is a pimp has pride. In order to be a ho’, you must surrender your pride. It doesn’t help that every voice in society, from your parents, to your teachers and the church tells you not to think about yourself, but to think of others. You are taught that Satan’s sin was pride, and that “Those who are last shall be first,” although that doesn’t keep Rev. Chickenwing from moving up to the front of the line at the Sunday afternoon potluck. You may applaud Rosa Parks, but you have been conditioned from childhood to move to the back of the bus and to shut the #$@! up. At work you are expected to do

menial tasks and to watch silently as the pimp supervisors, who have three-martini lunches in four-star restaurants, are lauded for their “hard work.” Nobody wants to hear your ideas about a new product line or how to improve efficiency; just shut the $#@! up and move to the back of the bus. And when it’s time to hand out raises and promotions, they will inevitably go to the fat cat supervisors. Don’t ask for a raise or a promotion (Did you forget to shut the $#@! up?), because people will be outraged. Why are you so greedy and self-centered? By the way, we need to cut salaries (except for management). Hey, stop thinking of yourself and be a “team player.” (Note: That’s not “team player” as in “team playa,” but more like “team ho’.”)

When you join the church or the Lions Club you are sent to the back of the bus, where you can wash dishes, mow the pastor’s lawn, sweep the floors, pick cotton, etc. Don’t complain, because it’s all about service. Do you think you’re too good to help others? Of course, you have to wonder why the pimps in charge aren’t doing the back-breaking menial work, but their work is even harder, because they have the heavy responsibility of organizing, supervising, and managing. Don’t suggest any ideas, because the pimps in charge have everything well planned out. Your job is to shut the $#@! up and do what you’re told. When it comes to women you ask (i.e. beg) them out. You’re led to believe that if you’re really lucky, some woman will

agree to accept half of everything you own, plus monthly support payments if she decides to cash out. Courtship and relationships are nothing other than just a series of “yes, massa” groveling and bill paying, buying her flowers, gifts, and dinners, culminating in several grand for a diamond ring. It is no accident that you are supposed to kneel when you propose. What makes you think you deserve sex without marriage? Who do you think you are, wanting sex with more than one woman? You’re just a nappy headed n--er at the back of the bus. If some night you find yourself sleeping on the couch, that couch will be strategically placed at the back of the bus. At work, in your romantic and home life, and in your social life, you are being

beat down continually. It is hard to keep your head up when you are being constantly slapped down. This unrelenting browbeating keeps you in check, working as a ho’, and keeps any crazy ideas of being a proud pimp far from your mind.

14. To get respect you may have to slap some bitches upside the head. It is time for some acts of social disobedience. You’ve got to get up off of your knees and act proud. At first it will be hard because all of the groveling you’ve done over the years, all of the putdowns and the condescension, will make it hard for you to stand up and lay claim to the respect you deserve. When Rev. Chickenwing tells you to pass the plate, say “Hell no! You can pass your own

damn plate.” You can tell the uppity bitch who’s got you doing the step-and-fetchit act in the futile hopes that your friendship might escalate into something more, “$#@! yourself.” Tell the Grand Poobah that he can wash the dishes himself. Refuse to grovel, to take orders, or to go to the back of the bus. Take Harriet Tubman by the hand and get the hell out of the slave states of Matrimony, Engagement, North and South Blue Collar, and West Menial Labor. Your attempts to regain some pride will be met with resistance. People want you to be a ho’ because they personally benefit from it. Your wife gets a personal errand boy and a guaranteed cash cow. Your boss is making money off of your labor, not to mention how he gets off on

telling someone else what to do. When he gets named Regional Supervisor of the year, it is your work that gets him that honor. For every sharecropper who joins the church or the Rotary Club, the pimps at the top get more money and more prestige. As much as they claim to hate n—ers, they aren’t about to let you leave. They will tell you that you are crazy. The frightening specter of alienation from Pimpmaster O.G. (Omnipotent God) will be raised. You really don’t want to piss off God, do you? An appeal will be made to your moral sense. “You know,” they’ll say, “you’ve been such a good employee and husband. You wouldn’t want to throw it all away would you? You shouldn’t be selfishly thinking of your own needs when you should be taking care of mine.”

When I spoke of getting outrageous in chapter 4, I meant you’ve got to start drawing attention to yourself. You want people to notice you as an entrepreneur, a lover, and a leader. You’ve got to believe that you deserve the money, the women, the power, and the status, and then you’ve got to act on it.

Chapter 6: I Want My Money, Bitch! 15. I want my money, bitch! (Chumps give they money to ho's; ho's give they money to pimps.) Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession because since the first man, hardly smarter than an ape, had anything, he gave it to a woman to try to get sex. Thousands of years later, busters still give their money to ho’s all the time. Men buy skanks on the street corner, yes, but the same thing happens on a date, when poor chumps buy dinner, and movie tickets, drinks, flowers, candy, gifts and so on. Men pay for sex, or to try to get sex, all of the time. The concept is so ingrained that

all beer companies have to do is show pictures of sexy women, and men will fork over their money. Men will also buy pictures of sexy women, giving birth to the pornography industry. But the typical brainwashed working man is so exploited, and has such a weak grip on his own earnings, that when he buys a prostitute it is merely one ho’ paying another ho’. Paying for sex only makes the working man poorer; he –of all people, doesn’t have the money to throw around. The typical guy, the ho’, spends all of his money trying to get a woman. When he gets a wife he spends the rest of his life giving her his money, trying to keep her. And when his wife leaves the typical middle class ho’, he loses half of

everything he has. Plus, he is still paying for a woman he doesn’t even have. Enter the pimp. The pimp has the most radical, outlandish idea: to stand the world on its head and instead of paying ho’s, ho's pay him. At a time when chumps are falling over themselves to give their money to bitches and ho’s, the pimp gets his for free, and in fact, women pay him. “I want my money, bitch!” is the clarion call of freedom and empowerment for a man. How can the pimp get away with this? It is expected that the man will pay and pay and pay for the privilege of being with a woman and if he’s lucky, sleeping with her. Malcolm X explains it well. For a time he lived in a boarding house where many prostitutes lived. From this

experience he learned a great deal about male and female relationships, particularly how women feel about men. This is what Malcolm says: “Most men, the prostitutes felt, were too easy to push around. Every day those prostitutes heard their customers complaining that they never heard anything but griping from women who were being taken care of and given everything. The prostitutes said that most men needed to know what the pimps knew. A woman should be occasionally babied enough to show her the man had affection, but beyond that she should be treated firmly. These tough women said that it worked with them. All women, by their nature are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they

see strength.” The last line is one you should have tattooed onto your forearm so you can read it throughout the day. “Women are attracted to men in whom they see strength.” When you buy things for a woman, you send a message that you are trying to buy her affection. You also imply that you are not enough by yourself to deserve her, so you must throw gifts into the mix to make yourself more attractive. You are so eager to please her that you let yourself be pushed around. The pimp, though, has pride. He believes that any mere bitch or ho’ is lucky to have him. Pimps don’t go on dates, so they don’t put themselves in the demeaning position of paying for a woman’s favors. And if you try to push a

pimp around, you gonna get straight up bitchslapped. When you become a pimp, you stop trying to buy women with money. The pimp realizes that he is enough of a man that he doesn’t have to try to bribe women into going out with him in order to compensate for his shortcomings. Hell, the bitches oughta be payin’ you. The pimp has both money and women. Women will compete for the most desirable men. Remember Malcolm’s brother Reginald, whose girlfriend was so eager to have him that she lavished him with gifts and pampered him. I have see women literally fight over a guy they both wanted. Perhaps you remember the show “The Bachelorette,” in which a group of women were competing for a single very high status and very desirable guy, a man

who was one in a thousand. Lord a’mighty, did the claws come out. The only reason anybody buys into the crap we hear about women being "conciliators" and "nurturers" is that we almost never see women coming into contact with that man at the top of the food chain, that oncein-a-lifetime catch. If you position yourself at the top of the heap, and have unshakable confidence that women should be paying you, then women will respond in kind. Be prepared to see some serious ass mud pit wrestling as the bitches fight over you. This mindset with women (That is, “I am deserving. You oughtta be payin’ me.”) really should carry over into every other area of your life. You have been taught to work for nothing, to give your

money to women, to bosses, to car dealers, to credit card companies, to a million and one bastards all standing to make a buck off of you. Now is the time to shout, “I want my money, bitch!” and backhand fools as necessary. You are entitled to earn and to keep your money, and it’s time that you stand up for yourself to make certain that it stays that way.

16. I want my freedom, bitch! (Pimps don't get married.) If you thought you were paying out the ass when you were dating, Lord have mercy on your soul if you ever are foolish enough step in front of the Mac truck called marriage. The moment you agree to get married, you lose all control. You are not free to have sex with other women,

you can’t come and go as you please, and all of a sudden the financial demands go right through the roof. Marriage is insanity, like Kunta Kinte leaving his bachelor crib in New York City to become a slave on a cotton plantation in Mississippi. Your wife is free to work or not to work, but regardless, the weight of supporting the family falls squarely onto your shoulders. If and when she gets pregnant, your freedom is further diminished, and another stack of bills is heaped onto the pile. She can get pregnant anytime she wants, with or without you, and you are financially responsible for every child she has during the marriage whether you are actually the father or not. With each child she gets larger, until

she reaches the point where if she were out on the corner, no man would pay to have sex with her. How many times have I seen a bloated skank driving a fine SUV and thought, “Some poor chump is paying for her nasty ass.” But now you’re stuck with her. If you decide to leave, or she decides to leave, it’s payday for her. She takes half of everything you’ve got, plus the kids, and monthly support. When she shows up once a month and shrieks, “I want my money, bitch!” it’s devastating to a man. If you were nothing but a poor working ho’ before you were married, where are you going to be once you’re divorced? Where will you be when you're making child support payments and your kids are calling another man "Daddy"?

“I want my freedom, bitch!” should be the attitude you carry with you every step of the day. The church will want to tie up your Sundays, and have you do menial work. Credit card companies, car dealers, jewelry stores and other merchants will want to obligate you to make payments for years, so that you are a slave to debt. The boss will try to get you to work extra hours without getting paid for it, or will pile up the work so that you’re taking it home at night and on weekends. Fight for your freedom. If Harriet Tubman took a frying pan to the head for freedom, the least you can do is stand up to the clowns who try to control you.

17. A Pimp has more than one ho'. It is natural. The lion mates with many

lionesses. The dominant male in every species has a harem. As far back as the Bible, although Reverend Chickenbucket seems never to have read this part, men had several wives. Just as no real pimp has only one ho’, no man should have just one woman his whole life. One woman for life is a poverty mindset, in which you are being threatened with a wagging finger and a KKK posse in the background warning you not to get too uppity. Don’t think about more than one woman, don’t think about leaving your fat, nagging wife, and don’t you dare think about nailing any fine white chicks. When you focus on one woman, she has control. She is all you’ve got, and she knows it. The more women you have, the more they know they must compete for

you. When you have options in the form of other women on call, you are in a position of strength, and will not act out of desperation. Look for one woman, and you'll get nothing. Look for two women, and you'll get ten. Think about this. The inner attitude you have, and your behaviors when you are looking for just one woman, that “perfect” woman, will trip you up. You will come across as desperate and clingy. You will try to force things rather than relax. You will give her all of the power because you are afraid of losing her. But if you look for two women you are relaxed, because you have a backup plan. You don’t need any one woman, and that kills the stench of neediness. In pimpology, it’s simple: mo’ ho’s

means mo’ money. Every ho’ that a pimp has is a source of income. Multiple ho’s means multiple sources of income, so if one night Ebonetha gets sick, the pimp doesn’t panic, because he has other bitches to pick up the slack. When you only have one source of income, especially if that means getting a paycheck as an employee, your boss owns you. If you lose your job, you’re toast. Your goal is to get multiple streams of income. Like a pimp, you want people to work for you, so you can be in your pimp crib with a fine chick and make money the whole time. If you have real estate rentals, a business, an Internet business, a vending machine or an automated car wash, etc., you’ve got money coming in from several

sources even in your sleep, so you don’t panic if one of them dries up.

18. Get the money, the bitches will follow. When you’re a broke ho’, your life is nothing but work. You will have to work at getting bitches, too. You will try to get numbers and get clowned, you will spend a gang of money on first dates that don’t lead to second dates, you’ll beg her to stay and she’s going to go, not to mention the fact that she’s been stepping out on you for the last three months. It seems that the harder you work, and you’ve got to work your ass off at everything, the less you actually get. You’ll think, “Well, I guess I gotta take it up a step.” But the problem is not that you don’t

work hard enough; the problem is that you are still a ho’. It is what you are that holds you back. As a ho’, you will always work and get little in the way of respect or money. Once you become a pimp, when you have a sense of pride, as you gain control of your money and your life, the bitches will come effortlessly. For the filming of the show, “So Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” hundreds of beautiful women showed up at their own expense, willing to marry a man they had never even seen. The show created an uproar, mainly because the obvious truth had become exposed to daylight. When you have the money, the bitches will come to you.

Chapter 7: Pimpin’ 24/7 19. There is no retirement home for pimps. Pimping is a lifetime endeavor. It’s not a job; it’s a way of life. If you’re waiting for the government to take care of you with Social Security after years and years of slaving, you’re going to be very disappointed. Many promised retirement plans in private businesses will fall through when those companies go bankrupt or must tighten their belts. Investments in stocks and other retirement savings may very well collapse, too. My point is not to preach doom, but to alert you to the fact you will always be responsible for your life, and it’s foolish to count on somebody riding in on some cracker white horse in the twilight of your

life to solve all of your problems. Too many men are living their lives on hold until they can retire so they can live the life they want to. A lifetime of ingrained passivity cannot be overcome by the simple act of “retiring.” Many men die within a year or two of retiring because their job, no matter how menial and wearisome, is the only source of purpose and accomplishment in their lives. When you pimp, in whatever form that pimping takes, you are fulfilled. When you are involved in an activity that makes you alive, that rewards you financially, that gives you a sense of independence and pride, you will not be counting the days until you can get the hell out. Accomplishing anything is simply a matter of time. If you work at something

long enough, you will eventually achieve the breakthrough you’re dreaming of. This is why you’ve got to be involved in something that you love doing, otherwise you won’t put in the time to develop your skills. Too much time is spent at a job waiting for payday, for the weekend, for retirement, but this frame of mind does nothing more than kill time, and doesn’t lead to any achievement.

20. Pimps don’t buy life insurance. The bitch can take the $25,000 out of your pockets when you’re dead. When you are dead, it’s all over. Although you may believe in an afterlife, no one can be certain it exists. Regardless of what may happen in the next life, it’s a shame to waste the life you’ve been given

here and now. Why in the hell would you buy anything that you can’t “use” until after you’re dead? The answer is that your wife is putting pressure on you to take care of her after you're dead. And don’t forget that the oily salesman who is so concerned for your widow and children gets a chunk of change when you buy your policy. It’s really touching that your wife can see as far ahead as your death and how she can profit from it. Just how much money are you supposed to pay up, even after you’re gone? Don’t buy burial plots, funeral plans, or coffins. Whether you are buried in a cardboard box following a crappy ceremony, or just dumped in a ditch on the outskirts of town, you will not know the difference, so why worry about it? Think

of all the Olde English malt liquor you could buy with that money, or better yet, a business project that you could invest in. Don’t plan your funeral ceremony. You’re pretty damn desperate if you have to die in order to draw a crowd. You should be able to gather several hundred people to see some talent of yours, whether it is performing or a display of something you have created. If you don’t have those skills, you need to start working to get them. Sammy the Pimp in his later years married a young woman. He was found dead the next morning with $25,000 in his pockets. Setting aside the obvious link between marriage and death, Sammy the Pimp knew both how to live and how to die. He wasn’t lying on a bedpan in a

retirement home. He wasn’t bitching about social security, because his pockets were full of cash. Despite the fact that he was senile enough to get married, he was screwing a woman much younger. Sammy wasn’t planning for his death because he was too busy living. Be like Sammy the Pimp. Live your life non-stop to the fullest. Become so involved in the thrill of living the pimp’s life that death takes you by surprise. At that point you’ll no longer have any use for the cash, the furs, the cars, the guns, and the mansions, so you can say with your last breath, “Go ahead, it’s all yours.”

The Golden Wisdom of Pimpology 1. In life you are either a pimp or a ho’. 2. Ho’s work for pimps, but pimps work for themselves. 3. Every man wants to be a pimp. 4. A pimp doesn’t go to church – unless he’s the preacher. 4a. Pimps don’t tithe. 5. Ho’s don’t pimp themselves: You must decide that you are going to become a pimp. 6. Pimps don’t make excuses. 7. A pimp makes money from nothing. 8. A ho' works with her body, a pimp works with his mind. 9. A ho' is an employee, a pimp is an entrepreneur. 10. Get outrageous. Live large.

11. A ho’ is a ho’, but pimps are unique. 11a. There are no off-the-rack pimp threads. 12. Fake it until you make it. 13. The difference between a pimp and a ho’ is a pimp has pride. 14. To get respect you may have to slap some bitches upside the head. 15. I want my money, bitch! (Chumps give they money to ho’s: ho’s give they money to pimps.) 16. I want my freedom, bitch! (i.e. Pimps don’t get married.) 17. A pimp has more than one ho’. 18. Get the money; the bitches will follow. 19. There is no retirement home for pimps.

20. Pimps don’t buy life insurance. The bitch can take the $25,000 out of your pockets when you’re dead.

The Pimp Hand Strikes by Max Vance Foreword To all of the honest pimps, the criminals who exploit drug-addicted women and frequently slap them around, I apologize for tarnishing your reputation by associating you with the scum to follow. It is inevitable that some readers will mistake the felonious women beaters for the sleazy pimps who are making the big money. Why do I say "honest pimps?" Of course, you honest pimps routinely lie in

your line of work, but you are honest in that you admit you are pimps, and make no pretensions of being anything else. You do not try to convince the women you enslave that you are making them money or that you are somehow enriching their lives. For such refreshing truthfulness, I thank you. It gives me hope that some day the preacher, the wife, the stockbroker, the jeweler, the insurance agent, the banker, and all the other big league pimps may be as honest, if only to themselves. To you honest pimps, though, I offer a ray of hope. If you can overcome the barrier of your conscience, you can move up to big time pimpin’, where the real money is made, and ironically gain a measure of respectability.

Chapter 1: Deadline All I know is I’m tired. I’m out on the street corner every Monday through Friday, nine to five, even when it’s cold. My spot is the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Lawrence Avenue, right in front of the Big Time Liquor Store with the iron bars and flyers for King Cobra malt liquor in the window. The johns I service in the typical day may be rough with me, and belittle me with their talk, but that’s just part of the job. My work is physically demanding, standing in the cold, walking eight hours a day in my stiletto heels on the sidewalk, and bending over to lean into passing car windows. My voice is hoarse from crying out, “May I help you, sir? Want a date,

good lookin’?” I know that I can’t keep this up forever, but how else am I going to get money? I am using my body 24/7 to make money, but I never get to keep any of it, 'cause every time I turn around a pimp is there to take it from me. I done freaked for a whole mess of whitebread, and I’ve got nothing to show for it. Worst of all, I can’t see any end to it. I’m only getting older, and I know I can’t keep turning tricks forever. There is no retirement plan for ho’s. Even when I die, I will die as a ho’. It’s three minutes until nine o’clock, and the whole day is ahead of me. 2 Short, the boss pimp, who comes and goes as he pleases, drives by in his gold Cadillac on his way to the golf course, playing rap tunes by Peter Drucker Notorious MBA.

Boss pimp is a squat, heavy man whose face is always red. He leans his head out of the window, as does his pitbull in the seat behind him, and it’s hard to tell one from the other. “Remember the assumptive close, ho’!” he shouts as he pulls away. It just ain’t right. I do all the work while boss pimp is at the golf course, at management meetings, having lunch and a cold forty-ounce malt liquor. I am constantly being slapped around on the job, during evaluations, and every payday he takes most of my money. A tall man with a three foot wide afro and a diamond-studded platinum ‘fro comb comes out of the liquor store with a gin and juice. Suddenly my stomach feels like a greasy handful of dice rolling and clacking together. It’s the loan shark, Easy

C. (The ‘C’ stands for “Credit.”) Like a shark he pulls his gums up from rows of razor-like teeth rimmed with gold. “You’ve got until seven o’clock tonight to come up with two g’s, or I’m gonna whale on you.” “Two g’s? I been making the minimum payments.” “That’s right, ho’, but you been making late payments and your rate done gone right through the roof. Plus, they’s penalties.” He punched his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Didn’t you just raise my credit limit? I been getting credit offers in the mail every day.” “Two g’s, by seven tonight, or I’m gonna slap the taste out your mouth.” “You know I don’t got that kind of

money. Where am I supposed to come up two g’s?” “If I was you, I’d shut the hell up and get to work.” Easy C jabbed a forefinger at me threateningly. He turned around and crossed the street. “Seven o’clock tonight,” he shouted without looking back. I had just one day -ten hours, to be exact--to get two grand. I had to get some money, fast. But how? I could try to get money from a loan shark, but I had borrowed money from Easy C to pay off the first loan shark, MC “Master Charge” Hammer. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to earn some green before. As I remembered it, I could still feel the soreness in my left ribs.

Chapter 2: The Stock Pimp I was young then and trying to do my best to manage my money, so I decided to pay a visit to Get Down Jones, the stock pimp. His office is on the boulevard several doors down from Big Time Liquor, in Westside Pawnshop and Brokerage. As I entered the office I saw the stock pimp, lounging in a suit with stripes made from ticker tape. Get Down Jones casually grasped a bundle of money encircled with a rubber band and gestured for me to be seated. But as I looked more closely I saw that only the outer bill was a genuine hundred, and the rest were slips of paper cut the size of money. He got up to shake my hand, leaning on a cane fashioned out of a collapsible pointer. Returning to his

chair, he took a swig from a forty-ounce bottled water. Whap! I jumped when the broadside of his pointer cane struck the stock chart behind him. “The market be up o’ the market be down, but I gets my money, ho’.” I signed the forms putting two hundred dollars a month into a 401k, and he handed me a vinyl miniskirt and a pair of fishnet stockings. "This skirt seems kind of short,” I meekly protested. “I don’t feel covered at all.” "Don’t worry, you in this for the long term.” He got up, strutted over to the door and opened it. “This is yo’ first trick, Mr. Aggressive Growth.” “But, but, he looks kind of volatile,

like a big bear.” “Yeah, baby, but he like a bull, if you know what I’m sayin’.” The door closed and I could hear him laugh as he moved down the hall, accompanied by the click-clack of his platform heels and metal cane. My new john mauled me. He not only didn’t pay me, but took what little money I had. I wound up paying Get Down Jones the stock pimp out of my own pocket.

Chapter 3: The Auto Pimp That trip to the stock pimp sure was a bad memory. But now an idea came to me; I could sell my ride and get the two grand. I drove over to Ed Sell the auto pimp, which was right next to the junkyard. My car coughed and sputtered smoke, while the torn vinyl at the front edge of the roof caught the wind and puffed out like a fat man’s chin. The lot was decorated with flags like baseball pennants. It was easy to see Ed in his orange jumpsuit and jerry curl that glistened in the sunlight. My car lurched and died just as I pulled up beside him. “I’m Ed Sell! What up?” He smiled and leaned both hands on either side of the car door. “I need to sell this ride.”

He looked the car over, resting his hand on his chin and flashing a pinkie ring with a huge rock. “Didn’t you buy this here from me? You still making payments?” “Yeah, but I wanna sell it.” “Sho’ thing. I’m gonna give you two C notes.” “Two hundred, but…” “Alright, I’m outta my mind, but I’m fixin’ to give you two-fifty. You know what I say, ‘A brother in need is a brother in deed.’” A diamond in his tooth caught the sunlight and sparkled. “But I just paid three grand for this car.” “Well, you didn’t pay three grand, you made payments.” “I must have paid a thousand already,

at least. And now you’re giving me twofifty, when you said the car was worth three thousand.” “Look here; it’s three grand on the lot, but the moment you drive it off the lot it’s hardly worth fifteen hundred.” He raised his hands palm up with a shrug. “And if I had made payments until I had paid it off, how much would I have paid?” Ed took out a calculator and jabbed his finger into it several times. “Forty-five hundred.” My fingers tightened on the steering wheel, and my head dropped down between my arms. “Then why would any fool make payments on a car?” “I think you just answered your own question. Of course, you could always go

with a basehead rental. Crackers call it a lease.” “How much is a basehead rental?” “Twenty dollars a day, plus a penalty if you get any jerry curl stains on it.” “And if I’d have leased it, how much would I get now?” “Nothing.” I closed my eyes shut. I had a headache like I’d been hit in the forehead with a hammer. “Alright, six hundred. Just let me get the crack pipe out of the trunk.” I left Ed Sell’s car lot with my crack pipe and $270; how I earned the other twenty dollars, I’d rather not say.

Chapter 4: The Tax Pimp I really felt like lighting up the pipe, but I needed to hold onto the money. $270, plus a crack pipe and some extra cash from turning a few tricks, just might be enough to make Easy C happy and keep me from getting killed. I’d been nervous and shaky all day, but there was still something else that worried me, something like a hidden rat gnawing in the walls. Oh, Lord have mercy. Today was April fifteenth. April fifteenth, how could I have forgotten? I was in a real fix, because I had to be visible on the streets in order to turn some tricks, get some cash, and keep Easy C from killing me, but I also needed to keep a low profile so G-Man the tax pimp wouldn’t see me.

“Hey, good lookin’!” I waved at a guy in a brand new truck. I leaped off of the curb, but he gunned the engine and spun the tires as he took off. What the hey? Oops, I forgot I was carrying the crack pipe. I tucked it into my purse and decided to try again. I raised my hand to flag down the next car. As it drew closer I saw the tires were all black, and this was one time when black was not beautiful. I started running. I rounded the corner of Jerry’s Garage and I was about to jump the chain link fence when I was startled by two snarling pitbulls on the other side. I grabbed the crack pipe in my purse and threw it over the fence. A baldheaded buff dude with dark shades came around the corner and

marched toward me. He was so buff he was carrying a copy of the tax code with hardly any effort. It was G-Man the tax pimp. “I want my money, ho’,” he snarled. “I’d like to file an extension, Mr. GMan.” “Too late, bitch. Hand it over, now." He lifted the tax code up over his shoulder, ready to swat me like a fly. “Let’s see,” I mumbled as I began rummaging through my purse. “Fifteen percent of 270 is….” Bam! The tax code came crashing down on me, and I was just able to lift my shoulder enough to catch the brunt of the blow, but it still knocked me to the blacktop. G-Man dropped the tax code onto my feet. It was so heavy: it caused excruciating pain, pinning my legs to the

ground. He yanked the purse out of my hands. “You moved into a higher tax bracket.” I saw that he had grabbed ninety dollars. Damn! I was in the thirty percent tax bracket. G-Man smiled, exposing a gap between his two front teeth like Mike Tyson. “Plus social security, gas tax, license fees, opportunity costs, cost of compliance with regulations, and such and such.” He dropped the purse onto the ground and grunted as he picked up the tax code. When I bent down to massage my ankles I realized one of my high heels was gone. I wasted fifteen minutes looking for it, before I found it with the heel snapped off. I had only half of my money, my shoulder and ankles hurt, I had no ride, my

crack pipe was gone, I was barefooted, and I had less than six hours to get eighteen hundred bucks.

Chapter 5: The Liquor Store I needed a drink. I’d just made twenty five bucks off a car of gang-bangers. One of my rules is one john at a time, but I had less than five hours to come up with some serious cash. A quick stop at Big Time Liquor wouldn’t hurt, I figured. I limped into the store in my stockinged feet. He was standing in back of the register, behind a thick glass window. He wasn’t a brother, but he was dark, with a ‘do rag wrapped around his head. “All right,” I started. “Ah salami some bacon, what you got? I need something with some kick.” He looked at me like he was on sherm. “Oh, you mean asalam aleikum. But I’m not a Moslem; I’m a Sikh.” “Yeah, whatever: You look like a

Mexican to me. Okay Mr. Sikh, I’m seeking some malt liquor.” “Any particular brand?” “What you got?” He turned to a row of liquor bottles than ran from one end of the wall to the other, and then picked up a 40 ounce malt liquor bottle. “This here is Easy Like Sunday Morning. It has picture of a football game on it, so you can sit on the curb and tell professional athletes how they screwed up, so you feel like you’re better than they are. Plus, if your team wins, you feel like a winner.” “And what if my team loses?” “Then you drink some of this.” He snatched a bottle off of the shelf. “MJ 37. You see it has Michael Jordan’s name, picture, and number on it, so just carrying

this bottle makes you feel like a winner.” “Nah. I don’t want any sports drinks.” “Hmm. The sports drinks make billions of dollars. How about the hard stuff? Porn whiskey. It’s as good as sex.” “I get plenty of sex in my line of work. What else you got?" “There’s Mickey D. It comes in all kinds of delicious flavors —French fry, donut, pizza One bottle of this, some pork rinds, and you’re good to go. You just gotta watch that you don’t gain weight.” Aha! An idea hit me like a ton of bricks. The lottery! I could play the lottery and get Easy C’s money. “Give me ten lotto tickets.” “What kind?” “How about the Daily Grind. Can I borrow a nickel? I don’t have any

change.” I started scratching, and kept scratching, but only one ticket was a winner for one dollar. “Give me eleven tickets.” I kept on scratching, and this time two were winners. I looked into my purse, and was now down to $141. “Okay, seven more.” Wouldn’t you know it, today was my lucky day. The seventh ticket was a winner! I started jumping and whooping. I even cried. “What’s this ticket win?” I handed it to the dude, sliding it under the glass window. “Employee of the month.” “What’s that pay?” I was shaking with excitement. “It doesn’t pay anything. I take your picture, frame it, and hang it up on the wall here for a month.” He pointed to a

picture on the wall. It was a photo of a black man with the name “Roshawn Green” under it. “Plus, you get a parking spot with your name on it.” I should have known. Ain’t no brother working in a liquor store. A black man can’t even get a job in this town. Then I got mad. “Parking space? I sold my car ‘cause I need the money! What you mean, frontin’ with some kind of scanless, tricked up lotto ticket? I been working and scratching all for nothing. Why I ought to cut you….” He was reaching under the counter for something like a shotgun, so I decided to leave. I started walking down the boulevard, ignoring passing cars because I needed to think. I needed some cold, hard cash. Then I saw some dudes in the alley.

They were smoking. “Hey, you guys wanna party?” I strolled toward them with my sexiest walk. “Define ‘party’,” one of them replied. There were three of them dressed in business suits. I decided now was not a good time for a school boy comment. “I need a hit.” “What’s in it for us?” “I’m gonna freak for you.” “No thanks.” “Tell you what; I got an employee of the month lotto winner I haven’t cashed in.” They were happy to hear that. “Here, take a hit.” I took the blunt and handed him the ticket. I breathed in deep, held it, and then

I coughed. And coughed some more. “Man, this is nasty!” I took a close look at the joint. “Hey, wait! I’m not smoking weed, I’m smoking money!” “Same thing,” one of them yelled out as they headed to the liquor store. “You some sick freaks!” I shouted. Think, think, think, dammit. I was already sore: I just couldn’t take another beating. It was two-thirty right now, and Easy C was going to go off on me at seven o’clock. I had to get back to my crib. I wasn’t sure what the answer was, but I’d find it there.

Chapter 6: The Jewelry Pimp In exchange for certain, uh, favors, I got ten dollars and a ride to my crib, which was on the third floor above HiTimes Billiards. I knocked on the door, but there wasn’t any answer. I guess wife pimp wasn’t home. I fished my key out of my purse and went in. It was a nice looking place. Lord knows wife pimp had to have the best carpet, the best sound system, a new set of platinum wigs, an industrial strength blender matching the kitchen décor, a refrigerator and freezer with running cold water in the door (although there was a faucet ten feet away), and a whole mess of doodads I didn’t want and didn’t have any use for, especially since I was the one paying for them. Wife pimp spent all her

money, and then started spending my money, while I was paying the bills: rent, electricity, phone, gas, the whole lot. Money got real tight, and so I went to MC “Master Charge” Hammer to get a loan. Pretty soon I was borrowing money from one credit pimp to pay off the other, until today, when the whole situation was going to catch up with me. What I needed was something I could sell, but small enough that I could carry it. Most of this stuff, from the curtains to the paintings on the wall, to the stereo, was worth hardly anything when fenced. It looked good in the store, it cost a whole lot, but when it came to getting cold, hard cash out of it, it was worthless. I went through the living room, the kitchen, and the bedroom, where I put on a new pair of shoes, but found

nothing. I figured I might as well check the bathroom. In the top right drawer was wife pimp’s wedding ring, with a big o’ rock. Shazam! I turned a trick and got another fifteen dollars and a ride over to the Love Diamond Emporium, the nicest store in the ghetto. While most places in the ‘hood had a bell over the door, a sound like a doorbell, only softer, went off as I stepped in. This place even smelled new and clean. Some of the salespeople looked shocked, because I looked ragged and desperate, with a bruised shoulder, but Ray Ray Ice looked calm and friendly. “Welcome to the Love Diamond Emporium,” he said, and his voice sounded just like it did on the radio.

“How may I help you?” “I want to sell this.” I showed him wife pimp’s wedding ring. “So you want to upgrade? You know the ring you bought your wife pimp when you were married hasn’t kept up with your earnings today. What better symbol of your everlasting love than a new diamond? Besides, it’ll save you a beating.” “You ain’t followin’ me. I don’t want no upgrade, I wanna sell.” "I’d like to help you, but we don’t buy rings, we sell them.” Ray Ray Ice smiled. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” “Wait just a minute; I paid two months’ salary for this here ring.” “Well, you made payments, so if you add the interest it was more than two

months’ salary. Isn’t your love worth more than two months’ salary?” He removed the carnation from the lapel of his suit and sniffed it. “I paid several grand for this rock, and that money’s gone forever? But what do I get out of it?” “You get love, and a wife pimp.” “And if I don’t pay several grand?” “No money, no rock.” Ray Ray Ice shook his head sadly. “Sure, you could take that several grand and put it into a money-market account earning interest from which you draw cash, and you could have no-strings-attached, mind-blowing sex with a variety of women, without any financial obligations, but you wouldn’t have a wife pimp.” “And why would I pay several grand

for a wife pimp?” Ray Ray ice shrugged his shoulders. “For love. Plus, if you only had a girlfriend, she couldn’t take half of everything you own, plus alimony and support payments.” “Half?” I shouted. At that moment I swore I would never smoke crack again. “Unless you die; then she gets it all.” My knees gave out, and I slumped against the glass display case. Unless I die. And that just might be at seven o’clock tonight. Hmm, speaking of death, I remember paying a visit to the death pimp.

Chapter 7: The Death Pimp It must have been ten years ago. Wife pimp was on my last nerve, bugging me to pay the death pimp a visit. So between tricks I strolled over to Happy Shades Funeral Parlor and Death Insurance. The place was dark and quiet, with black, heavy drapes on the windows. A man dressed all in black, with a long cape, walked out from a back room and smiled. His black hat had a wide brim and a long ass ebony feather. “Welcome, I’m Queasy Mfume. Why don’t you step right over here?” He waved toward a desk at the corner. “Have a seat, please. So you’re here to get death insurance?” “Well, I’m thinking about it. How much does it cost?

Queasy leaned back in his chair and put the tips of his fingers together like a tent. “In order to pay for your funeral expenses, plus your family’s living expenses, dice games, gin and juice, lottery tickets, wigs, gangster rap CD’s, subscription to BET...Let’s see….” He leaned his head up toward the ceiling. "You’d need about $150,000. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why can’t they pay they own bills?” “After the shock of your death, and the aftermath, I don’t see how they could pay those bills. Don’t you want to ensure that no matter what happens your family is provided for?” “They could provide like I do. I’m out turning tricks 24/7. So how much does it cost?”

“Only $86 a month would give you and your loved ones peace of mind.” Queasy grinned and slid a stack of papers across the desk toward me. "So when do I get my money?” “In the event of your untimely death, a payment would…” “But wait, I’d be dead.” Queasy Mfume stopped and cocked his head. “Why, yes, that’s why it’s called death insurance.” “Why do I care what happens when I’m dead?” “Well, you do care now.” “’Cause I ain’t dead.” I was getting mad. “But what about your loved ones? Don’t you care what would happen to them?” Queasy’s eyes got big and misty.

He looked so concerned. “I’m paying bills left and right, getting pimped night and day, until the day I die, and even then I’m supposed to put out?” He lifted up the phone and made a call. “Yes, wife pimp? Uh-huh, I think we got us an uppity ho’ who don’t want to put out and pay up….” My goose was cooked. Lord knows I didn’t need another ass whuppin’. I signed the papers.

Chapter 8: Payday I was so busy waving to a whiteboy in a BMW that I didn’t see the gold Cadillac come up behind me. I jumped when the horn honked. Oh, damn, today was payday. As always, at the end of a long day, when I can hardly stand and I prefer not to think of how I’ve degraded myself for a job, the Cadillac rolls into the alley and boss pimp gets his money. The car door opened and boss pimp looked really red, like the lit end of a blunt. His pitbull leaped out of the window and skittered across the sidewalk until he was right at my feet, gnawing at my ankles. Boss pimp took off his fur trimmed cape made of laminated pages from the Wall Street Journal and tossed it onto the diamond tuck seats. Oh oh, this

did not look good. As he strutted closer I noticed he was wearing boots with four-inch heels, and that those heels were clear acrylic fishbowls with goldfish in them. “I want my money, bitch!” he yelled. I felt the stinging slap of the hardcover edition of Who Moved My Cheese? on my cheek as I toppled over to the pavement. He yanked the purse out of my hands, removed my money, and threw the purse back onto me. “Oh, and by the way, we’re downsizing. I’m giving Lonkeisha your spot on the corner.” “I fought for that corner office. I turned tricks for years. I been slapped, kicked outta cars, and thrown outta hotel windows.” Boss pimp laughed as he got back into

the Cadillac and drove off. It was hard getting up off of the sidewalk. Lucky for me, I’d tucked the six hundred dollars I'd got from pawning wife pimp's wedding ring into my bra. Maybe there was something else at the crib I could fence. Maybe wife pimp would give me a loan. I was okay just fifteen minutes ago, but I’d lost $335, my spot on the corner, and now it looked like I’d be lucky if I just lost my teeth. If Easy C killed me at seven o’clock tonight I would be ready. I guess. I had death insurance, so wife pimp would get a whole mess o’ money, but I still can’t figure out what was in it for me. The good news is that I’d managed to get six hundred dollars for wife pimp’s ring. I now had $751, and three hours to make

some more cash, which just might be enough to keep me alive.

Chapter 9: Homecoming I had to take the bus back to my crib because I looked so desperate and so raggedy that I couldn’t stop a car. I went up three flights of stairs for the second time today, as if I wasn’t tired enough the first time. In my mind I was making up a story; wife pimp was going to want to know where her diamond ring was at. “Stole! That’s it, yo’ ring been ganked!” Or maybe “Ring? Ah, naw, woman, don’t tell me you done lost it again!” and brace myself for the slap. Quietly, I opened the door. My crib was butt naked! There was nothing on the shelves, no couch, no refrigerator. Double ought nothin’. My head was spinning all crazy-- maybe all my stuff really had been

stole. Wham! It was a sound like a big ass bell, the liberty bell or something, had been dropped right on top of my head. I heard ringing, and then everything went black. And this was another time when black was most definitely not beautiful. I woke up with my face on the carpet. Man, my head hurt. I figure wife pimp must have hit me upside the head with a skillet. Then I saw a note on the shelves with a nail file stuck right through it. I was dizzy at first, but I crawled until I could pull myself up. With shaking hands I grabbed the note to read it. Dear Ho, I found me a new ho. We was writin when he was lock up.

I took all my thangs and my haf. I figger the seven hunnerd is a start on the amilony. Wife Pimp I reached into my bra and my money was gone! That was messed up beyond belief. Now I didn’t have nothing. My head hurt like crazy, I had no money, and in less than two hours Easy C was going to kill me. It was a done deal. And if I lived somehow, I was still going to have to make payments on all the stuff wife pimp took. My head must have been hurt bad when I got hit by that frying pan, ‘cause I got a crazy idea. Maybe somebody at a church could help me.

Chapter 10: Pimpin' for God I rushed right over to the First Baptist Church. I would get dizzy, so every now and then I’d have to stop until things stopped spinning. Maybe it was the damage to my head, but I wondered why in the whole world I had never heard of a Second Baptist Church. There it was up ahead, one of the nicest buildings in the ‘hood. Even outside the church I could hear it. I staggered up the steps and through the big oak doors. The inside was huge, like an indoor football stadium, with tall, thin windows and a ceiling so high that it must have had birds’ nests in it. A man sat at the front pew crying, with his shoulders shaking. I walked up quietly, padding across

the thick new carpet. “Why are you crying?” “The golf course is closed for renovation,” he sobbed. He wiped his eyes and turned to me. “I seen you on TV! You the Right Reverend Billy Graham Cracker!” “Please,” he protested, “just call me Reverend Billy Graham Cracker. How may I help you?” “You’s willing to help me, a lowdown dirty ho’?” I looked down at the hardwood floor as I ran my purse straps through my hands. “Why, of course. No matter how lowdown or dirty, a ho’ is one of God’s children that has money.” He smiled and put on his spectacles. “Oh, Reverend Billy Graham Cracker,

all my money been stole, I been whupped on twice today, been hit in the head with a skillet, wife pimp left me and cleaned out my crib.” I had to stop to catch my breath. “Child, you need to be saved.” “You got that right; at seven o’clock Easy C is gonna kill me.” “No, I’m not talking about an earthly saving, that keeps a fist from knocking out your teeth or prevents a knife from going up to the hilt into your lung. No, that’s only a temporary, physical saving.” "Temporary and physical sure sounds good to me.” The reverend sat down and guided me to sit down next to him. He rested his hand on my shoulder. “See how the devil has clouded your mind? All you can think about are the unimportant, shallow things

of this earth, like I have no money, I’ve got brain damage, somebody is going to kill me.” “But, Reverend Billy Graham Cracker, I need two thousand dollars or Easy C…” “Hush, child.” He picked up a big ass bible the size of a Chicago phone book. “The Good Book says it is better to give to than to receive. If you will give to me, uh, I mean the Lord, he will return it to you tenfold.” “'Scuse me, what’s ‘tenfold’?” “That means ten times.” “Hot damn! Oops, sorry, my bad. When do I get my money? By seven o’clock tonight?” “In the life to come.” The reverend set his hand on the opened bible and looked

up at the ceiling. “You mean I have to wait until I die?” This sounded like death insurance. He pulled down his spectacles so they sat on the tip of his nose and gave me the evil eye. “Looky here, you need to think about your eternal soul and stop being so damn greedy. You can sacrifice in this life and live high on the hog in the next, or you can live for yourself and after you die come face to face with Pimpmaster O.G.” “O.G.?” "'Omniopotent God’, and that means really powerful.” The reverend took his glasses off and stared straight into my eyes. “If you don’t live right in this life, the afterlife is gonna be one eternal bitchslap.” “But I need two g’s real bad, or…”

The reverend moved real quick for an old honky. He grabbed that huge bible with both hands and whap! –hit me right across the head, knocking me down to the carpeted aisle. “‘I want my money, harlot,’ thus saith the Lord.” Whew, Lord have mercy, my head was spinning. That was the most spiritual bitchslap ever got. As soon as I could, I got up and booked out of there.

Chapter 11: Reckoning I was as good as dead. I went back to my crib and sat on the floor, looking at nothing but the bare walls and empty shelves. My head hurt, and it wasn’t just the knot on my skull. All my life I worked hard as a ho’, paying $4500 for a car that I bought for $3000 dollars which was only worth $250. Paying $3200 for a $2500 wedding ring that was worth only $600, just so I could get a wife pimp who would take all my money and ride me to make payments on a whole mess of stuff I didn’t want and didn’t need. So to get this stuff I was turning tricks, and getting slapped by boss pimp, the stock pimp, and the tax pimp, who were taking my money –all just to get money to

take home to wife pimp and to make payments for the stuff she wanted, until the day she walks out and takes half of everything I freaked for, plus alimony and support payments. Unless I died, in which case she would get it all plus the death insurance. I was supposed to pay the death pimp and the God pimp for things I’d never get while I was still alive. And there’s no way I could pay everybody, so I went to a credit pimp, and then to another credit pimp to pay off the first, and now Easy C was fixing to kill me because I didn’t have a cent. It was the crack. That’s why nothing made sense. No, not the crack that I was on –the whole world was on crack. In fact, the earth was just a big rock floating in space, and the universe was a crack

pipe for God to smoke. A gust of wind blew through my wig, and the door slammed into the wall a split second later. “I want my money, bitch!” Easy C yelled. He stopped and looked around for a moment. “I see you sold your stuff to pay me.” I shook my head. “I ain’t got yo’ money. I ain’t got nothin’.” In one quick, powerful move, he grabbed me by both shoulders, picked me up off of the floor and slammed me into the wall. “How you gonna pay me?” His eyes were wide and bloodshot, just inches away from mine. “I don’t know.” “You gonna freak for me,” he sneered. “And then you gonna get the ass whuppin’ of yo’ life.”

“I’m done freakin’.” He looked surprised. Then he got mad. Like a rag doll he pulled me off the wall, and then slammed me back into it, again and again. Until he missed, and shoved me right through the window. It was three floors down to the alleyway. It was freaky, but as I was falling I was at peace. No more pimps, no more bitchslappings, no more payments, no more turning tricks and degrading myself for money that was never even mine. I could hear a booming voice, like it was a dream, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I’m free at last.”

Chapter 12: Don't Wanna Be a Ho' No Mo' I couldn’t see a thing; it was all dark. “So this was what it’s like to die,” I thought. Then I realized I couldn’t breathe. I pushed and clawed my way up and fought for air. I had landed head first in a dumpster. Aw, damn, I was still alive. Lying back on a bunch of trash bags, I rested. I was still shaken by the beating, by the fall, and by the stress of the whole day spent running, hustling, getting slapped, and so on. Most of all, today was hard on my mind. Nothing made sense anymore. “Are you okay?” I about jumped out of my skin. I looked over the edge of a dumpster to see a brother standing there. “You scared the

mess out of me.” “Here, let me help you down.” He stretched out his hand. “I heard the glass break here in the alleyway, so I came to check it out.” I tried to step down at first, but it’s not easy in a skirt, so I lay down on the lip of the dumpster and rolled over the top. “Man, that’s quite a fall out of that window. You’re lucky to be alive.” “I didn’t fall by myself; I got shoved. And I don’t feel so lucky to be alive.” I rested my back against the trash bin and slid down to the pavement. He knelt down beside me. “Here, have a drink.” I took a swig and spat it out. “Man, that some nasty stuff! Diet Coke! What kind of sick freak is you?”

He laughed. “I’m trying to stay in shape. Why don’t you tell me what happened?” I don’t know why I trusted this dude, or even how I could trust anybody, but I told him the whole story, from nine o’clock this morning and Easy C’s threat, right up until I got thrown out of the window. He pulled up a plastic crate, sat on it, and listened the whole time. By the time I finished there was a tear in my eye (But don’t you go tellin’ nobody). I breathed deep, and let it all out in a sigh. “I just don’t wanna be a ho’ no mo’.” Brother looked at me, and I could tell he was serious. “I can help you. If you really want out, there’s a way out.” “Why would you help me? But you ain’t got that kind of green.” I shook my

head and stared at a puddle in the asphalt. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” He looked me right in the eyes. “Nah.” I stared into his face, and there was a resemblance, but no, it couldn’t be. “Bicycle Frank?” “Yeah, that’s me.” He leaned back against the brick wall. “I was a straight-up alcoholic. Now you know how I can drink this diet mess. If you can drink Night Train Express 24/7 for three years, you can drink anything.” “Sweet baby Jesus, you’s like a whole ‘nother man.” “You got that right. I remember you giving me change when I was pedaling around on my bike. So now you know why I’m going to help you. Let me tell you how I’m going to help you.” He took a swig of

his drink, and then rested his arms between his knees. “You still don’t recognize me. Everybody called me Bicycle Frank, but my real name is Francis Green. I was a pro football player. And just like you, I was a ho’.”

Chapter 13: Bicycle Frank We were sitting in the alleyway next to the dumpster. I was amazed, more amazed than being shoved out of a third floor window and living to tell about it. “You Francis Green?” “That’s me,” he replied. “You think you’ve got problems because you don’t have cash. By now you know you don’t have to be a woman to be a ho’. You don’t have to be black and living in the ghetto. There are millions of white boys, some of them pulling in six figures who ain’t nothin’ but ho’s. I got drafted in the second round by New England. I gained almost a thousand yards in the first season, and eleven hundred in the second. I had a Nike endorsement, a commercial on TV, a crib like the Bat Cave with a lap pool in

the master bedroom. I was living large.” Francis shook his head. He crumpled his empty Coke can and tossed it over my head into the dumpster behind me. “I was nothing but a big-time ho’. You got pimped $4500 for a hoopty ride. I got pimped $45,000 for a Mercedes. You got took for three g’s on a ring; I got pimped for two hundred grand. And the tax pimp, the stock pimp, the death pimp, the preacher pimp, the wife pimp, the boss pimp, agent pimp, that whole pack of clowns, they took me too, only for a hell of a lot more money. I was getting bitchslapped left and right and didn’t even feel it.” “Aw, man, you call that problems? I wish I was getting pimped like that.” I set my purse behind my head as I leaned back

against the dumpster. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Like you, I was selling my body, taking shots from linebackers, getting hit after the whistle. Then my knee got blown out. I was sandwiched between two big ass apes – one high, one low. Just like that,” he raised his hand and snapped his fingers, “it was over.” “The cash dried up, but every pimp still wanted his money. Now I could feel the bitchslaps. I lost my house, my car, my career. Wife pimp up and left me, and took the kids. I got hit up for big-time support and alimony payments, but I was broke.” I whistled a low note. “Man, that’s messed up.” “You’re telling me. It got worse. The

last step was selling my superbowl ring; that’s when I knew it was over. I didn’t even have anything to remember it by. I didn’t want anybody to know who I was, how I hit bottom, so I became Bicycle Frank. I rode my bike and drank my wine. I was poor, but I was free.” “But look at you now.” I studied him. He was middle aged, dressed well, clean. His watch and clothes were nice, but not fancy. “For three years I wandered in the wilderness. Then one day out of nowhere I decided I wasn’t going to die like that. Some way, somehow I was going to learn how to make it in life. Come with me to the car.” I got up and followed him out of the alleyway, walking on unsteady legs. It was dark now, and he opened the trunk of

a car parked under a streetlight. He reached in and grabbed a book, which he handed to me. “It’s yours.” I looked at the cover. Live Like a Pimp: An Uncommon Guide to Uncommon Success. "A book?" “It’s all in your mind,” he pointed a finger at his head. “You’re a ho’ because you think like a ho’, and you’re willing to settle for being one.” “Why are you giving this to me?” “Because I used to be like you. And this is my mission; it’s why I get up in the morning. It’s why I pass on the Night Train when I feel like having a drink.” He opened the door and got into his ride. As he drove away I thought, “Maybe there’s hope for me.”

If you enjoyed Live Like a Pimp, please go to Amazon.com and leave a reader review --I'd really appreciate it. Please check out these other titles by Max Vance:

Fiction With My Clothes On What happens when a legend of the adult movie industry decides to become a school teacher? Sammy Atmeijian, better known as Rod Long, decides to leave the adult movie industry for a job with dignity, something he can do with his clothes on. He returns home to central California, and tries to forge a teaching career and a

relationship with his attractive co-worker Linda, all without the benefit of a script. Teaching is harder than he thought it was. Soon his secret past threatens to destroy his new career and relationship. To the Third Generation Jerry Lavery, the colorblind son of the most powerful family in the isolated town of Amity, Idaho, tries to run away from the child he fathered, only to kill the sheriff's daughter in a drunk driving accident. His suspicion of behind-the-scenes maneuvering deepens when he discovers a fetus in a jar bearing his name and birth date. Jerry begins to suspect that the growing number of colorblind men in town are not just strangers, but his brothers. Fighting to clear his name and to

reclaim the love of his high school sweetheart, in the end he must confront the matriarch of the Lavery family to break the legacy of evil.

Self-Help and Motivation HCG Diet Recipes: More Taste, Less Hunger The HCG Diet is a powerful diet that gets rapid results. The only catch is that the permitted foods are extremely limited, and sticking to the diet can be an ordeal. Now the book HCG Diet Recipes: More Taste, Less Hunger updates the fifty year old diet with delicious, filling recipes that still closely adhere to Dr. Simeons low-fat, low-calories diet. I lost 18 pounds in 21 days on this

diet, and there's no reason you can't lose as much or more, while enjoying tasty meals and feeling as full as possible on fewer calories. Groundhog Day: Secrets of Success and Seduction from the Classic Movie The classic movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray represents the life of the common man all too well --stuck in a rut that he cannot escape. But the movie also provides a blueprint for the frustrated man to escape his repetitious prison life. The book Groundhog Day: Secrets of Success and Seduction from the Classic Movie explains those lessons at length. Among those lessons you will learn the following concepts: The Groundhog Day Syndrome, and its

symptoms The power of engagement Winning through altruism Don't drive angry The Gunwitch method of instant rapport with women The Juggler method of success by social proof Effortless seduction: Be the Prize All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Jail I was terrified of going to jail. I shouldn't have been. Much to my surprise, my time in jail turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. I learned a lot from the many inmates I met, like: “The Miracle Man,” who came out of a coma so deep that his fingernails and

toenails had fallen out A slow-motion ecstasy user who wants to go to clown college The illiterate heroin user with a Mohawk, few teeth, and acid reflux A construction worker who witnessed two murders “Jailhouse Christians,” who are drug dealers out of jail, but devout Christians once they're locked up The mentally retarded inmate locked up for sexual assault Elvis, who was sentenced to a year in jail for buying beer The heroin-addicted drug counselor who woke up in his car soaking wet, not knowing how he got there All I Really Need to Know I Learned

in Jail is not only a fascinating read, but you will learn valuable lessons, such as: You Don't Need Underwear Don't Stick a Pencil in Your Eye Never Waste a Miracle Refuse to Wear the Helmet Don't Play with Guns Know Why You're Locked Up