Dangerously, I was frantic to sock it into every young girl weak enough to go for it. I had to run for my life one evening when an enraged father caught me on his back porch punching animal-like astraddle his daughter’s head. I had become impatient with the unusual thickness of her maidenhead.
2. FIRST STEPS INTO THE JUNGLE
The slide was greased. I was starting my long plunge to the very bottom of the grim pit. I guess my trip downward really was cinched when I met a petty hustler who was very likeable and we became pals.
My hustler pal was called Party Time. By the time he was twentythree he had done four bits in the joint. On each fall he had been jacked up for either strong-arm robbery or till tapping.
He got his moniker hung on him because as soon as he scored for scratch he would make fast tracks to the nearest underworld bar.
When he got inside the door he would shout, “All right you poor ass bastards, it’s party time and Joe Evans is in port with enough scratch to burn up a wet elephant. All you studs stop playing stink finger with these long-cock whores and everybody belly up to the log and get twisted on me.”
His flat African features were pasted to a skull that could have belonged to a cave man. He was short, powerful, and shiny black.
He was ugly enough to “break daylight with his fist,” but for some curious reason he was irresistible to many of the thrill-seeking white women who sneaked into the black side of town panting as they chased after that hoary myth, “Nigger men do it so good it thrills you to your toe nails.”
There was a Fast sheet joint with the trick rooms in the rear, right on the alley. I was peeping one night into one through a frayed shade when I saw Party Time for the first time.
My eyes were bugging when I saw the tall viking type white man, his tiny, but voluptuous female white companion and Party Time taking their clothes off. Finally they stood there naked. I could see their lips moving so I pressed my ear and eye sideways against the window that was open a couple of inches at the top to get the sound.
The white joker was tenderly hefting Party Time’s weapon in his hand like maybe it was Ming Dynasty Pottery. He said excitedly to the broad, “Oh! Honey, can you believe the size, the beauty of it!”
In the glow of the room’s red light, that broad looked like an animated portrait by Da Vinci. Her eyes were blue fire in her passion. She purred like a Persian kitten and pounced onto the bed.
Party Time stood at the side of the bed looking down at her. He was an ebony executioner. His horizontal axe cast a cruel shadow across the snowy peaks, rose tipped.
My trouser front was tented as I pressed even tighter against the window. I had never seen anything like this back in Rockford. Then to my amazed ears, the white man said a strange thing as he pulled a chair to the end of the bed and sat on the very edge of it.
He was breathing hard when he said, “All right now Boy, stab it into her, hurt her, punish her, crucify her, good Boy! Good Boy!”
The broad looked so fragile and helpless to my naive eyes that I felt a pang of pity pulse inside me as she moaned and whimpered in painful pleasure beneath the black demon savagely pile driving between the jerking white legs jack-knifed, imprisoned behind the sweating, hunching black shoulders.
Like he was trying to make a home Party Time was asking in a hoarse voice over and over, “Beautiful Bitch, is it good? Beautiful Bitch, is it good?”
The white man was an odd, funny sight as he raced around the arena like a demented Caesar, cheering on his merciless black gladiator.
Finally when the show was over and they started to dress, I went to the front and sat on a stoop next door to the joint. I wanted to get a close up of the freaks.
When they got to the sidewalk, in their street clothes, they were disappointingly normal. Just a clean-cut white couple having a parting chat with a grinning, black Negro.
The mixed-up couple went down the sidewalk away from me. Party Time came toward me. He didn’t notice me sitting on the stoop. I was itching with curiosity, so I hit on him when he came abreast. It startled him. His face got stiff.
I said, “Hey Jack, how you doing? That sure is a fine silk girl, huh? You got a square to spare?”
He fished a cigarette from his red shirt pocket, handed it to me and said, “Yeh Kid, she’s fine as a Valentine. Two sights I ain’t never seen and that is a pretty bulldog, and an ugly white woman.”
He was spouting cliches, but to a small town boy he came off witty as Hell. I was in that brain-picking mood so I put the snow machine into high gear to hold him. My eyes bucked in mock awe as I lit the square.
I said, “Thanks Man, for the square. Christ! That’s a sporty vine you got on. I wish I could dress like you. You sure are clean aplenty.”
He took the bait like a rapist in a nudist colony for the blind. He flopped down on the stoop beside me. He poked his chest out, his eyes flashing like a pin-ball machine gone haywire, as he got ready to open up. He hiked the pants legs of his green checked suit to his calves to show his blood red socks.
The huge zircon on his right pinky glittered under the street lamp as he cracked his knuckles and said, “Kid, my name is Party Time. I am the best flat-footed hustler in town. Money loves me and can’t stay away from me. You see that fine silk broad, I got a double saw to lay her. Course that ain’t nothing, it happens all the time. I could be one of the greatest pimps in the country if I was lazy and didn’t have so much good hustler in me.”
I sat there listening to his bullshit until two A.M. He was likable and I was hungry for a pal. He was an orphan and he had just done a two-year bit straight up, his fourth, two months before. He had a head full of wild risky hustles he wanted to try. He needed a partner. He tried all of them on me for size.
I got home at two-twenty. About one minute later I heard Mama’s key in the door. She had served a banquet for her white folks. I just made it into bed with all my clothes on, when she came to look in on me. I was snoring like a drunk with a sick sinus when she kissed me goodnight.
I lay thinking in the darkness until daybreak, putting myself into, and trying to size myself into one of those quick buck schemes that Party had plotted. When the sun came up fat and bright I knew I would give Party’s version of the Murphy a whirl. I didn’t know his version was crude and dangerous, and only a weak imitation of the real Murphy.
Years later I discovered that the Murphy, when played by experts, was a smooth short con game with a slight risk. In any section where Negro whores operate white men will flock to trick with them.
I met Party several times after school at a pool room. He ran my role down to me and the next Friday night we got down with our hustle. Mama was serving a party so I could stay in the streets until at least one A.M.
Around ten that night in an alley in the heart of the vice section, Seventh and Vliet Sts., we unwrapped the package that Party had brought. I rolled up my pants legs beyond my bony knees. I slipped into the twenty-five cent red-cotton dress from the Salvation Army.
I put on the frayed red satin high-heel shoes. I pinned a scraggly piece of hair just inside the front inner band of the faded blue straw bonnet. When I tilted it on my head at a sexy angle, the ringlets of uneven hair hung down over my eyes like bangs.
I stood wide legged, flexed my thigh and hip muscles against the tight red dress, aping the whores stance.
Party looked me over head to toe. I was wondering how I came off as a broad. He shook his head, hunched his shoulders and walked toward the mouth of the alley to catch a sucker.
I got the answer when be reached the sidewalk. He twisted his bead toward me and said, “Listen Man, stay outta the light, okay?”
Within five minutes he gave me the office that some action was coming down the street. I watched Party giving the pitch to a short elderly white man. I wondered if I had enough voltage as a broad to come through with my end of the deal.
