Guido x 2

[Wilson Gray]

Mark writes, quoting the OED:

"Now: a man who takes a proportion of the
earnings of a prostitute, usually in return for arranging clients, providing
protection, etc."

Perhaps the OED, regarding it as unnecessary, neglected to add, "a
[white English]man ..." Otherwise, this definition of pimping is a
pernicious lie or an error that beggars description. A pimp has no
motivation whatsoever to do anything *for* a whore in return for his
money, when doing something *to* his whore accomplishes the same end
with less bother.

I realize that I'm fighting a losing battle, here, but the generosity
shown pimps by posters and the works cited by posters on this listserv
is astounding beyond belief.

I don't personally know anything about white pimps, but I have read
several paperback bios by the former whores of white pimps. Naturally,
I realize that this means nothing, because anybody can say or write
anything about the game. Who's to know the truth? Indeed, what I'm
about to write, to the best knowledge of my readers, could likewise be
sheer fantasy. Sadly, it definitely is not.

And, of course, I have no reason to doubt what those few educated
Englishmen of 400 or 500 years ago who knew how to write and whose
writings have survived the centuries considered pimps to be.

Amongst the colored, there's a "joke" between 50 and 100 years old:

Q. Is pimping easy or is it hard?

A1) It's easy.

A2) It's hard.

Q. That's right.

It would probably take too much, probably dull, exposition to explain
the point of this joke. So, I'll just go back to my original point.

The sentence beginning with "Now" and ending with "etc." is blatant -
probably too weak an adjective - nonsense - probably too weak a noun.

A whore gives a pimp *all* of his [sic] money, solely in order to
avoid what George Orwell, in his book, 1984, succinctly described
simply as "[physical] pain." He gives *none* of his money back for any
reason. He doesn't lawyer a whore up or pay her fine to keep her out
of jail. He doesn't pay her rent. He doesn't buy her food. He doesn't
provide her clothing. He doesn't even bother to provide sex. (A whore
lame enough to let tricks get her off is/was? derisively referred to
as a "come-freak.") A pimp is not a "trick." He does *not* fuck
whores. If he gets his money, then a pimp is down with that. If he
doesn't get his money, then a pimp provides a beating that is nothing
less than torture, even if it means that the woman has to do her
whoring on crutches or with an arm in a sling for a couple of weeks.

Random books by white whores that I've read describe a similar
lifestyle. One woman described a beating by her (white) pimp that was
so bad that she urinated on herself.

Supposedly semi-academic works like Black Players disgust me. Yet,
people both black and white read such books and apparently come away
feeling something like, "Damn! Who knew that pimps were so cool?!"

I may be wrong, since I was able only to glance at Black Players
before my gorge began to rise, but I think that I recall a place where
the female co-author kinda sorta maybe just a little bit brags that
one of "their" pimps told her that she was so fine that he would be
honored to have her in his stable. I nearly blew chunk.

Pimping is a game. No pimp cares what a whore looks like or how old
she is. The only requirement is that the whore give the pimp his
money. *Nothing* else concerns him. How the idea ever came about that
a pimp is merely a variety of gigolo - though I once foolishly
internalized this definition of pimping myself - or perhaps a kind of
panderer, came about, I have no idea. I once read a novel by a black
author who seriously wrote that the book's pimp-character controlled
his whores with his willingness to perform cunnilingus on them. It's
said that you can't make this stuff up, but, clearly, people do.

WRT to the whores, they undergo a kind of basic training or boot camp,
called "breaking-in" in the game, in which they have their minds, not
to mention their bodies, bent until they fully understand their
responsibilities to "Daddy" and fully understand that Daddy has no
responsibilities to them. Only then is she put on the  block. (A
little pimp humor: "on the block" in the sense of her place of
business X "on the block" in the sense of her being for sale.) She's
no more likely to run off or to call the police than an abused wife.
Like abusive husbands, pimps have been said to hunt down and mutilate
or kill run-aways. This I "know" only from novels, TV, Reader's
Digest, and gossip. But I have no trouble believing it, based on what
I do know.

-Wilson, In whose experience pimping is hard


On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Guido x 2
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4:16 PM -0500 1/23/10, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>IMHO, euphemism. It has evolved somewhat, but not that far. OED's relevant
>>def., with cites from the first to the time of yours.
>>
>>     1. a. Originally: a person who arranges opportunities for (illicit)
>>sexual intercourse; a procurer. Now: a man who takes a proportion of the
>>earnings of a prostitute, usually in return for arranging clients, providing
>>protection, etc.
>>
>>1600 B. JONSON Euery Man out of his Humor III. i. sig. Iiiv, Punt. What is
>>he for a Creature? Car. A Pimpe, a Pimpe, that I haue obseru'd yonder, the
>>rarest Superficies of a Humor.
>>1666 S. PEPYS Diary 10 June (1972) VII. 159 The Duke of York is wholly given
>>up to his new mistress... Mr. Brouncker it seems was the pimp to bring it
>>about.
>>1711 R. STEELE Spectator No. 51. {page}6 He has been used as a Pimp to
>>ravishing Tyrants, or successful Rakes.
>>1780 W. COWPER Progress of Error 326 Ye pimps..Who fasten without mercy on
>>the fair, And suck, and leave a crawling maggot there.
>>1825 Mariners' Mag. 17 Sept. 226 The moment a vessel lands, these landlords
>>and their pimps stand ready to conduct the sailors where the greatest
>>inducements to debauchery and intemperance exist.
>>1871 B. TAYLOR tr. Goethe Faust (1875) I. xi. 135 A fitter woman ne'er was
>>made To ply the pimp and gypsey trade.
>>[...]
>>
>>What's GB?
>
> Google Books (in this context).
>
> So a pimp was a pander(er) before he began to specialize as above.
>
> LH
>>
>>
>>On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>  Now, for "pimp": did the term evolve over the tears? An 1874 dictionary
>>>  on GB lists pimp (n.) as "a man who provides gratification for the lust
>>>  of others". Is this a euphemism or did the meaning really change?
>>>
>>>      VS-)
>>>
>>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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