The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim (15 page)

The older guy jumps from his machine in the street and races to the trunk. A female companion leaps out behind him and tearfully tries to dissuade him from opening the trunk, where perhaps he has stashed some deadly weapon.

The younger guy explodes into action and speeds down the driveway in his car. As he passes the struggling couple, he says with eerie sweetness, “Don't split, baby. I'll be right back.”

The older guy gesticulates and prances about for a few seconds before roaring away. Before the racket of his leaving has died, the young guy wheels back into his driveway, and within ten minutes starts to hose down his car. The older guy barrels back seconds later and stands menacingly in the street glaring up the driveway at the young guy, who steps away from cover to stand defiantly staring at his opponent.

There is a patient, ominous looseness in the young guy's body, like that of killer gunslingers in the Old West. As he slouches there with hands on hips, I notice a curvy bulge at his belt line near the small of his back above the flowing tail of his shirt. The cemetery
radiations from the young guy are so powerful that the older guy lets himself be persuaded by a pal to cop a heel after a bit of halfhearted threats and profanity.

Fortunately, in this set-to between black men, there was no bloodshed. But usually the tragic reverse is true. It is not surprising that black men imprisoned in the ghettos of America use one another as substitute objects upon which to vent the rage and hatred they feel for the white man.

* * *

I am still cooling it on the sofa when a dear old friend, an elderly domestic worker, comes to visit. She has a decision to make, and she wants advice. She is excited because she has received a letter from a so-called black man of God who virtually promises to wipe away all earthly problems for her if she will send to an Eastern post office box a donation of ten to one hundred dollars for a prayer cloth.

Religious hustlers white and black suck the sweat and blood money from superstitious, elderly ghetto residents and from poor whites. These vultures have talents and morals inferior even to those of admitted hustlers and con men in the street. The pimp at least victimizes alert young people who conceivably will have time left in life to cast off the pimp's evil spell and to recoup financially and emotionally. The con man bilks victims who are not paupers and who are looking for something for nothing. In my opinion, even the force-oriented character of the stickup man is superior to that of the craven religious hustler. The bandit puts his life on the line and faces his usually armed victim baldly and boldly and with noble recklessness.

The religious shark preys on the poor, the lame, the blind, the hopeless, the aged, the near senile, the sick, the dying. He shoots fish in a barrel. He hasn't the guts and intellect to go out and play his con against some kind of threat, challenge and risk. And he is so limited, so bereft of creative ideas, he has to use God as a prop.

My dear friend handed me the prayer cloth letter. It read:

The Prayer Cloth may be laid upon the sick, placed in the bed, or carried on the person. It may also be used in other ways, and for many kinds of blessings as your faith may direct you. As you use the Prayer Cloth, think in your mind that this represents me, the MAN OF GOD, laying my hands upon you and praying the prayer of faith for you. EXPECT the answer as you use the Prayer Cloth. In fact, if you believe, the Prayer Cloth will be just like the hands of Jesus being laid upon you!

One Prayer Cloth may be cut into many small pieces and used in many different places, or by many different people. EVERY THREAD is blessed by prayer and faith in Jesus' name.

FOR PEACE OR A BLESSING IN THE HOME—Place the Prayer Cloth in some secret place in the home. It represents the prayers of the MAN OF GOD for your home, and the presence of God to bless your home.

IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW SOILED OR WORN the Prayer Cloth gets, it still brings results if used in faith. It may be washed if desired.

FOR FINANCIAL OR MATERIAL BLESSINGS it may be carried in the purse or pocketbook. Carry it when you go looking for a job, or to transact business, or to court. It will represent the presence and power of God going with you in these matters.

FOR THE SALVATION OF LOVED ONES, AND THE DELIVERANCE OF THOSE WITH BAD HABITS LIKE DRINKING, USING DOPE, ETC.—Place the Prayer Cloth or a piece of it under, in or about their beds, or wherever they sleep, or wherever they SHOULD be sleeping. Let it be a secret. I gave one lady a Prayer Cloth for her husband who was
drinking badly and told her to put it under his mattress. She came back later and said, “I placed the Cloth under my husband's mattress and he quit drinking, but he found the Prayer Cloth and went back to drinking!” So let this be a secret.

THOSE WHO WANT TO STOP USING TOBACCO—Carry or keep the Prayer Cloth on you where you usually keep tobacco, and trust God to take the desire away.

PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT SEND ANY CLOTH OR ANYTHING TO BE BLESSED. LET ME SEND YOU MY OWN PRAYER CLOTH AND BLESSINGS.

* * *

I advised my old friend until my voice got hoarse against sending part of her rent money for the prayer cloth. Finally, reluctantly, she agreed that, in view of her great faith in God, buying a prayer cloth from a far-off stranger would really be an indictment of that faith and a painful extravagance.

* * *

Mama's warmth, inner beauty, intelligence, sweetness and thoughtfulness as a mother and human being are reflected in old letters, photographs and other dusty memorabilia she had hoarded and treasured through the seasons of her life. I'm joined by an enthralled spectator as I open Mama's ancient steamer trunk with its welter of faded stickers plastered on in dozens of bustling baggage rooms in the early gypsy years of our lives.

Ah! Here is a photograph of me at twenty-two in full rainbow pimp regalia. Slumberously evil eyes stare into the camera with an odd malevolence, perhaps due to the powerful “speed ball” (heroin and cocaine in combination) I had mainlined a half hour before I sat for the photographer.

My wee one shudders in mock repulsion at the image of the dapper predator with the insane eyes and hollers, “He ugly! He ugly!” And I feel glad that my pimp image repels her.

Here is another old group photograph of my kindergarten class, taken on the school yard with a background of blooming apple trees adazzle with snowy blossoms. On my left is a moonfaced Italian kid named Joe, my close pal. And on my right is a towering, fierce-faced, bully Polish kid with a lantern jaw thrust out, a feared enemy. That was until one soggy summer day (two, three years after the photograph) he put the strong arm on me for a bag of tootsie rolls, and in the scuffle he lumped my eye and put me to rout with tears and snot flowing.

Mama viewed my defeat and flight not only as a craven trait surfacing in her only child, but also as a symbolic transgression against and a humiliation of the whole black race. She psyched me up for victory in the return match by the simple expedient of filling me with the terror that she would murder me if I did not vanquish the bully.

She marched me toward combat, and we spotted him slingshot sniping at a pigeon with a broken wing down near the Rockford, Illinois, gas house. I saw a possible equalizer for the superior size and strength of the bully in a length of rusty pipe in the gutter. I darted for it and seized it, but Mama shook her head resolutely and unpiped me, an action which deepened my suspicion that she had gone bats.

Lantern Jaw had his usual fear-branded audience of scared kids around, and I was dizzy with fright as Mama nudged me up to the brawny kid who kept getting bigger and bigger. I was just standing there when Mama suddenly shoved me hard against the bully. He cuffed me against the side of the head; a quick look back over my shoulder at Mama's doomsday face was enough to send me into an attack orgy of rage, fear and excitement sufficient to overwhelm the bully and send him fleeing into the wind. I vividly remember that the cheers were thunderous, and so was my berserk heartbeat.

Here is one of me taken in the lap of a department store Santa Claus. Those were joyous days despite the obsessive dreaming and desiring for wondrous, impossible things that I never got—like the gentle pony, Bo Mee, with great golden-flecked eyes that I
possessed and loved for so many years, in my dreams. Perhaps for me, a black kid, one reason why those days were joyous was because as a child I was not aware of this country's exclusion of most black people from the possibility of living its good life. I could still feel a pang of pride when I heard “America the Beautiful” or “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Of all the horrendous maimings of the black man's psyche by America's racism, I believe it is the early crushing and destroying of this heady, vital sense of proprietary pride and emotional kinship with one's country which ranks as one of the most lamentable and disastrous.

Here is a photograph of a jet-black luscious siren now known as the Black Duchess among dope dealers in the East. When she was a girl I stole her from a shoe clerk in Chicago and “turned her out.” She was the Duchess of Doom for the lovesick clerk. He couldn't live without her. He blew his brains out a week after she left him. I kept her ninety-six hours. I lament that it had to be me who stole her and his life.

I'm looking now at a picture of a dear first cousin of mine taken at a bottle-covered table in a Milwaukee bar twenty years ago. She is seated with drinking buddies, her babyish face not yet hardened by whiskey and merciless life. She had musical ability but her whiskey-mauled mind suffered too much trauma too soon to allow her to use it successfully.

I looked down at her in her coffin year before last and the once softly-rounded, light tan doll was a sunken, blackened specter. Here is a yellowed half sheet of music and lyrics clipped to her picture. It was her last creative effort. It's title?—“Let's Go Get Stoned.”

Here is another of ten-year-old me taken in the backyard of one of the happiest houses I have ever lived in as child or man. Henry, my stepfather, a man beautiful inside but rather odd-looking outside, lived there. And because of his presence it had to be one of the most unhappy houses Mama ever lived in.

Three white buddies are standing beside me with the summer jade glory of weeping willow trees in the background. The four of us were inseparable at school, on hiking and small game hunting trips, and in and out of one another's homes visiting and eating.

But one day in one vital and irreconcilable area of childhood activity they discriminated against me, and barred me from participation. It was spring, and my fresh young heart had burst forth in goofy passion for a lispy black beauty who lived on the other side of the viaduct. My three pals and I had just had a ball dislodging rocks in my backyard and capturing garden snakes when suddenly, in a mysterious manner, they left me separately.

I sat alone at the edge of the backyard, idly tossing pebbles into the creek below and, perhaps turned on by the hulaing of the willows, decided to visit the lovely fox across the viaduct. It turned out that I got only a brief but prickly peek at her in a pink bathing suit as she waved and got into her father's car on the way to the beach.

As I started back across the span, I looked down absentmindedly at the railroad cars and the wooded section along the creek. I got a flash of towheads in triplicate among the trees, and decided to join my pals in whatever new adventure was about. I sneaked through the trees to surprise them. I came upon them in a little clearing. Their naked bodies were beaded from a dip in the creek as they stood in a tight circle on the bank frantically masturbating. I stayed concealed and entertained for a few moments before slipping away . . . the shocked young victim of a unique racial discrimination.

* * *

On the Fourth of July, I idly flip the television dial and am treated to an excavated spook, scripted and motivated by the mercenary medium to play his part in a patriotic “Honor America Day.”

Reverend E. V. Hill, the spook, proceeds to do his thing.

He shouts into the microphones with the piercing desperation of one of the multitudes of black lynching victims in America's gory history crying out against the slicing off of his genitals, “This is my
beautiful country! This is our wonderful country! America, for you we will fight and die!”

I wonder how many of the poverty-crushed members of the preacher's congregation see America through his rose-tinted nigger eyes? The preacher is succeeded by a young white woman with straw-colored hair and a wretchedly pitched voice, vapidly informing nigger me that America is great because of the vast numbers of life insurance policies in effect here, etc.

I think of the thousands of black people who don't even score for daily grits and greens, of the uncounted thousands who have been hurled into pauper ovens for cremation or piled into graves in potter's field.

Disgusted, I try the radio. The lush, mellifluous voice of a black balladeer caresses the air. The possessor of the voice, still handsome in middle age, has everything needed to join the Tom Jones and the Humperdincks in the rarified heights of a vocal superstardom except a white face.

He is Arthur Prysock, and he is one of the many physically attractive, magnetic black male performers who have been the victims of powerful white racists in key entertainment positions and publicity media.

Only rarely does a black performer (like Harry Belafonte) with erotic radiations slip past the rules of the entertainment industry into true stardom and financial security. Those black male performers whose erotic voltage is comfortingly low, or nonexistent, stand a far better chance of making it big.

An even more ghastly denial is the systematic destruction of the true, vital heroes of the black race—men like Paul Robeson, Jack Johnson, W. E. B. Dubois and more recently Muhammad Ali, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The technique has been to deform and butcher the victim's image and character in the communications media and in the double-standard judicial slaughterhouses.