Free Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle by Booker T Huffman, Andrew William Wright Page B

manicured and painted with a high gloss. Meanwhile, I sat there with my chin resting on my hands, watching everything he did.
    From my privileged place under Butch’s wing, I heard the other pimps in the barbershop exchanging random stories about their girls and talking about the pros and cons of the game. One bragged about having a white chick in his stable. He said of all his girls, she made most of the bread. All these black dudes got a big kick out of the fact that he was selling a white girl’s body for his profit. In their eyes, she was white gold.
    I felt like Sinbad traveling the Seven Seas listening to salty pirates spinning tales of their conquering voyages. After being trapped in my little tiny comfort zones of Sunnyside and South Park for years under my mom’s protective watch, I was experiencing the real world through these pimps’ stories. This was far beyond what I had been exposed to while around my sisters. Now I was seeing it from the view of the men in charge of Carolyn’s and Billie Jean’s worlds.
    Watching Butch’s showmanship influenced the way I acted at school. Even though I was still barely attending, when I did go I always thought of myself as being like Butch and his pimpin’ friends. Thanks to the cash he threw my way, I had the sweetest clothes—the hottest cowboy boots money could buy, designer bell-bottoms with the sharpest creases down the fronts, and entire dresser drawers of short-sleeved IZOD Lacoste shirts with the little crocodile on them. I even had a meticulously sprayed and maintained Jheri curl, which was the highest level of cool at the time. Compared to the other kids in their ratty jeans and untied sneakers, I felt like a man among children.
    The other students were like, “Wow, what’s he into? Booker’s gotta be loaded.”
    I had flash and balls and sauntered around like I owned the place. It was all a big game to me. I thought,
If I can fake my way through life, why the hell not?
    That’s when I considered pursuing Butch’s offer to take on his career path. The only part I didn’t like and couldn’t see myself getting down with was beating the women. I still had nightmares over some of what I had seen. And sometimes I overheard Carolyn talking about some girl found dead in an alleyway or Billie mentioning a girl who never came home again. It was a lot to come to terms with.
    As much as I may have fantasized about the grandiose ideas of running the streets like Butch, not once did I take him up on his offer. No matter how hard the dark side was pulling me, deep down I really wanted to do the right thing.
    Sure, I saw riches and respect. It was a way of life that had lured in many a lost soul, but I also knew it did not always work out for guys as it had for Butch.
    My sister Gayle once had a small-time pimp named Gene. He was a real rags-to-riches brother. Starting with nothing, he set up his business with about four or five girls. Soon he was tricked out with the flashy jewelry and the Cadillac. For quite a while, Gene was a man about town, really making it. The dude was an impressive success. Then out of nowhere, he just kind of disappeared without a trace.
    Well, a couple of years later, we were driving around and came up to a red light and there was this guy looking horrible, dressed in rags, propped up on cardboard boxes against the wall. “Hey, man, can I have some money for food?” he said. “I’m cold and starving. Please help me.” It was a pathetic sight.
    It took me a second to recognize this guy with his overgrown beard and those glazed-over eyes, but the shape of his face and the sound of his voice were clear. It was Gene. This man who had seemed to have it all figured out was curling up for the night in a little shanty made of boxes and garbage.
    When I later asked Butch what had happened, he told me Gene had committed the cardinal sin of getting high on his own supply. While making additional money selling drugs, Gene had taken them himself. In