Pimp: The Story of My Life

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, sexual violence, child abuse, child sexual abuse, death by suicide, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, cursing, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and death.

“There was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. Nothing during that day that I heard or saw that prepared me for the swift, confusing events that over the weekend would slam my life away from all that was good to all that was bad.”

Slim looks back on his mother’s decision to leave Henry as the most pivotal moment of his childhood: the one that changed the entire trajectory of his life. Slim and his mother lived a stable life with Henry, but it became clear that Slim’s mother had no real interest in Henry. When she left Henry for an abusive man named Steve, Slim’s life was never stable again. He developed a severe mistrust for women and carried feelings of betrayal through his life. This dynamic demonstrates The Relationship Between Crime and Trauma.

“I was sopping up the poison of the street like a sponge.”

Here, Slim combines metaphor and simile to create a powerful image of the process of being corrupted by street life and the sex work industry. Slim refers to the ideals of the pimping world as poison because he believes that this setting infected his mind and transformed him into an abusive, hateful man. Slim uses the sponge metaphor to describe the impressionable nature of his youthful mindset, and his use of alliteration adds a poetic flow to his prose.