Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Health & Body

The joys of anorexia
Not everyone is destroyed by eating disorders.
By Georgie Binks
[01/27/00]

Health Urge: Nancy Chan
Sacrificial boyfriend
Sometimes awful, selfish, hurtful lying is the nicest thing a girl can do.
By Tracy Quan
[01/27/00]

Urge: Naked World
Beauty and the beak
Philippine women turn to nasal inserts for longer, "whiter" noses.
By Hank Hyena
[01/27/00]

Column
Turning orange
Raw carrot abuse is nothing to laugh at.
By Mary Roach
[01/28/00]

Urge: Naked World
Ugandan sex slaves released
After four years of sexually servicing rebel soldiers, kidnapped Catholic schoolgirls are finally freed.
By Hank Hyena
[01/28/00]

Complete archives for Health & Body

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Don Juan is one of hundreds of men attending the Players Ball, Chicago's annual gathering of pimps and their stable of prostitutes. The party has been a November tradition since 1974, when bell-bottomed macks or pimps, from Milwaukee and Chicago, first gathered to celebrate Don Juan's birthday with drinking and dancing. "The Players Ball brings people together to recognize that pimpin' is hard work, despite what the public thinks," Don Juan rasps in his whiskey-stale voice.

"The ball appreciates the blood, sweat and tears it takes for a guy with a third-grade education to be driving a Rolls and wearing diamonds." The event, billed as an international competition although foreigners rarely show, is always held at a Chicago nightclub and it is a party, not a pageant. There is no onstage parade of pimps in crushed velvet evening wear, no macks strutting in Speedo swimsuits.

Since Don founded the ball, it's probably no coincidence that he was pimp of the year for 13 consecutive years. The voting process is scientifically arbitrary: A month before the ball, Don and his cronies meet for drinks and argue over which mack made the most money and the biggest name for himself that year. "The criteria for winning is what we call the 365-day-a-year workout," Don explains. "It's all about activity: your bankroll, what kinda car you drive, did you buy a big house, lemme see your jewelry."

Flashy homes, clothes and jewels are how pimps flaunt their success and lure more prostitutes to their stable. "Being named pimp of the year is based on how well you are known and respected, how wise you are to picking up the tricks of the trade," Don adds. "It's like the Academy Awards: If you win, you get more girls, your light be able to shine." To punctuate his words, Don waves cigar-fat fingers weighted by diamond knuckle-dusters that spell "Magic" and "Juan."

In order not to bruise a pimp's peach of an ego, there are many categories: If you're not "No. 1 International Pimp of the Year," you might walk away with a trophy for being a "No. 1 Super Player" or the "No. 1 Boss Player."

At the November 2000 ball, a millennial mack will be chosen. It may be someone like Scorpio, who was pimp of the year in 1998. It's incomprehensible that this doe-eyed, candy-voiced man is a pimp; he looks like he should be liberating dolphins trapped by tuna nets. How can he be pimp of the year, next to a shark like Good Game, who looks like he was conceived in a Caddie and teethed with gold-capped incisors.

Scorpio may not be the sharpest-dressed pimp -- his orange and gold paisley lamé suit looks like it was stitched from Howard Johnson drapes -- but he's a harbinger of the new millennium, a politically correct pimp who eschews whips and hangers, yet manages to keep his women in pocket. "Ain't nothin' I like better than a happy hooker," Scorpio purrs to his stable of six girls. "Long as you're happy, I'm happy."

Pimps eyeball at the ball, passing out business cards like candy. The first rule of the pimp game is: Don't let your woman look at another pimp. "Because if she look at another pimp and she like him, your money stopped," explains Pimpin' Ken, a 34-year-old college-educated mack from Milwaukee who majored in business and sociology. Ken also likes to brag about having a Ph.D. in Pimpin' Ho's.

Pimpin' Ken claims that history justifies his job; prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, he says. But a historical precedent of slavery, as these African-American pimps should acknowledge, does not make slavery acceptable. When they talk about their girls, they believe in free will, saying, "She chose me; no one's forcing her to do this." But when it comes to their own careers, pimps believe in fate. Their disenfranchised youth is to blame; they had no choice but pimping or dealing drugs.

Scorpio is considered a "gentleman pimp" for his hands-off approach. Then there are mother pimps, who coddle the girls, and dope fiend pimps, who inoculate theirs. A whore's job is to break a pimp down, Ken says, and a nagging prostitute makes a pimp beat her. "But you can only beat a person for so long," he adds. "I tried, but it wasn't easy to jump on someone and then sleep next to her. When I look at most women, I have to consider my mother and the love that I have for her; if it weren't for that, I'd probably be just as cold and callous as other pimps."

Now Ken is into space-age pimping, where the philosophy is that a woman stays because of choice, not force. He has to control a woman's mind without physical abuse by selling her a dream. "Besides," he adds, "if you beat a woman and destroy her face, how can she get your money?"

Next page | Don found God while watching a televangelist on PCP