Making love is something to be shared… with multiple partners and cocaine.

So I nudged the other girlies off my shoulder
Went for Tootie cuz the girl was much older
East to the Benz, I slowly walked;
Clearing out my throat so I could start my smooth talk
Sex in my mind, I was sure of it…
I wanted to tax that ass like the government!
Anything goes when it comes to hoes, they go:
Pimpin’ ain’t easy, pimpin’ ain’t easy
Well, it’s Friday night, ain’t a damn thing funny —
Bitch better have my money.
“Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy”; ‘It’s A Big Daddy Thing’, Big Daddy Kane (1993)

$15 Bucks And She’ll Do Whatever…

How fucked does your life have to get where spending your early mornings riding your ten-speed, trolling for johns who will have sex with your wife, makes sense? The last few months I lived in Toronto was in a rooming house in Etobicoke, which is only nominally a part of the City. Generally, after a night out with friends, the regular transit service would be done, so I’d walk for a couple of hours out of downtown until I found one of the 24-hour buses.The after-hours bus service in Toronto — the “Vomit Comet” or “Blue Light Special” — was not worth waiting for.

On the early morning walk home, which was actually very enjoyable and went through a minimal number of gang areas, I’d occasionally run into the Bicycle Pimp and his Walking Hooker. The first time he asked if I wanted to fuck his wife startled me, but I just said “no thanks” and kept walking. A few weeks later, after I said “no”, he asked for a couple of cigarettes. I had an extra pack so I gave him the half-pack I had been working on. I’m fairly sure, at that point of the evening, she was hooking to buy a pack of smokes.

I must have met him at least another five or six times. He was youngish, skinny-ish and pretty ragged. He would ride until he found a willing john then, while his wife serviced the john, Bicycle Pimp would ride ahead looking for another. I only saw her a couple of times, but Bike Pimp would ride up and ask if I wanted a blowjob “you know, from my wife”, and after I said “no thanks” and there were no other people in sight, he’d kind of hang around and talk as I walked.

He told me the whole thing was her idea and he was just following along behind her out of a weird form of love and devotion to keep her safe. It wasn’t a continuous conversation, I was Someone New every time. Usually he’d tell me all about the dangers of being a small time pimp, and how he wanted her to stop… but there were the drugs and the debts and the cigarettes and the rent and he couldn’t work and hadn’t worked in years and his family was in Alberta and hers were dead and it was only thirty dollars then twenty then fifteen and she’ll do whatever you want then it’s ten… and then he’d circle back to make sure she was alright.

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What they were doing made sense within their world… “we need smokes so get the bike.” There’s a certain hilarity in a random meeting at 3am in the middle of a deserted city street between an earnest and polite guy walking home and an earnest and polite guy on a bicycle asking strangers to have sex with his drug addicted wife for cigarette money because she asked him to… it feels like it should be funny: “I met a guy on a bike selling his wife. Hilarity ensued.”

But it didn’t. To be honest — and I’ve been editing this thing all fucking night trying to keep it that way — it was really annoying because Bike Pimp was fucking with my Zen. He was interrupting my thoughts, he was telling me things I really didn’t want to hear again… he was reminding me of the people I was living with before I went to College and got my life somewhat together. I was never, at any point, anything other than disappointed in this guy because he was selling his wife for ten bucks. It almost seemed normal, like it was inevitable I’d be running into a guy selling a woman, at her request, at 3am that morning.

But each time I saw him on his shitty little bike he was something I had to endure. His wife was lost in an alleyway, working for cigarette money, and this simple-minded fuck wanted someone to talk to… someone to unburden his life onto. But I didn’t want him to shut the fuck up and go back and take his wife home and get her help, I just didn’t want to hear him speak. I was disappointed in him for what his wife was doing to some pathetic puke, but I disliked him — I was pissed off at him — for what he was doing to Me. I had taken myself, in five years, from living in rooming houses with addicts, prostitutes, criminals and unmedicated schizophrenics who killed their best friends pet bunnies, to being a College graduate and working as a reporter and living in apartments with furniture and heat and walls without holes.

But, four years later, here I was out of work and living in a rooming house owned by a crazy woman who saw coloured clouds around people, walking beside a fucking Wife Pimp at 3am wishing he’d seriously Fuck Off the planet because being reminded of the person you Were while you’re trying to be the person you Wanted To Be even as you knew you were quickly becoming the person you thought was Dead, when all you really wanted was to just be at home dreaming of your girlfriend and her wonderful breasts is a totally Shit Filled way to end an evening.

And that’s as far as I’m going with this for now.

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