I was sick about two days after that. I didn't even want a reefer. I didn't want anything, anything, that was like a high. I started drinking some of Dad's hquor after that, but I was scared of those dry highs.
Anyway, that was the big letdown with horse. For a long time, I just looked at other people and wondered how the hell they could go through that. Dunny still liked it. He said it was pretty good. He said he had a real boss feeling. But Tito felt about the same way I did. He said he wasn't going to fuck with any more of that stuff as long as he lived. The horse had turned out to be a real drag.
Although I was tighter with the guys who had been with me at Wiltwyck now, I still was close to Danny and Butch and Kid. I just didn't look up to them as much as I did before I went to Wiltwyck. Now they were just sort of big brothers. I called them whenever I needed them; if I didn't need them, I didn't see them.
One of the reasons was that they weren't the hippest guys around any more. Johnny D. was the hippest cat on the scene now. Even Butch, Danny, and Kid looked up to him. Everybody used to listen when he said something. It made sense to listen—he was doing some of everything, so he must have known what he was talking about. Sometimes we used to sit on the stoop or up on the roof and talk to Johnny or just listen to him talk shit. He sure seemed to know a lot of things. Johnny just about raised a lot of the cats around there, and I guess I was one of them. To me, what he said was truer than the Word of God.
Johnny was always telling us about bitches. To Johnny, every chick was a bitch. Even mothers were bitches. Of course, there were some nice bitches, but they were still bitches. And a man had to be a dog in order to handle a bitch.
Johnny said once, "If a bitch ever tells you she's only got a penny to buy the baby some milk, take it. You take it 'cause she's gon git some more. Bitches can always git some money." He really knew about bitches.
Cats would say, "I saw your sister today, and she is a fine bitch." Nobody was offended by it. That's just the way things were. It was easy to see all women as bitches.
Johnny used to always be on the verge of getting done in. It was dangerous to live in our building when the cat was living there. Somebody was always trying to shoot him or stab him or throw him out the window or something. He was shooting at people, and people were shooting at him. But that was all right. He was big time, that's all there was to it. And everybody knew it, so everybody listened to the things he said.
I remember the first time I saw the cat. I think he was still owing some time from Coxsackie, so he was working and looking like a real workingman. But the^at looked slick —he was made for crime and larceny. In spite of the way he looked and all the things he did, Johnny was one of the nicest cats in the neighborhood. He knew how to be nice. He knew it good.
I was kind of scared of Johnny, but I still always wanted
to be around when he started talking. Another thing about him was thaf"he was somebody good to have in your corner. Everybody respect*exi him, the whole neighborhood.
He was the first cat I ever saw hit a guy and knock him out with one punch, just like in the movies. You could see that sort of stuff happen in the gyms, but not on the streets. Cats got out on the street and knocked each other down and cut each other up, but nobody just put a cat away clean, with one punch—no talking, knifing, cutting up, or noise making. That cat was really smooth.
When one of Johnny's girls messed up on him—^tried to hold back some money or gave somebody some pants and didn't get any money—he sure was hard on them. It was good to be around when that happened. Sometimes Johnny would beat their ass and throw them out and not listen to anything. He would say, "Git outta my sight, bitch, and don't ever come back.*' This used to make some of them act like they wanted to go crazy.
I remember Clara. Clara was a redheaded white bitch of Johnny's, and she had a fine body on her. I was even scared to dream about her, she looked so good, but I did. But Johnny had a lot of chicks like that. The reason I remember Clara so well was that she was the first white girl I ever jugged. '
Johnny had gotten mad at her one night for not giving him all the money. He beat her ass and had her in there crying. Then he called Harry. Harry lived upstairs on the fourth floor, right under Johnny. So Johnny called to him out of the window and said, "Git the fellas." Harry called everybody he knew in the building and across the backyard. I was one of the first cats up there, and when I got there I saw this chick lying on the bed crying. I thought. Lord, don't tell me he's gon give that away! And I waited and waited to see what he was going to say.
He kept cursing at her and telling her what a stinking, dirty, funky bitch she was. The chick just kept on crying. And then other cats started busting in the doorway.
Johnny snatched her up off the bed and took her out the door and upstairs to the roof. Everybody followed without being told. We all knew what this meant. She must have really made him mad, because he'd beat her ass, and Johnny didn't beat chicks unless they'd done something really bad or made him mad. And Clara was one of his favorite women.
We got up on the roof. She started hollering, "Johnny,
please! Johnny, please don't!" He just left her out there with us and walked.
She called Kid and said, "Kid, please. . . . Kid, I thought you were a friend of mine." And cats kept pushing in on her. Before I knew anything, somebody was reaching over me and snatching her clothes off. I think I was about the third one.
It wasn't anything as great as I thought it was going to be. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but, anyway, the dream came true. And I think it probably came true for a lot of other cats that same night too. A lot of people had their first white girl that night, just about everybody in the building. After that, I was pretty sure that white girls weren't anything different. Bitches were bitches.
It was Johnny's policy to never give a bitch a second chance. He could afford to do that—if you have enough of them, you don't have to be giving out second chances. Johnny used to tell us that you have to be creative and new in the bed and do things to chicks they've never had done to them before. That was the only way you were going to stand out with a chick, especially if she was a bitch who'd been around a whole lot and been in bed with a whole lot of niggers. And Johnny used to say that the worse thing in the world any cat could be was homy. A homy cat was lost, he used to say.
I remember one time he told us the lowest thing a man could do was beg a bitch for her body. I had never begged any of them, but I didn't know just how much truth there was in what Johnny was saying. I'd heard begging—and by some cats I really respected too. But I thought that if you were hip enough, like Johnny, you never had to beg. So I listened. I listened to all that stuff he used to tell us about how to pull bitches, how to make them do what you wanted them to do, and how to keep them yours forever.
I used to think, He's makin' it a point to screw all the good-lookin' bitches in the neighborhood. There were few women around the neighborhood that Johnny wanted to jugg and didn't jugg, even if they were married. Johnny was getting to every fine bitch in the neighborhood ^d proving all the things he said to us. It's easy to beUeve a guy and listen to what he's saying when you see he's doing all the things he's talking about.
One time Johnny saw me fighting in the street. Donald
Gordon, from 146th Street, and I were going to war, long and strong. "After it was over, Johnny said, "Come on up on the roof, Sonny, 1 want to show you some stuff." So I went on up. I had seen him watching me while I was fighting. A whole lot of grown people were around there watching, and I didn't look as good as I wanted to look. It was too long and too hard.
Johnny brought some gloves out of his house, and we played around up on the roof. He said, "Sonny, I thought you knew somethin'. I thought you'd learned somethin' up at the place where you were. Man, how did those cats let you come out on the street not bein' able to use your hands any better than that?"
I'd always thought I could use my hands pretty good as it was.
We put on the gloves, and he said, "Throw up your hands." I hesitated a while. Then Johnny slapped me with a left glove. "C'mon, throw up your hands. I'm not gon hurt you." He smiled, so I threw up my hands.
He slapped at me again with his left, and I kept trying to fan it away with my right hand. He just kept throwing it in there; he had a real fast hand, and he was hitting me in the face. He just kept on, getting faster and faster and faster. I was just getting mad. I couldn't seem to get a good punch on him.
After a while, I started getting excited, and I hit him one time on his chin. He shouted, "Good! Good! Good! That's it, baby; that's it!"
I stopped and looked. I was wondering what was wrong with him and why he'd shouted like that. Then all of a sudden he hit me straight in the face. I was mad. It almost brought tears, but I just v/ent on throwing everything this way and that way. I wasn't even reaching him. It seemed like he was aU around me and never in front of me, and yet he was so close. It seemed like he was hitting me ninety times a second. I just couldn't get started. I just got wilder and wilder.
He grabbed me with both hands and held me and said, "You see, Sonny, every time, you stop. Unless you git excited, you don't stay on a cat. It's like if you git in a good punch and you've got a cat goin', you always slow down instead-a keepin' on, as if to say, 'That's one now.' And the only way you gon rally or really press a cat is when you git excited; and when you git excited, you can't do a god-
damn thing, man. It's the same way wit a bitch. If you gon pull a bitch, you can' git excited and let her know that you want that pussy so bad you about to go crazy. You gon lose your brains through your dick?" He said, "No. You see, you just never learned to do things without gittin' excited. C'mon, Fm gon show you how not to git excited when you do things."
And Johnny started showing me how not to get excited. He said, "I want you to hit me in the face three times. I'll put my left hand behind my back, and I'm not gonna hit you. I'm not gon touch you. You can hit me as hard as you want."
The first time I hit him, I didn't hit him too hard. And he just looked and smiled. I hit him again and didn't hit him too hard, but it was harder than the first time. And he smiled at that. I said to myself. Yeah, like this is bullshit.
He said, "Go on and hit me as many times as you want,'* and I kept on hitting him. I hit him kind of hard, and he said, "Damn, man, hke cool it." That was enough. He said, "Look, I'm gon hit you in your face. I'm just gon slap you with my hand, and I'm not gon tell you when, and I'm not gon tell you how many times. If you cry, I'm gon walk away, and I'm gon forget about it. And if you get mad, it's like the whole thing is just lost, and we gotta start all over again."
I had to go along with it. He hit me. He hit me in my face ten times, and each time was harder than the time before. He just slapped me on one side, and I didn't even know which hand was going to come. He said, "Remember, don't git excited. Don't git excited." When he slapped me the fifth time, I was ready to cry. But there was no sense in me even thinking about hitting this nigger, because I knew there was nothing in the world, even with God on my side, that could have helped me to kick his ass.
I just held it back and fought it. After hitting me ten times, each time harder than the time before, he stopped. He said, "You mad at me, man?"
"No, man. I'm not mad at you. I think it's a whole lotta bullshit, and if you wanted to hit me in my f^ce, you could-a told me."
He said, "Uh-huh."
So we sat down, and he started telling me things about bitches and things I liked to hear. He took me downstairs and showed me some pictures I hadn't seen before. It was
pretty nice, iie asked me if I wanted to get high. I said, "No, I don't want to get high." Then James Fox came in and said that he hfed his works and that he wanted Johnny to straighten him. Johnny asked me again if I wanted to get high, and I said, "No, man, I don't mess wit no horse no more."
So he said, "All right." He said he had to take care of some business and would see me later, and he asked me if we were still tight.
"Yeah, man, you know we're all right."
"Okay, now. Sonny, if I ever see you out there in the street fightin' a cat again and not pressin' him, not stayin' on him every time you throw a punch, and not showin' this cat wit every punch that you mean to kick his ass, I'm gon take you up on the roof again, and that time I'm gon kick your ass." And he winked at me.
I said, "Yeah, all right, man," and walked.
I had cut Tito and Dunny and Turk and Bucky and all the cats who were hanging out with me into Johnny too. We all used to sell him stuff, and we all liked to listen to Johnny when he talked. All of us would do anything for him, but after a while we wouldn't sell Johnny the stuff we stole, because we knew the cat was taking us. There were other fences around that we could always get a better deal from. So we stopped doing business with Johnny and just listened to him. And he used to tell us a whole lot of things that we didn't know about.
He told us how to steal furs and what to do with them afterward, how to steal silver, and how to go downtown to the places where few Negroes went and steal stuff. Johnny told us how to dress. He'd tell us things about looking like a delivery boy when you went down on Park Avenue to steal something or looking like a working boy when you went down to the garment center to steal things. He knew a lot about stealing and all kinds of crime.
He knew more about bitches than anything else, and I guess that was his main stick, bitches. At that time—when I was listening to Johnny—I wanted to try a lot of the things th^t he was telling me about bitches on some of the bitches I knew. Some of the things I was just too scared to try. And some of them ... I didn't know any chicks I'd dare try those on.
There was one good chick. This was Jackie. Jackie was a
beautiful black bitch, and she had a body on her that made Hollywood glamour girls look undernourished. And Jackie was only thirteen years old. I remember the first time I went up to her house. I knew her sister, Trixie. She was a skinny little ugly-looking girl when she was in Carole's class in P.S. 90. But Trixie had gotten older, and she'd gotten fresh. She'd started jugging everybody, and just about everybody knew it. She had a reputation as the main young whore on Eighth Avenue.
Dunny was going with Trixie when I first went up to her house. He took me up there. He'd been telling me about her, but I'd never been able to place her as the girl Carole used to bring home for lunch sometimes, because she was real skinny and funny looking then. But it was the same Trixie. And Trixie wasn't so skinny or so funny looking any more. She had a body on her that was far from funny.
Her sister, Jackie, I'd never seen before. I probably would have paid no attention to her a few years earher. She probably used to be a funny-looking black girl with nappy hair and knock-knees. You wouldn't want to do anything but pull on her hair or punch her in the mouth or something like that. But the first time I saw Jackie, I didn't know how I'd missed it.
Jackie was almost as hip as Trixie was, and she was only thirteen. She started doing things for me; I guess she liked me. A lot of guys used to come up there, but she used to give me stuff and do a lot of crazy things for me and to me; and when I came up to her house, she never talked to other guys. She always wanted to come around me and play; and if I wanted some money to get some reefers or something like that, she would always run out and get it.
Turk used to always be trying to get some pants from Jackie, but Jackie didn't like him too much. She always told him that he couldn't do anything and that he should take some lessons from me about what to do with a girl in bed. That used to make Turk mad, real mad, because Turk was a big cat, and I was a little cat.
Jackie could always get some money from somebody, so I stayed tight with her. I wanted to stay tight With her, so I didn't treat her too bad. I used to go up there, spend the night. Her mother wouldn't say anything. A lot of cats had come up there to spend the night. It was that kind of place.
Jackie was the first girl I tried some of the things with that I'd learned fr
om Johnny. Just about every time this cat told
me something ne^, that you could do with a girl, I tried it out on Jackie. And if it could work on Jackie, I knew what it could do to most of the girls around there. Jackie had had a lot of things done to her, and she'd been to bed with a lot of grown men. That's how she got her money. She was a big girl. But I didn't mind that too much, because she was nice. She liked me, and I liked her. We got along. We were more good friends than anything else, and maybe we just jugged because good friends were supposed to do that sort of thing. Anyway, I liked doing it with her, and I guess she liked doing it with me too, because we just kept doing it. She knew a lot of the older prostitutes in the neighborhood, and I suppose they used to teach her things. She knew a whole lot. As a matter of fact, she taught me a whole lot of things. She was the first girl who ever put her tongue in my ear, and I couldn't take that feeling for a long time. It took me about two weeks to get used to it. At first, it seemed kind of dirty for someone to be putting her tongue in your ear, but after a while, it just felt good.
If you were a cat who could come into Jackie's and make one of the sisters just forget about whatever she was doing and give all her attention to you, you were somebody. It made cats who didn't know you wonder about you and who you were. It made the cats from downtown respect you right away. It had a whole lot of advantages, being good friends with Jackie.
I guess she had her advantages too, because I was known everyplace and respected in most. When she went to school and told the other girls that she was my girl, it made her somebody. Most of the people in the neighborhood knew that I'd been in trouble most of my life and that I'd been in what they thought was a reform school. They thought I was a bad cat. People who didn't even know me had heard about me, and they had a whole lot of respect for me. If Jackie could tell people she was my girl, they would respect her too. Everybody but Sugar. She should never have told Sugar. Sugar used to call Jackie the Black Spanish Girl. I think she called her that one time because she had some big earrings on. She got all her friends in school to call Jackie the Black Senorita and to tease her about the way she dressed.
Manchild in the promised land Page 14