Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  He told me, “Remember, you got to keep your story straight, and you got to keep a friendly atmosphere with these cats,” and he said they would probably be paddy boys. He told me not to be too hip with them. He said to use slang words like “guys” and “a piece-a meat” when talking about girls and to offer them some chewing gum and take out some cigarettes. You had to act suave, because you had to convince these guys that you were a pimp.

  After about three tries that night, and about four hundred dollars later, I knew the Murphy. I went down the next week a couple of times on my own. You just had to keep watching for the Man. He was always looking for cats who were down there jostling. They’d have paddy boys down there jostling too, and these cats were smooth. A lot of times, they would pull your coat if they saw the Man pinning you. The paddy boy’d just pass by you and say, “Watch it, baby, the Man is on the next corner,” or “The Man is pinning you from across the street.”

  After a while, you got to know all the jostlers down there, the jostlers, the whores, and everybody who was hustling in the Times Square area. It was a nice way to make some quick money. But I still had my big pot customers, and they were still coming to me. I had the market on the good pot uptown sewed up; I didn’t want to blow that. So the only time I’d go downtown and play the Murphy was when I was really up tight, when I needed two or three hundred dollars in a hurry. I could do that in a couple of hours if it was a good night. The best night was usually on the first of the month or near the last of the month, when the soldiers got paid. They used to tell soldiers about watching out for the Murphy boys when they went to town, but there were farmers everywhere who wouldn’t listen, who were dreaming.

  After a couple of weeks, I was an old pro. I could tell somebody who needed money, “You wait here, and I’ll be back uptown in about two hours.” I’d tell them I was going to have two hundred dollars when I came back, and I would. All I had to do was walk down the street and see somebody who was looking up at the building like he was fascinated with New York. I’d walk past him, not even stop, and say, “Soldier, you interested in some nice young girls?” The cat’s eyes would usually light up, and he’d say, “What? What’d you say?”

  I’d keep walking, and he’d usually follow. Then I’d start walking slow, and he would start walking with me, and I’d tell him all kinds of things: “It’s nice young girls, colored, white, Chinese, anything you want. They’re built fine, nice shapes; they got titties that don’t sag down … they set right up. Like, they don’t even need a brassiere on.” I’d really build it up. Then I’d tell him that it would only cost him twenty-five dollars for an hour.

  You could push a guy a little bit and say, “Look, fellow, I’m out takin’ care-a business and I don’t have but so much time. So if you want to git some-a the best pussy in New York, you let me know. If you don’t, don’t hold me up, don’t take all night wit it.”

  He would ask me things like, “Where is it?” and “How far is it?” I’d tell him that it was at a house and not far from there by cab. Most of the time, he would be taken in by your friendly air, by your offering him a cigarette or some gum. When you were in the cab, you got him to put some money in an envelope and wait for it, as if you were supposed to check his money before he went into the house because the girls might take it from him.

  If he didn’t go for this, there were a lot of other ways to get his money. If he looked too hip for that, you’d stop at a store and call up a real number. You’d get some chick to talk to you, any chick. You would stop in the middle of the conversation and ask a trick who was watching you, “Look, man, do you want a drink or something while you up there?” Then you’d take the phone and say, “He don’t want any drinks. He’s gonna have somethin’ sent up.” You’d carry on a conversation, then you’d ask him again, “Say, fellow, did you want to stay one hour or two hours?”

  Most of the time, the chicks you were talking to would be saying, “You crazy?” or screaming or maybe she had already hung up. But he knew you had dialed a phone number and were talking to somebody. After that, even if the chick had hung up, you’d say into the phone, “Look, I’m gonna send this cat over in about ten minutes.” You’d end the conversation and go out and talk to him. You’d send him up to a hotel room after he’d given you the money. Sometimes you’d just give him a key and tell him he could go on up to the hotel. Then you’d just come on out. A lot of times, you’d steal a hotel key beforehand and send him up to that room. It didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t be down there when he came back.

  These were just a few tricks of the hustling trade. I thought I became pretty good at it after a while, but during the middle of the month it wasn’t as good. Pot was the thing that you could make money on all the time, so I wasn’t going to stop dealing pot and depend mainly on the Murphy. I didn’t have that much faith in it. Around the first of the month, it was a sure thing; but you could stay down in Times Square all night in the middle of the month and were lucky if you came out with fifty dollars. When it rained and when there was snow on the ground, it was bad for business. But nothing could stop the pot business. Cats were smoking pot all the time. I decided to concentrate on that.

  Reno and I pulled tight. We became good friends after I decided I wasn’t going to make a career out of jostling. He started teaching me a whole lot of stuff, most of the stuff he knew, I guess. He taught me how to con. He was a good con man, one of the best I’d ever met. He started teaching me how to con cats out of goods, how to shake down prostitutes by pretending you were the law. He showed me the trick in three-card mollie. I used to always think that the trick was to keep your eye on the card. But Reno showed me that I couldn’t possibly beat three-card mollie, nor could anybody else, because the card was never there. You had to palm the card. I couldn’t do it because my hands were too small. But I was still fascinated, and I felt real slick once I had learned about it and about the pea that was never there either. I remembered that Dad had said that. Knowing all this, I felt I was real slick and ready for street life.

  Reno was a pretty hip cat. He’d been in jail for about four years. When horse came on the scene and became a big thing, Reno wasn’t on the outside, but cats kept coming up to Woodburn for using horse or for getting busted trying to get some money for horse. He’d met a lot of junkies when he was up there, and he was scared of horse when he came out. But he would snort a little cocaine.

  One Saturday night, Reno came uptown. He said he needed some money. So I give him a half a bill, fifty dollars. He told me he’d be back in about an hour and would have something that would give us a ball.

  I admired the cat a whole lot, and I respected him. He knew just about all the shit there was to know out in the street. This cat really knew how to live out in the street. I guess he had to, because his mother, Miss Jamie, had never cared about any of the kids. The only way they were going to make it was to learn how to live out in the street, and this cat had mastered it at an early age. When he told me something like, “I need some money and I’ll give it back to you,” he always did. One time the cat told me, “Sonny, I’m goin’ to Jersey, and if you see me next week, I’ll have at least three thousand dollars.” I saw him about a week later, and he had the money. This was the way he was. He always did everything he said, so I always listened to him.

  About half an hour after I’d lent Reno the half bill, he was back uptown. He was in a cab. He stopped at 146th Street and Seventh Avenue, outside the bar where I used to deal pot, and called me over. I came up to the cab, and he had two gray bitches in it. He said, “Sonny, do you want to go for a ride with us?”

  “Yeah, man, but I’m gon take care-a some business.”

  “Can’t somebody else take care of it for you?”

  He winked at me, and the chicks looked kind of good, so I said, Tuck the money, I’m gon go on this ride.” So I got in the cab, and we went downtown to a hotel where Reno had already paid for a suite. These chicks were tricking, and the bitches looked good.

&
nbsp; When we got in the hotel suite, he introduced the bitches to me and said, “This is Lydia, and Lydia wants to be a friend of yours.”

  I said, “I’m all for that.”

  He took out something, and he said, “Good. We could have a party. We can have some room service.”

  He took out this package of something white and threw it on the table in the living room. It kind of scared me, because I thought it was horse, and he knew I didn’t fuck with any horse. I said, “What’s that all about?”

  He said, “We gon git high, man, and have just a party for four.”

  I hesitated for a while, and I was wondering what the hell was Reno doing, because he knew I didn’t want to screw any bitch who was high off drugs. It was all right, but it took them too long, they never came. Horse cuts the nature, and I didn’t want to bother with that. I said, “Look, man, you got in that bag what I think you got in that bag?”

  He said, “No, Sonny, ‘scuse me for not tellin’ you, but that’s coke, man. That’s some-a the best coke in New York City today.”

  I just said, “Oh,” but I thought cocaine was habit forming too, and I was scared.

  Reno said, “Man, this stuff’ll make your head bigger than that mother-fuckin’ ceilin’ up there.”

  I said, “Oh, Lord.” I’d heard about cocaine. I’d heard that some cats went crazy and started doing a whole lot of weird shit. I remember that James Fox got high off cocaine one night and tried to stick up a police station with a toy gun. He had gotten shot twice and was doing fifteen years. Fox said he thought it was a boat he was sticking up. I was thinking to myself, Maybe this cocaine is worse than horse.

  One of the chicks started opening the bag. I couldn’t let this bitch get into the cocaine while I just sat there like a lame. I said, “Wait a minute baby, pour me some.”

  She said, “Okay, just a minute.” Then she snorted some.

  So I dived on in. I took it real fast. I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t even sure it had gone up my nostril. I snorted some in the other nostril and waited for something to happen. Nothing happened right away, so I said, “Maybe I need some more,” but before I could get the match-book scoop up to my nostril again, the music started sounding real pretty. It was prettier than music usually sounds. I looked around. Everybody looked beautiful. Everybody looked like angels, like the nicest people in the world. The whole room had changed; it looked like a room outside or a garden house. I felt I was in the nicest place in the world with some of the nicest people in the world, and I was all set to have the nicest time in the world.

  My inhibitions just sort of went out the window. I didn’t have any kind of complexes. I wasn’t scared of anybody or anything. We started playing. We got real friendly. The atmosphere was so relaxed. It was the most relaxed place I’d been in in all my life, and these were some of the most relaxed people I’d ever been with. I felt I knew them better and enjoyed being with them more than any of the other people I’d known.

  I took Lydia into the bedroom, and we started playing for what seemed like a long time. I had a whole lot of energy, more than I’d ever had before. We played and played and played. When I’d gotten my nuts off about six times, we got hungry. I said, “Come on, let’s go out and eat.”

  We went out to this little restaurant at Broadway and Forty-sixth Street, ate, and came back. We got high again and played some more. About three o’clock in the morning, the stuff wore off, and I started feeling tired. I felt more tired than I’d ever been. I just couldn’t stay awake any longer, so I fell off to sleep. I slept until about noon. When I woke up, everybody was gone. I was the only one left in the hotel suite. I got up and went back uptown. I looked around for Reno, but he wasn’t around. I didn’t see him for three days.

  When the cat got back on the scene, he told me he was trying to get an apartment downtown. He never mentioned the time we’d had with those whores a few nights before. It didn’t seem to matter to him. I wanted to talk about it, but I felt I would have been real lame to say anything about that to him, because this must have been something he did almost every night, so I didn’t mention it.

  After a while, Reno asked me to go downtown with him and meet some Spanish cats. He said that these were the people into all the cocaine weight and that he was going to cut me into them. I went down there, and to my surprise, I met a cat I knew from Warwick, a Puerto Rican cat named Ventura.

  I started buying cocaine in quantities. I’d usually go down there and get a spoon for forty dollars. I learned how to take it, and I didn’t care after a while whether it was habit forming or not. After taking it constantly for about a month, I found out it wasn’t habit forming. If the panic was on and I couldn’t get any, it didn’t bother me. I’d just go on and smoke some pot and forget about cocaine. But I had found my thing. I had found that my best high was with cocaine. It did more for me than pot, more than anything I’d ever had before. So I kept snorting cocaine.

  It was as expensive as hell. A cap of cocaine that was the same size as a one-dollar cap of horse cost five dollars. It didn’t matter, because I had money coming in from the pot. Every time I’d cop some cocaine, I’d never get less than a spoon. Then I could sell some and make my money back before I got high off the rest of the stuff. I never lost any money using cocaine.

  Most of the cats my age, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, were just coming out of the house. They were just being cut loose from their parents. The first thing they usually did was run out and start using drugs to be hip, to be accepted into the street life, to be down. I didn’t have to do that, because I had come up in the street life. I knew all the old hustlers, the hustlers who had become successful now, the hustlers who used to be fences, used to be whores, the hustlers I used to sell stolen goods to when I was just ten, eleven, twelve. I knew these people from way back, and now they had big Cadillacs, they had restaurants. Some of them had little nightclubs, after-hours places. I’d see these people on the street, and we’d stop and talk. All the young cats my age envied me and looked upon me as an older cat. Most people thought I was older. They had put out the story at one time that I was a young-looking little midget, a cat who was really twenty-one or twenty-two. It was the only way some of the cats my age could explain my being so far ahead of them in street life.

  Mama used to get down on me about hanging out with Reno. She’d say that she knew he’d be going to jail one day soon and that I’d be going with him. At the same time, she was always getting down on me about bringing certain chicks to the house. She used to say I always brought nasty girls to the house. It became a real hassle.

  Dad knew I was doing something, but he didn’t know exactly what. They didn’t know I was dealing pot, because I didn’t have people coming to the house. He’d say, “Yeah, you gon be up there in jail where all them other bad boys is you used to hang around with.” He was always riding me.

  I got tired of it after a while. I got tired of them telling me who to hang out with and who to associate with. I felt that this shit was childish, and since I was out and working, I didn’t have to take it.

  I got fed up one day and moved out. I told Mama I’d found a place up on Hamilton Terrace and was moving. Mama didn’t believe me until I started packing my stuff. Dad didn’t say anything; he started mumbling to himself. Mama started crying and said I shouldn’t be leaving, I didn’t have anybody outside. She said a boy of sixteen should still be living with his family.

  I didn’t feel that way about it. I told them that I was tired of living with them, that I just couldn’t take that sort of thing any more. They were kind of old-fashioned and countryfied. The way I saw it, they couldn’t understand anything. I just packed up one night and pulled out. I left Dad squawking and Mama crying and moved up on Hamilton Terrace to a nice little room. This was where all the young hustlers lived.

  The only other fellow I knew in Harlem who used to sell a lot of nice pot was Tommy Holloway, and he lived on Hamilton Terrace too. He was the one who got me my room up there. T
ommy dressed real nice. He showed me a lot of stuff. He showed me what fences to buy clothes from if I wanted to get the best. He even cut me into the good dry-goods thieves so that I would never get burned by fences.

  This was where I felt I was supposed to be; it was where all the slick people were living. This was the set I wanted to be in.

  It hurt Mama. Dad didn’t care. He thought I was going to end up in jail anyway. Behind this, I could associate with anybody I wanted to. Mama kept telling me, “You can come home,” every time I came around. I told her that I had my own home now and that I wasn’t going to come back there any more. She said, “Come by and get a good meal.” I’d stop by and give them money. After a while, they stopped asking me where I’d gotten it.

  After I’d moved, Reno got busted, and he was in the Tombs. I didn’t swing with anybody for a while. There was Tony Albee, who was about a year older than me, but he was just coming out. He’d been a nice boy, and he had just come up from down South in 1950. He had never gone through all the stuff that I had gone through. He hadn’t been through the gang-fighting stage. He’d never smoked pot until I gave him a reefer one night. The cat was at a party, and I gave him a joint. He said he liked it, and he started trying to get tight with me, but the cat was a farmer. I didn’t let him get but so tight. I used to let him run errands for me. He used to do what I told him to. If I went someplace and told him to wait, he’d wait. After a while, I started liking the guy.

  He started hanging around. He said he wanted to started dealing pot, I said okay, and I gave him a couple of ounces and told him, “You can give me fifty dollars when you sell the stuff.” I had to show him how to roll pot. He was a real country boy all the way.

  People started saying that he was my partner. He turned out to be a real nice guy, so I didn’t mind. He stayed close to me and used to try to dress the way I did. He’d buy clothes from the same people I got mine from. He’d never worn anything but cheap Charlie’s shoes before, but now he started wearing custom-made. I guess he wanted to start acting just like me, and he had to start someplace. If he wanted to get into the street life, he had to start swinging with somebody who was already into it. I was into it kind of good, so I was a good person for him to start with.