FADED GLORY-THE PIMP TRILOGY
BILL LEWIS
C.2003 M. BENNETT HOOPER
Bill Lewis was about 6’3’’tall and weighed about 240 pounds.
Bill’s medium brown skin face was extremely ruddy and distorted by numerous razor bumps. He had an oddly shaped body with a behind that seemed to hover over his waist. No matter what he wore it never seemed to fit.Appearing ugly to others was not his personal handicap. Bill thought he was the greatest thing God ever created. In addition to his odd physical appearance Bill obviously had an eye problem or rather a color problem when it came to his clothing.
He might wear a black shirt, red tie, brown sport jacket, and light tweed pants. His coat always was an inch or more short on the sleeves and he wore run over un-shined shoes. He nonetheless still thought of himself as a fashion plate.
Bill left school in the 7th or 8th grade and tried to feign intelligence around his fellows though he never read anything. His limited conversation was filled with expletives, MF’s, SOB’s, and kiss my ass.
When he could afford gas or car repair money he took to the streets riding and grinning in his old 1956 dirty and faded maroon Buick. The car had three black tires and one large white wall tire as they were then called. The white wall had a white stripe about three inches wide around the tire.
Bill was loud and flamboyant doing anything for the attention of others. He ceremoniously flashed his fade bankroll. His personal stash consisted of two $5’s, two $ 10’s, two $20’s, and several singles with newspaper cuts mixed between them. Bill couldn’t change a $100 bill.
Lacking any real skills he considered himself a hustler and a pimp. If you were slow or weak he might sell you a case of EX-LAX swearing it was fudge. He would shoplift from neighborhood stores becoming belligerent and threatening when merchants complained.
Bill’s stable of girls were a mirror reflection of him. The women were nasty looking, and walked the track half nude. For Bill’s women everyday was a bad hair day. On Mother’s Day and at Christmas they would run by Judy’s Beauty Salon to get their hair done. Sadly it did not improve their appearance. Bill would beat the women anytime, and anyplace. He wanted the other men to know that he controlled his whores. “I’ll kick dey azz,” he would say loudly and proudly when he played craps in the basement of Coby’s Collision Shop.
He would even curse and slap his alcoholic mother whenever she found him and begged him for money for one more beer, even though she could barely stand. Bill interesting enough never seemed to ever fight any man. Bill was a chain smoking numbers runner who stayed in trouble because he would always try to cheat his customers.
He survived from those early days in the 50’s up to the 70’s on the streets in Detroit Michigan. The 70’s in Detroit paralyzed many of its’ pimps as the demand for the women faded.
The numbers running was severely damaged by legalized gambling in the form of the state lottery and bill’s mother died of cirrhosis of life. Bill was lost and without any savings, he sacrificed himself to drugs. When I last saw Bill he was sitting on a bench at the local car wash. With a grimy rag in his hand he longed to make a few dollars to feed his fix.
When he saw me his eyes were shame filled and downcast as I was one of those from the past he had attempted to impress. Now Bill Lewis , the player, the pimp of old was a tired scrawny, 110 pound dirty old man living the life of a bum on the street. Homeless, tired, and alone. Pimping for a Black man was never an option, it only insures prosperity for a moment and enough woulda, coulda, shoulder’s to last a lifetime before he sleeps forever. RIP Bill Lewis you should have made better choices.
