husbands and children right there in New York.
I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man from the best possible source,
from his own women. And then as I got deeper into my own life of evil, I saw the white man's
morals with my own eyes. I even made my living helping to guide him to the sick things he
wanted.
I was young, working in the bar, not bothering with these women. Probably I touched their kidbrother
instincts, something like that. Some would drop into my room when they weren't busy, and
we would smoke reefers and talk. It generally would be after their morning rush-but let me tell you
about that rush.
Seeing the hallways and stairs busy any hour of the night with white and black men coming and
going was no more than one would expect when one lived in a building out of which prostitutes
were working. But what astonished me was the full-house crowd that rushed in between, say, six
and seven-thirty in the morning, then rushed away, and by about nine, I would be the only man in
the house.
It was husbands-who had left home in time to stop by this St. Nicholas Avenue house before they
went on to work. Of course not the same ones every day, but always enough of them to make up
the rush. And it included white men who had come in cabs all the way up from downtown.
Domineering, complaining, demanding wives who had just about psychologically castrated their
husbands were responsible for the early rush. These wives were so disagreeable and had made
their men so tense that they were robbed of the satisfaction of being men. To escape this tension
and the chance of being ridiculed by his own wife, each of these men had gotten up early and
come to a prostitute.
The prostitutes had to make it their business to be students of men. They said that after most
men passed their virile twenties, they went to bed mainly to satisfy their egos, and because a lot
of women don't understand it that way, they damage and wreck a man's ego. No matter how little
virility a man has to offer, prostitutes make him feel for a time that he is the greatest man in the
world. That's why these prostitutes had that morning rush of business. More wives could keep
their husbands if they realized their greatest urge is to be men.
Those women would tell me anything. Funny little stories about the bedroom differences they saw
between white and black men. The perversities! I thought I had heard the whole range of
perversities until I later became a steerer taking white men to what they wanted. Everyone in the
house laughed about the little Italian fellow whom they called the "Ten Dollar A Minute Man." He
came without fail every noontime, from his little basement restaurant up near the Polo Grounds;
the joke was he never lasted more than two minutes... but he always left twenty dollars.
Most men, the prostitutes felt, were too easy to push around. Every day these prostitutes heard
their customers complaining that they never heard anything but griping from women who were
being taken care of and given everything. The prostitutes said that most men needed to know
what the pimps knew. A woman should occasionally be babied enough to show her the man had
affection, but beyond that she should be treated firmly. These tough women said that it worked
with them. All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in
whom they see strength.
From time to time, Sophia would come over to see me from Boston. Even among Harlem
Negroes, her looks gave me status. They were just like the Negroes everywhere else. That was
why the white prostitutes made so much money. It didn't make any difference if you were in
Lansing, Boston, or New York-what the white racist said, and still says, was right in those days!
All you had to do was put a white girl anywhere close to the average black man, and he would
respond. The black woman also made the white man's eyes light up-but he was slick enough to
hide it.
Sophia would come in on a late afternoon train. She would come to Small's and I'd introduce her
around until I got off from work. She was bothered about me living among the prostitutes until I
introduced her to some of them, and they talked, and she thought they were great. They would
tell her they were keeping me straight for her. We would go to the Braddock Hotel bar, where we