no respect for the whites they get into bed with. I know the way I felt about Sophia, who still came
to New York whenever I called her.
The West Indian boy friend of the Profumo scandal's Christine Keeler, Lucky Gordon, and his
friends must have felt the same way. After England's leaders had been with those white girls,
those girls, for their satisfaction, went to Negroes, to smoke reefers and make fun of some of
England's greatest peers as cuckolds and fools. I don't doubt that Lucky Gordon knows the
identity of "the man in the mask" and much more. If Gordon told everything those white girls told
him, he would give England a new scandal.
It's no different from what happens in some of America's topmost white circles. Twenty years ago,
I saw them nightly, with my own eyes, I heard them with my own ears.
The hypocritical white man will talk about the Negro's "low morals." But who has the world's
lowest morals if not whites? And not only that, but the "upper-class" whites! Recently, details were
published about a group of suburban New York City white housewives and mothers operating as
a professional call-girl ring. In some cases, these wives were out prostituting with the agreement,
even the cooperation, of husbands, some of whom even waited at home, attending the children.
And the customers-to quote a major New York City morning newspaper: "Some 16 ledgers and
books with names of 200 Johns, many important social, financial and political figures, were
seized in the raid Friday night."
I have also read recently about groups of young white couples who gettogether, the husbands
throw their house keys into a hat, then, blindfolded, the husbands draw out a key and spend the
night with the wife that the house key matches. I have never heard of anything like that being
done by Negroes, even Negroes who live in the worst ghettoes and alleys and gutters.
Early one morning in Harlem, a tall, light Negro wearing a hat and with a woman's stocking drawn
down over his face held up a Negro bartender and manager who were counting up the night's
receipts. Like most bars in Harlem, Negroes fronted, and a Jew really owned the place. To get a
license, one had to know somebody in the State Liquor Authority, and Jews working with Jews
seemed to have the best S.L.A. contacts. The black manager hired some Negro hoodlums to go
hunting for the hold-up man. And the man's description caused them to include me among their
suspects. About daybreak that same morning, they kicked in the door of my apartment.
I told them I didn't know a thing about it, that I hadn't had a thing to do with whatever they were
talking about. I told them I had been out on my hustle, steering, until maybe four in the morning,
and then I had come straight to my apartment and gone to bed.
The strong-arm thugs were bluffing. They were trying to flush out the man who had done it. They
still had other suspects to check out-that's all that saved me.
I put on my clothes and took a taxi and I woke up two people, the madam, then Sammy. I had
some money, but the madam gave me some more, and I told Sammy I was going to see my
brother Philbert in Michigan. I gave Sammy the address, so that he could let me know when
things got straightened out.
This was the trip to Michigan in the wintertime when I put congolene on my head, then discovered
that the bathroom sink's pipes were frozen. To keep thelye from burning up my scalp, I had to
stick my head into the stool and flush and flush to rinse out the stuff.
A week passed in frigid Michigan before Sammy's telegram came. Another red Negro had
confessed, which enabled me to live in Harlem again.
But I didn't go back into steering. I can't remember why I didn't. I imagine I must have felt like
staying away from hustling for a while, going to some of the clubs at night, and narcotizing with
my friends. Anyway, I just never went back to the madam's job.
It was at about this time, too, I remember, that I began to be sick. I had colds all the time. It got to
be a steady irritation, always sniffling and wiping my nose, all day, all night. I stayed so high that I
was in a dream world. Now, sometimes, I smoked opium with some white friends, actors who
lived downtown. And I smoked more reefers than ever before. I didn't smoke the usual woodenmatch-
sized sticks of marijuana. I was so far gone by now that I smoked it almost by the ounce.
After awhile, I worked downtown for a Jew. He liked me because of something I had managed to