My post for picking up the customers was right outside the Astor Hotel, that always-busy
northwest comer of 45th Street and Broadway. Watching the moving traffic, I was soon able to
spot the taxi, car, or limousine-even before it slowed down-with the anxious white faces peering
out for the tall, reddish-brown-complexioned Negro wearing a dark suit, or raincoat, with a white
flower in his lapel.
If they were in a private car, unless it was chauffeured I would take the wheel and drive where we
were going. But if they were in a taxi, I would always tell the cabbie, "The Apollo Theater in
Harlem, please," since among New York City taxis a certain percentage are driven by cops. We
would get another cab-driven by a black man-and I'd give him the right address.
As soon as I got that party settled, I'd telephone the madam. She would generally have me rush
by taxi right back downtown to be on the 45th Street and Broadway comer at a specified time.
Appointments were strictly punctual; rarely was I on the corner as much as five minutes. And I
knew how to keep moving about so as not to attract the attention of any vice squad plainclothes-
men or uniformed cops.
With tips, which were often heavy, sometimes I would make over a hundred dollars a night
steering up to ten customers in a party-to see anything, to do anything, to have anything done to
them, that they wanted. I hardly ever knewthe identities of my customers, but the few I did
recognize, or whose names I happened to hear, remind me now of the Profumo case in England.
The English are not far ahead of rich and influential Americans when it comes to seeking rarities
and oddities.
Rich men, middle-aged and beyond, men well past their prime: these weren't college boys, these
were their Ivy League fathers. Even grandfathers, I guess. Society leaders. Big politicians.
Tycoons. Important friends from out of town. City government big shots. All kinds of professional
people. Star performing artists. Theatrical and Hollywood celebrities. And, of course, racketeers.
Harlem was their sin-den, their fleshpot. They stole off among taboo black people, and took off
whatever antiseptic, important, dignified masks they wore in their white world. These were men
who could afford to spend large amounts of money for two, three, or four hours indulging their
strange appetites.
But in this black-white nether world, nobody judged the customers. Anything they could name,
anything they could imagine, anything they could describe, they could do, or could have done to
them, just as long as they paid.
In the Profumo case in England, Christine Keeler's friend testified that some of her customers
wanted to be whipped. One of my main steers to one specialty address away from the madam's
house was the apartment of a big, coal-black girl, strong as an ox, with muscles like a
dockworker's. A funny thing, it generally was the oldest of these white men-in their sixties, I know,
some maybe in their seventies-they couldn't seem to recover quickly enough from their last
whipping so they could have me meet them again at 45th and Broadway to take them back to that
apartment, to cringe on their knees and beg and cry out for mercy under that black girl's whip.
Some of them would pay me extra to come and watch them being beaten. That girl greased her
big Amazon body all over to look shinier and blacker. She used small, plaited whips, she would
drawblood, and she was making herself a small fortune off those old white men.
I wouldn't tell all the things I've seen. I used to wonder, later on, when I was in prison, what a
psychiatrist would make of it all. And so many of these men held responsible positions; they
exercised guidance, influence, and authority over others.
In prison later, I'd think, too, about another thing. Just about all of those whites specifically
expressed as their preference black, black, "the blacker the better!" The madam, having long
since learned this, had in her house nothing but the blackest accommodating women she could