There is such a thing as Battered Woman Syndrome which, I believe, is a sub-category of PTSD.
Now imagine it’s late on a freezing cold night in January, somewhere in New York City. A line of prostitutes are standing along a sidewalk in the yellowish light of a street lamp. One of them is thinking these thoughts: “I wish a trick would come along soon. It’s freezing out here, but what else can I do? My pimp will give me hell if I don’t bring him some money tonight. I’m so sick of this life. Maybe I should just take what little cash I earned tonight, go down to Port Authority, and take the next bus out of here. It wouldn’t matter. He’d find me anywhere. He knows where my family lives, even said he’d kill them if I ever left. I wouldn’t mind working for him so much if he would spend more time with me the way he used to. He used to be so much fun. He’d take me out and we’d have the greatest time of my life, but now he spends most of his time with his other girls, the bitches. He bought them all diamond rings for Christmas and what did he give me? Just a lousy silver ring and a pair of cheap high heels that broke after two nights of streetwalking. He’s been vicious lately too, all that money we give him going up his nose. Then the last time I tried to quit this life, he beat me. Just when I felt so alone and so in need of love, he stopped hitting me and in such a sweet, soft voice he said he loves me and wants to be with me forever. He said he’ll change and treat me better from now on. How could I say no? No one else was there for me. Besides, he says if I turn tricks for one more year he’ll have saved enough money to buy me a beauty salon of my own and I can quit this shitty life for good. Just one more year...”
I bring up Battered Woman Syndrome because all the prostitutes in Gentleman of Leisure: A Year In the Life Of a Pimp display symptoms of this mental disorder. Symptoms include believing that they did something to deserve repeated physical, psychological, or sexual abuse, fear for the safety of themselves or loved ones, disassociation from their own bodies, irrational fear that their abuser is omnipotent or omnipresent, as well as the idea that things will get better if they only wait a little while longer. Repeated blows to the head can cause brain injuries that lead to confused thinking and poor judgment. The abuser in these situations uses methods of manipulation and coercion, control over finances, control over sexual behavior, physical violence, alternating patterns of abuse and tenderness, and promises of a brighter future to keep their victims on a leash, figuratively speaking. Pimps learn these coercion techniques from other pimps. Prostitutes who are enslaved by them often suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. This is what goes on in this unique book.
Gentleman of Leisure started as a photo-journalism project by Bob Adelson, the acclaimed photographer of the Civil Rights Movement. It turned into a literary project as well when the subject pimp, named Silky, and his stable of hookers agreed to be interviewed about their lives. They were surprisingly candid to the point where it is hard to believe this isn’t fiction.
Silky is a sweet-talking, charismatic guy who wears flashy clothes and drives a custom-made car. If you’ve ever seen Blaxploitation movies from the 1970s, you would recognize his kind. On the surface, he seems like a great person to be around, but after getting to know him a bit you realize he is nothing but a predator. He says he prefers pimping white women because Black women are harder to control, but he also admits he has a chip on his shoulder because of slavery and feels that by enslaving white women he is paying society back. And he seems to have almost absolute control over his girls.
But Silky does not do most of the talking throughout the book. We learn more about him through the monologues of the prostitutes who work for him. All of them feel like they are in a committed relationship with him. Sandy is the one he has the most intimate conversations with, Kitty is the one he has the most sex with, Linda is the one he takes out on dates the most. He claims he loves Linda the most, although he beats her when she doesn’t “behave”. Actually, all of them get beaten but Silky says he regrets having to do that. He also makes sure his string of ladies are all jealous of each other in order to keep them from working together against him. They refer to each other as wives-in-law, tolerating the others because their sense of self-worth is low and they depend on Silky because they think they can not live without his protection. You really get a sense of how sick Silky is in a passage where he babysits Kitty’s three year old daughter and begins grooming her for “the lifestyle”.
The author, Linda Hall, and the photographer, Bob Adelman, do not offer any commentary of their own. Their presence in the book is largely unnoticeable. They let their subjects speak for themselves. It isn’t hard to interpret what they say. Silky, whose thoughts are oblivious to anyone’s feelings but his own, is a narcissistic abuser while the women he controls relay anecdotes about living a life they hate. This is matched and contrasted with photographs that show Silky with each woman, sometimes having fun, sometimes being romantic, and sometimes with bruises and lumps on their faces after a beating. This is a book that shows without telling. Some people might criticize Hall and Adelson for not explicitly stating a moral stance, but such pedantry would only diminish and ruin the harsh impact that this book is apparently meant to have.
Gentleman of Leisure is a wretched book about a side of life that most people would feel more comfortable ignoring. Don’t take the easy way out. It lays out everything for you to see like the exposed guts of a freshly slaughtered cow. It’s a book that invites you in to peep like a voyeur at a lifestyle you ordinarily would ignore and then socks you in the gut to show you how terrible these women’s live are. If you go away from this book without feeling some sense of disgust, sadness, sorrow, pity, or depression, you’re probably emotionally dead, mostly likely suffering from some form of psychopathy, the inability to feel empathy for other human beings.
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