Member-only story
Bottom Bitch
An Age of Pimps and Tricks
I’m an eighties baby— I grew up before smartphones and the Internet. I grew up with a connection to the real world— one in which I existed by using my senses. A world where my dad reiterated that the eyes are the windows to a soul and that is how you know if you can trust a man. That has never failed me.
He always explained to me that Barbie wasn’t real; I’m not plastic and never will I wake up with blue eye shadow and a sparkly pink car. If commercials were on tv advertising a product— I’d scream, “Dad! Maybe it is Maybelline. Maybe if I buy mascara I can be that pretty.” He always took the time to laugh before explaining the art of marketing, modeling, and con-artistry.
Maybe I’m lucky I had a father who made sure my first word was dad, and my second was bullshit. Perhaps not everyone has someone in their corner making them listen to Janis Joplin and explaining that her raw soulfulness comes from sincere emotion, experience, and a goddamn heart. Not Mattel. Not Maybelline. Not, as he said so damn seriously, deception and the Pimp game. Janis is real. Most motherfuckers are not. Most are not showing their cards. A real human being is vulnerable.
My Dad was a man of the streets— he got it “out the mud.” Literally. He could sell a rock from his driveway with such honesty. He could tell you, “This, my man, is nothing…
