When contemplating all the perks journalism offers, I’m ashamed to complain. Free books, plentiful office supplies, and throngs of eager groupies are but a few of the spoils that come from working at a modest-circulation political opinion magazine. Still, choosing one lifestyle necessitates forgoing others, and sometimes I wonder what I’m missing.
Throughout childhood, my chief concern was how, as an adult, I’d juggle the demands of being a multi-sport professional athlete. The dream, however, was dashed when an astute basketball coach noted that the only way I’d ever be able to drive to my left was with sawhorse barricades and a police escort. He finally persuaded me to relinquish my ambitions, draping his arm around my shoulder and admonishing, as a father to a son, “Labash, trust me, you suck.”
Thanks to resilience and financial straits, I bounced back some years later to pursue an exciting career in telemarketing. Since the job’s only requisite was the ability to show up for four hours a day and dial a phone, it was work for which I was well-suited. But about three weeks after I started, burnout set in. The quota-filling environment was so Darwinian, only two co-workers managed to thrive under the pressure. One was a man called The Judge, a heroin addict with half his teeth who really needed the job. The other was Phil, a rotgut alcoholic. Whenever you adopted Phil’s thuggish approach and succeeded in, say, forcing a discount muffler on a woman too old to drive, he would take you out to the parking lot on a smoke break and give you a celebratory swig of his ripple.
Eventually, I stumbled into this life of bylines, exotic travel, and the Pulitzer nominations that have become synonymous with my name. Still, when I’m sitting around with my staid media colleagues in our Casual Friday dorkwear, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d had the courage to surrender to the primal urge that welled when I first saw the 1971 blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song — perhaps the best pimp film ever made.
Not that I condone prostitution. Nor do I wish to backhand uncooperative employees or chew toothpicks in between meals. Instead I speak of pimping as a state of mind. It’s an outsized view of the world that requires bold elan, whether standing down one’s street corner or wearing goldfish in the heels of one’s boots. It is why, even in tony Upper East Side prep schools, calling someone a “pimp” has become a compliment, and why Pimp Chic, say my spies in Milan, has dominated the catwalks this spring.
I was reintroduced to the Pimp Chic ethos a few months ago, while researching a story on Bill Bradley. Though Bradley, as an NBA player, used to “dress like Harpo Marx,” according to his former New York Knicks teammate Walt “Clyde” Frazier, the sartorially sublime Clyde embodied a wide-brimmed, open-shirted elegance that hasn’t been replicated since. Fortunately, Clyde distilled his aesthetic in an unjustly neglected 1974 book, Rockin’ Steady, A Guide to Basketball & Cool.
On the first page, Frazier quotes another Walt, with the assertion “I celebrate myself.” (Among Pimp Chicsters and epic poets, there’s little room for modesty.) In a chapter simply entitled “Cool,” Clyde relates sneaker-cleaning techniques, and how as a boy, after following said techniques, “I dug looking down and watching me walk in them.” Cool is not just about the Rolls-Royce and black Ranch mink coat (both of which Clyde owns). It is about possessing the icewater circulatory system that allows one to nab a falling cocktail glass in midair without spilling a drop. “It’s just instinct,” explains Clyde. “It’s nothing you can practice. A natural cool. Cool is my style.”
The book is also chock-a-block with helpful grooming tips, from patting down one’s “‘burns” to mashing down one’s “‘stache” until one can look in the mirror and say, with full confidence, “Yeah Clyde, you’ve got it.” There’s also helpful advice on “bread” (keep a million dollars around in “cold cash”), staying drug-free (“I don’t need grass, because I can sky on myself”), food (“No way you can be cool and be fat”), and catching flies barehanded (though Clyde’s reputation precedes him — “Flies won’t come within ten feet of me anymore”). When it comes to “vines” (or clothes), Clyde leads by example, giving a complete inventory of his closet, including everything from his velour “lids” (hats), to his green calfskin suit with poncho and silver studs, to his 50 pairs of kicks (“Colors: groovy”).
Most important, Clyde instructs, “Don’t look back.” It’s sage advice. In fact, looking back on my telemarketing days, if Clyde had pimp-rolled through our office, Phil would have taken him to the parking lot and rewarded him with a slug of ripple.
MATT LABASH
