Love is never hearing your lifemate say “Baby, you might want to get tested. Today.”
Photo attributed to Brandon Christopher Warren http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandoncwarren/4164759025/
Iceberg Slim, born Robert Beck, gives us a gritty look at urban life. He is considered one of the forefathers of the urban fiction genre. He was an ex-pimp already hipped to the game and knew all the players involved. You Dig, Jive Turkey? Not every drug dealer is a kingpin, not every pimp is rich with a huge stable of beautiful women. The characters are just regular people trying to make it however they can.
In the novel, Doom Fox by Iceberg Slim, the main character of the novel is Joe ‘Kong” Allen. He is an ex-boxer with a face only a mother could love (after she’s had a few). The novel spans thirty years of his unlucky love life starting from after WWII to the mid 1970s. In the beginning of the novel, he falls head over heels in love with this beautiful woman he meets in a bar. She tells him that she is new in town, down on her luck, and really needed a friend. M’Kaaaaaay. There was one itty bitty thing about her that bothered him about her. She REALLY knew her way around the bedroom. (Weird, right? It was like she was a professional or something…) Sadly, she takes his love, his money, and the engagement ring and skips town before he or her pimp…er… physical recreational services broker realized she was gone. (Yes my friends, she was a hooker…er…physical recreational service provider.)
That was just the beginning and the end. (You’ll understand once you read the book 😉 )
The real love story involves Joe and Reba, a green-eyed, auburn haired beauty who he believes is “THE ONE“. He loves her because she is beautiful and is willing to love him. Physically. He accepts that she does not have deep passionate romantic love for him. Now don’t get her wrong, Reba really loves Joe in her own way. He is a good man who takes great care of his family and she knows he loves her. However, that does not keep her from being unfaithful. Joe is very “traditional” in the bedroom and Reba has a condition called “being hot in the pants”. (It seems to be hereditary. Her mother is a CHRONIC sufferer.)
In addition to learning about Joe and Reba , you learn all about the other people who played significant roles in their lives. I thought this book was boss! Basically, all the characters in the novel were looking to be loved. (Mostly in a physical way but loved nonetheless.) The language and the descriptions are real, gritty, and graphic. There is also a lot of 70s slang but I know you all got your boots on, so just be cool when you start to feel out to lunch because if you keep on keepin’ on everything will be copacetic. Ya dig? (Translation: You’ll figure out what they are saying.)
Catch you on the flipside!
