Pimp Mongering

Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust By Bob ArmstrongCarroll & Graff, 256 pages, $14.95.

It is always difficult to write a good book, but it is generally thought to be easier to write a good memoir than a good novel. Perhaps that's true. One can imagine DMX producing a readable autobiography, but 300 pages of his fiction is a dodgier prospect.

The advantages of memoir are obvious: You don't have to think up a plot and you needn't worry too much about making your characters plausible-after all, they're real people. But memoir has its disadvantages as well, and while you don't have to make up your characters, instead you get stuck with them, and sometimes you get stuck with a bore.

Vanilla Slim is Bob Armstrong's memoir about his short stint as the pimp entrepreneur behind Zen Dolls, a San Francisco escort service. Armstrong is a hipster, a Vietnam vet and a porn magazine columnist with a burning desire to write for The New Republic. He gets his start with a two-inch help wanted ad in the back of SF Weekly; he "rides the storm" for a while; and then his career ends rather abruptly with 19 days in jail and three years' probation.

The story of Vanilla Slim is essentially a comic one. It's the comeuppance of an aging blowhard, and in the right hands it could make for a witty novel. But the story isn't in the right hands. It's told by the blowhard, and Armstrong doesn't see himself as a clown. He wants to be taken seriously and that, it turns out, spoils the fun.

An example: At one point Armstrong conceives the idea of producing intellectual porn videos according to the strictures of Dogma 95. He picks up a hand-held camera, snorts a lot of speed and brings in two of his favorite girls for a little lesbian action. Before the action begins, he asks the girls to pretend they're witches performing a Santeria ceremony. The girls get wrapped up in the witchcraft; it goes on forever; and finally Armstrong is moved to comment, speaking of himself in the third person,

"He's still so spun out, he fails to realize he's dragging this supposed g/g scene deep into boring territory."

Now obviously there's humor here-it's the fishmonger complaining about his wife's perfume-but since Armstrong himself is the fishmonger, he can't see the joke and his complaint is simply exasperating. Does he really think there's a chance his movie will land in fascinating territory?

What Vanilla Slim needs is an antagonist. When Mr. Armstrong lectures his hookers on religion and philosophy, what's missing is a girl who can stand up and tell him he's full of it. You'd think there'd be plenty of them, but Mr. Armstrong's prostitutes are remarkably docile students. One girl, Shannon, is visibly upset because she can't remember who Thomas Jefferson is; another girl, Havana, reacts with only gracious appreciation when Armstrong explains to her the meaning of narcissism.

Armstrong's portrayal of himself as a wise man among innocents recurs throughout and it leads to some of the book's most excruciating passages. Here's Armstrong introducing Havana to color theory:

"'? you got a red apple in your hand. Is the red in the apple?'

"She nods her head. 'This is getting deep.'

"I eyeball her untouched biscuit and gulp down half my espresso. 'You like going deep, you've told me so? So, is the color purple in the cloud, is the red in the apple?'"

This bit of Socratic dialogue goes on for pages and although Havana is properly impressed ("Whatsa color? That was really cool, how did you know all that?"), it's hard not to wince at Armstrong's self-satisfaction. Look, man, I expanded her mind!

Vanilla Slim suffers a great deal from the complacency of its narrator but that's not the only problem. Far too many scenes are written in the continuous present (a tense useful only for padding); and some of Armstrong's phrasing is term-paperish (he doesn't think about having a smoke, he contemplates it); but there are still a few moments of real excellence.

Armstrong is best when he's writing about his cellmates in the county jail just after getting busted. He has a nice eye for the absurdity of other people and as long as he's gazing outward he can be very entertaining. But a memoir seems to demand introspection, and that's not what Armstrong's good at. He might have done better writing a farce.