1. How to Be a Drug Dealer

Why is it that “testing the limits” of "free speech” has almost exclusively been done by pushy artists and entertainers? Dirty jokes from radio personalities like Howard Stern or pictures of gay sex from artists like Robert Mapplethorpe don’t test anything. I, on the other hand, am not an artist- I’m a businessman. I’m not an entertainer- I’m a criminal. I will test the limits of free speech by telling you how to get rich breaking the laws of the United States of America.

Drugs are made incredibly valuable when they're made illegal, just as a dam builds up pressure by holding water back. People want to get high very badly, so they give drug dealers great amounts of money for that opportunity. Water behind a dam wants very badly to flow downhill, so it generates great amounts of electricity when we let it go. This dam effect is extremely powerful. For example it keeps Las Vegas lit up like a bonfire all through the night. That allows for great nighttime visibility, so people can hand over all their money to the casino, regardless of how wasted they are. A dam is a big reason that money brought to Vegas stays in Vegas. This dam effect is the reason an uncut gram of cocaine costing 20 dollars (at most) in Mexico will cost 40 dollars, at least, in the States even after it’s cut fifty percent. Drug money spent in the US, stays in Mexico.

The only reason you may know about folks like Stern and Mapplethorpe is that something called the Federal Communications Commission gives them fame and fortune by

trying to keep them from doing their thing. Jesus, Mapplethorpe is just some New York yuppie who took pictures of naked people, and he’s so famous my spell checker knows who he is.

Folks in this FCC sit in meeting rooms you find while walking through the Halls of Power, and they arbitrarily decide whether the Founding Fathers (the guys who wrote the rules) would have, for example, let a bra commercial show nip poking through. The Founding Fathers were obscene old men that screwed their slaves, grew hemp, and strutted around in wigs and makeup, and yet bra commercials are not allowed to show nip. This FCC gave Stern, Mapplethorpe, and many like them everything they ever wanted by making them follow absurd rules. The DEA can do the same for you.

I'm not interested in free speech or lack thereof, to be honest. I'm not motivated by some sort of social conscience. This book is not meant to be a social commentary, and I actively avoid writing about non drug-related politics. So, let’s switch gears. How do you become a successful drug dealer while remaining above ground and outside of cages? With sharp adherence to the principles laid out in here you do. You will find instructions for dealing drugs throughout this book you’re about to read. You’re hooked on it like it was literary crack cocaine.

One rule is to stay sober and in control as much as possible. Mind you, most of my life I’ve done drugs like a Pfizer lab rat. But I have been very smart in the most crucial areas, and therefore I can tell you how to get away with this. Explaining the first part of what you need to do will lose me a few readers; nonetheless, here it is:

Be white, middle class, conservative looking and always watch that show COPS. There. Now you’re out of the police’s target demographic. Why do people get busted with drugs?

First, because they're driving a rusted out Chevelle with a Madonna on the dash or confederate flag on the license or dangerously ethnic music on over sized car audio.

Realistically, though, it’s the wife beater they’re wearing that really does it. Often cops will see the wife beater, and just open fire; no questions asked. Here’s why I’m going into this.

The band NWA (a drug dealer favorite) has a lyric saying something like “black police showing off for a white cop.” I may not have the words exactly right; my apologies to Ice Cube if not.

But, the point Mr. Cube makes here is about a phenomena where black police will beat a black suspect even harder than a white cop would. This is to demonstrate that there is a distinction between perp. and cop and it’s based on class if not race. If you are poor and you look like it: you will be a target. If you are Black or any race, really, other than White, Asian or India Indian: you will be a target. And keep in mind that if you are India Indian you may be mistaken for an Arab and that’s worse than wearing a wife beater.

I know that blatant discussion of race and class often makes people uncomfortable, and may lead you to believe that I'm a bigot, and that therefore you should quit reading. If you feel this way then you can go to hell. I'm telling you how to push dope. Get some freaking perspective.

But do keep reading because buried in here is some actual concern. I don’t have the statistics right in front of me, but the proof of what I say can be demonstrated by the fact that I don’t

need any. Everybody knows that a gigantic percentage of people in prison are there for nonviolent drug offenses.

This is where my bigotry and hatred truly lies. Innumerable people (if you can call them that) over the last one hundred years (not kidding) have worked tirelessly creating laws to combat the "dangers of drugs." I understand their position: they have to appeal to their conservative base in order to get elected. I'd just like to see each of those bastards swinging by the neck from a fucking flagpole. So many lives ruined. So many good people plunged into hellish, violent places because of wrinkly conservative senators waving their dicks around and being “tough on drugs.”

Don’t peg me for a liberal though. Liberals that stand by and watch this horror, while doing nothing except whining about equal rights or public education, or some other Goddamn lost cause are just as much to blame.

If you want to sell drugs in this police state you have to live by the lessons laid out in this book to survive and be free. The very first lesson will begin right here even if I'm jumping the gun a bit. I'm pissed off now, and want to get a move on.

The lesson is about working below the radar of law enforcement, and pursuant to that idea I'll relate the following story. The story is of a Turkish dude named Stan "Afghan Stan" Muhamadi.

Afghan and I had been doing business adjacently for a spell. Not in cooperation or competition, we were just in the same business. I had cultivated a long-standing and very reliable connection for large weight in cocaine, and if you know much about the drug biz then you know a situation like that is the absolute Holy Grail. The connection was a transnational

gentleman who happened to be moving up in his group. I imagine this rise in status meant he needed to be selling larger volume because he approached me to help him in that endeavor.

Mind you I pay no attention to the inner workings of transnational mafia drug trafficking organizations. I buy their drugs and give myself whiplash looking the other way from an incredibly complex and dangerous morass. At any rate, with this connection I worked out a finder’s fee in the form of a massive discount on a massive purchase, and then I gave him Afghan.

The connection, Afghan and myself met at a dive bar. This was a place I had always assumed was a front though I never asked if it was because that’s exactly the kind of thing not to ask. However, as it happens the spot plays a pivotal role in my story. Part of the reason I’m telling this now relates to the fact that it recently got turned into a pile of rubble. Victim of the times and of other larger outside events that are exactly the kind of thing I try not to know about. I'll say this though, when the elephants fight it’s the grass that suffers.

Everybody exchanged banalities in various foreign accents. We all drank and yakked and shook hands, and the connection eventually left to go off and do whatever it is Mafiosi do. Afghan and I waited because there was no sense in us appearing with these gentlemen. Also, we were crossing fat gagging lines off a mirror that said "Cuervo" on it right there at the bar.

We eventually moseyed on out the door and down the street happy as clams because this thing was really going to happen. Meanwhile, it was extremely good coke he’d given us. So good you could tell just by looking at it. It’s hard to discern different qualities of cocaine just by visual inspection unless you have the very best cleanly made and uncut perfection. It has this

pearlescent look with a pink hue and it’s hard as rock. Unmistakable. Also, it makes your whole fucking face numb and your heart hammer so that the hooker on the next barstool can feel it.

Anyway, we two were walking along peacefully when a cop car rolled up. I’ll bet we were an unlikely looking pair in a shady little corner of downtown. Afghan is dark haired and brown eyed. I am red blond and blue eyed. Afghan was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and a beaded necklace with Arabic writing on it. It was actually Turkish, but honestly. I was dressed like a bank teller and had on a loosened tie with argyles on it.

Afghan had a knife in his sleeve. I had a bible in my bag (for effect only, it burned my fingers when I touched it). We were both detained and questioned. I walked away. Afghan is in prison now. And the only reason the cops didn’t waste him on sight was because they thought he was India Indian.

The moral here is if you're in one of the police's target demographics, you have to find a way to seem like you are not. That means watching COPS every time it’s on. COPS is an in depth analysis of how not to appear to the police. The other moral is about staying sober during tricky situations like ones where you’re walking downtown in a major urban area in the middle of the night holding contraband. Had we been sober that night things might have turned out differently.

Afghan's arrest shook me in an intense way even if he was asking for it. I am conflicted as I think about him tonight, and conflicted about what I’m writing. It’s the same brand of conflict you will face if you decide to do this thing, indeed even as you decide to buy this book.

2. You Can’t Argue With Insanity

My own career in the illegal drug industry started at a young age but as an out and out dealer not until my early twenties. I'd recently gotten back from flying around the world on a magic trust fund carpet instead of going to college. Mind you no one in my family was rich. The trust fund came from grandparents who scrimped and saved so their grandchildren could get some higher learnin'.

My parents were sociology professors and while long on education they had somehow missed out on that big social science money. They made their scratch from teaching, and thus I did all of my growing up in college towns. I came back to this particular college town because my friends were still there; my folks had moved on and I wanted to relax a bit after almost two years of vacationing. There weren't considerations like, you know, getting a job or an education weighing on my mind.

The problem with this game plan was that I quickly became mind-numbingly bored. Naturally the solution was to break the law. I had enough money to buy pot at a bulk rate, so low it didn't matter if I used a little while selling. Or used a lot. Back then I smoked pot like a Moroccan brush fire. There was still some of the trust fund left, but also something far more important. I had multiple connections garnered from many years spent schmoozing in that town's drug scene.

When I first got a hold of the garbage bag full of potential prison time I lived in a very unstable setting that was absolutely not conducive to selling drugs. My housemates included two strippers, Bella and Donna who were inseparable and collectively known as Belladonna, Bella’s parolee boyfriend

Zane, Zane’s junky brother Grimm and my good friend Luther who was a heavily tattooed guitarist in a popular local band and a dwarf that stood about 4'3''. The chaos started early on. Zane showed up out of jail guns blazing,with all kinds of ingenious plans for how he would pay his rent. Bella related one of these to me one morning and the conversation went like this:

I said, "You guys can do whatever the hell you want as long as you're not fucking with me. But when he doesn't pay his share I will not cover any part of the difference." This look of grave personal hurt came over Bella's face. "You mean you aren't going to do the thing where you pay it 'till he gets a job?"

I had actually not heard that well thought out plan. I said "Hah!! That’s a good one!" Then stormed downstairs to get high. Zane was a consummate car thief, though not consummate enough to keep his ass out of the clink. Car theft and prison recidivism were his line. He was none the less one hell of a resourceful dude. In fact, he had a little tattoo parlor going out of our place for a spell. He did those with a prison tattoo gun made by putting a guitar string through a pen and powering it with the wheel inside a Walkman. He taped one end to the Walkman wheel so that as it turned, the string shot back and forth like the bar between a train's wheels. The tattoos were just for friends, mind you. He didn't have a business license. Also the venue wouldn’t have passed the sanitation inspection you need for minor cosmetic surgery. Zane was a fairly good dude, but his brother was an absolute dick. He and I got into a pissing contest one night

regarding a skillet. Grimm 's position was that I should not use his skillet. My position was that Grimm and his skillet could go to hell. Donna the alpha stripper and Zane the parolee were pretty cool. Their counterparts were absolutely not. Bella the beta stripper was hell on high heels and let no form of reality stand in the way of her chaos. One time I heard her upstairs yelling ecstatically because she’d gotten a pre-approved credit card in the mail. "Oh my God!! It has a four thousand dollar spending limit!!"

I looked at it later after Donna gave it to me to hide. She didn't want to confront Bella with her insanity but was hoping she would forget about the thing because it had an interest rate of like thirty percent. Those two made fuck loads of money stripping but only did it at strip clubs a good distance from town. They were terrified at the notion of one of their friends coming to watch them and potentially expecting a lap dance.

That’s a crazy thing to think about actually. Where do you draw the line between friends and customers in the sex trade?When they'd go off into the field they would leave a note out saying only this: "Don’t tell anyone." Usually Belladonna wouldn't give anyone any notice that they were leaving, which was neither here nor there to any of us except that maybe we'd worry. But one time I happened to come home while their bodyguard was there. Clubs sometimes assign scary-looking escorts to strippers when they go from place to place as part of business.

Dude was an eight or ten-foot biker with tattoos on his tattoos everywhere but where the scars obliterated them. He was sitting patiently at the end of Belladonna's giant, wrap-around, blood-red shag couch like Archie waiting for Veronica. I startled him when I came through the door and we stared at each other in this mutually perplexed fashion. He probably wasn't used to guys being anywhere near his girls, outside of the club that weren't either the abusive boyfriends or the stalkers. I felt shocked as well: the way he looked at me made me feel like a stalker or abusive boyfriend. I thought, well at least I'm an abusive boyfriend or stalker that pays his rent on time. I shook my head, gave him a peace sign and zipped down stairs to get high. The house had equally dysfunctional pets. The menagerie consisted of a cat, her kittens, one giant dog: Rocco, one normal sized dog: Ivy, and one little rat dog: Gizmo. The cat was the pushiest animal I have ever encountered and one night she actually broke a window because she'd been locked out of the house. She was Bella’s cat but she hated Bella, which was something Bella could not accept. The cat was relegated to the upstairs for a spell because Bella didn’t want her to have her kittens down in the basement where Luther and I had our zone. Didn’t think it was safe. The cat’s reaction was to infiltrate the basement through some pipe space and have her kittens on the foot of my bed while I was passed out in a drunken stupor. I think my room was the one in the house least inundated with cigarette smoke. Loud, mewing kittens aren’t cute when you wake up to them and you have a demonic hangover. We'd been at this crazy thrash metal show

(GWAR) the night before and I thought, this is the weirdest morning-after ear ringing I have ever had. Ivy, the medium sized dog, was chronically depressed. She was also Bella’s pet and Bella was so highly chaotic that Ivy had probably seen some truly horrific things in her advanced dog years. Gizmo, the little rat dog, was actually some kind of expensive pure bred. Not a poodle per se but some other brand of little yappy number. Gizmo was known as the poo-cano. He acquired this moniker because he would lie on his back and want you to rub his belly. This made him shiver and convulse hyper-actively because he loved it so. One time we all tried to see how hyper we could get him so we took turns frantically rubbing his belly. It turned out he hadn't been walked in a while, though he'd apparently been fed, and we quit doing that immediately after he acquired his moniker. Rocco was a gigantic freaking dog -- really hairy, friendly and stupid. His claim to fame was arguably even worse than Gizmo's. See, Zane was highly cleanly which was good because Belladonna weren't exactly little Martha Stewarts. Zane had just done a heroic vacuum-a-thon of the upstairs, rendering about a bushel of dog hair, and had gotten a blowjob from Bella as a reward. When Bella finished she opened the door to her room just outside of which the dogs had been waiting, wondering what was going on in there. They stormed into the room and well, Rocco, what can I say? If you can’t figure out what happened next I don’t want to explain it. I've tried before and there's no way that doesn’t sound just... wrong.

For various layers of reasons, it wasn’t long before the police kicked down our door. It was maybe six in the morning. Early spring. The snow was melting and that winter’s accumulated frozen dog shit was starting to thaw and stink in the back yard. It was just barely first light and I woke to the telltale sound of incoming law enforcement. It’s hard to describe sounds, so I'll tell you how to make it for yourself. Find a large, flat piece of wood like a table or a door. Knock on it as hard and fast as you possibly can while screaming: “Police Department!!! Search Warrant!!!” That is one hell of a way to wake up in the morning. Especially hung over and stoned and goddamn kittens underfoot. So here's the story leading up to this sad event.Luther and I lived in the basement of this one story house. The strippers, parolees and junkies stayed upstairs and were discouraged from coming down but everybody had to walk through the upstairs to get to the down. Follow? The night before myself, Luther and several other folks had been at the local excuse for a dance club. It was some kind of weekly special night and they had cheap Long Island iced teas so we were pretty hammered by the time we returned to the crib. The living room was lit only by a street lamp shining through the windows so, you know, it was dark. As we walked toward the stairs leading down to the basement we noticed something odd. Zane was doubled over and shivering against a wall with his hands held tightly against his stomach. Luther said something like “Zane, are you OK?” He looked up like Gollum caught in the headlights of a car while searching the tarmac for ‘The Precious.’

He actually hissed a little bit. Bizarre, I know. But we were all used to so much weirdness by that point we didn’t think too much of it. It was the next morning that the cops came on the scene and as you may have guessed they were looking for Zane. I got upstairs just as Donna the alpha stripper was greeting them by the remains of the front door. Three ardent police stood in the doorway and - I swear to God - they were in the Charlie’s Angels pose. The fat one in the middle had a shotgun pointed straight up and the two on the sides had handguns pointed in either direction. The one in the middle chambered a shell as soon as he saw me. He looked at me, then at Donna and then screamed “who's that?!!?" I said "Jesus man I live here." They continued screaming at Donna and I in the living room regarding whether or not we were hiding Zane. Then they had us wait on the front porch on our knees while they secured the house. Given the scene outside you'd have thought the Dunkin' Donuts truck crashed in our front yard. While they were still in the process of searching the house for Zane they brought out first Bella, then Grimm , then Luther the dwarf, who was giving the cops all kinds of attitude. He walked past us all as we chilled out there on their knees. He was wearing boxers, a wife beater and bunny slippers. He sat down on a concrete step (it was just the right height for his legs) and lit a cigarette. A giant fat cop waddled up and stood over him, posturing like an ape, and screamed, "Where’s Zane Anderson!? Are you hiding him?!!!”

Luther replied “I don’t know, he probably headed out the back window while you guys were in the front screaming.” Now comes one of the greatest images ever to fry itself into my brain. Luther changed position slightly and the cop reacted with lightning like reflexes, putting one hand to Luther's face and the other fast to his nightstick. Luther burst out laughing and had this incredulous look: “The fuck you think I'm gonna do?” Personally I find dwarfs in bunny slippers to be extremely threatening. Just then they brought Zane out. Zane said “I love you” to Bella as they hauled him out and she gave him a gave him a huffy, blow off. "What-ever." We did eventually find out what happened to cause this chaos. The night before, Bella had nagged Zane into stealing cigarettes from the grocery store. We lived on the other side of a highway from a grocery store. He eventually went out and attempted this feat. Bella was a very effective manipulator. The problem was that he was stopped by store security.

They noticed him hopping over the tobacco counter with a carton of Marlboro Lights because Zane is the sort to raise a security guards’ eyebrows.

He and the guard got in a tussle and the guard won out and restrained him until the police came. The cops weren't ones that knew Zane personally (though many in town did), so Zane was able to give false information and escape with the handcuffs still on. He went back to the house, and this was where Luther and I discovered him huddled against the wall at the top of the stairs. He was dislocating his thumbs to get the handcuffs off. They found them later under the couch.

So, anyway, there I am on my knees on the front porch watching this tattooed dwarf in bunny slippers being belligerent with the police and I think about the six-pound bag of pot I had.

And here is where I shall impart one of the greatest pearls of wisdom I can give to a new drug dealer other than the one about staying sober and in control, which nobody was doing at that point. Don’t keep your contraband in the same place where you sleep.

I had it sealed tight in a garbage bag inside a little water cooler hidden carefully far away from the house where it would stay until I could find better dealing conditions. Don't forget that! Cops can kick down your door at any time for any number of reasons. For example they had raided two other houses that morning to find Zane using the domino method. The world is a big place with lots of little nooks and crannies; there's no reason to be sitting on a powder keg.

Kneeling there in the soggy early spring morn, I basked in the warm glow of having my ass well covered.

3. Skunk and Sulfur

Shortly after the fiasco with the cops hauling Zane off, believe it or not, I moved out. I moved in with some friends that, while not really any more stable than the circus troop I'd just left, were far closer to me. Less likely to rob me of my drugs and money if they knew I was dealing. These were two interesting gentlemen by the names of Jimmy and Colin.

Jimmy was a shockingly talented artist and a serial womanizer who was into pushing the limits of acceptable behavior.

This phenomena crystallized in the flat-out funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

Are you ready? Here we go:

He got a Dear John letter saying “I’ll see you in Hell.”

Colin was not the artistic type and was actually more of a businessman. He’d had several ultimately abandoned business ventures by the time he was twenty-two; which is not to say he didn't make any money off them - he just got bored easily. Colin's quirk was that he was a recreational liar. When at crowded parties he would find some random college kid he wasn’t likely to see again and see how far he could twist their reality. I would try to listen in if I could, but generally I only got little snippets. He only did this at raucous, standing room only, deafening type parties loud enough that adjacent people couldn't easily hear his demented bullshit. "Yeah, I’ve been working lately at the University Ape Slaughterhouse.... division of Simian Services... probably noticed the building over by East Dining Hall. Mostly we're just yanking electrodes out of chimp brains and tossing the bodies in the oven... electrodes cost money... today did a giant shipment of Ebola monkeys...have kind of a rash." Another one was "You know, I was once loosely implicated in a prostitution ring... we called it an "Internet dating pyramid scheme".... cops called it "online solicitation."

Especially horrifying was when he tried to impress women: "Just got an article accepted by the school newspaper... headline: new discovery... fresh teen pussy... leading cause of teenage pregnancy." Anyway I spent that summer and winter and most of the next summer selling weed and magic mushrooms out of this venue. The mushrooms came from my friend Constantine who eventually got busted one night after taking a particularly large dose of DXM or dextromethorphan. That’s the active ingredient in cough syrup that’s all the rage with kids these days: the night-time-sniffling-sneezing-so-you-can-rest-and-trip-balls medicine. The cops had seen his car weaving and had stopped him. He explained that allergy medication sedated him sometimes and that he was tired. Since he actually had the medication bottle in his possession they believed him, but followed him home just to make sure he was all right. They even walked him to his door. Constantine played everything off pretty well all things considered; that is, until he passed out just as he opened the door to his apartment. The cops noticed vermiculite (used with the growing medium) all over the floor and investigated. They found all sorts of mason jars full of growing fungi and that was it for him. An interesting side note is that there were dried up bits of shroom all over the place so they had to have a HAZMAT team clean it up. Mind you, I was no Mr. Expert Drug Dealer at that point either. I smoked pot like a Rastafarian whose friends worry about him because he smokes so much pot. I also drank heavily - though booze has never been my drug of choice. I just did it

because everyone else was. One of the central rules of the drug culture is always to give in to peer pressure. What’s more, I wasn't following some of the basic safety guidelines I have now. For example, while I did have my master stash hidden away from the house, I kept an unnecessarily large amount at our place simply out of raw laziness. On top of all this, the place we lived was not as stable and quiet as it could have been. The upstairs dudes (the house was divided into four units) had a habit of shooting off giant illegal bottle rockets at all hours, and the neighbors would complain about the explosions. Listen: never tolerate frequent explosions at your black market place of business. Pisses me off, thinking back on it. But the venue had a wealth of logistically positive aspects. It was in a high-traffic part of the student ghetto and people could approach the back of our house right off an alleyway. Our traffic was not only invisible from the main road, but adjacent houses had pretty good amounts of traffic too so that made for a smokescreen. Also my roommates and I were very popular and the place was a really pleasant little spot, so folks would tend to hang out for a bit. This is a highly, highly important rule: make sure people stay for a while after they buy from you. Large, fast volume of traffic going in and out is a great way to get your door kicked in. Understand that your business will grow as fast as you let it, and there is no shortage of dangers when you have a lot of business. One of the biggest is noticeable traffic. What makes traffic obvious to the police is when it’s not congruent with local traffic patterns.

Most of the people out and about during the normal workday are housewives, trades, the unemployed and cops. But trades don't congregate. Housewives only congregate around Bed Bath and Beyond and like, candle shops or some shit. The unemployed only congregate around the bar and the drug dealer's house. Cops only congregate around Dunkin' Donuts and the drug dealer's house if the drug dealer isn't careful. Don’t sell during the work day and don’t let people park at your house. Mine, however, was a big-time party house. There was no way to hang out there reading comic books and telling the masses to just say no until 5. People are pushy when they want to get high. What I did was find other houses to hang out at until the workday was over and read my comics there. While I was reasonably careful with traffic, there were other things with which I was not. Specifically, those fireworks should have been an issue. It’s just that I quickly became accustomed to the occasional warlike cacophony that rivaled the original Fourth of July.

For example, on one of these occasions I was in my room bagging up eights out of a half pound bag which is an activity that generates a massive pungent stench. That was mixing nicely with the stench of cordite and gunpowder from rocket contrails. You can imagine maybe: smoky, sulfury, skunk smell. My window was about head level from the ground and was open so I could hear voices outside and assumed it was the upstairs dudes discussing trajectories. It turned out to be the police. I knew this because one of my friends was bragging about what a prick he'd been to them:

“Then the cop was, like, saying how like, they had these complaints of a loud party here, and I was all, ‘there’s no party

here man! Do you see a party here man?!’ Then the cop goes, ‘Why do we see an empty keg on the back porch?!’ And then I'm like, ‘That keg has been there forever man!!’” My situation may have been chaotic but business was fucking amazing. My whole community smoked pot like a DEA evidence furnace, so I simply waited around for folks to come to me when they wanted to get impaired.

Most of us followed a certain base drug regimen: A pack a day, a six pack a night and at least an eighth a week. We’d be stoned frequently, except during the work hours, not including the first one or two because that morning's wake and bake was probably still kicking; then again immediately upon return home. Jimmy and I practiced a permutation of this lifestyle, which was to be stoned continuously throughout the day, but also to be engaged in the act of pot smoking itself, continuously throughout the day. Jimmy and Colin were the ones on the lease, and I paid half of my negligible rent to Colin with money and the other half to Jimmy with dope. One time we were both getting totally fried while I was awaiting customers and Jimmy was awaiting chicas. As Jimmy got up to answer the phone I thought to myself: "Jesus, we have been smoking solidly for the last hour. I think I'm in some kind of dissociative state." I actually started to get panicky. Jimmy got off the phone with some girl who was calling to get jammed and walked back into the room where I was debating calling 911.

"Hello operator? I'm high as shit! Send help!"

Jimmy said "Well? Should we get back to this weed smoking thing we were doing?" I thought about it for a second and decided that was a better course of action. I didn't have health insurance. I wish I remembered more details of that era of making money at the expense of my higher order cognitive functions, but it’s all very hazy to me now. I spent it as a modern monster incarnation of Holden Caulfield. Those were my salad days. There was a long and pleasant stretch of debauchery in there. You can imagine maybe: getting drunk in the evenings shortly after waking up, the smell of perfume in the sheets; making sure the wallet condom was gone like any responsible adult would. I'd be selling drugs out of the house while my roommates went to work or otherwise got on with their lives. In the evening we'd get forties and sit out on the porch and watch the convenience store across the street through binoculars. Lotta people in and out of a convenience store: we called it reconnaissance. After about the second or third forty ounce of malt liquor, with it getting dark and our vision getting too blurry to check out chicks as they fueled their cars, we'd head inside and switch to hard liquor. Usually in the evening there were five or ten people hanging out at the house. Except on this one crazy ass night, which captures the spirit of raw chaos of the time. That night there were like twenty people over and everyone was on the front lawn for some reason and each was holding an open container. I didn't think this was the safest set up for my vending operation, but I had the perfect solution in mind.

The convenience store across the street had a PA system, which let the clerks inside tell the motorists outside when to begin fueling once they had paid inside. These were the days before credit card gas pumps. The chick that worked the register had a crush on me and I felt she would do what I asked. Part of her job was to tell the motorists they could have their gas. The thing was she had to speak very softly into the PA system, because the volume was always cranked up to 11. That was so anyone could hear the speakers, including the hearing impaired and the immediate neighborhood. By my logic, if I were to place a telephone call to the convenience store after about fifteen minutes of stoned-out drunken pawing through the Gray Pages, my plan would unfold as follows. She would put her phone directly up to the PA system microphone. I would stand outside the house screaming militant political rap lyrics into my cordless and the revolution would radiate from their PA system and out across the immediate neighborhood. This would prove an adequate solution to the problem I was trying to solve, the details of which had escaped me by that point. I remember hearing my disembodied voice espousing Black Nationalism at massive volume across the misty student ghetto night, looking up, the drizzly summer rain coming down on my face, seeing my clenched fist in the air, and waking up the next evening.

4. How to Manage Encounters With Police and Informants

Here is my personal explanation for the massive drop in crime since the eighties. You see this phenomena all the time (especially if you watch COPS). Some dude gets pulled over for whatever reason and he has warrants on his head, stolen goods in his car and a gun within easy reach under a pile of empty beer cans. That's all well and good - if you know much about the law or move amongst criminals, you know he's in a little trouble at this point. But then they find drugs. Ohhhhh Shit!! Now we have a real problem!! The cops have started an era of something called "proactive policing." That means busting people for ridiculous offenses like spitting on the sidewalk or littering. This, in and of itself, does nothing for the crime rate. But here’s the thing: cops can tell damn well who has drugs even before they stop the victim for crossing a solid line or whatever the pretext may be. The fact that the target committed a "crime" gives them more power to stop, question and search the poor bastard. They find paraphernalia or drugs, and the dude is suddenly gonna do months or years for spitting on the sidewalk. Again, all that does nothing for the crime rate, but here is the punch line. While relatively few drug users are into serious crime, anyone who's into serious crime uses drugs. Real criminals like you and me are the collateral damage of the drug war. But we cope with this by using a handful of simple yet extremely important procedures. First, we'll cover how to interact with law enforcement when you know goddamn well you’re breaking the law.

Then, we’ll learn how to cope with the possibility that law enforcement knows it too. Let’s say there's a cop telling you to come over to his cop car: you have to do it. If you don't comply, that’s illegal. If you keep walking, he can say you were fleeing, which is even more illegal. Running may work on occasion, but if the cops are serious about getting at you, I promise they will make things happen so you won’t escape. You have to face this. You have to do what police say in terms of where to stand or sit. A rule of thumb is, they are able to tell you what to do as it relates to you not getting away from them and them protecting themselves from you. They're allowed to touch you, but for the love of sweet Jesus do not touch them. If you touch a cop you've committed assault on a police officer and you're in so much trouble you wouldn't believe it.

Now first off, remember you don't want to set off his internal cop alarms prematurely. Ask, "Did I do something wrong officer?" The "officer" part rules out, for the cop, the possibility that you have an attitude. Cops feel obliged to crush attitudes. The fact that you are asking a question puts the ball in his court and pushes him to decide if he is going to fuck with you. That is as far as the pleasantries go. If he says anything other than "carry on" or some other indication that he's not interested, you ask, "am I free to go?" Right off the bat. This is highly important. These are the two ways a cop can stop you: 1. The cop has "reasonable suspicion." That means he thinks a crime is going down. If a cop has reasonable suspicion,

he can stop you and pat down the outside of your clothes, but that’s it. With very few exceptions, depending on where you live, you have to tell him your name, address, social security number and date of birth at this point. 2. The cop has "probable cause." That means he thinks a crime is going down and that you're the one doing it. If the cop has probable cause, he can search your clothes, your bag or your car all he wants. How do you know if the cop has either of those? You ask, "Am I free to go?" If he says "yes," then walk away (don't run), and don't answer any questions or say absolutely anything or even look back. A cop has drawn his own line when he says you're free to go. He has far less power to continue to fuck with you unless you interact with him again.

When a cop stops you because he has reasonable suspicion, it’s called a "detention." Detention is not arrest. Cops can't take you anywhere in the car unless they arrest you or you give consent to go with them. Don't ever consent to anything. The reason cops are allowed to pat you down when they have reasonable suspicion is to make sure you don't have a weapon. So if he feels something he could interpret to be drugs, he can't use that as a reason to go into your pockets. It’s best not tempt fate though.

Personally, I would carry the bare minimum of anything in my pockets, especially not a lighter or keys, because those in theory can feel like a knife. If you keep your mouth shut and the cop can't feel anything that might be a weapon, he can't go into your pockets. If you're worried about him doing these things anyway, speak toward his dashboard camera/microphone and say "officer may I stand in

front of the camera please? I'm worried you’re going to hurt me or violate my rights." Once he has said "No" to your "Am I free to go?" you have to put up your constitutional shields. Tell him your name, address, D.O.B. and S.S.N. if he asks. The address you should give is the one that will come up on his computer when he runs your name. Don't give him any other addresses you use and don't lie. Then (and this is so goddamn important) you say the following. "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney."

This sentence gives cops nightmares. When you say this sentence, you are invoking both your Fifth and Sixth amendment rights under the Constitution. Totally shuts down his program. Did you know that once you say the magic sentence they aren't allowed to mention in court that you said it? And they can’t keep interrogating you? "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." You see how I underlined that and put it in bold italics? That is how emotional I am about this. It’s incredibly important. And it’s not that simple either: once you have said the magic sentence, you must keep your mouth completely shut. Tell them name, address, S.S.N. and D.O.B. and then repeat the magic sentence. Every time you speak again, you've cancelled it out. Cops are really good at getting you to talk; do not underestimate their ability to trick your ass in the heat of a bust. You're not as good at keeping your cool as they are at making you lose it. I know you think you’re a cool customer. You aren't. Cops practice making people talk all day and night and

you don't practice anything but the skin flute and the butt trumpet. However, their tactics can be predictable.

The method he will use to get your ass behind bars (where it belongs) is to lie to you. He'll say you're required to do things like empty your pockets, give him your ID, and give him info other than your name, address, D.O.B. and S.S.N. You say, "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." If that doesn't work then he’ll start in with lies about all the trouble you're in. About how all your friends and a dozen witnesses are ratting you out. But this cop really wants to help you. You know, because he understands where you're coming from; you remind him of the way he used to be; he likes you. This is so Goddamn ironic. Cops automatically want what's absolutely worst for you: it’s called "building a case" and it’s what they get paid to do. They do not want to help you. Ever. "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." The next wave of lies will come with the paperwork. The cop will come up with a clipboard and tell you that you've got all kinds of things to sign if you want to get out of trouble. Usually these boil down to written confessions and written statements that you give up your rights. They write, you sign. Don't fucking sign. Say, "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." Next he will say, "OK then I have to fill this out. How do you spell your name? Arright, what was your address again? Oh yeah, I know the area, that’s a nice trailer park."

This part is actually legit; they really do have to write down your name and address, D.O.B. and S.S.N. The thing is, without missing a beat he will say "we appreciate your cooperation... almost done... cut you lose in a sec... where was it you were at tonight?" "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." They stick bullshit questions on to formal ones so they seem like ones you really have to answer. That last question is common: they like to get you to tie yourself to a location. Then they can line you up with witnesses that saw you throwing bags of dope around like Johnny Pot Seed. Once he's exhausted all his other tricks, he'll go to his last ditch efforts. First he’ll claim he's a dirty cop and that he's going to plant drugs on you if you don't start talking or signing. If he was a dirty cop he'd already have the drugs planted on you and wouldn’t have bothered with all the lies up to this point. You are exhausted by now so pair it down: "I Remain silent. I see attorney. I smell bacon." The last trick he has at this point is pissing you off so you flip out and do something he can arrest you for. He may give you a surreptitious flick to the ear or quietly describe to you how he spent all the previous night making passionate love to your mom. Don't let it get to you. I mean, for one thing, we all know your mom and it’s probably true. "I am going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." Now for the flip side of the law enforcement coin: the magic sentence is of no use with narcs and it’s always dumb to deal drugs to people you don't know. Obviously street dealers do this

and those dudes get arrested on a regular basis. And killed. However, if you want to expand you will have to deal with new folks eventually and some of those will be people you've never met. So here’s how. Above and beyond all other rules is that a new customer has to be vouched for by someone you trust. Next step is to have contact with them over a week or two while they buy from you across the person who vouched for them. During this time they should never ask you to sell to them directly. If they aren’t playing the game, you have someone else tell them to get their head right, or you tell them to fuck off. I read in a spy novel an incredibly good quote that applies to what we're talking about here. I'd worry about plagiarism, except that I don’t remember the quote very well, so my version will be different. It said something like: “The truth is ever-changing, ephemeral and hard to know -- but a liar is easy to spot.” Once you're done gasping at what a cool quote that is, you may begin to wonder what it has to do with this topic. Well, here you go: “People are ever-changing, diverse and hard to know -- but a cop is easy to spot.” Nice Huh? If you plagiarize that I will sue your ass. It’s true, though: cops are not highly trained slick cloak and dagger types. They stick out; keep your eyes open.

Look for signs of lying. Both narcs and cops lie like rugs with political ambitions.

Gesturing with hands palms up, touching the head and running hands through the hair are the most common involuntary motions people make when they're being untruthful.

Cops will know this, but snitches will not, because cops don't give snitches any training. Instead they just throw them to the wolves. Snitches are not trained liars like cops are, and as such, their disguise may fall apart if you test them. For example, he may not have his story straight and memorized. Ask him the same questions repeatedly and periodically over the course of two or three conversations. Untrained liars tend to forget what they said. By the way, a lot of these ideas I picked up from a guy named Barry Cooper. He was a consummate, highly decorated narcotics cop for many years on the West Texas part of the Mexican border. He arrested multiple thousands of people for drugs, but he no longer thinks that behavior was OK. Now he is strongly motivated to atone by giving out cop secrets. It's cost him though: the Texas government took away his kids. Anyway much of the following is his stuff. First, understand that these days police are absolutely never allowed to use any substance whatsoever. When they buy from you, they'll claim that they're buying for a friend or for resale. While they aren't allowed to use the drugs they get trained to pretend like they are. For example they learn to take a hit of smoke into the mouth; hold it for a second and then blow it out through the nose. This kind of bullshit behavior is easy to spot for anyone that smokes herb. For one thing, smoke looks different once it's come out the lungs: it looks thinner. Make the bastard take a real hit. Keep an eye on your possessions when someone new shows up. Undercover cops are allowed to steal from you if the

stuff they steal can be used as evidence. Don't have anything illegal accessible to visitors. Surveillance on a buy takes a lot of planning and setting up on the part of the police. When you switch times it fucks up their program pretty good. But when you switch times and also locations the cops are hosed. When you discuss changes of plan with your buyer remember that everything a snitch does, particularly buying, is supposed to be cleared through his boss cop. If he seems to stall then just let the whole thing go. Drug dealers are never at a loss for customers. A big job of an informant is to introduce you to an undercover cop. There is absolutely no reason someone you just started dealing with should be going out of their way to introduce you to anybody. Even if neither person is a cop or a snitch, they're being disrespectful of the danger you're in. Steer clear of anyone that’s been busted or has disappeared for a while. If you must talk about illegal stuff with anyone you don't absolutely trust: whisper in their ear. Thats your best bet against wires and distance microphones. Another one of a narc's roles is to buy drugs from you and then give the drugs to the police so the police can go get a warrant from the judge. If that happens, then most likely within 72 hours you will be paid a visit with a battering ram. That doesn’t work the other way around though.

Cops are absolutely never allowed to let drugs get out onto the street. On rare occasion they'll bust somebody by selling them illegal things, but only if they can swoop in immediately and reclaim what they sold. Ask your new customer to bring you a joint and then have him walk away. The second he's gone, flush it down the toilet.

If a raid doesn't happen almost immediately, there's no way he could be a cop.

5. Milwaukee’s Beast Zombies

Picture, if you will, a sleepy northeastern college town. My high school years. Ahh, to be young again, and also a sociopath. My town was a royal wide spot in the road that happened to have a massive university in it. Odd little juxtaposition of modalities, as my arty girl friends would put it. That is to say, friends who were girls, not "girlfriends" precisely, or at all. The female part of my high school cohort tended almost exclusively towards art, drugs, promiscuity and... that's about it. I know this sounds like bullshit put in here to be funny, but actually, yeah - that's about right. Some weren't even into art. At any rate, my extended community were the "townies" to the migrant college students, a simple catch-all phrase that caught us all. But in reality, those caught up in this phrase bore various different stripes. My own specific branch was the punk rock, skater, anarchist, skinny white boys. Most of us were either from the upper east side of the trailer park or the lower west side of the suburbs. Everybody had been smoking pot since the age of fourteen or so, which was good because it distracted us from the petty crime and vandalism that had gone on before that. We were a "street corner society" and hung out on a street that marked the border between campus and downtown. This place had been frequented by our ilk since time immemorial and had retained the same name during all that time immemorial.

Actually, just since Pink Floyd came out with "The Wall." You know, because everyone called this place "The Wall." It was a little half circle seating area built into a stone berm on the edge of campus. The purpose of this berm, or "wall" if you will, was to stop the main campus lawn from spilling down onto the retail thoroughfare of this, my beloved college town. We spent most of our days doing things other than going to school, and most of these activities took place at or adjacent to The Wall. All of these activities would be frowned upon by polite society, or any society, really. If I saw kids doing today what we did then, I would call the fucking police - goddamn kids and their crazy monkey music. What were some examples? Well, one good one was "PissCups.” This was an activity that involved pissing in a lidded soda cup like you might get in a fast food joint. There was more to it than that, but not much. Friday and Saturday nights we placed these these things very carefully on the sidewalk right before the bars let out and all the drunk college kids shuffled out en mass. The greatest perspective on the whole thoroughfare was from The Wall, which was why this whole thing worked so well. Here is what you did. First, you got the PissCup in position and then you sat at The Wall: watching, waiting, smoking. For some reason, young, dumb, drunk (usually male) college kids loved to - and this is the kicker - show what wild men they were (to nearby coeds) by kicking the soda cup. I know it seems hard to imagine that anyone would want to add to the humiliation suddenly felt by said college kid. But we would taunt the poor young gentlemen with boisterous explanations of what he had just accomplished.

"You're fucking covered in piss!!!! You fucking dipshit!!! AAAAhhhhh hahah hahahahah!!!!!" That one never got old. Well, it kind of did: everyone agreed Jimmy crossed the line when he put a dead squirrel in a PissCup. A frat boy kicked it with great fervor and really low to the ground. The piss and squirrel went almost directly straight up then straight down. He screamed and cried and shook like a wet dog, and it was ugly. That’s no way to treat a fallen squirrel. "Phling," was arguably the most mean spirited and dangerous of our activities. To play this game, what you did first was get yourself a nice long, fresh tree branch, say, couple of feet long. Then you stripped all the side branches off so that what was left was a thin whip-like deal. If you are over fifty and were beaten by your parents, you might know this item as a "switch." I'm not over fifty, but I know people who are. They tell me that parents used to discipline their children with makeshift weapons. Next, you found yourself a slightly rotten acorn and took the cap off and stuck the soft part onto the thin end of the switch. Using a whipping motion while keeping the switch perpendicular to the ground, you sent the acorn rocketing off at top speed. If it went over the roof of a store, it was a "foul ball." If it hit the storefront facade and penetrated, it was called something I don't recall - but it was worth a lot of points. If it hit someone in the head, it was called a "head hunter" and you won at that point. The prizes were meted out by the ArtGirls. There is one more horror that I will include in this collection, because it was the high water mark of a very special time to be a part of. It wasn't one of our games per se, because

the nature of the activity precluded repetition; the victims got wise quick. This was more of a high point in our community-wide delinquency. The two architects of this caper were a very criminally-minded yet ingenious young weasel named Trevor (who happened to be the inventor of Phling) and this dude named Weave Joiner. These two were the legendary perpetrators. There are two bits of necessary background I have to put in here. First: the Japanese beetle. This proud creature was an invasive species that invaded from Japan, arriving sometime in the early nineteenth century. It was our local locust and was highly destructive to foliage, especially grapes and roses. To ward off the threat, north easterners put out "Japanese beetle traps," which are big plastic windsock-looking things loaded with a pheromone that the beetles get attracted to. When they come to investigate, they fall in and they’re trapped. What you end up with is this giant bag of rotting Japanese beetles at the bottom and a roiling, thrashing mass of trapped Japanese beetles at the top. Second: the FratGirl. During the first few weekends of the semester all the frat girls of a particular frat girl house would gather en mass in these organized marches, beginning in the dorms where all the frat girl houses had to be located. Interesting side note: frat girls weren't allowed their own houses and had to live in the dorms. This was because of a one hundred and fifty-year-old-law on the books barring more than a certain number of unrelated females living under the same roof. The idea at the time was to prevent bordellos from forming. A rose by any other name, right?

On their mass migration they'd be marching in time to the most inane fucking chants. "We rock the house! Kappa Kappa Kappa Delta Beta!" Over and fucking over again, all the way, clear across town, like some kind of Gestapo Booster Club on parade. Unfortunately for them, this path took them by a low parking garage where Trevor and Weave had assembled their collection of bloated Japanese beetle traps. They shook out the contents onto the herd of future trophy wives while screaming: "It's the Apocalypse!!!! Where's your God now?!!" We were such horrible kids. And as we got older we just got worse. Fast-forward to early adulthood and you will see this to be the case. Meanwhile, as bad as this all sounds, my friends were the Light Side of the Force in our community. The Dark Side was a gruesome side indeed. These were the older kids, a few years older than my cohort, but who had graduated right around the time we did, or much more likely, not at all.

I'd describe them as the zombies from Night of the Living Dead - only instead of spending their time eating human brains, they spent their time sitting around listening to punk rock, drinking Milwaukee's Beast beer and smoking Bugler Fine (cheap) Rolling Tobacco. Well, I mean, they thirsted for human brains too; just mostly they stuck with the Milwaukee's Beast and Bugler. The Zombies tended to be a bit more salt of the earth than us. Don't get me wrong, we were all white trash. The Zombies were just white trash that didn't give a fuck. My set at least tried. You know, affecting airs of refined taste in Indie music, Beat poetry and Timothy Leary. The Beast Ice Zombies just sat around, got in fights, stole cars and drove them around drunk. You might

find this interesting: for some reason, most of the strippers I knew hung out with Zombies. The Zombies were an interesting bunch and, like the "townies" as a whole, they bore various different stripes. For example while most got wasted on Milwaukee's Beast every night, some drank a beer called Unnaturally Lit to get plowed. Also, the pattern of jail tattoos varied somewhat. For tasks beyond criminal ones, the Beast Ice Zombies weren't good for much and they were not super employable. Luckily for them, there was MoonCorps. MoonCorps was a business owned by these two lesbians redneck townies that weighed in at a combined nine hundred to a thousand pounds. They owned a huge number of old run-down houses right near campus, ideal for cheap student rentals. So, in essence, their business was to maintain these properties and keep them standing in the face of massive destructive forces. That’s where the Beast Ice Zombies came in: cheap brute labor. This may seem surprising to those unfamiliar with the horrors of student living, but it’s true. Cleaning houses that have been occupied by college students is a feat that requires actual carpentry. Flooring and drywall has to be changed, sinks jammed with puke have to be dealt with, windows missing for some reason need replacing, etc. That level of hedonism ravages your average multiple-occupancy dwelling. For example, the mess can be so bad that it takes cleaning, carpentry, payoffs to the Housing Bureau - and perhaps an exorcism - before any new tenant can move in. I never worked for MoonCorps, though many of my cohort did between stints at Burger King. MoonCorps was such a shit

job that it was considered a rite of passage. Because I never worked there I was never popular with the Beast Ice Zombies. Also, they figured I was stuck up and bourgeois because I didn't drink enough beer and I smoked too much dope. On the other hand, Belladonna's was a major hangout so I would see these cats all the goddamn time. Belladonna tended to put up with more of their bullshit than the girlfriends waiting at home would, and also, Grimm and Zane were total Zombies. As it happens, my friend Luther the dwarf was liked and respected by them. But when we went from the front door down to our zone in the basement, we made it a point to walk quickly past them as they sat there getting wasted on and around Belladonna's giant, wrap-around, blood-red shag couch. Remember how I said we put up boundaries between the scene upstairs and ours down in the basement? This was the reason. If we'd taken a minute out of our busy schedule to hang out with the Punk Rock Undead, they would have insisted we drink at least a six-pack with them. Then one would have the following awesome idea: "Hey, we could go party downstairs with you guys! Then Belladonna couldn't bitch at us about spitting on the floor!" No, we kept things real distant. When I tell this part of the story, for some reason people tend to assume that Belladonna would be having trysts with the better-looking of the Zombies. That was not the case, and as a matter of fact, Belladonna were quite prudish around them. Well, there was one time when a Zombie's girlfriend (a Zombette, I guess) talked Bella into doubling up on him (with her) for his birthday. But that particular dude was the most alpha member of them all, sort of a Zombie chieftain, so she

didn't mind. The whole deal was awkward, because Luther and I totally knew about it while Zane was completely in the dark. He thought he and Bella had something really special. In any case, with rare exception Belladonna were pretty non-sexual with the Zombies. It was with the housemates that shit tended to get a little crazy. I have known many a stripper, because they were part of the set I moved with, not because they were part of a strip club I frequented. That is certainly not to say I've never been to a strip club. But, having seen both sides of the stage, I can say that in a community context they see you very differently. Not necessarily that they like you, but they don’t automatically see you as a sucker and an asshole to be bilked of money. But even when away from the work setting, they still habitually use some level of sexual power. Some are very shut down sexually when not on stage faking it. But for most, that is not the case, and in fact they use their sexuality like a Jedi uses the Force: talking about sex, behaving provocatively and, while not necessarily taking their clothes off, wearing things that may as well not be there.

Another one, believe it or not, is trying to get you to take your own clothes off. I bet they find that affirming of their lifestyle. The ones I lived with were always trying to get me to show them my junk. I didn’t, because I figured they'd snap a picture and save it for their records, which is exactly the kind of thing they would do. They got pissed when I refused, though, and Donna said she would eventually burst in on me in the shower. But they'd always offer to trade and would even get into minute bargaining:

“OK, just let me see your pubes and I will lift up my shirt and you can see my bra.” I'd say, “I'm not playing this game because I know goddamn well how its gonna end. You guys start trying to get me naked; I refuse; you get pissed and I have to tie the bathroom door shut with one of Bella's whips when I take a shower." I wandered a ways off topic there. My main point was to talk about the Beast Ice Zombies. Another was to field a question I am often asked regarding why there were so many strippers and Zombies in my community. I don't know. Me, my friends, the Zombies and the strippers that loved them: we all hung out at the bottom of the barrel together. You can see that when I would start plying my trade, there would be no shortage of great customer base. Customer base is an important element, no doubt, but there are three other big ones. They are: safety from the law, venture capital and a wholesale connection. Safety wasn't an issue for me (stupid), nor was capital (trust fund), nor wholesale connections (next chapter). So game on.

6. Bad Party Planning

My first decade on the planet took place in a rural part of the Southwest. The sticks, no doubt, but within a long commute from a non-rural part. That part had a major university that would pay academics to teach class. This was before my family lived in the college town mentioned above, and this original place was a lot of fun.

We had a few acres with a giant garden, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, lots of cats and a couple of dogs. I definitely had a very happy early childhood, but then when I was nine or ten my parents decided to up and move to the fucking Northeast. I completely hated that goddamn place. I went from this Shangri-La of sunshine and gardens and animals and deserts and mountains and five alarm sunsets to a stygian, wintry, rainy, suburban American nightmare. You know, typical house, typical quarter-acre plot. No goats, no chickens, no garden, no sunshine. Nearly killed me. However, I had an older cousin who lived in our new town. He was a young socialite, and his set were mostly hippie and punk types. He saw me hating life in this new world, so he would bring me along to the odd party. Not that I would mesh into that social scene - I was like nine, for Christ’s sake. But it was diverting. It was these folks whom I met through my cousin that later in life got me into the game, helping hippies hawk their homegrown. See, the set I moved in high school was adjacently connected to the underground set of my cousin's. So even after a span of ten years or more I would still see these cats around. The most fateful of these meeting happened around Halloween at a NORML party held at a farm way out in East Buttfuckville. It was hosted by a Sasquatch-looking hippy dude I had known since I was ten. That dude was the textbook burnout/hippie/waste case, but he was the alfa male of that particular hippie troop and owned the farm. It had been left to him by his grandparents.

NORML, by the way, is a pro-pot lobby group. I don't know what the acronym stands for exactly: National Organization for the something-or-other of Marijuana Laws. I could look it up, but then so could you. In addition to not knowing what the acronym means, I don't quite understand how the party we attended came under the auspices of that organization. All I know is that it was called a "NORML party" and I got 100% wasted there. I also know that having a farm is a great way to be a pot grower. The thing about having a farm, especially one where lots of corn is grown, is that you can grow giant pot plants out in the fields and they can't be spotted from the road. Even though the Feds sometimes fly over cornfields to look for guerrilla gardens, there's a lot of cornfield in the Northeast, and if you space the plants out enough it’s damn hard to spot them from the air. So I was at a NORML party thrown by Bigfoot, situated fifty miles on the other side of the middle of nowhere, and was 100% wasted. Also worth mentioning is that I think I came with several people who, in retrospect, I'm not completely sure I did come with (?). The party was spread out across the barnyard, but mostly concentrated in the barn itself. It was actually a very substantial, chaotic, whacked out little happening. Dope, acid, mushrooms and the Northeastern fall (especially around Halloween) go amazingly together. The crisp fall air held at bay with THC warmth. Luminescent fall leaves seen through LSD fractal hallucinations. However, parties with a lot of LSD and shrooms tend to become decentralized. Most folks need to be in a tight group of familiar people to have a good time frying their cookies on acid.

In this case, there was a central party (with the band and kegs) inside the barn and then multiple sub-parties happening at discrete bonfires all over the barnyard. At some point, I lost track of the people I think I came with (?). For this reason, I ended up marooned at a bonfire-sub-party, feeling unable to venture out into the scary darkness. It was Halloween, after all. Also, I was 100% wasted on multiple drugs, many of which I'm not, in retrospect, completely certain I took (?). Meanwhile, there is no shortage of ones we can very safely assume I did take. The activity I'm about to describe is a textbook example of bad party planning. Several random scruffy counter-cultural characters and myself were doing hits out of a full-size (five foot high) nitrous oxide gas tank next to a gigantic bonfire (!). I can explain what a bad idea that is by introducing you to a cool stoner party trick: Take yourself a hit of nitrous oxide, then blow it out real fast through your cigarette: the end burns like a sparkler. There were six or eight scuzzy hippies surrounding this tank of explosive gas and staying warm by the bonfire. Nitrous oxide is very popular in the hippy set. It’s sometimes called "hippy crack" and is usually available at hippy jam band concerts, sold in balloons you might normally put helium in. However, this particular night we had an even more rip-shod setup than that going: we were filling garbage bags with the nitrous and twisting them shut to make a seal. Just untwist it a bit and take a hit off that shit. There’s nothing in the entire universe more ghetto than huffing gas out of a garbage bag with a bunch of hippycrack

fiends huddled around the nitrous tank like it’s the One True Cross. Anyway, I was chilling there when suddenly I noticed Sasquatch was right next to me. Then I remembered I'd settled at that particular sub-party for that reason, perhaps having followed giant footprints in the mud. Sasquatch was a comforting presence because he was a positive figure from my childhood. However, also at this moment I noticed I'd run out of nitrous in my garbage bag because I wasn't very good at holding it right. Sasquatch was a dude, though, and offered me a hit of his. The hit was gigantic because Bigfoot pushed on the bag as I inhaled. I reeled back; deafened by the auditory distortions nitrous causes (called the "wa-waas"). Looking back up at the hulking figure, I remember seeing a combination of Viking berserker, woodland great ape and miniature fireworks display (?). Being on the verge of unconsciousness loosened me up enough to ask what I'd been working up the courage to ask all evening: "you ahh... sell me some...'that?"

Sasquatch didn't look shocked or anything, but it took a little minute to sink in.

He said "you Sally’s old-man little-bro right?" "Cousin.""You get busted? You narc or something?"I could barely hear my reply " 's that money."Sasquatch said, "OK" and the rest is history.

7. How to Hold and Carry

It wasn't because of carefulness and intelligent methods that I avoided getting busted back then - it was because I was lucky and small-time. There is, however, a smart way of doing things. There are important tricks of the trade for home dealing, and most of them revolve around the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. First, however, I want to cover some ideas that are highly, highly unconstitutional. I owe most of this to Barry Cooper. You may recall him as the ex-narco-cop that gives out cop secrets to atone for ruining the lives of many a citizen who happened to use drugs. If you are selling dope out of your house, you will be sitting on at least some amount of dope at least some of the time. First and foremost, it needs to be well and truly hidden when it’s not in your hand being exchanged for money. I know what you're thinking: if the cops were raiding for drugs, wouldn't they have a dog with them, thus making any hiding spot useless? Here is how to deal with drug dogs. These three steps are so clever and easy I'm surprised they aren't part of the popular lexicon of drug knowledge but they aren't. First off, get some "fox scent" and "doe scent" from someplace that sells guns and outdoor gear to hunters. These are sprays meant to attract fox and deer but they have a side effect which is to drive any dog completely batshit. The dog will become so riled up and weirded out the dog handler won't be able to cope. Don't use much of the stuff, because, for one thing, it doesn't take much; for another, it’s piss from female fox and deer in heat.

The next technique is the best one. You take a bunch of dope, put it in a thin plastic bag and leave it overnight someplace warm. In the morning you rub it all over everywhere in the house. The smell gets out to just the perfect extent. People won't notice the smell, but the drug dog will - and he’ll be utterly unable to pinpoint anything. The last step is the icing on the cake. Get a handful of seeds and stems, grind them up in a coffee grinder then sprinkle them all over your lawn and your neighbor's lawn. Make sure they're completely ground because if a cop recognizes a stem it can make a case for a warrant. Also, if you don't get the seeds chopped up, they’ll grow into plants, which can also make a case for a warrant. Ingenious, huh? But all that may not be enough. Now we’ll discuss using the law to your own advantage, as opposed to simply escaping it.

Here is what you do: never let the police into your house. Your 4th amendment rights (the ones against unreasonable search and seizure) are strongest in your house and the police have a real hard time getting in there. With few exceptions, they can only get past your door with a warrant. For this, they have to convince a judge that searching your house will help them arrest somebody, and usually that’s you. There is a big loophole to this warrant business though: that’s if you willingly let them in. The police show up at your door, then during the conversation they innocently ask, "may we come in?" You say “sure,” thinking they just want to get out of the rain. But now you've given up the last bastion of your Fourth Amendment rights. Once inside your house, they can

snoop around and anything illegal they see will land somebody’s ass in jail. This is known as a "consent search," and it’s never a good thing. Under absolutely no circumstances do you ever have to give police consent to do anything. I mean for one thing: that’s an oxymoron.

Those cops at your door really want to bust your ass bad - that’s why they're knocking. They know you have illegal materials in there, and they'll pull out every stop they can to get at them. All those stops will involve lying. They'll say you're already in trouble and that you’re required to let them in; giving consent will just help your case. They'll say that if they don't find exactly what they're after or nothing that’s too illegal they won't arrest anybody. So you don't have to worry if you have a bowl or a few plants in there. On the other hand, if you refuse consent, things will go incredibly badly for you. All lies. Cops will always go as hard as they possibly can on you, warrant or not. Don't ever open the door for police. If they're knocking then the best thing to do is to not answer. If you feel the need to talk to them, then you yell through the door for them to have their dispatcher call you. Best course of action is to pretend you aren't home. If the cops say they can see you in there, then yell, "We aren't home!! And we don't sell drugs here!!" But they'll be out there banging like a workaholic prostitute and snooping around the windows. They'll come back with a warrant after they see your electric neon-green hookah shaped like Gumby-- sitting in your upstairs front window-- which has been open all night-- because people have been using it to puke out of-- which is why they were called there in the first place.

If the police say they have a warrant, then you tell them to kick your door down. Also ask them to please avoid shooting you. Remember, if you want to survive this you will put something on over your wife beater. The lesson here is to never trust the police. Police do not get paid to help people they suspect are breaking the law, and if they're paying attention to you its because they suspect you’re breaking the law. What about other people answering the door though? Can they let the cops in? No. Cops can only come in if invited by someone who lives there. This means someone whose name is on the lease/mortgage, someone who has a key or someone who's had their stuff there for a certain amount of time. Matter of fact, if one resident lets them in and another resident later says they have to get out then they have to get out. The other resident has to be on the scene, though; this can't happen over the phone. Now let’s talk about the warrant actually getting served on your criminal ass. Don't bother asking to see it as a way to stall them, because they don't have to show it to you. You won't be answering the door anyway and that’s the ultimate stall. If they're trying to talk to you, this is because they don't have a warrant but they do want to get in your house. Tell them to come back when they have a battering ram. As it happens, once they kick down your door there isn't much legal advice for me to give you except: 1. It’s incredibly important that you keep your mouth shut, and: 2. Keeping your mouth shut isn't quite enough. When they're searching for your illegal items they'll be watching you like a hawk. One will say "I'm gonna check in the

bedroom closet!" and he'll make sure you heard him. The other cop will notice you getting nervous. Both police will then know that you have your drugs hidden in that closet. How do you deal with this? First make sure that you've said the magic sentence: "I'm going to remain silent, I would like to see an attorney." Then say absolutely nothing. Head down, eyes closed and meditate to remain calm as possible. This is the ultimate poker face. If you have any sort of dialogue going with the police then there is no way to pull it off. Magic sentence, mouth shut. If it’s your car that’s being searched, he'll make sure you see what he's doing and he'll be watching for your tells. Say: "I’m feeling light-headed, can I sit down?" Then say "I am going to remain silent I would like to see an attorney." He'll let you sit down, especially if you spoke loud enough that his dashboard microphone picked it up. Since you followed your request with the magic sentence, he can't ask "Are you just asking that so I can't see your tells?" Sit down on the curb and mellow out. Don't watch what he's doing. If they do find drugs, they'll try to get you to narc. They'll say they can help you out a huge amount, in fact, maybe even let you go: if you narc. All lies, once you are in this much trouble the police can't help you. Police do not have the authority to commute a sentence once you've been busted with drugs. Only the judge does. But the judge won't. If you narc, they will use you until you have served your purpose then throw your ass in jail: exactly the same as they would have if you hadn't narced.

By the way, you may not be the only one they’re coercing to narc. If you deal drugs out of a place with roommates you will put these roommates in danger, and there's only one way they won't get busted when The Man comes knocking. You have to prove that you had "exclusive control" of your room and all the use and storage of contraband went on in there and in no other part of the house. "Exclusive control" means that you were the only one that ever went in your room. It’s hard to imagine being able to prove exclusive control in court, though. What’s not hard to imagine is the cops throwing everyone's asses in the clink and figuring that if they didn't do what they were accused of, they probably did something else. Make sure everyone understands the dangers and how to avoid them: never, ever cooperate with police. If cops are asking you for permission to do absolutely anything, it means two things. One is that they want to bust you. Two is that they can't do it without bypassing your Fourth Amendment rights. Just say no. What about when you are getting stuff from point A to point B? You know: carrying contraband.

Well, one way a cop can get into your car is with the aid of a drug dog. Once the dog has indicated that it smells drugs the cop can search you, your bag or your car all he wants. Here’s what you need to understand about drug dogs. While it’s true that any dog can smell incomprehensibly tiny amounts of anything that has a smell, that part isn’t important. What's important is that they can differentiate between these tiny smells. Just like we humans can resolve between colors. Interesting side note: seeing multiple colors is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. Did you know that? Crazy huh?

The point is that you can see a red ball perfectly well, even if it’s behind a wire fence, right? Well, dogs can detect your drugs no matter what you use to cover up the odor. So, contrary to a popular myth, coffee grounds are no protection. However unlike the way light shows us the red ball instantly, it takes time for scent to get to where a dog can smell it. So your best bet is to hold the smell inside a container but understand that even that is not infallible. If you put your drugs in a plastic bag it will take far more time for the smell to permeate than it would in say a paper bag, but in the end it doesn't matter what you use: the smell will get out eventually because smell is a molecular thing. The best technique for containing drug smell is to put drugs in a Ziploc bag and then put that inside of a mason jar. Both clean on the outside and sealed tight. Always carry drugs in concentric sealed containers, making sure no drugs get on the outside of any of them, and then get to where you need to be as quickly as possible. Containment is key; containment, and also cleanliness.If you have drug residue on your hands it will get all over everything you touch, and the cops know that. For example when a cop brings a dog to your car he will take it to the car door handles first. All it takes to make the dog alert is the drug residue from your fingers that got on the door handle. Clean your hands often and then open the car door with something else anyway. It’s possible for the dog to smell your drugs even from outside the car. Barry Cooper has a number of tips to help you avoid that eventuality, and he was a narcotics cop and a K-9 specialist, so listen.

Put the drugs in a fresh container at the very last minute before you go out because, as we were just discussing, it takes time for the smell to permeate. Put them toward the center of the car because that maximizes the distance from the outside of the car where the dog will be sniffing around. Put them high up in the cab for that same reason and also in case the dog is able to sniff inside for some reason. Dogs are not physiologically designed to smell up. Not that they can't do it; it’s just much less effective for them. The best way to keep a dog from smelling your drugs is to keep the dog the hell out your car. If you give your keys to the cop or unlock your door because he told you to, for some reason that’s legally the same as giving him consent to search. So when he asks you to do these things, just don't do them. On the other hand, don't be confrontational or argue with him or say you know your rights or anything like that. Say nothing more than "I don't consent to your search." If he is pressing you, then say "I am going to remain silent I would like to see an attorney." If he asks you to exit the car, then do it. But shut and lock the door behind you. Another weakness to exploit is that dogs are unpredictable and fickle in their obedience, and their natural behavior doesn't lend itself to being a work animal. Fox and deer scents work in cars exactly the way they do in houses. The dog won't alert to them, but it will act up and not do its job right. Some people use cayenne pepper or bleach or other nasty substances to dissuade the dog. The problem is that the cops know that trick. When the dog handler sees his dog jerk back because its nose got scorched he will take note of this. The cop

can add that to bits of evidence he collects to justify probable cause. For example, you seeming nervous can be one of those. Best move of all is to make sure the drugs are in clean, fresh, concentric containers that hold the smell in. Of course, if you do drugs of any sort in your car then drug residue will get all the hell over everywhere and none of these precautions will be worth a damn. If you feel the need to get high in your car, then that’s your decision. Just don't drop the soap. Next topic will be hard to get your head around- don’t do any drug business in your car. A license plate is a 6'' X 12'' name tag. Not driving is one of the ultimate ways to stay under police radar. People in the US are married to the idea of doing everything and going everywhere in their car; it’s just the American mindset. Cops are part of that mindset, and they're looking for drivers. Not that they're opposed to busting people on the sidewalk, but have you ever seen a cop tailing a pedestrian in a cop car? Doesn’t work.

I get so much static about this part. Don’t fucking drive.

The thing about a driver’s license is that it makes you keep a current address with the police. For example, once you switch addresses you only have a certain amount of time to tell the 5 about it or they can bust you. If you’re a criminal that works with the public as part of their criminal activity, then consider going without one.

If that doesn’t seem feasible to you, then look at it this way: there are now 7 billion people in the world and a negligible percentage of them have a driver’s license. You’ll fit right in. So ride the bus. It’s not like buses are thick on the ground, though; in the worst-case scenario, you'll be waiting thirty minutes at a stop if you’re doing this during the day. The problem is that thirty minutes can be a long time if you're scared or justifiably paranoid because you’re holding. So look at route maps for stops that have a lot of buses using them. So, say you're waiting at a stop, but you’re all freaked out because you have a giant sack of contraband in your possession. Put the drugs into a bag that looks like litter, and leave it on the ground -- where it looks even more like litter. When you see the bus coming, bend down and subtly pick it up. The person who gave me this idea left out an important detail, which I won't leave out now: don't use a potato chip bag.

One night I was leaning against a tree by a bus stop and I was all relaxed because I had the drugs stashed on the ground nearby. I’d selected a potato chip bag from the trash to hide them in. I’d chosen it because it was dark-colored and not shiny, and on the ground you could barely make it out. But someone came by walking his dog, and lo and behold: the dog started fucking with it because it smelled like food. The owner tugged the leash because nobody wants their dog eating garbage. As fate would have it though, the giant sack of cane fell neatly right out onto the grass. I began yelling and waving my arms to distract the owner. "Hello there!! Top of the morning to you!! Out for an evening constitutional? Couldn't have picked a better day!!!"

The dude said "¿Qué?" and walked quickly past giving me a wide birth. He hadn't seen the luminescent white sack on the ground as he yanked his dog away. Though the little bastard still had my potato chip bag.

Then the bus pulled up. I hurriedly tossed the cellophane sack down into the front of my shirt and got on the bus. I was freaked out, sweaty and with this big obvious bulge just over my belt. The bus driver gave me that look that says, “I don't give a fuck about anything in the universe, least of all you,” which all seasoned bus drivers seem to get.

He rolled his eyes a bit. "Need a transfer?"

Now, remember that cops can pat you down if they have reasonable suspicion, go in your pockets if they have probable cause, and do all that plus search your vicinity if they arrest your criminal ass. The reason cops can search your immediate vicinity is to protect themselves from you. Thus, the area they can search is loosely demarcated by where you could lunge to grab a weapon. Keep the drugs out of lunging distance. This hiding business is a bad idea if your run is during the workday commute and a bunch of people are waiting at the bus stop. Wait in the crowd and keep the contraband on your person. Oftentimes, major bus stops have garbage cans. In an emergency, slip the bag in there. It becomes far harder for police to tie drugs to you once you get them into a public trash can.

Another source of danger is the scale. If the cops find a scale on you, they’ll think you’re a drug dealer.

If there’s drug residue on this scale, or if you’re holding drugs along with the scale: you’re fucked at a much higher level than with drugs alone.

Speaking of which: if you're holding drugs and also a gun, you’re fucked on a whole different dimension of pain no matter how legal the gun is. No guns with drugs and no scale with drugs either. Use a cheap digital scale that you can throw away when you’re done. Cheap digital scales are only cheap because they don’t stay accurate after extended use. For a single use they will be as accurate as you need. Buy a bunch on Ebay.

Here is the poem I wrote called: Pull your head out of your ass if you want to deal drugs.

Are your ready? Here we go:

No car, no gun, no scale, no license and no address.

If all this seems like a lot of trouble keep in mind that sitting in prison is a lot of trouble too.

8. How Not to Be a Drug Dealer It’s hard to recall exactly what we were doing all day back in that era at Jimmy and Colin’s. It sure as hell wasn’t working hard or going to school.

Nobody watched much TV, because it was considered uncool, and because no one at our friend’s houses trusted one another enough to split a cable bill. So not much TV, except for one glaring exception: Sifl and Olly. Some of my more twisted counterparts and I became obsessed with this show after someone taped all the episodes. When I say my "more twisted counterparts," I mean Weave and Trevor of Japanese beetle fame. The show was hosted and mostly populated by sock puppets, and the hosts themselves were a white sock and a black sock. Genius. The idea was that these two had put the show together on a shoestring budget and had to fund it by doing infomercials for a senile old businessman (a gray sock) that sold absurd products. For example they sold shaved beavers that protected you from pirate burglars by gnawing on their wooden peg legs. Or a do-it-yourself body piercing kit for your pets. That was just a nail gun. Other examples included chicken-flavored air conditioning, hurricane-flavored bubble gum, Civil War corpses, legless dogs, CAT scan glasses, a bottomless swimming pool, foot-long hamsters, hooker monkeys, Bigfoot feeders and a black hole-powered vacuum cleaner. My favorite was the all-purpose juicer that juiced everyday inedible objects like furniture and appliances. One customer claimed he juiced his microwave and now he could see through stuff.

During the infomercials, Olly the white sock would get more and more worked up and emotional about the sheer quality of the products. Sifl would have to rein him in when he inevitably became abusive to the callers for not showing enough appreciation for this high level of quality.

Along with watching bizarre shows and being high at all times, the lifestyle was not the healthiest I have ever lived. The convenience store across the street had a deal going where, for some paltry sum, you could assemble your own sandwich from absurdly low-quality ingredients. I subsisted off these sandwiches, which I outfitted with all the cheeses, salami, way too much mayonnaise and absolutely nothing resembling a vegetable. I also drank huge amounts of orange juice back then for the vitamin C it provided; vitamin C tends to get leached from your system by alcohol and drug abuse. Another highlight of that era was smoking like a locomotive. Jimmy smoked a pipe, I smoked Marlboro Red 100s and Colin smoked cigars moderately. Besides Colin I would say that roughly 100 percent of our community members were heavy smokers. You will find that pot smoking and cigarette smoking go beautifully together, and typically, people will have a cigarette shortly after they get blitzed. Folks were constantly getting high at my house, and if they weren't, they’d have been smoking mountains of cigarettes anyway. Yes, abuse of our bodies was a cornerstone of existence in that era. However, we were also hard on our living conditions. Jimmy was a collector of bizarre items that he called "found objects" and the rest of humanity called "garbage." His aim was to always be adding to the art movement in progress that was his room, and the most egregious example was this gigantic, beat-up old baby grand piano. He’d met some random person who needed to get rid of it, so he talked me and a few other suckers into wrenching our backs getting this gigantic thing out of a third floor apartment, onto a flatbed and into his room.

His sales pitch to get our labor (free of charge) was that the piano would be a community resource that anyone who wanted could come and play. And all the chicas would love us and people would be more likely to buy my weed, because the house would be a center of music and merriment. The problem was that there was a reason the previous owner hadn't wanted the piano: the thing was beat to shit, totally out of tune, and had cracks in its sides. Instead of getting it professionally tuned, Jimmy contented himself with scattering marbles across the piano wires to give it a "discordant" sound. Colin kept more conservative living quarters and was mainly a collector of objects of violence. He didn't have any guns - at least none that he showed anyone - but he had a boatload of knives and various martial arts weapons. He also had a full-size heavy punching bag that rested on its side on the floor of his room because we didn't have anywhere to hang it. So naturally, people would pretend it was an enemy gang member whom they were interrogating. That involved standing around it in a group, punching, kicking and beating it with nunchucks, black jacks, police batons and brass knuckles while screaming, "What now motherfucker?!!" My room was the smallest in the house and had been a breakfast nook back when the house was a single family dwelling. I was never someone who needed a lot of space though. I had been traveling around the world before staying at Belladonna's and had never moved beyond living out of my traveler backpack. I came with few possessions and acquired very few more. As a matter of fact, instead of a bed I had a couch to sleep on and didn't use sheets until Jimmy made me.

Jimmy wasn't initially worried about the bedding situation until the girls started. It was his couch and he wanted to reclaim it someday. Being a drug dealer involves keeping a low profile. On the other hand, you are certainly a public figure: a man of the people, a pillar of the community. But the illicit nature of the activity gives one a "bad boy" slant. You’re like an evil, underground politician. I never had any serious relationships during that era, but many a woman came along. One fling was part of a small clique of hippy chicks I was acquainted with because I had dated one of them several years prior. The girl was a doozy. She had short angry red hair that matched her fiery, twisted, aggressive personality. She was all peace, love and harmony - until you crossed her. I didn't want to cross her, and also, she had an ass like something out of a comic book, so I tolerated quite a bit. The first tryst occurred after she burst into my room in the middle of the night after some kind of lunar ritual in their crazy Wiccan society. Hippy chicks always have that kind of shit going on. Afterward it became apparent to her how I kept my very sensitive activities very quiet, sexual indiscretions included. You'd be surprised how much more frequently and easily you can have random trysts if you learn to keep your mouth shut. The whole thing got to be just plain weird though. The girl was a sexual experimentalist to an intense degree, and she would show up out of nowhere in the middle of the night. I felt like some kind of eco-feminist reverse concubine. When I would see her or members of her coven at a bar or party, we would just act like old friends. I wouldn't mention that I had spent much of the

previous night with this redheaded super witch in some kind of advanced yoga posture. Another very memorable girl was one from outside my community. I met her because at the time Colin was working for a landscaping firm, so one night he had some of his rather provincial coworkers over to smoke dope. Our little corner of the world had no shortage of those types. You might say my town was an island of progressiveness in a sea of poor dentition, multiple chins and gun racks. One of these dudes had brought his sister. She was a diamond in the rough. She had long wavy black hair, delicate features, and a body like a geisha. The lass was unaccustomed to the crazy shit that went on in our little town and in our little house. For example, she had never met a drug dealer and had never smoked dope before. What's more, she’d driven there separately from her brother, who was trying to set her up with Colin. You can see the writing on the wall though. That night she was on some kind of dope psychosis-fueled sexual cowgirl trip. "Yip, Yip, Yah!!" Of course, my notions of "normal" sex were pretty distorted at that point. I was so exhausted by the end of the rodeo that once I was put out to pasture I passed right the hell out. In so doing I, forgot to lock the door, bar the windows and put up some kind of protective magical ward. I woke up to such violence as I have rarely seen, and it was taking place directly above me on an old couch. It looked like a Marvel version of the Wicked Witch of the West vs. Calamity Jane, except in Monstervision like a Godzilla movie.

Jimmy burst in the room with a chica behind him swathed in a sheet looking concerned. She retreated, and we made a heroic UN-style peacekeeping effort. The cowgirl geisha stormed out to her truck holding her jeans and flannel shirt. She was wearing a wife beater, my boxers, and untied work boots. I debated stopping her to explain the whole sad, sad misunderstanding and to suggest round five, but I wasn't quick enough. She moved like a mountain lioness. Also, the dome light in her cab revealed some serious firepower. The super witch was done with me directly at that point. It wasn't like awkwardness: it was more like rage. No skin off my teeth; I was happy to be done with that era of tantric date rape. There was some kind of sexual vibe to our neighborhood during that particular summer. One of the houses behind ours had this room upstairs that was famous in the immediate area. It belonged to a woman with an operatic range and a sex addiction. At one point, I mentioned this to another one of my friends, and he became irate. "I know!!! Every time she starts yelling, my cats run under the couch!!" What makes this interesting was that this was Trevor of Japanese beetle fame; what also makes it interesting is that he lived on the other side of our block. But my living conditions suited me to the ground and the smallness of my room was not an issue, because I had always believed in simplicity.

My home decor consisted of some books, some clothes, my travel photos and a journal. Not a lot.

As a matter of fact, I didn't own a car and didn’t use a drivers license. I got into bars with my passport.

I definitely enjoyed what I did. But life was not perfect - largely due to Jimmy's ideas of housekeeping, the kitchen doubled as a scrap yard for unwashed dishes. Jimmy was not a fan of domestic work and instead enjoyed living in filth. I wasn't exactly Mr. Clean myself. The video game system that had belonged to Colin and had resided in my room for a spell was removed after it was discovered doused in spilled - and long-since dried - orange juice. Believe it or not, the scene was beginning to sour. In fact, we're getting to a spot where one era burns away and another arises from the ashes. That’s good, because if things hadn't come to a stop when they did, I wouldn't be able to tell you about them now. I'd be locked in a cage somewhere. If you haven't picked up on this yet, my style then was a full-blown living PowerPoint presentation of how not to be a drug dealer. That neither occurred to me nor bothered me then. However, there were two other things that did. I knew shit was getting out of control when Constantine quit being forthcoming with the mushrooms. For one thing, it was a load of profit out the window. Also, even before he got busted he started going all the way around the bend as a result of taking far too potent a regimen of illegal and semi-legal drugs. He stumbled into Jimmy's room one night while Jimmy had a girl over. Jimmy decided to physically throw him out, and Constantine appreciated that not one bit. His response was to find an item of road kill and take grainy black and white pictures of it. He put those on a flier and posted it all over town. Also included on the flier was our address, directions from downtown, and a message saying: Found: Dead Cat

We had a few people stopping by to shame us for not taking a cat’s life very seriously, and also, the road kill’s actual owners showed up and wanted Fluffy's corpse back. That was tense. Lastly, a borough official came around wanting to know who was illegally posting offensive bills. On top of all that, something happened that was no good at all. We had had a raucous house party, which was something we didn't do very often. Like, that was the only time we ever did it. The place was a constant party anyway, you see. But this was a real party with a band and kegs and everything; Jimmy was going through a Gatsby like socialite stage. Things were well wound down and we were cleaning up a bit, when these two crew cut beefy dudes in clothes statistically indicated to be hip showed up at the door. One of them said, "Hey is this the party? Can we buy some weed?!" They actually started opening the screen door but I yelled, "Don't open the door!" This is the opposite of what cops want to hear when they're trying to bypass your fourth amendment rights. I didn't know that though. The only reason I said it was because the very second anyone opened either the front or back door, the cat would immediately shoot outside, no matter where it had previously been in the house. Oh yeah, we had a cat. It was one of the kittens of that pushy, window-breaking cat from Belladonna's. Anyway, these undercover cops let the cat out after I yelled at them not to open the screen door. The cat shot out, and I followed it, saying, "Now I have to go find him!"

The dudes repeated their wish to purchase contraband, but I replied, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. The party's over." I never heard anything more from local law enforcement, but that was a powerful warning shot across my starboard bow. I was starting to see the writing on the wall - it was written in flaming napalm. Then one day I was part of a conversation, the content of which forced my hand in matters. It was with Colin and another friend named John. He was like, "You're a communist! We have to work so we can pay taxes! You just sit around and sell dope all day!" Colin jumped right on his bandwagon "Yeah, we have to work so we can pay taxes!" Then John said, "And you just sell dope all day!" Colin chimed in, "You sell that shit to kids?!" I glared at the both of them. "I am not a communist. Get the fuck out of my house! And quit smoking my dope!" I yanked the bowl from his mouth. That tore it for me. For fuck's sake, what could be more capitalist than a drug dealer? I couldn't abide being called a pinko. Between this and the other bullshit happening, I knew I had to get the hell out. I high tailed it out west.

9. Domestic Horror

She was a borderline personality chick from the South, full of deep fried Hatfield and Mccoy genes. Like you normally find in jail or on Jerry Springer.

But she knew how to play the damsel in distress and also the dragon. I was a sucker for the damsel part, and a sitting duck for the fiery screaming part.

Cry, cry cry. Rage, rage, rage.

Part of the borderline personality is this intense, all-consuming neediness and a separation between public and private faces. By the time I saw what lay beneath I was fully sucked in. Meanwhile there’s little known fact that’s invaluable to people who abuse their loved ones. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, because nobody can defend themselves from their allies. One reason I was a sitting duck for this chick was that I’d only recently gone straight and was a little naive about the world of squares. For example, I’d never considered that there were so many adults who’d never in their lives gotten high. What the fuck kind of life is that?

I mean, technically I understood that there was world of squares out there somewhere. But I’d always suspected it was a myth, like UFOs or global warming or Canada. In any case, it was something I’d never been a part of. Not since grade school, anyway. Also I was in pretty ugly mental and physical condition for other reasons.

You may remember I abruptly dropped the Beam crew and cut short that part of the tale because I needed to cover people’s asses? Life got real, real harsh in there. By the time I met this chick I was a scarred-up piece of broken brain. I had some PTSD going, and a heavy dose of PHKD. Ehh, bad times. So here came this chick that offered a relative island in a definite storm. She had a good job and a seemingly (at first) good head on her shoulders. She worked for a light industry chemical company that did contract work from some shadowy agency, which I am fairly certain was Cobra. In the middle of the night she would occasionally sit up screaming, “Co-Braa!!!” in a raspy reptile voice and I’d fall off the bed. Almost immediately we moved in and got married, and I’m not completely sure why. I guess that was what I wanted at the time. It’s just what people do, you know? They grow up, they get married.

She agreed not to ask about my ungodly past, and I agreed to horror in lieu of love. By the time I proposed marriage (to hush up the nagging stream of hints), I had some secret drug use going on. Ball and chain on the other foot, you might say.

She couldn’t detect how ripped I was, because she had only ever hung out with squares.

There were times that she was screaming at me and I was so blitzed I could barely understand what she was screaming about. It was like a satanic version of Charlie Brown’s teacher. I was getting high behind her back the moment things got ugly. So, that is to say, from the very beginning. None of this was easy. I was wracked with guilt about the secrets, lies and

multiple lives that come with that territory. It didn’t register with me that I could’ve put my feelings of wrongdoing in some perspective. She was completely comfortable hurling shoes at my sleeping form because I’d left them in the hallway the night before.

Seriously. Waking up to projectiles raining down on you from a red-faced psycho country mouse is almost as bad as waking up to a police raid. You know when you live with roommates and one of them is maladjusted and it takes the piss out of your whole living situation? It’s a million times worse with an unstable, unhappy partner.

By the time she split, I had slipped too far and for too long and was a lacerated, rolled-up little ball.

I got better fast once she was gone though, and I sometimes wonder if the whole thing wasn’t actually worth it. There is an expression in antiquated English called “burning a fallow field.”

When your cropland gets depleted of nutrients because you’ve over-farmed it, you let it grow nothing but wild vegetation for a season or two. Going “fallow” so to speak. Then you burn it. The dirt now has enough nutrients to grow more crops. Loading down the field with petrochemical fertilizers works much better, mind you. But I guess medieval English farmers were eco-hippy types.

It was like that with my marriage. I let my life go fallow, and things got better quickly once the marriage was over.

But a problem I faced was that I’d become dependent on my wife’s square friends as my only social group. I’d cut ties with all my old drug friends prior to meeting this chick and thus was highly isolated.

Once we were together, I was too fucked up with guilt and abuse and general ugliness to be out making my own connections. Meanwhile, the people I naturally gravitate toward are drug types.

It was her square friends that became my only social outlet, and they left when she did. After a huge amount of time hanging out with those cats, they just disappeared. It’s creepy. Divorce shatters a lot of illusions.

But prior to the divorce, I’d met an important dude named Bob, and he had an important bit of information for me; one that led to a gigantic sea change in my life.

We came across each other at the mall one evening while waiting for our respective chicas. He was waiting for his to come out of Victoria’s Secret. I was waiting for mine to come out of one of those places that sells soaps and lotions to soccer moms. Being a housewife must make you filthy and give you dry skin.

I myself was high at the time, and he himself was pining for times he’d been high. Bob had recently gotten busted, and thus was in drug court. He was being piss tested regularly, and thus was clean as a whistle. However, before being busted he had been running one hell of a speedball habit, and thus was well connected. It was through Bob that I learned of a place that would become extremely important to me. A drug traffic dive bar called the CGB.

Lesley wasn’t cool with drug traffic dive bars. She’s more of the TGI Friday’s type. That’s her real name by the way; she doesn’t refer to herself as “psycho country mouse.” Man, there’s something to be said about truth in advertising.

Anyway, this CGB era required an extensive double life and the frequent need to check my wedding ring at various doors.

Meanwhile, I was starting cold and it would take time to get what I needed out of this scene. Bob claimed dropping his name in the CGB would be counterproductive because his arrest had generated huge problems for his drug dealer friends. He had had a bunch of their numbers in his cell phone, and when he was arrested the cops put those numbers in their cell phones. He was honorable about the whole thing though - did his time and didn’t dime. No wearing of wires; instead, it was an agonizing detox in a prison cell. Nonetheless, he figured he was a hot potato for his connections and advised me not to mention him. But he gave me the name of the place he scored, and that was all I needed. It turned out to be this classic yet broken-down, ghetto fabulous gay bar where they played R&B and country music on the Jukebox. And get this: it was smack-dab right next door to the state’s federal building.

10. Crossing White Lines

The first time I went there I walked past the guard post at the entrance to the the Fed's parking lot; pissed-off-looking cops glared at me. I reached the bar and pried open the door to gaze upon a scene that made me think: Trouble.

The residue of sixty years of bar smoke shaded the powder-blue walls. The carpet was well worn but well vacuumed: a collection of well vacuumed cigarette burns. There was a pool table just past the bar, and beyond that was a small dance floor and a tiny spot for a band to set up. The mirrors behind the bar were trimmed with chrome, and the walls they hung against were powder-blue. The bar stools were comfy and worn in and trimmed in duct tape.

Sitting at the bar was a black woman in a giant wig that made her look like Diana Ross. There was also an older gentleman sporting lots of jewelry and a neatly trimmed goatee. He was smoking a Marlboro Red 100: the brand known affectionately as the "Cowboy Killer;" it’s hands down the most nicotine for your buck if you like to smoke name brand. It’s always been my fresh air of choice. The bartender looked at me like, "I have never seen you before but I know exactly what you're after." As I sat down on a barstool, he came over and said, "You got any ID?" I handed it over, he glanced at it and said "I can tell it’s really you." He then asked the usual: "Whatcha having?" "Ahh, whatcha got?" "Corona, MGD draft and forties of Miller High Life" he replied. "One draft please." I said. I sat there wondering what the fuck I was doing. Where were all the drugs? Were there drug dealers in the back training handguns on me as I waited? What would the story in the paper say?

"Openly gay young man, shot dead in bar under suspicious circumstances. Male prostitution suspected." I sat there sipping beer for a while while the bartender sat at the other end of the bar, talking to Goatee Dude. He eventually came over to me and said,

"You’re welcome to come sit with us." "OK, sure, be right over."

As I walked over, Diana Ross smiled at me and said, "How you doin' sugar?" "Just fine," I said. I felt psyched to be getting things rolling. I sat down and bummed a Cowboy Killer from Goatee. My new friends expressed a great deal of interest in me. The bartender was feeling me out for cop-hood, while Goatee was feeling me out for gay-hood. The bartender asked, "So what's your story Bud?" I wanted to put out the vibe that I knew about the drugs and wanted some of them. I shook my head and pursed my lips "Ohhhh, nothing." He said, "Uhh huh" picking up on my drift. I went on: "I heard about this place; that it’s a local landmark. I heard it’s been in businesses for a long time and I wanted to check it out." The landmark comment effected the bartender’s pride in his workplace. "Opened in 1948, oldest gay bar west of the Mississippi!" He went on to say his name was Dan. Goatee also introduced himself, but I don't recall his name. He eventually

broke the ice when Dan made a trip to the other end of the bar to serve someone who'd just come in. He said, "There's a lot of drug traffic here,” as if to give warning.

"No shit?" I replied.

"I don't do drugs,” he said, a little out of nowhere.

"Ahhhh... well. As it happens... I do. That a problem?"

"No, that’s fine. It don't care what people do, as long as they're not hurting anybody, but I don't do drugs."

"Well alright. Thanks for not judging me.” I said.

When Dan got back we included him in our conversation. "We were just talking about drugs." I said. "I was explaining that I actually enjoy doing drugs."

“Me too” he replied.

Diana Ross remained sitting some distance away and didn't have anything to say to anybody. When she went to the ladies’ room, Dan said, "You remember when we asked her if she was a man and she showed us her tits? That’s the only time I’ve seen that since I've been working here."

After shooting the breeze for half an hour with Dan and Goatee I began to lose hope: this just wasn’t gonna pan. Then sure enough! The Spanish Armada showed up. Both new friends looked at me for some kind of reaction. They knew I could tell what was going on. A bunch of tough, macho, violent looking Mexican men didn't really fit in at a gay bar. I probably looked contemplative because I was busily contemplating. "You know, now that you mention it... I wonder, maybe, if you could put in a good word for me with those gentlemen over there." Dan asked, "You’re not a cop?"

"I'm really not a cop." I shook my head. "I'm a loser though."

"You’re a loser? Huh. OK." He seemed decided.

Dan made the introduction, and this is where I met the first non-runner coke dealer I would buy from: a guy by the name of Santo. Dude gave me shitty deals on shitty coke, but was a foot in the door. I am a natural schmoozer, and I schmoozed away. Within minutes, I was playing pool with Santo and meeting his minions. After a couple of half-assed pool games (I wasn't really trying and Santo wasn't any good), Goatee leaned over conspiratorially while I was lining up a shot.

"You know I am undressing you with my eyes, don't you?"

I laughed. " I suppose that's fair; I have done that to many a young lady."

He radiated disappointment and looked back at his beer. I bought across Dan who was possessed of the intuition to know that I was in no way an officer of the law. The exchange went down as follows: I gave Dan the money, Dan gave Santo the money, Santo gave Dan the baggies and Dan gave me the baggies. Very tricky. I wanted to give Dan a finder’s fee and Dan thought that that was an awesome idea. He suggested it take the form of lines of white powder. The procedure was to go into the woman's bathroom and lock the door behind you. Then you snort coke from the top of the toilet paper dispenser, and in this case leave another two lines for the bartender who just hooked you up with Mexican drug trafficking elements. I hung out for a bit and rapped with Dan. Goatee disappeared; perhaps alienated or intimidated by the transaction. That was the only time an exchange went down in this fashion; afterwards, Santo was willing to deal with me directly. Probably because I continued to put up big money for shitty deals, and because he trusted Dan’ cop-dar. I struggled with the language aspect though.

A huge percentage of the Latin American dealers and runners I have known over the years spoke little or no English. I think that’s because they have to stay underground. They're not out and about schmoozing with normal English-speaking Americans and thus don't hear and practice gringo talk. I don’t know for sure; I’m not a linguist.

I speak fluent Spanish, but I have found Mexican hard drug dealers rarely accommodate for the fact that I can’t understand all their accents and idioms. For example, the first time I communicated directly to Santo about buying from him he asked (in English), “Rock or butter?”

He spoke in that particular Northern Mexican style where words come out so fast they run together. Like an auctioneer in a bidding war: “Rockobuttr.” He looked at me intently. I played it cool like I was carefully deliberating my decision. I pursed my lips, nodded knowingly, then replied, “Man I have no idea what the fuck you just said.” He laughed. “Do you smoke or sniff?” I pieced together that rock was crack and butter was powder coke. Despite the barriers in language and sexual orientation, the spot soon became my regular hangout; I had time to burn, and I spent it drinking beer at the CGB.

11. Cuerva

The the gay bar aspect of the CGB was an entirely different energy than the drug trafficking. It was oil and water in the same jar.

Crackheads, coke heads and the odd junky would sneak, stumble or shoot in and then be dealing with mafiosi. Gay guys, drag queens, lesbians and prostitutes of every inclination would mix in their own set by the bar. Mafiosi generally stuck to the pool table.

Santo’s operation was actually very high tech. “Ghetto tech,” you might call it. One hustler would take your money, another would give you the drugs, and a third would be guarding the master drug stash. That dude would have it hidden near him in one of the many shady recesses of the bar. If the cops stomped in, as they did on occasion, no one would be holding anything. The guy who watched the stash would keep it six or eight feet away from him because when police search you they can also search your immediate area to make sure you can't lunge for a weapon. So if you're using this technique to safely hold drugs, remember to keep them out of lunging distance.

Santo’s crew had a system where calls would come in to the bar's land line to let them know a call was coming in on the bar's pay phone, and they'd have someone there to pick it up before it got through the first ring. I guess pay phones are difficult for the Five to tap. Of course, they’re also public.

These calls were for business matters and warnings from outdoor spotters regarding police movements. Most people who came in to score had to buy a draft first. That provided the venue with a little overhead, but also slowed down traffic and prevented the drive through effect. Depending on how crowded it was or how tolerant the bartender on duty was, there would occasionally be some hard drug use going on in the women's bathroom. I didn't indulge in that. I mean, I certainly have done hard drugs in the women's bathroom of the CGB, just not any more than a few times.

When I did it, it was because this chick named Cuerva offered and I accepted. It would have been rude to refuse her generosity and my policy was to avoid alienating people when new on a scene. Cuerva, for her part, wanted me to get into the

hard stuff because she was one of the more connected middleman hustlers in the venue. She could tell I had money, and she wanted it. She figured I would come to her when I got into the habit. Mind you, I understood that from the beginning. However, following my non-alienation policy meant being very tolerant. For example, in the course of hanging out at a gay bar, believe it or not, I would occasionally get hit on. That was a little annoying, but I learned to take it in stride.

Well, I didn't mean "take it" exactly, but... ahh, I didn't mean to say "but." I'm just saying not to blow them off... well, not "blow them," or... Look: I'm not gay. Well, maybe I am. I spent a lot of time at a gay bar once. At any rate, Cuerva was an example of a type you will find in all kinds of venues where folks are selling hard drugs: a middleman. She would approach people that the dealers didn't know and go between them and the dealer - for a tiny commission from the dealer, and an exorbitant one from the customer. Usually these middlemen will rip you off as much as you let them. A common technique is to take your money, then disappear until you get tired of waiting for them to come back from the bathroom. Cuerva had grown up on a Navajo reservation on the Arizona/New Mexico border in an area called the "Rez." The Rez is a tangle of reservations, federal lands, BLM lands, protected areas, national forests, ranches, one-horse towns and UFO landing sites in a gray area between Arizona, New Mexico and conventional reality. It’s a zoning nightmare. She claimed that she had learned Navajo as her mother tongue, before she learned Spanish or English. That's quite

possible. The Rez is a bit of an alternate dimension, in a way that's hard to describe to people who've never been there. I had the most fascinating conversation with Cuerva one evening regarding growing up in places like the Rez and northeastern college towns. I explained my experience of moving from the rural Southwest to the suburban Northeast - and hating the second place and missing the first place. I particularly hated the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (or WASP) preppy kids I had gone to grade school with. I explained how, as a kid in the Northeast, I would pine for the Southwest and a crew of classmates who weren't 100% WASP larvae. Cuerva said she could relate. While born and mostly raised on the Rez, she had done some growing up in another city before moving back. She experienced the same thing with her cohort there. She claimed it’s just the way people get when there’s no diversity: they get viscous and insular; doesn’t matter if they are WASP or Navajo. This was a major epiphany for me. I had always seen my hatred of preppies to be a product of never belonging in the suburban Northeast and yet having that situation foisted on me. Meanwhile, here is this woman from somewhere that epitomized the wily Southwest I’d missed so badly as a kid. And she'd had the same experience with her cohort there. Crazy. At any rate, Cuerva was a master hustler and so well connected that she was able to afford heavy drug use and have money left over for one hell of a wardrobe. She was always very stylishly dressed and well composed, though she tended to surround herself with chaotic types. When I first came on the scene, she was working the middleman gig with her boyfriend,

whose name was Steve. Steve eventually got kicked out of that bar for begging the patrons for money. Clearly, it’s one thing to be ripping people off all goddamn day, but when you ask them for change... well, that’s just unforgivable. Within a few weeks though, Cuerva dumped Steve, and within a few hours Steve was stalking her, waiting outside the bar at all times. In addition to being a stalker Steve was one of the most aggressive panhandlers I have ever met. When anyone he judged to be a potential donor came anywhere near him, he'd yell, "C'mere!!" loudly and aggressively. Later, after being banned from the CGB, he would occasionally yell at patrons from the front door while the bartender was trying to get him out. He'd stick to his M.O. too. "Hey Goatee!! C'mere!!!" Diana Ross, I mention because she's a good character. Not because she is a big part of this story, or because I ever interacted with her much - or even held down a conversation with her. Because I never did. Any of that. I mean, we would bum cigarettes back and forth on occasion, but no, we never really conversed. I think she didn't like the look of me. One time she was slow dancing with some random dude right next to the bar, while I was sitting a little ways away and could overhear them. Her partner was whispering something to her that, given the vibe of the situation, probably amounted to, "Hey, can I pay you for sex?" She replied, "I have a boyfriend," and that was the extent of their conversation, though they did continue dancing. Hard to say what the supposed boyfriend would have thought of her hanging out in a dive bar, slow dancing with strangers who

assumed she was a prostitute. Another reason I mention her is to tell a great racist joke of hers: "What do you call a blonde white bitch with a brown dye job? Artificial intelligence!" There was one other hustler who used the CGB as a daytime residence, and this was Azul. Azul was yet another middleman/rip-off artist like Cuerva, but he skirted my hustler-dar and got $80 off me in the end. He looked to be in his sixties and very battle-scarred, tough and weather-worn, so I assumed he was ranking. The tiniest bit of patience would have saved me eighty dollars, because I heard someone say Azul was unreliable to say the least. I was not the only person with whom he pulled his scam, though. For example, one night there was a scruffy white kid sitting by me who kept asking when Azul was going to show up. Meanwhile, Azul was standing not fifteen feet away. When this kid finally got up and left me alone, it was because I claimed only to speak Spanish. “¿Qué?” Azul came over and explained that the kid was a rat working for the cops. The old bastard had ripped off the police, and they were desperate to get at him. Cops do not like accidentally distributing money to dangerous criminals. Eventually, he played his trick on less accommodating parties and was escorted away at gunpoint by non-police and then disappeared for a spell. While he was gone, I happened to hear people complaining about him. Specifically, that he had actually phoned the cops - narced, in other words - to remove his competition. You would think phoning the police would be a major faux pas in a bar full of narcotics hustlers - and you would be right.

Anyway, eventually there was a stabbing at the bar, and it caused a big ruckus. The police were certain that Santo was involved and they tried to strong-arm the bartender into confirming that story. They said if he didn't narc they'd come back and arrest his bar-tending ass. That was an empty threat, by the way; nobody gets arrested for silence. There are plenty of bass left in the pond that kept their mouth shut. The next character that needs to be mentioned here was a cameo at the CGB, but an important one. Shade was his name, and he was Santo 's brother. He was tall and lanky, covered in Mexican jail tattoos, and radiated instability and general psycho-ness. Santo needed him around because he was muscle and security and completely capable of violence. The problem was that he obviously got into the crack. He later robbed a few people with a knife and also stabbed Azul, so he was kicked out of the bar. Bad behavior like that will get you 86'd from the CGB! They have a zero tolerance policy for attempted murder. This all got to be a bit much, considering it was a fucking conservative city, and the bar was directly next to the freaking Federal Building. Santo was arrested and then deported. When Santo got busted in a long-term way, it caused a feeding frenzy. A massive dealer vacuum was created, and as it filled I was poised to reap a supply side whirlwind. To mix several metaphors.

12. You Can’t Argue With Reality

So, say you don't remember any of last night at the club and now it burns when you pee. You can tell someone about it. You don't know what to do. They probably don't either. But getting it out there to another person takes power away from the worry and crushes it on the jagged rocks of reality. Talk to someone, and together you can both decide that it’s probably OK in the end, and you can go to sleep peacefully that night. You may even sleep together, if you're lucky, or rich. And you get some ointment. Afghan Stan quoted an old Persian proverb to me that translated to something like, "If you don't know you have a problem, in effect, you don't have that problem." In English, we have a similar, though kind of inverse, saying that "a situation defined as real is real in its consequences." On the other hand, if you are completely ignorant of a problem or define a delusion as reality, you are really fucked. Talking to people will help you stay grounded and keep your eyes wide open. When you are a drug dealer who needs to fear both sides of the law and his own customers, fuck. So you will need to be open with people- but not too open. Courtney Love said something ingenious on the Howard Stern Show one time and it went like this: “Honesty is always good, but candor?” She shook her head. “Too much.” Drug culture people tolerate an amazing range of deviant and antisocial behavior from each other. Fights, rip offs, slander, libel, personal gossip attacks, seeds, stems, adulterated cocaine, taking three hits before passing, I could go on. But some things are never tolerated.

When talking about drugs with anyone but your closest friends: never ask where their drugs come from. Don’t ask if they sell or grow, or anything about their dealer. It’s considered plain rude to ask about someone’s connections and, believe it or not, it may stir up paranoia that you're a narc. Meanwhile, if you talk about your own connections, you’ll make everyone think you’re an asshole. That’s because you would be an asshole. But one way or another, people who talk about things they shouldn't find themselves wishing they hadn't. Probably you'll get the cold shoulder, but eventually you could get far worse.

The dark side of communication is violence. They say that war is the physical manifestation of politics, well, violence will manifest from you running your mouth. Crime is not necessarily evil but it’s the nature of both to be secret. And snitches lie in ditches. So given all the danger to life and limb and the danger of being locked in a cage you may be asking yourself: why do it? Why sell? Why use? Because it’s an imperfect world and you have to balance imperfection to get by. You know we’ve killed far more people for oil than ever died for drugs. And even if you aren’t getting carpet bombed because you live on top of the world’s oil supply-- you’re still going to die from the horrific global warming you cause driving to work everyday -- so you can make your car payments.

But what’re you supposed to do? Sit and rock in the corner of your room with the blinds drawn and Bridge Over Troubled Water playing on loop? No, you go on. Life is gritty and if you wanna make an omelette you gotta break some eggs. People

smoke cigarettes, they use coarse language, they drink whole milk and sometimes they goddamn well do drugs.

Meanwhile there are important parts of your life you will never learn from your parents and it isn’t your role to teach your children. A father can’t tell his daughter that if she wants to maximize her choices in men she should learn to show some skin. A mother can’t tell her son that a man who wants to get laid should learn to be brash, bad, unpredictable and occasionally kind of a jerk. And neither parent can say to their children “obey us, follow our advice, listen to your teachers and do what they say and you will grow up to be a total fucking pussy.”

These are things you learn and skills you build with a little bit of rebellion and the occasional walk outside the law. You’re taking risks, building an interesting life and experiencing the other side of the line.

If you don’t believe me that’s OK. Just learn to be content in your white picket cage.