The Wilderness Years - Going Pro

So i was about ten months in and it had been a pretty good run, there had been a slow and steady snowball effect and now it was a rare day when i didn't do at least some business, some weeks had seen me run through three pounds, all cut up small, maybe the occasional QP out the door but i needed to sell it small, quarters became my new favorite (7 grams, a 1/4 ounce) thing to sell, a half Z a close second, both helped me move a decent amount for a low level pissant like myself and yet maximize the profits, needless to say the real job at the warehouse became more a place to go to keep me honest so to speak, i was making three times a week hustling what i was at the straight job but the fact is the straight job set a precedence, in this fucked up philosophy i had made up i figured i wouldn't look as much like a hood in a neighborhood full of half-ass hoods if i had to go to work every day, if people saw me walking to and from work five days a week, if the cops saw me walking to and from work five days a week, i'd be just another young punk slumming it up in the transient part of town... besides making dealing your full time gig was not a good way to last in this game, too much temptation and too much spare time, it can be that kiss, you know the one, just remember i said that...

And of course things came up, sometimes supply could be a bit of an issue, i did a good job of stretching shit, sometimes explaining to people i had to cut down the size of their order to help spread it around, i'd explain i have a lot of customers and potheads being the easygoing types made this a soft sell, they understood, at least they had something and they would ask me about timetables on the re-up and i'd say probably not to long or anything to worry about but to be judicious for a couple days, try that line of thinking with a coke head or a smack fiend and you'd hear gnashing of teeth and wailing and threats and apologies and then more threats and then pleading, it'd be a god-damned comedic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions on a customer by customer basis...

At this point the biggest fear i faced was that each time the freezer bag ran low that the call to Hippie Jack would yield the news that he had fucked up or had to wait a few days or had to collect money from his not so conscientious hoodlums and then wait even longer for Mr. Big to come round with his duffel bags of grass, the delay usually pissing Mr. Big off and thus causing even further delays, at least at this point i had cache enough that an extra pound or so would be put aside for me, cuz the fact is if you're gonna go pro you gotta have the product to do it with, i hadn't really said it aloud yet but this weed gig was my livelihood, closing in on the first year and there had already been a couple of hiccups with Hippie Jack but i always managed to get through it, usually without ever really running dry, but the game is simple, one must have a steady and reliable source or one will be fucked and outta the game and most likely losing and/or owing money they don't have, it helped to know that i was Jack's bread and butter, i was like his own ATM, i showed up and produced money...

But as the game picked up i got the feeling the good Doctor and particularly Jess wanted their own place, then word came down that Ebony and Ivory (the gay couple downstairs) had broken up and were moving out, Jess jumped at the chance to move downstairs and play house while i began to the hunt for some new roomies, i had a little time and soon enough i had found some, a young guy i knew from the shore and his girlfriend and his buddy, a kid a moving out of his house for the first time but a kid i was assured was low key and mellow, the smart move was they were all younger than me and knew what i was up to and understood that it was their place as well as mine you had to be fuckin' cool dig? just don't do anything stupid that would get the fuzz pounding on the door, fact was that my room tucked away in the back smelled wonderful and that wafted down the hall towards the front door, and that wasn't mentioning the paraphernalia strewn around, in the game it was an odd and healthy paranoia, the belief to do nothing stupid combined with the belief that you were small enough to fly under radar, the belief of the nickel-dimer, of course those fat stats the G-men trot out are often stuffed with nickel-dimers of this very ilk... the goal is not to be of that very ilk...

So i was staring down my first summer back in the city, my old roomies moving downstairs, my new roomies moving in, my rent actually decreasing a bit, and the business up and running like clockwork, the added bonus was now it was like i had two-thirds of the building as my own, no need to worry about the nosy neighbor, first and second floors were locked up, upstairs Cheryl was cool and often laughing at the fucked-up white boy with the Rasta hair and his friends, i never knew if she knew what was up, she may have but she never let on, then again she seemed to be having a pretty good time up on that third floor so maybe she didn't pay any attention... and for the first time in five years i wasn't gonna see the ocean or occupy some shit apartment at Podunk U., shit was rolling along just fine and the loans were getting paid and i was saving a little money, it's what i had set out to do, had i been using my degree the fucking squares would have said i was doing well for a guy fresh from dropping out of grad school, it didn't suck for a 25 yr. old who was looking for Sal Paradise and Hank Chinaski, looking for Old Bull Lee and any number of other characters real or otherwise, i mean shit man? what could possibly go wrong?