The Wilderness Years - Problems pt. 1

 And so begins the story of Red... not to say that it didn't come with it's own set of challenges but if was off and running and not too terribly taxing, there weren't a lot of demands placed and i was definitely the one in charge of the situation which at the time was exactly where i wanted to be... in charge of everything basically... working in a business that was often run on chaos and now dealing with amounts of grass that would get me tossed into a place that i probably couldn't even fathom, the semblance of control was paramount to my sanity... 

Enter Disco Dave... (this little episode has been previously covered but could use a revision)... Disco Dave was one of those rave kids who liked to stay up late and dance all night... Disco Dave was a rich kid who not only had a lawyer momma but also a trust fund from some accident that had happened when he was younger which resulted in him getting burned due to some negligence on the corporation's part and so Disco was pretty much set for life... and yet we would still show up at my place looking for the front, looking for me to hand him a large bag of weed on credit for him to move and bring me the money at a later date... Granted this was how the weed game operated, fronting product was nothing unusual and the guy who did it always did it while taking into consideration just who he was handing that weed to... so not only was i in charge of receiving, distribution, accounting, marketing and a few other skills that MBAs spend a lot of dosh to acquire, i was now also the chief loan officer who had to look over applicants and decide if said muppet would eventually fuck me over... and while i had my reservations about Disco Dave i also knew he had money or he liked to say he had money so while i considered the risk more moderate than low i approved the "front". 

The truth is that for a period of time Disco wasn't a bad earner, granted he wasn't one of the top boys but he did a decent enough job swinging quarter pounds, which soon grew into half pounds, and was relatively reliable getting the cash to me in a timely fashion. Now if one recalls (which i'm sure they don't since this tale has taken fucking years to get through with it's sporadic starts and stops and such) Stiv and i had a bit of a contentious relationship, Stiv if one remembers being my hookup to the big weight. Stiv really loved his money and was rather greedy in that respect so there was always this game of cat and mouse and when things really took off and we hashed out a deal where i could lower the price of pounds if the buyer bought at least five in cash, it gave me an opportunity, to in a way, stick it back to Stiv for being a greedy bastard. I realized that i could tack on a pound or four which went to my smaller weight crew to the bigger weight crews total. What does that mean? Well it means all i had to do was bullshit Stiv and say that i sold x amount of pounds at this price and x amount at this price which in turn would net me a few extra dollars. Basically on the pounds i'd bullshit Stiv on i made a whopping $450 bucks on each one.

At the time i knew we were lucky, Stiv and i, as our mark-up was practically unheard of back then in the weed game. The breakdown was something like this, most of the guys hustling were making maybe $100-150 if they sold a pound of grass outright, especially if you were dealing with larger amounts, (the breakdowns and profit margins were much less then what was seen in the powder game), this weed was good enough that i was making $250 per elbow, obviously the smaller i broke it down the more i made but that also increased the number of people i dealt with and the opportunity to end up on the wrong side of John Q. Law. Stiv let slip one day that he had been tacking on fucking $400 to MY price... what in the fucking hell was my first thought, and so the sparring began. When things were expanding faster than the universe my top sellers were asking for a discount which being the reluctant businessman i felt was fair, besides it would be cash in hand, no front, and in the end we would move more product faster thus earning more money. Stiv didn't want to budge and we went back and forth. He said fuck them cuz we had the grass and i stated that while we were easily the best game in town that didn't mean a new game couldn't show up and compete. I explained that these guys were earning us big money hence deserved the break. My breakdown basically knocked off $250 per pound for five pounds or more, i would pay Stiv $200 less per pound and we'd split the profit on each one which was still $200 each. Basically every time this happened we'd each make a fucking grand. 

Part of my argument also had to do with the fact it would cut down on the people i dealt with as i had already started weeding (no pun intended) people out. The goal, i explained, was to get to a point where the crux of the business was all pounds or larger amounts except for some of my longtime nickel dimers who i'd still hook up. Stiv whined about how every time he drove up and back he had to cross a state line which was basically interstate trafficking. I stated that he basically had possession of the weed for less than a day before i picked it up, drove it through the city, and then distributed the gear to a cast of fucking hundreds, or so it felt like (and probably was closer to that number than i wished to think about). We both were taking risks was my point, he took his and as i stated as long he was smart, did it during the day, drove the speed limit, they were well minimized. On the other hand, i dealt with a myriad of people, some complete fucking morons (though i did my best to eliminate that) who one didn't know how they would react if they were caught with their weed... which brings us circling back to Disco Dave. In the end though Stiv and i hashed out our tenuous agreement and got back to work. 

Which brings us back to Disco. The original rich kid. If there was one thing i learned in my years in the game it was this... the more money the client had or came from the more likely they were to fuck you over, roll over, etc. The rich kids knew that they had a support system behind them that would do whatever it took to get said prince or princess out of a jam... i was live without a net, if shit went down and the Fuzz seized the safe (now safes) i'd be fucking broke, i'd be sitting in court with a public defender, yeah my father would have done what he could to help me but i didn't want that and didn't need him dipping into a retirement savings to keep his kid out of the Pen
, it was up to his kid to do that on his own which meant developing a keen and discerning spider sense when it came to the Fuck-Ups of the world... and Disco never failed to set the spidey sense tingling just a little bit. 

And so one brisk winters day Disco showed up to grab a half pound of weed, as usual i welcomed him in and he regaled me with his tales of how fucking cool he was, dressed in an expensive and hideous sweater with his brand new Timberland boots... he was hood fabulous. Disco was roughly the same size as me with buzzed brown hair and a ruddy complexion. He sat spinning his wonderful yarns about his adventures while i pulled weed from one bag and put it into another, i always enjoyed watching people watch the trusty triple beam, in fact it was Disco Dave's vagrant little brother who procured it for me, lifted from a high school science lab and sold to me for an ounce of weed. I set the weight and Disco watched as the little bar floated gently past the midpoint and up, i then adjusted the scale and told him he had about an extra eight to ten grams. Disco then let loose with a string of plaudits about my dealing prowess before getting to the little issue of payment. 

Disco, pulled out a wad of cash which covered his balance for the last batch, i counted it and then he asked if it would be cool to get this one on the front as he had some things come up and was a little short. I shrugged and said that'd be fine though i wanted to ask if he had blown all his money on new boots and a sweater that reminded me of dog vomit... but if one ever wants reaffirmation of how wonderful they are all one needs to do is front some fool some grass. Once again Disco began gushing effusively about me being "the man" and "the king", i wanted to explain to him that there was no need to tell me because i already fucking knew! (ego much there King?)  and what i really wanted to know was how some rich asshole didn't seem to have any money when it came time to pay for his weed which he sold basically to be cool or to get him through between trust fund disbursements. How was it that he had more than a few hundred bucks for his fly threads but not any to pay "the man"? I didn't need his fucking praise what i wanted was my fucking money. 

But this is the game... and i was now in a position where even if i got beat i could still cover the cost of the loss... yes it would not the most pleasant thing kicking in my own hard earned money because some pooh-butt rich kid made off with a half pound but it wasn't like the early days, when just getting beat on a eighth or quarter ounce really hurt... and so Disco grabbed his gear and made for the door. He told me it wouldn't take him more than a few days before he could get me the bulk of the money and i said that's cool but why don't you get it all or most of it and hit me back at the end of the week, roughly five days or so, mainly because the less i saw of Disco the better, he wasn't one of my favorite worker bees, not that he ever knew that, i was adept at making all the minions think we were cool, buddies and pals, when i reality they just fucking worked for me. If Disco wasn't moving gear and was part of the nickel dime set he'd be one of those clowns who only saw me at the local between certain hours... if he didn't make it? oh well no skin off my back and he'd have to wait for his grass, since he actually made me money he actually was allowed into my apartment... i think it made him feel special... the reality was he was not... (to be cont.)