Looking back and telling stories it's both amusing and baffling to think about all the things that happened, the experiences, both positive and negative, that came from spending all this time living outside the boundaries of decent society as some might say... there was a point and time, before things really took off, that a guy i sold to brought over his boss, the guy i knew ran a store on the South Side, a store i believe might still be there all these years later, back then it made most of it's profit by being a head shop while also selling shit all the cool kids wanted, for those of us Gen Xer's think something like Spencer's in the mall only hipper, it was a hipster shop before Hot Topic came along and commodified the subculture but before i run off on some grad school like tangent i'll get back to the point...
The guy i knew apparently had told his boss about my skills in the art of slinging grass, the guy i knew, we'll call him Wayne, would often stop by and pick up an ounce or so, sometimes i'd break it up for him as he usually was helping out a few friends, we'd bullshit and he'd often ask if it was cool to bring his boss by sometime... i had no problem with that as Wayne was fucking cool, a tall skinny guy with stringy hair, a bit of a geek but he knew the score and was probably overly paranoid when it came to scoring weed but i'd rather someone be overly paranoid than a fuck-up like Disco Dave... so Wayne brought his boss Randall over a couple of times and on one of those occasions Randall, who was one of those up his own ass cool guys who liked to talk about his time living in NYC, explained that he actually worked for or was somehow connected to High Times Magazine, of course his store sold it (he was the owner of the place Wayne worked) and he stated that after meeting me a few times, discovering i had an interest in writing, often perusing my makeshift bookshelf made of stolen cinderblocks and boards from a local construction site, wondered if i might be interested in writing a column for High Times about the business of dealing... being an overly paranoid dealer i asked if i would be paid and if so how would that work as the last thing i wanted was my real name affiliated with any of this... he explained i'd obviously have a pen name in the article and that the checks would be mailed out an since HT was part of some larger company no one, at first glance, would really know who i was or what i was doing, i'd be paid like a freelancer so to speak and he had already pitched it to the editors who thought it could be an interesting bit...
Thinking back now i often kick myself because i could have had the checks mailed to his store and picked them up there but the fact is i still had to deposit them and even if i used the corner check cashing place i needed to show an ID... somehow i just never really felt comfortable with it and finally declined the offer but stated that when i was out of the game someday i'd gladly do it... Randall being the pompous prick turned his nose up a bit and though he claimed to understand my concern i could sense he thought i was being a paranoid stoner... granted it wasn't his ass that was looking at jail time but once his ass was his tune most definitely changed or should i say his outlook on things did...
The colossal failure known as the War on Drugs has only been good for the prison industrial complex, law enforcement budgets and muppet politicians looking to score points with white bread chickenshit motherfuckers... fact is, like the wise cop once said, there are enough dumb dealers out there to keep us busy, the really good ones? we'll never see unless we get lucky... but back in the late great 90s and early aughts the war was in full swing, the Clinton Administration put more people in jail for weed than anyone before or after (if i'm correct) and i was operating right in the middle of it... not to mention who came after but one understands my point... fast forward past this conversation a year or two and we have an up and coming Christian conservative fed prosecutor working this area who decides to crack down on paraphernalia... immediately Randall's store is raided and he's on the hook for a slew of criminal charges related to selling smoking devices, which while they could be used for weed don't necessarily have to be... said prosecutor is the same woman who would famously entrap Tommy Chong when after months of badgering his son they sent a shipment of goods to good ole' Pennsyltucky... Tommy had nothing to do with it other than his name on the company but since he made better press than arresting his kid he took the fall...
Randall was in the same boat... his store had been popped so he had to stash all the bowls and bongs and then went to court and explained that the bulk of his business, what made his business profitable, was the selling of paraphernalia and wouldn't the city rather have a viable business than an empty storefront? of course the legal-prison-industrial complex was unmoved by his pleas and while Randall was told he could keep his stock he would be prohibited from selling it and so he was stuck or would have to sit on thousands of dollars worth of product... the way around that was to get in the same game i was, not selling gear per se but the gear to smoke the gear... he told me to let anyone who was looking to buy a pipe or bong to stop by and talk to Wayne, they had stashed the paraphernalia in the empty store next to his store and would sell it out the back door... literally... i actually bought a nice bubbler and matching bowl (which i still have) and turned some business his way because Randall had stated he'd listen to offers because while he wanted to make something off the stuff he really just needed to recoup the money he laid out... which brings us back to the Disco Dilemma..
After the hiccup with Disco it did dawn on me that i needed a place to stash some cash and some gear... having it all in one spot meant that if anything happened i'd be proper fucked and so i set about thinking about how to solve this problem... being "the man" has both it's pros and cons, people are ripe to do you favors and also just as quick to fuck you over... i needed someone i could trust but who also was just far enough outside the business to keep them off the radar should the shit go down... which led me to my old roommate... a solid dude five years younger than me but who now lived by himself on a third floor of a three story walk up, a place i'd hang every Friday when i took the night off (for the most part) and kicked back, relaxed, drank beers,, played foosball and then sometimes headed out which usually meant ending up at the strip club... for obvious reasons...
It was a one bedroom apartment that had an excellent walk in closet right off the kitchen, it was big enough for me to stash a small trunk which would hold 10 or 15 pounds of weed and an extra safe, the trunk would be locked and the safe would be locked inside the trunk, i'd hook my friend up with free weed and a little cash, call it a rental fee, it wasn't as if i didn't have the money at this point as that was not a problem... (like that famous line from Scarface) "was what to do with all the fucking cash"... so out i went to get a trunk and another safe... then one Thursday afternoon, one of those afternoons where the squares of the world aren't really paying attention or thinking about the criminals of the world, i lugged the trunk up the steps and then went back down and grabbed a smaller box which held a small safe, i stashed the trunk in the back corner of the closet and told my boy that if possible he should stack some shit on it, make it look like it's been there for storage or moving but make it easy enough for me to move the stuff and have quick access should i need it... once it was all set i left a half ounce on the table and hit the door...
I'd stash about 10K in the trunk to start with, i called it emergency funds, just in case, the most i ever stashed was around 15K, yes things were rolling and sometimes i'd sit on the floor of my apartment office/bedroom, door closed counting the bundles of money, $20s or $100s and $50s gum banded together in $1000 bundles... thinking back to buying tickets for the footie match in merry old England and mentioning how much cash i had squirreled away it had now almost quadrupled, i was paying off the student loans so fast that every month i would receive my bill saying that i owed $0, the bankers wanted their interest but i'd be damned if i was fucking going to give it to them, the only balancing act i had was not paying too much and raising a red flag, i could have written a check and paid the shit off at this point but i knew better... i never told my boy how much cash was in the safe, i did let him know there might be between 10 to 15 pounds of weed in the trunk, these days every time i grabbed the 40 or so for reup i'd run through about half of it in the first twelve hours i was home, for the time Tuesday's were fucking hectic, get home from work, count the money, head to Stiv's, load the gear and get back so that by 5pm or so i could get the weight crew in and out before heading to the bar... hell at this point there were times when i would sell pounds out of the trunk of the car cuz i needed to keep the foot traffic down in the apartment... healthy paranoia... one can never have too much... just ask Randall...
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