Thursday, November 24th, 2011

A Chapter by brendanbueno

The ins, outs, and abouts of drug dealing. What to do, and what to boycott. All According to Andy.

I came to school that day, prepared with a small baggie of six or seven pre-rolled joints, which Andy, Kelsi and myself had done up the night before. When Jess came by my locker, I let her have a peak inside my bag. She laughed when she saw the joints, and found it quite amusing that I was going to attempt to deal pot.

Jess was dry however, and wasn't opposed to me taking her place. She wasn't threatened by me, and we wouldn't have to rival anyway. She even offered me the names and phone numbers of the students which she regularly dealt with, just in case they needed to pick up that day.

On my first day as a pot dealer, I made just 15 dollars. Three joints worth. Even that small amount seemed like a lot to me. After all, i didn't have a job or any other source of income, so in a way I was proud.

I came home and gave Christian a huge kiss on the cheek. I flashed him the 15 bucks proudly, then stashed it away in the top drawer of our bedroom dresser. I was sure of myself that i could be responsible. I wasn't going to spend any money until I was capable of paying back what I owed to Shane.
Shane was in touch with me over the next couple of days. He would ask me how I liked the pot, like most dealers wanted to know. Then he asked me if I had picked up weed from him in order to sell. I told him yes, like that had been my intention all along. He seemed impressed by that, and encouraged me to sell as much as I can.
While he was questioning me, it occurred to me that he had never even checked to make sure i had a job, or if I was even able to pay him back if selling the weed didn't work out. Maybe he thought I was already an established pot dealer, or that because I rented an apartment that i could afford it. Or he was just a very inexperienced dealer himself. I had a suspicion it was that.
He began to get pushy with me. He would ask me every day how I was making out with dealing, and if I had made back the money yet. I was feeling pressured, and didn't know if it was normal or not for me to take this long making the money back. I think he was beginning to realize that he had been a little too trusting with me.
I learned after talking to him a bit more, that he, his girlfriend and my friend Mike all lived together in an apartment just down the street from where I went to high school. I wanted them to trust me, and so I told them everything they wanted to know. They knew everything about me. They had enough information that they could really put me in trouble if I didn't pay them back. That wasn't an option.
Kelsi came over again that night, and she brought Andy with her. I was excited to tell him about how I'd been successful at school that day and made 15 bucks. I asked him if he could give me any tips or advice. He told me to just make sure I always had supply on me. Customers liked a dealer who was reliable.
“One time someone needs to pick up and you're dry? You just lost a customer.”
I guess up to that point I hadn't really considered dealing in the future, or picking up again from Shane. But since the dope was fronted to me, the balance would only be even after I sold all of the weed and paid Shane back. If I really wanted to make any money for myself, I'd have to save my earnings and get Shane to front me again.
Andy also strongly discouraged me from rolling all of the weed I had into joints. Not every kid wanted to smoke a joint. Some of them wanted to take it home later, grind it up and smoke it out of their bong or pipe. I understood this, since that was how I was used to smoking my pot as well, but I wanted to earn as much money as possible from the amount given to me by Shane. I figured the best way to do that was to roll joints.
A joint was 5 bucks no matter what, so I would always try and stuff the most minimal amount of weed into a joint, about less than half of a gram. That way i could usually roll about three joints with one gram of weed, and make 15 bucks. Or four joints if I was being extra cheap.
Andy warned me that part of being a reliable drug dealer was about the quality of the sale. I just ignored the things I didn't want to hear. I had 15 bucks, and I was sure that the next day i would make even more. Besides, without Jess I was the school's only pot dealer. If kids were really desperate to get high at lunch, or during class, then they would have no other choice than to buy from me.
Somehow, we got on to the topic of us all doing mushrooms together. Kelsi and Andy had already done it before, but Christian and I had not. I could tell that Christian was still struggling with the idea of me as a pot dealer, and the conversation about trying other drugs was not sitting well with him. I think this is why he could never warm up to Kelsi or Andy, even. He saw their motives as threatening and reckless.
The idea to try mushrooms interested me at the time. I was all preaching a free-thinking lifestyle, but rarely had the opportunity to practice it. It seemed like these days my principals were always being challenged. If I really was as open minded as i said I was, then i wouldn't have an issue trying 'shrooms, so I told them I was into it.
When Andy packed the bong for us again, he drizzled a little bit of tobacco over top of the ground up weed like he had done the time before. This time I asked him what he was doing. He told me it was just a way to conserve weed, and that it was called a popper. I hadn't thought about it like that, but agreed that it did seem like a good way to help our supply last a little longer.
Christian on the other hand wanted no part in smoking tobacco. He even cursed me out about it later, concerned that i would become addicted to cigarettes or develop cancer. I thought he was nuts for thinking that.
When i took the hit, i felt light-headed again like I had the night before. This time I knew it was because of the popper, and I actually liked the head rush that i got from it. It became somewhat habitual for our group to smoke weed like this from that point on. Just never Christian. He refused to try it.
Almost immediately we asked around for mushrooms. At the time however, no one seemed to have them. Even Shane, who told us he could get us whatever we wanted, wasn't able to find us a connection. It's to my regret because, at this time in my life I think i really would have done it. And to have that experience would have been cool to write about. Perhaps the trip would have opened my eyes to things I was refusing to see about my current condition. Maybe things wouldn't have happened the way that they did.
Since we had all been discussing what to do for a Christmas party for quite some time, Kelsi brought her strobe lights with her and hooked them up in the North room in front of the window. She thought they might make a nice addition to the party, and if we blocked all the light out of the room we could even have a small dance party in there. Kels and I blocked out the curtain with a blanket I had lying around, then danced to Skrillex with the strobe lights on. They were really cool, the way your body would flash on and off like a stop-motion animation.
Time was progressing at such a rapid pace it seemed. I couldn't believe that in just one month it would already be Christmas. My first away from home. I wondered if that would hurt my mom, not having me around on Christmas eve, and then in the morning to eat breakfast with the family and open gifts like we usually would. I wondered if we would make up by then.

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