From Meth User to Meth Dealer

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 6 Part 2

Anthony thumbed out $120 in twenties. He was five foot six and over 200 pounds of juiced-up Italian muscle. His melon-like shoulders strained the fabric of his yellow shirt. His dark, thick-browed eyes would have been entrancing had they ever met mine. I desperately wanted to invite him to take me for a ride, but sadly I was too Caucasian for his tastes.

“Great, take any two you like.” I gestured to the counter in front of me. Six little baggies of Tina lay neatly in two rows. A couple solid chunks, a couple made up of shards, and a couple more granular, all weighing a quarter gram equally. This was no “grab the money, palm the drugs, and run” situation. Oh, no, no, no.

She’s bringing a presentation!

I waited like a clerk at Tiffany’s while Anthony made his choice. He went with the chunks. I would have to. There’s just something about Tina when it’s one solid rock. It’s like preferring one big diamond as opposed to a bunch of tiny diamonds, even if the weight is exactly the same.

“Thank you so much for shopping with us, and give me a call if you end up needing more.”

“Sure thing,” Anthony said. He was all business, much to my chagrin. I closed and locked Richard’s red apartment door behind him, savoring the lingering musk he left behind.

The first few months of 2004 were something of a Golden Age of slamming and PNP for us. Richard had left his job with a very healthy severance package. Thanks to which, we were living high on the hog, slamming every day, often multiple times. Each slam, if not as glorious as the first time I slammed, was close enough to be plenty satisfying.

Though he continued to freely share with me, this was not the case for our guests.

Richard wasn’t about to just give away his Tina, especially since you couldn’t throw a stone on Manhunt without hitting a tweaker who would gladly come over, smoke several bowls of someone else’s shit, and then promptly leave without a single dick being sucked.

Richard had no time or Tina for that.

Like a staunch cashier at a city museum, he would strongly recommend a “suggested” donation. Eventually, it was understood, both by our regulars and any new guests, that compensation was required.

Our guests obliged and often would ask if they could make another donation and take some Tina for the road. Pretty soon we had a short list of guys who would give us a call when their regular connections fell through, asking us if, by chance, we happened to have an extra quarter to spare, which most of the time we did.

By this point Richard was buying by the 8-ball (an eighth of an ounce at 3.5 grams) for $500 to $600.

Often, we’d end up selling 1.5 grams and slam the remaining 2 grams between us. It wasn’t profitable but it did turn a roughly $1700 a week habit into a $300 a week habit.

This is where Jackson the Candy Man comes in, whose aspirations of becoming a big time dealer were being realized.

Jackson would invite us over to whatever seedy motel he was shacked up in after receiving a fresh shipment. We’d all get lost in heavy slams, sometimes garnished with “G” or “K”. Richard would end up in the shower, Jackson would be transfixed with divvying up his wears for delivery, and I would fuck around with whoever else happened to have joined us — that is if they were with it enough to focus on fucking, which often they were not.

There was something incredibly sexy-dirty about these seedy hotels in rundown and forgotten places in New Jersey. Cheap rooms, questionable cleaning practices, truckers and sex workers probably fucking in the room next door. The seediness of it all only added to my abandon and sexual depravity.

As Jackson’s business grew he would upgrade his lifestyle along with it. He left behind the budget motels for the well known national chains like Best Western or Comfort Inn. Then another step up with a Holiday Inn or even a Radisson.

Eventually he would put himself up in suites with high ceilings and fully furnished living rooms, at hotels for traveling businessmen with expense accounts, and Jackson was nothing if not a businessman. The kind of hotels that offered full sit-down breakfast of fresh fruits, waffles, eggs, meats, biscuits, and freshly brewed Starbucks coffee, not that we ever ate any of it.

As our guest list became a client list, we in turn became regular clients of Jackson. 8-balls at first, but soon we were buying half ounces and eventually whole ounces at a time. Since it was just as important to unload the product as quickly as possible, Jackson charged us a rate of $1000 an ounce.

Were we to turn around and sell the entire ounce by the 8-ball, we’d make up to $4800. By the quarter at $60 a pop, we rake in over $6700.

Of course, a generous portion of each ounce was for personal use, but we still sold enough to make between $2000 and $4000.

Still, that’s all things being equal and consistent. While Jackson was many things, consistent wasn’t one of them. Sometimes he didn’t come through and we’d have to parcel out our supply, balancing our necessary slamming with client demand.

Sometimes Richard and I would blow through an entire half ounce all by ourselves.

Even then, we’d still come away with $1000 to $2000 each week.

Drug dealing really is the purest form of capitalism.

By February, visitors came over less for a hook up and more to shop our wares.

And if Richard owned the shop, then I was the general manager: taking orders over the phone or online, giving the green light to come over, taking cash, tracking inventory.

And dealing with customers.

My phone rang. “Hello?”

“John, It’s Noel, I’m sorry I’m running late, I’m on the New Jersey Turnpike.”

“Well you were supposed to be here an hour ago.” I wasn’t mad, just stating a fact.

This was Noel’s regular routine, right down to his catchphrase that I nearly said right along with him. “I tell ya John, life is just beating me down.”

Noel was a tall, shaved-headed bear with an impressive fur coat of body hair and a voice like Bea Arthur if she smoked two packs a day. He was always late, often by an hour or more, but it was so consistent that I simply figured it in, giving him the green light for say 2pm if I knew we were still going to be home at 3:00 or 3:30. When he would finally arrive, he was always very nice and pleasant to me, so I would often overlook his tardiness.

I had barely hung up with Noel when my phone rang again. It was Bill, just outside.

I opened the door for a short and pudgy psychiatrist with a bespectacled face and balding head followed as always by his boyfriend Trevor. Tall, dark eyes and hair, chiseled jaw, Trevor was quite attractive though just past his prime. I could sense a fellow moocher in the boyfriend. This guy was here for the Tina and nothing more. They were always good for at least an extra quarter.

As I retrieved two more quarters to replace the ones Anthony had purchased, Bill remarked, “What happened to the carpet?” He gestured to the living room floor which was now exposed hardwood.

“I ripped it up,” I said matter-of-factly.

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Why?”

I straightened the quarters on the sheet of black construction paper. “Because…” my hesitation telegraphed how I felt about the answer. I lowered my voice though I knew Richard wasn’t listening from the other room. “He thought it was infested with staph.”

“What?” Trevor said.

“Staph…as in staphylococcus?” Bill asked.

“Yes, indeed, staphlylo-fucking-coccus.”

2 AM the night before I was in full tweaker project mode going to town on Richard’s living room carpet with a box cutter. I pulled up thick strips of the heavy, dusty carpet, relishing the satisfying sound of thick tearing and popping as it broke free from the carpet staples.

Richard had become scared of the carpet, afraid to even step on it, because he believed it to be covered in staph. As I huffed and puffed and wiped the dusty sweat from my brow, I briefly enjoyed the feeling of being productive. I believed I was doing something good. That I was helping.

I had used so much of Richard’s Tina by that point I felt I had a responsibility to help him out, to take care of him as his showers and psychosis evolved.

At first, the worms became bugs. He could feel these “bugs” crawling under his skin. Richard would constantly pick at his own face though he never broke skin believing he was getting them “just fine” without hurting himself.

This is a very common affliction with meth users, often leading them to pick at their own skin so much it leaves their faces and bodies pockmarked with tiny open wounds, aka “crank bugs” which Richard, thankfully, wasn’t doing. So, thank God for small favors, I guess.

After a while it evolved again. It was no longer “bugs.” He had been infected with a “fungus.”

When he developed an abscess much like I had had, he didn’t wait for it to become debilitating to have it looked at. The doctor diagnosed the abscess as a result of a staph infection. From that point on Richard forgot all about any fungus or bugs or worms and found his “true” enemy.

Infection, thy name is staph!

“That’s what it is. That’s what it’s been the whole time! I have staph.” He was relieved, reassured, even proud. He wasn’t crazy. He had staph. A doctor said so.

“Yes, the abscess was a staph infection,” I would gently argue. “But the antibiotics took care of that. You don’t have that infection any more…”

“It’s right here!” He shoved the doctor’s report in my face. “See? See that word right there? Staaaaaph,” drawing the word out as if I was simple minded. “This. Is not. In my head.” Then off to the shower he would go.

When I would periodically pop my head in to mark the passage of time, he would try to convince me.

“Look. Look at the water.” He had taken the hand held shower head off. The hose shot a thick stream of water at whatever area he was working on, pinching and rolling his skin like he was trying to get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. “See that yellow coming out? That’s staph.” The way he said “staph” was like it was a sentient being, something he was outsmarting.

“Yeah, but…the tiles. The tiles of your shower are yellow.”

“Because they’re covered with staph.”

“But they’ve always been yellow…”

“It’s fucking staph! If you’re not going to help, get the fuck out!”

He could be quite mean in these moments, but I didn’t blame him. I’d probably act the same way if someone was telling me, however tactfully, I was losing it.

Though he never moved off calling it staph, it still continued to evolve. It became “airborne.” According to him, staph spores covered every inch of the apartment.

He threw out his mattress because it was riddled with staph, bought a new one, and then threw that one out too. We took to sleeping on a futon mattress that an acquaintance was looking to unload.

He hired one of our regular guests, Pete, to wash his walls with bleach — after I refused to do it — compensating the tweaker with a quarter of Tina. In my opinion it wasn’t enough for the mild chemical burns the guy walked away with.

When he became deathly afraid of his carpet, I decided to solve the problem myself.

When I was finished throwing out the carpet, I walked into the bedroom. Through the window facing the street, in the growing morning light, I could see the pile of carpet and foam I had left for garbage removal. The night’s project was complete.

“All done…”

“Get the fuck out!”

“What?”

“You’re covered in staph. Look at you! I literally can see it all over you. If you can’t see it, you’re the one who’s crazy. I mean, look at your arms.”

I looked at my arms. They were in fact covered. Covered with dust and dirt and carpet fibers. “Richard, this is…”

“Staph!”

“Fine, it’s staph, I’ll go shower,” I said, turning and heading for the bathroom.

As exhausting as these episodes were, they weren’t constant. Thankfully, his need to slam was stronger than his need to do battle with his staph. It became a manageable condition in part due to the antibiotics he had been prescribed. Though the real infection had cleared up, he believed he needed to keep taking the antibiotics to keep the staph at bay. When his initial doctor finally refused to refill the prescription, he trolled around till he found a doctor that would. Several times we made a trip into Manhattan to a doctor on 14th street so he could go in and get his unnecessary drugs.

Some addicts troll for opiates, Richard trolled for antibiotics.

“That’s nuts,” Bill said after I told him about Pete’s chemical burns.

“Yup, it is. So boys, what’ll it be tonight?”

Bill and Trevor perused my wares for a moment before Bill let Trevor choose. I knew these guys liked the granular quarters more so I had placed two more on my display.

Trevor brought out the puppy dog eyes and asked, “Can we get three?”

Bill pretended to ponder for a hot second before relenting. “Ok.”

“We’ll take these three.”

“Great! That’ll be $180. Thank you very much gentlemen.”

As I shut the red door behind them I turned and looked at the remaining three quarters still sitting on the counter.

“I’m a drug dealer.”

I said this to myself with continued astonishment. More than a few times I would park the car while Richard would head inside and I would just sit and say out loud, over and over, becoming increasingly maniacal, “I’m a drug dealer.”

The idea that I was dealing drugs was about as improbable to me as me becoming a Supreme Court justice.

But there I was, holding a wad of cash. I remembered Jerry holding up a big wad of cash the size of a baseball, saying, “This is why.”

My phone ringing broke me out of my reverie.

Bea Arthur’s voice came through my phone. “Hey John, I’m here.”

“Great, Noel, I’ll buzz you in.”

I was a drug dealer.

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