My Gay Meth Dealer Became My Roommate

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 6 Part 5

“Ok, he’s on his way up.” Jackson was about to close my bedroom door, shutting us in. “Remember, don’t make a sound, this guy is serious and can’t know anyone else is here.”

Jackson was nervous. I’d never seen him nervous. He had always been in command, always carefree. He was the Candyman and everyone was always happy to see him in whatever room he stepped into. So seeing him nervous was… unnerving. I knew he was about to make some kind of deal, perhaps unloading a significant amount of product. But he almost seemed… scared?

“We got it,” I reassured him. “Not a peep.”

I clicked off the room light and sat at my desk. I even turned off my computer to be on the safe side.

Walt sat on my bed. “Not a peep.”

Walt was all of 20 if he was a day. Blond, short and slight, he had yet to shed the acne of adolescence, and he always sported a long black coat.

Walt was Jackson’s most loyal minion, of which Jackson commanded an entire chorus.

When Jackson moved in, I watched as he conducted his minions in the transformation of the second bedroom.

Anything and everything that remained of Nick’s and Danny’s was carted away. Carpet was laid. The walls were painted a wet burgundy. Furniture was bought in, shelving installed.

They even installed track lighting. I should have asked if any of them were named Mark, Rick, or Steve.

Along with a ridiculously large tube TV, a mini-fridge, 2 safes, and a flat screen computer monitor — of which I was insanely jealous, still using a huge brick of a monitor myself — they brought in two shelving units meant for sorting screws and nuts. Jackson filled them with syringes, alcohol wipes, little jars, baggies of various sizes, and several other pieces of paraphernalia. It was good to know I’d never be far away from a fresh point.

Standing guard over it all like a sentinel, silent and unwavering, was Jackson’s BDSM equipment: a foldable flogging rack on which hung all his ropes, restraints, paddles and such, crowned by a Styrofoam wig head holding up a full leather hood complete with blindfold and gag.

Jackson’s minions weren’t mindless zombies. The men — mostly in their 20s with a couple longer in the tooth at 40, even pushing 50 — worked enthusiastically, almost shivering with anticipation for the payoff they had in store.

Jackson was also just a fun personality to be around. He would hold court, entertaining them, and me, with his high octane storytelling, all while performing a chemical experiment in a clear glass cylinder. Then, presto chango, like he was pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he would raise the cylinder to reveal freshly made crack cocaine, much to the amusement of his minions, especially the one whose payment it was.

Beats bribing friends with pizza and beer to help move.

Walt and I sat stone still and quiet in the dark after Jackson closed my bedroom door. Walt and I hadn’t really conversed with each other before, and we certainly weren’t going to start now.

I wondered about Walt. He seemed like a sweet kid. I didn’t understand why he was here at all. According to Jackson, Walt didn’t do any drugs. Apparently, his older sister was struggling with full blown AIDS in part due to her own struggle with drug addiction. So why be here? Why be friends with Jackson? Did he need a friend badly enough to look past the drugs? Was he hoping to somehow fix Jackson? Did he actually not use drugs like Jackson claimed? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Yet there he was, sitting with me, on my bed, in the dark.

There was a knock at the front door. Jackson walked down the hall and opened the door.

I didn’t hear a greeting, just the door closing again and two pairs of footsteps — the second much heavier than Jackson’s — as they came down the hall and entered Jackson’s room.

We kept still and quiet as we heard their two voices from the other room. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The second voice was deeper, gruffer than Jackson’s.

I began to wonder what would happen if either of us made any noise. Did this mystery person have a gun? Wouldn’t be out of the question. My breathing became shallow.

Sitting there in the dark, I became increasingly afraid, scared to move a muscle lest I, like Pippin the Hobbit in the Mines of Moria, knock a suit of armor down a well and bring down wrath and destruction from this unknown entity with the gruff voice and heavy footsteps. My imagination was being very unhelpful, throwing images of an ogre bursting through the french doors of my room, grabbing me by the neck…

Walt grabbed my arm.

I nearly yelped, but caught myself in time. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could see Walt shaking his head no. I tried to mouth “what” when I realized I had an unlit cigarette in my mouth.

Walt had stopped me from flicking my lighter.

I mouthed “thank you” and put the lighter on the desk extremely gently.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, footsteps emerged from Jackson’s room and walked down the hall. The front door shut and locked. Walt and I remained quiet in the dark till Jackson opened the door.

With his usual bubbly energy, as if he once again had not a care in the world, he broke the silence and the tension. “Gentlemen, thank you for your cooperation.”

Jackson and I had been roommates for a little over two weeks by this point. We had gotten to know each other, even becoming friends. In those brief times when he was home without any hangers-on, he would drop the performative façade and just be himself.

He even opened up to me, a little bitt, telling me about his time in prison and how all the guys inside have one thing in common: their love for their mothers. You don’t dare say anything about another guy’s mother. For many of them, the only person left in the world who gave a single shit about them was their mom. She was the most precious thing in the world to them.

He also shared with me that his supplier in Vegas was a member of a Mexican cartel. He mentioned how brutal they were to those who fell out of favor. Though he didn’t go into specifics, his demeanor told me that he had witnessed this brutality first hand. I thought I saw the glimmer of a frightened child.

“Are you sure you want to be in this business?” he asked me. There was a genuine concern laced deep within his question. Even in that moment, I was still such an innocent.

“Don’t worry,” I said with a calm arrogance. “I can take care of myself.”

The weight behind his question was undeniable, but what was I gonna say? No?

Now that I was getting my Tina directly from my roommate and not through Richard, I was spending a lot more time at my apartment and less in Fort Lee. It was as if that bold and misleading shower commitment I had made never happened. I left Richard with 15 or so clients while taking three or four of my own who had only ever dealt with me anyway, and I was adding a client or two each week.

Jackson would fly to Vegas and mail back shipments that I would receive and leave for him to open.

With the rate of $1000 an ounce, I was able to start to build my own little baseball of cash while enjoying my half gram a day minimum habit which was barely ever the minimum.

By the end of March 2004, I had cast off all thoughts of theater. I had all but cut off all of my friends and my family. I was slowly strangling the performing part of me with it’s stupid little monkey outfit, and I was smiling while I did it. I believed my previous naïve, sheltered, boring life of show tunes and video games was over.

And I couldn’t’ve been happier.

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