Independence Day Special: This Is Your Country on Drugs

DRESSED TO DEAL

I would dress like a dork. A collegiate dork to be exact.

A denim-collar-down-jacket-waffle stomper, outdoorsy-but-clean-REI-kind of
dork to be real exact.

I would paste down my bleached-blond spikes into a forced-part comb-over. I
was Sunny Jim come to life. I would stand on the corner of the major strip
in this particular university area armed with my Mead binder full of $10
gram-bags and eighths.

If a familiar car happened to be passing my corner, I would pinch my thumb
and index finger together, lift my hand up to my mouth and proceed with the
universal joint-toke mime. I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to
be in a high school classroom 60 miles north.

One time I made $300 in three hours.

That day, it was like working a McDonald's drive-thru window at lunch rush.
Fuck school.

They would come down the pike in their parent's immaculate, ultranew cars.
The convertible Chrysler K-car and the Ford Taurus seemed to be the most
common.

They would roll down their windows; I would open my binder and present my
product like an Amway display case. They would pick a bag or two or three,
hand their tuition over to me with a smile, and be on their way. They
always came back. It was too easy. Rich college kids in the big city with
minimal life experience, maximum cash, a longing for the imagined street
credibility they saw on MTV or Hill Street Blues and way, way too much time
on their hands: It all meant money in my pocket.

Ka-ching!

It was 1985. The Drug War was starting to really kick in. Crack was
becoming the media's overused word of choice.

But this war I was hearing so much about wasn't happening on my corner.

Despite my "disguise," it didn't take a physics expert, and certainly not a
physics major — i.e., my clientele — to figure out what the fuck I was
doing. I find it hard to believe that anybody who ever saw my narrow ass
poke a binder in random car windows would ever come to the conclusion that
I was pitching carpet samples.

Yet today I do not have a felony criminal record.

I doubt that any of my former clientele have criminal records.

No, the Drug War was being waged in poor neighborhoods, where black and
Latino people lived.

But why the fuck would I have sold there?

No one had any money, and their streets were crawling with cops. That just
would've been bad business.

Next Article: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1191/a09.html