TOUCHED BY A DOPE DEALER

By The Time Our Transaction Was Complete, I Had Seen The Person
Behind The Occupation

One night this year, I met a man whom I frequently think about,
although not romantically. This man, who told me his name was Jay,
was by no means an angel; in fact he was, and very likely still is, a
drug dealer.

I met Jay at a very low point in my life. I had separated from my
husband, my birth mother was in the hospital dying and I had a
fractured jaw due to a hellish extraction of wisdom teeth.

My friend and I met Jay after a day of hard drinking in downtown
Vancouver. We were trying very hard to forget. We were two middle-
aged women who had not smoked a joint since high school, more than 20
years ago, but for some reason we decided we would try it again.
Because I recalled someone saying that whenever he walked down
Granville Street he was offered drugs, we decided to try our luck there.

En route, we discussed the fact that we had no idea how you "score
dope." Our only experience with dope was being passed a joint at a party.

I first saw Jay with another man loitering at a payphone on a street
corner. My first thought was these guys look like pretty shifty
characters. I don't remember any details about the other young man;
only Jay stands out in my mind. The way he was dressed led me to
believe he was a drug dealer. He had on clothes that were worn and
torn, he wore a black bandana as though he were from the 'hood, and
wraparound sunglasses even though it was nighttime.

I approached him and asked him very loudly for "weed." He seemed
stunned by the request. He said, "You want dope?"

I said yes. I remember fumbling in my pocket for change and asking
him how much you could get for $2.50. His friend and my friend
started laughing; he simply said, "Nothing."

I said okay, I'd go to a bank machine. He said, "How much do you want?"

I said, "I'm old, I have no clue what I'm doing."

He thought for a second then he said, "How about an eighth?"

I asked, "What would that cost?" He told me and I said I'd go get the money.

As we were leaving, he said it would take him about 20 minutes. In
retrospect, I think he was just trying to get rid of us. When we
returned about 20 minutes later, I asked if he had the stuff. He
said, "Not yet, my supplier is in the shower." I asked how much
longer it would take. He said another 20 minutes.

At this point, even though I was inebriated, I got the distinct
feeling that he was trying to brush me off. I asked him if he knew
another source from whom we could score. I think he finally resigned
himself to the fact that I wasn't going to go away. He said, "I might
know someone, but he is at the other end of Granville. You can come
with me if you want."

As we walked he said, "What does a nice lady like you need with dope?"

I told him my sorry tale; I even told him I was adopted. He said,
"Wow, you do have a lot of crap going down." Then he surprised me and
told me a little bit about himself. We chatted as though we were two
normal people at a coffee shop. He told me when he first saw me he
thought I was a social worker. He then quietly told me that he was
adopted, too. I asked him whether his adoptive family was good to
him. He replied, "Yes, but I wasn't very good for them." When I
questioned him about why, he told me it was mainly biology.

After a time, we found another drug dealer. The other fellow was
reluctant to sell to me, but because Jay vouched for me, he agreed to
part with his wares.

Before any money changed hands, Jay said he wanted to smell the dope
to see if it was good. He agreed it was good stuff, and then told me
we should go up the street a bit to give the guy his money; he told
me we needed to be really "stealth" about it. I gave Jay the money
and he passed it on to the dealer. He got nothing back except the weed.

As we walked up the street, we stopped at a smoke shop to pick up
rolling papers. When we joined my friend, he asked if he could come
and smoke a joint with us. We agreed, but quickly added that he would
need to roll it.

We walked a bit and found a relatively sheltered building. As he was
rolling the joint, he asked us if we were "keeping six." Jay went on
to explain it meant keeping watch, and that the term came from the
armed forces. My friend went out to pace the block. I stayed and
chatted while Jay rolled the joints.

Within a few minutes, he told me he was 19 and had a three-year-old
daughter and that his dream was to learn welding at the British
Columbia Institute of Technology. I asked him why he wasn't doing it.
He said every time he got enough money together, something would
happen. We discussed music a bit and he told me he loved country
singer Martina McBride because of the meaningful lyrics. I realized
it never occurred to me before that a drug dealer would think about
the lyrics of music or have dreams like the rest of us.

We shared the joint. As my friend and I stumbled off, I fumbled in my
pocket and the pot and other stuff, including money, fell out. Jay
stopped and picked up the stuff. He gave it back to me and told me I
should put it in a secure location because you didn't want that type
of stuff falling out just anywhere. We parted ways.

The next morning, my friend and I recalled our misadventure. She
said, "Do you realize you were mothered by a drug dealer?"

I thought about it for a while and said, "Yeah, that is something, he
sure did mother me. But the funny thing is, I didn't think of him as
a drug dealer."

To me, he will always be Jay, the kind and thoughtful guy with
unfulfilled dreams who made a bad day bearable.

Pam Chandler lives in

Maple Ridge, B.C.

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