How To Lose Money And Brain Cells - A Petty Drug Dealers Guide PT 4

Out With The Old And In With The New

I started to hang around with Darren a lot more, I still saw Stuart from time to time but he was only really interested in smoking dope and I was taking loads more speed. We’d met a speed dealer named Leonard, who was in his mid thirties, divided his time between the pub and the bookies, sold poor quality speed and would make his drops whilst walking his greyhound, usually about twenty metres from his house. See rule #7. He was the first person to teach me how to do the handshake exchange, where you shake hands, the dealer palming a small parcel of drugs and the punter a folded bank note and to the unsuspecting passerby it looks just like an ordinary greeting, a technique that would prove very useful in the future; ironically, Leonard’s the only dealer I’ve ever met that rarely manages the transaction without dropping either the drugs, the money or both.

Things were becoming even more difficult with Carla and I had taken to spending more time at the South London squat where Darren was living than at her place. She’d booked an appointment at an abortion clinic in Brixton and asked if I’d come with her; of course I would, it was the least I could do. The appointment had been made for three days time, we would take the train together and then I would pick her up when it was all over.

I spent the next three days completely wired on Leonard’s shit speed and although it was of the poorest quality, it was very cheap and if you took enough of it then you’d get the desired effect, so naturally we were taking it by the handful. I didn’t see Carla until the morning of the appointment. She was really pissed off when she saw me and I don’t blame her, I hadn’t slept for days so my eyes were bloodshot and had huge dark rings around them. The train seemed to take forever and I struggled to make coherent conversation, Carla was far from impressed and just quietly sobbed most of the way, I did my best to comfort her but I was part of the problem so it probably done more harm than good.

We arrived at the clinic in Brixton, we kissed, hugged and I told her everything would be ok and that I’d meet her back there in three hours. She walked into the clinic and I headed straight to Darren’s to get on with more serious business of smoking bongs. Before I knew it the three hours had passed and I was barely conscious, the speed now out of my system and a combination of bongs and major sleep deprivation taking over. My phone rang and Carla’s name appeared on the screen, I didn’t even bother saying goodbye to the by now semi conscious Darren, just left the house and answered the phone.
“Hey baby, I’m really sorry but I’m on my way.”
“Where are you?” she asked in a sobbing and pleading voice
“I’m on my way, I just lost track of time but I’ll be there in twenny minutes”
“Just hurry up and get here, I need you.”
“I’m so sorry baby, I’ll be there as quick as I can, I promise.”
“I love you”
“I love you too, see ya in a bit.”
“Bye”
An hour later I arrived to find her in floods of tears and calling me every name under the sun. I don’t blame her and I’m not proud, I mean the girl had just had an abortion and had now waited over an hour for her useless boyfriend outside the clinic in the middle of autumn.
“I thought you said you’d only be twenty minutes?” she wailed.
“I’m so sorry baby but they cancelled my train.” I lied to mask the shame of my unforgivable behaviour.
“You’re a fucking arsehole Dave!”
“I know and I’m very, very sorry, I love you so much baby.”
“I love you too but you’re still an arsehole”
“How you feeling, you ok?”
“What do you think? Of course I’m not fucking ok, I just killed our baby and you were late to pick me up and you look a fucking mess!”
“I know and all I can do is apologise and say that I love you.”
“Please just take me home and stay with me?” she pleaded.
“Of course, it’s the least I can do.”
There were no words spoken on the way back to her place, it was the longest journey of my life. I felt terrible, absolutely terrible. Firstly I was suffering from a major comedown and secondly, and most importantly, I’d let Carla down and I felt completely ashamed. When we got back to her place we smoked a joint and then I held her as she cried herself to sleep.

As the months passed by things had gone from bad to worse, I still wasn’t working, I was still selling drugs but not on any kind of grand scale and I was consuming all the profits. I was spending less and less time at Carla’s and more and more time at Darren’s getting wasted on Leonard’s shit speed and as much weed and soap bar as we could smoke. By now Carla and I were just arguing all the time and the end result would always be the same, her accusing me of forcing her to kill our baby. The statement wasn’t exactly true but it still hurt every time she said it and every time it drove a bigger and bigger wedge between us through a combination of pain and hatred. On her part she began to hate me because she was feeling the trauma of post abortion and felt that I’d made her do it and on my part because I felt she was unfair to hold me solely responsible as I told her that I’d support her in whichever decision she chose.

One night I left Carla’s at around two in the morning, after yet another horrific episode of tossing around blame, as I walked down the street I became aware of a slow moving vehicle creeping along side me, it was the police. Two uniformed officers got out of the car, one male and one female, and began to quiz me.
“Where you off to son?” The male officer asked
“Home”
“Where’s that then”
“My parents, it’s 196 Chestnut Road”
“So where you been”
I was getting used to these mundane questions as by now they’d seemed to have become, at least, a weekly feature of my life. If I was on speed I’d approach them first and start asking them questions, being very polite, and it would always confuse the fuck out of them to the point that they’d just leave me alone, but tonight I was too stoned, broken and timid for those kinds of games and was shitting it because I had a block of hash that weighed four and a half ounces concealed in between my groin and the waistband of my boxer shorts.
“At my girlfriend’s”
“We’ve had a report of someone matching your description breaking into cars so we’d just like to give you a quick search”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes, you can either let us search you here of you can get in the car and come down the station. So what will it be?”
“Let’s do it now then, I suppose.”
“Officer Lawrence will be witness to it” he said as he pointed towards his female colleague
I was very nervous and began to shake as he asked me to remove my shoes. He patted down the ankles of my socks, a lot of idiots think that your socks are a good hiding place for your stash – they’re not at all! He asked me to stand with my legs spread apart and my arms raised out to the sides. He patted down the whole of my body and just when I was beginning to think I was getting away with it he inserted both of his thumbs into the waistband of my boxer shorts at the small of my back and began to move them in opposite directions around my waist towards the block of hash. I sized him up quickly and came to the massive sweeping generalisation that most Old Bill are pretty macho and massive homophobes. He was within an inch either side of the hash when I erupted
“Are you gay or what?
He immediately withdrew his hands and questioned in a very cautious and timid tone
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well you keep touching me up and you’ve just had your hands down my pants so what am I meant to make of it?”
All his bravado was now gone.
“I’m just trying to do my job son and you don’t seem to be who we’re after so you can put your shoes back on and go.”
“Cheers”
I walked off feeling terrified and excited at the same time, still shaking with adrenalin, being careful not to walk too quickly or do anything else to show my guilt. What a mind fuck I’d just managed to pull, I couldn’t wait to tell Darren but for now all I wanted to do was get back to my parents and smoke a spliff in their garden, regain my composure and get a good night’s sleep.

The next day I headed over to Darren’s and we laughed about my brush with the police the night before. Christmas and the New Year were only two weeks away and we were starting to make plans to see the Millennium in down in Brighton. We were going to get a bottle of vodka, buy as many pills and as much cocaine as we could and just see where the night would take us

The next few weeks passed quickly and it was now New Year’s Eve. Life with Carla was becoming unbearable, we’d suffered a miserable Christmas together, playing our favourite game of whose fault it was that she had had the abortion and it was becoming rapidly exhausting; my massive drug consumption probably had a lot to do with it too. Darren, Stuart, a whole arsenal of drugs and alcohol and I took the train to Brighton. We spent the whole journey drinking cans of beer, popping pills and snorting lines of coke.

When we arrived we met up with our friend, Richard, who lived there. Richard was accompanied by two boys, whose names escape me, and a girl named Debby. We spent the whole night wandering in and out of stranger’s house parties, drinking vodka, taking drugs and gibbering nonsense to anyone who’d listen. We even managed to sell a few pills along the way (See rule #3) and when it approached midnight we headed towards the pier to watch the fireworks. The countdown begun, the clocks struck midnight and the world didn’t end, we just kissed and hugged strangers, who now felt like friends, it was the year two thousand and I was out of my mind!

After the fireworks had ended we roamed the streets again and found another party from which we were ejected from for snorting lines of coke off of the coffee table. We found another and stayed there until it petered out at around four. By now I was only with Debby as we’d lost the others somewhere along the way. I had the keys to Richard’s place so we made our way there, hugging and touching each other the whole way. By the time we got to the front door we were kissing and had our tongues buried deep in each other’s mouths whilst our hands wandered and fumbled and eyes flitted about, uncontrollably, in different directions. We went inside, found an empty room and proceeded to undress each other and spent the next couple of hours having sex, smoking spliffs, hugging and kissing until it was broad daylight and we both passed out.

When we woke up we eyed each other awkwardly and began to discreetly get dressed. After we’d dressed we went downstairs to find Richard and Darren smoking a joint laced with cocaine. We learned that Darren had got so fucked up that he couldn’t find the house and after walking the streets for hours he had found a car which had been broken into and decided to sleep in it. Richard had gone back with a girl he picked up from one of the parties and arrived home about an hour earlier to find Darren on the doorstep.

We spent the rest of the day taking more pills, dinking more vodka and chatting incoherently and when bed time came I slept with Debby again. I felt awful for betraying Carla but now knew that it was definitely over because if I’d still been in love with her I would never have cheated on her. I fell asleep knowing that the following morning I would be returning home, feeling like death cooled down, and breaking up with my girlfriend – happy New Year baby.

The next day I returned back to Carla’s feeling awful, mentally and physically, and knowing what I was about to do. She let me in and started screaming at me about how I hadn’t spent the New Year with her and hadn’t even bothered to call or anything. When she stopped yelling I told her that I was breaking up with her and she immediately burst into tears and called me every horrible name you could possibly think of, then pleaded and begged for me to give it another go and then when I said no called me more names. I felt terrible, she’d lost her job the previous month, was being evicted from her flat the following week and now here I was banging the final nail in her coffin. I stayed and held her as she sobbed and I repeatedly apologised for a few hours. When I finally announced my departure she pleaded one more time and all I said was
“I’ll see ya later, take care.”
As I closed the door I felt an immediate sense of relief, it wasn’t an easy thing to do but at least it was over and I was now free to do whatever I wanted unquestioned.