How To Lose Money And Brain Cells - A Petty Drug Dealers Guide PT 6

Hell’s Kitchen

I moved in on Monday afternoon, I wasn’t due to start work until Tuesday morning but wanted an evening to adjust to my new surroundings. I was stoned and coming down from the multiple of drugs that I’d consumed on the weekend. My things that I moved in consisted of a rucksack full of clothes, a small portable television, a small all in one type portable cd/radio player, three porn magazines, half an ounce of base speed, seventy Es and an ounce of skunk; at nineteen these were my only possessions.

I moved into my new room, which took less than five minutes, smoked a joint and watched the people four floors down scurrying back and forth below my window. One of the first things I noticed about Soho was all the hair styles, yeah that’s right hair styles, not like my own scruffy mop that hung over my eyes but actual painstakingly styled and ridiculous looking hair. The second thing I noticed was all the beautiful and glamorous women wandering around. As night drew in I then noticed the various addicts and dealers going about their business – buying, selling, haggling, buying, selling, haggling, buying selling and some that smashing up the phone box opposite and a few that started fighting.

At around ten, when he finished his shift, Tony came up to my room to see if I was ok. He knocked on the door and when I answered he laughed as a thick cloud of ganja smoke flooded out into the corridor and filled the air.
“You got a spliff there for me then son?”
“Sure, why not? Come in and close the door.”
We sat and smoked and I learned that Tony used to hit drugs pretty hard up until about ten years previous. He told me that now he just drank far too much and had the occasional spliff. He seemed like a decent kind of bloke and we had quite a laugh. After an hour or so had passed he announced that he was off to bed and suggested that I do the same as I’d be starting my training at nine in the morning.

The next morning came and I awoke feeling better than I had in weeks. I had a quick shower and went downstairs to report for duty. The first two hours were spent learning how to pour the different drinks, about the different measures and how to use the till; all pretty straight forward stuff really.

When the lunchtime rush came I was to assist a girl named Louise in the kitchen so I would be able to take over the next day. It was easy, all the orders came through on receipts printed out of a machine in the corner and all the food was either micro waved or fried and then you just threw it in the hatch, pressed a button and it arrived downstairs, behind the bar. You certainly didn’t need to be a Jamie Oliver for this gig!

I met the rest of my colleagues and housemates throughout the day. Tony lived in a very large room on the second floor close to the kitchen; the pub had an upstairs bar so no one lived on the first floor. On the floor above Anna shared a large room with her boyfriend, Stephan who was also French and played drums in a heavy metal band. In the room next to them lived three South Africans, a girl named Michelle, her boyfriend Ryan and their friend named Walter. On the fourth floor, where I lived, were Louise and a Venezuelan named Maria who both lived in the rooms either side of my own.

I finished my shift at six and immediately retreated to my room to smoke some weed and have a tiny little taste of speed. After a couple of hours I decided to go downstairs for a pint and maybe get to know some of my new colleagues. Anna, Maria and Walter were all working and Tony was sat at the bar drinking and wearing a tee shirt that had ‘Drink responsibly........don’t spill it’ printed on the front of it.
“Ah, here he is! Come and have a drink Dave.”
“Nice one. Why not?”
Maria came over with a pint for me, and although she was overweight she was still kind of pretty with an inflated hour glass figure. She smiled and sat my drink down in front of me and told me that I had to come out with them to some heavy metal club after they’d locked up as it was only one pound per drink. I accepted both the drink and the invite, thinking it would probably be a good idea to get to know the people that I would be living with for the foreseeable future.

I talked shit with Tony about football and music, it turned out that he supported West Ham and loved Led Zeppelin, I didn’t care much for football but knew enough to feign interest but I was fairly impressed with his taste in music. Whilst we sat there chatting, occasionally one of the other staff members would join us when they had no customer to serve. Walter was just under six feet tall, quite stocky and used to be in the army back in South Africa. He talked in a deep and aggressive voice with a very thick accent and I didn’t warm to him at all. Anna, on the other hand, was beautiful and spoke in a very soft but sexy French accent and I couldn’t help stealing glances at every available opportunity, knowing it was pointless as she was already taken.

When closing time came and all the bottling up and cleaning of tables had finished we all headed to a club called The Matrix. The nine of us entered the venue which was an absolute dive. All the walls were painted black, they had a semi naked man wearing only a pair of tight leather trousers and boots and sporting greasy hair that came down to his arse dancing in a cage; a fucking cage! How cheesy is that? It was my idea of a terrible night out, most of their clientele seemed to have long greasy hair, wearing three quarter length leather jackets and ridiculous sunglasses; I hated it but I was flying on speed and it was only a pound a drink so I thought I might as well try to enjoy it.

We ordered three drinks each to save time and found a table in a corner to sit at. By now most of my new friends had noticed that I was high and were inquiring as to what I’d been taking? After I’d told them that it was speed Stephan, Tony, Walter and Ryan all asked if they could have some. No problem, I just made some little bombs by placing some of the powder onto a cigarette paper, wrapping it up and twisting it at the end and then handed them out to the now delighted boys. I offered the girls but none of them were interested.

We stayed in there for four hours and near enough consumed our combined body weight in cheap and nasty vodka. Us men all talked nonsense at one hundred words per second whilst the girls danced and looked beautiful. The night only had one hick up which happened as I was standing at the bar waiting to be served. A tall man elbowed me on the back of my head very aggressively as he passed me. He was dressed in full heavy metal garb, big bulky boots with menacing looking buckles on, leather trousers with some kind of skull for a belt buckle and of course the three quarter length jacket and shades. My knee jerk and instant reaction was to shout
“Oi!”
When he turned his head and I knew I’d had his attention I flicked the cigarette I’d been smoking in the general direction of his face and by pure chance it hit him clean in his left eye. I was charging on speed and this dude had just wronged me, I’m over six feet tall, there’s no reason for anyone to elbow me in the head, I was, uncharacteristically, ready to do battle. Luckily he was in such pain with his eye and so distraught that he just fled the scene immediately. All that menacing persona and intimidating choice of clothing and he just backed the fuck down, just like that! Tony, who’d been standing with me turned to me and said.
“Fuck me, you’re a bit feisty aint ya!”
“Not really mate but I just hate people being so rude and unnecessary, the bloke was a cunt!”
Our drinks came and Tony suggested that we finish them quick and move back to the pub to have a few more.

On the way back I kept noticing all the prostitute’s calling cards in the phone boxes. They all looked so glossy and porn star like and so I started to pick them up, not because I wanted or needed their services but because I realised how bare the walls in my room were and thought a dozen or so of those cards might brighten the place up a bit.
We spent the rest of the journey shouting nonsense at passersby, cars and even the moon and Walter tried, with little success to climb a lamp post. He was most put out by his failings and repeatedly assured us that had he not been so high he would definitely have been able to do it; he was an absolute dick!

When we arrived home all the girls went to bed and those of us who were high stayed up drinking. Some of the guys inquired about the availability of weed and speed on the quiet and I told them that I knew somebody who knew somebody and I would see what I could do. My soon to be my first new customers in my new neighbourhood, I was starting to get some good vibes about this whole pub game. See Rule #3

At around five in the morning we each went to bed, I had to start work at eleven. I tried to sleep but the speed was still running strong so I grabbed my porn and arranged them on the bed so they each lay open on my favourite pages containing my favourite girls and masturbated furiously for an hour and a half until my cock was so sore that I could no longer continue. I just lay on the bed with my eyes closed; trying to ignore the morning traffic, until I eventually drifted into that all too familiar speed induced half sleep that’s not really like asleep at all but some kind of fragmented lucid dream, still vaguely aware of your surroundings.

I awoke half an hour before my shift was due to start and I felt absolutely terrible. I was so dehydrated that it felt like someone had filled my mouth with a sponge that had simply absorbed all the moisture from my body. I downed three pints of water one after the other and had a quick shower. I decided the only way forwards was to have a small dab of speed to give me a little energy and enthusiasm to deal with the looming lunchtime rush.

I reported for duty in the bar and was immediately sent to prepare the kitchen as the orders would start coming thick and fast soon. I went upstairs feeling sick and the receipts with the orders printed on them kept flooding out of the machine. One burger with bacon and cheese and chips, one all day breakfast, two sausage and mash, two mixed grills, one chicken salad with garlic bread, three steak and ale pies, another burger with bacon and cheese, three fish and chips, one ploughman’s and so and so on, it was seemingly endless. Here I was after three hours non sleep, feeling sick and sweating so much that my shirt was sticking to my back and gasping for air in an outrageously hot kitchen and trying to get all this food prepared and cooked in the right order; it was an absolute joke, just the sight of the food made me want to vomit let alone the thought of eating any of it. This routine pretty much shaped my mornings for the next seven months.

As the week went by we worked and then hopped from one cheap late night bar to the next and by the time Friday came I’d taken and sold my entire half ounce of speed, I was left with only thirty Es and I was down to my last few joints of weed; it had been a good week and would’ve been quite profitable too if I hadn’t of spent everything I made on poor quality vodka in shitty rock clubs.

It was now Sunday, it was my day off and I’d taken orders from my new customers and I was off to see Charlie to get the goods. See Rule #3. I’d been so caught up in the Soho bubble that I was really looking forward to going to see Darren and getting away for a night. I also had all my old customers begging me to come back and sort them out with what they needed too which, unfortunately, meant it wouldn’t all be fun and games. Still I could tell that living in Soho was going to be a lot of fun and that I was going to be hitting it pretty hard and not getting much sleeping done; just the thought of it all excited me.