How To Lose Money And Brain Cells - A Petty Drug Dealers Guide PT 7

Settling In To The Mayhem

I’d been at the pub for about a month and had, by now, established a routine. Monday was now my only full day off and I worked as many of the day shifts as possible preferring to get on it at night. It seemed like most nights Darren or one of my other friends would want to come and see me and have their one or two big nights out of the week. The trouble was that meant every night was a big fucking night out for me; and it was a full on schedule.

It went something like this:
Saturday – work a double shift at the pub and then at closing time go to an illegal rave with Darren where we’d take a multitude of drugs and return home at around eleven in the morning so I could have a couple of hours to get myself together ready for my shift in the pub which started at one.
Sunday – work from one until six, have a few drinks and then smoke myself into oblivion until I could get some much needed sleep.
Monday – Day off, usually spent chain smoking skunk until my old friend and customer Stuart arrived and then take some acid, that I would’ve bought at the rave a few nights before.
Tuesday – work the evening shift and then head to the Matrix, take a load of speed and drink rancid vodka at a one pound a pop.
Wednesday – Work until eight in the evening and then go out with Darren until the sun came up.
Thursday – Just a four hour afternoon shift and then meet another one of my friends and stay up until at least dawn.
Friday – Day shift in pub and then out with Darren until at least sunrise.

As you can see that’s quite a full on average week and doesn’t leave much time for sleep or recovery but I was having the time of my life and enjoying every minute of it; well except for the work part, that was just starting to get in the way of my partying and I was already getting slack in the kitchen.

If Tony was out I would close the kitchen door and smoke joint after joint after joint as I cooked and prepared the food and listened to loud music; most days I felt so rotten from the night before that the mere sight of the deep fried poison I was cooking made me want to cry.

If Tony was in then it was a different story, I mean I still felt like shit but I didn’t take the piss as his room was next door to the kitchen. If he wasn’t working and drinking then he was usually in his room watching porn with a cushion covering his crotch and the door wide open. I’d be cooking this poisonous food and feeling like shit to the back drop of oohing and arrhing and oh yeah baby that’s it, yes, yes, oh yeah baby etc and if any of the staff, male or female, needed to ask him anything about the pub then he would shamelessly invite them in and talk to them without ever turning away from the screen; It was fucking nuts, absolutely fucking nuts!

I was also starting to see the darker side of Soho. I’d regularly be harassed by pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers offering baking powder in a paper wrap under the pretence that it’s whatever drug you happen to be in the market for. There was nowhere to get any peace or solace, if I wasn’t working then I could either go out drinking or hide in my room and that was about it.

One day as I walked home from the supermarket I was approached by a scruffy looking black man in his early thirties and wearing an extremely worn looking tracksuit.
“Yo bruv”
I tried my best to ignore him as I carried my bags full of shopping, knowing that as soon as he made eye contact I would have to engage him and his hustle.
“Bruv, bruv, give us pound please bruv?”
“Sorry mate, I haven’t got any change on me” I lied,
“C’mon man! I need to use the phone, innit.”
“I haven’t got any change on me, sorry man” I lied again.
“Well just give me fifty pence then?”
I ignored him and continued to walk towards the pub, which was only metres away now.
“How about just twenny pence then bruv?”
I ignored him again and he reached for my jacket pocket. I immediately grabbed his hand and shouted at him, making my voice as working class and as aggressive as possible.
“Get your fucking ‘and outa my pocket now! Who the fuck do you think you are? You little cunt!”
“Fuck you man! Now I aint gonna help ya no more!”
I walked into the pub shaken and confused to how he’d ever been helping me in the first place. Help me? How could that cretin ever help me I wondered but then he was just part of the typical Soho daily freak show.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though as I’d met two barmaids named Nikki and Michelle who worked in a cellar bar, you know it was one of these members’ only type places that are full of struggling actors, successful entrepreneurs and the occasional minor celebrity or two. It wasn’t as glamorous or ponsie as The Groucho or Soho House but you had to buzz on the door to get in and it was still a member’s bar all the same. They’d let me in and I would give them a little speed or a couple of pills and in return they’d give me all the free booze I could drink and they’d invite me to stay late for lock-ins too.

Every Wednesday and Friday night I’d finish work at eight and head out for a few drinks with Darren, who would already be propped up at the bar waiting for me. We’d have a couple of pills and a few healthy dabs of speed and drink four or five pints before heading to the cellar bar where the girls worked. I’d buzz on the door and they’d let us in and we’d make our way to the bar, which was usually pretty busy. The pair of us would slip them half a gram of speed each and a couple of Es and then the bar was ours!

This place was full of all kinds of mad people, Savile Row tailors, editors of major magazines, journalists, and the occasional z list celebrity or burnt out has been pop star, but mainly it was just full of mad Soho eccentrics who would provide much of our entertainment and also become welcomed customers. See Rule 3.

We would buzz around that bar at a million miles per hour talking meaningless bullshit at warp speed to anyone who’d engage us and when the clock struck three they’d kick out all the odd balls, surprisingly that did not include us, and just a core of anywhere between five and twelve of us would stay and help ourselves behind the bar and continue to talk nonsense and take more drugs until they weren’t having anymore affect on us, but still we continued, more and more, consume, just keep consuming, that’s all we did.

It would always be at least dawn before we left and more often than not I would make the twenty metre walk home, take a quick shower, clean my teeth and go straight downstairs to start my shift. It was always horrific and how I ever managed to mumble and bumble my way through it I’ll never know.

It was around the same time that Darren and I started going to illegal raves every Saturday night and really getting in to ecstasy and dancing to insane Techno. I’d finish my double shift at the pub around eleven and then we’d call up a couple of phone numbers we’d obtained that had pre recorded messages informing anybody who was interested of the address of the party; they were usually in disused warehouses in South or East London shit holes.

We’d perform the usual ritual of dabbing up some base and double dropping some pills and then make our way to the venue. You’d arrive there and if you were unsure of where it was then sooner or later you’d hear the music and just follow it until you come to a hole in the fence that would act as an entrance. You’d get in there and it’d be so dark except for strobe lighting that you’d never really be sure how many people were there until it got light in the morning.

For the most part the party goers were young hippie kids, a mixture of the hardcore caners and white, dreadlocked, guys with trust funds but there was always a rogue element too. London parties or raves were always quite edgy affairs where no matter how euphoric and out of your mind you might be you always got the feeling that it could all kick off at any given moment and that we could all be propelled into some kind of violent and hellish nightmare.

We’d stay up dancing to hypnotic Trance and deranged techno, taking pills by the handful and completely out of our minds until the sudden realisation that I’d have to get back to Soho to work my shift at one. After nine or ten hours of dancing and at least the same amount of pills we would leave via the same hole in the fence that we came in by only now it would look so, so different in the daylight.

There’d be other people leaving and you’d see their huge eyes glaring at you through dark rings of plastic that used to be made of normal flesh, grinning or looking lost with their jaws chattering up and down, up and down, completely detached from reality and so was we. Looking at all these weirdoes was a bit like looking in the mirror, although I was too high to recognize it. We’d wait at the bus stop with all the other walking dead and everybody would dance to the sound of the bus’ diesel engine ticking over as they queued to board it, I mean it was completely crazy but the sound of the engine would create the best out of this world Drum and Base tunes in your mind.

We’d get back to the pub and I would try to slip past Tony as he opened the bar and drank his first pint unnoticed, knowing that he’d be far from impressed seeing me go to bed two or three hours before I was due to start work and being so obviously out of my mind and fucked up. We’d go upstairs, smoke a joint and drift into that lucid non sleep until my alarm sounded and it was time for work.

Sundays were always a struggle to get through and the first thing I would do would dab a little speed to help perk me up. The pub was always busy in the afternoon as there was either football or rugby on the TV. I’d be flapping about like a jellyfish and shaking like a leaf whilst grown men swore and shouted at the TV screen and spilt drinks and insulted each other; it was an absolutely horrific place to be when you’d only slept for three of the last forty eight hours!

My hearing would be distorted and muffled from lack of sleep, too many drugs and too much loud music and I’d barely be able to focus, always just trying to focus and not throw up. I would hallucinate at regular intervals and cling on for dear life and just try to focus on what the customers were ordering, constantly ordering more drinks, more and more whilst I struggled to keep it down and just concentrated on what they had to tell me. I’d spill drinks and drop glasses and I’d constantly get the orders wrong and the customers would get frustrated and shout at me and it might’ve well been white noise for what I understood of it; I was an absolute mess and how I didn’t ever get fired I will never know.

The come downs and work aside, I was really enjoying my new lifestyle and location and felt at home in the vortex of Soho where one person sees only vibrant streets full of excitement, colour and odd little bars and another person notices the exact opposite; seeing only the misery and degenerates of all walks of life that parade around pimping and hustling, just pimping and hustling and always rushing to turn some poor fool over or get their next fix.