My flight takes off in one hour. I’m racing from the backseat of my cab to JFK to make my plane. After battling traffic I get to my gate and they are calling my name on the loudspeaker
wtf?
so i go to the gate attendant and he tells me I’ve been bumped up to first class. I’ve got twenty-three grand shoved in my underwear. This is weird. This never happens. Not the twenty-three grand in my underwear, that always happens… The first class. That never happens.
So I’m sitting in first class next to this first class type woman and she is telling me about her life and I’m drinking scotch and then we land in Denver. I transfer to another plane to take me to a small town that only a small plane can get me to on the border of New Mexico and Colorado.
I’m greeted by my grower. He’s in his truck with a pure bred wolf in the backseat.
She might growl a bit, he tells me.
I open the front door and
CHOMP!
my face almost comes off.
BAD GIRL!
Like that worked… this was no domesticated animal. We get to his home on the edge of a mountain ski town and we don’t talk business at all. In fact, we go to his garden and pick some mushroom and chives and some other vegetables and begin a three hour cook session. The fire place is lit. The best pot in the country sits on the table by the fireplace in front of the TV. We eat like kings, feed the fireplace and inhale the finest marijuana in the world while slowly dozing off.
I wake up to the wolf right next to me. She doesn’t remember who I am. She looks at me. I take a xanax.
Then my grower comes out of his room in full snowboard gear.
Let’s hit the slopes!
Now I barely remembered how to ski…
We get to the mountain and we are not in ‘ski territory’. We’re completely off the grid.
I’ll see ya down there, he tells me, and leaps off into the wooded mountain swerving in and out of trees like an olympic athlete. I get up and nearly crash into a pine tree. My ski falls off. I put my foot into the powder and sink up to my waist. My ski is six feet up hill.
I slide my way down the mountain on my ass, tell him I’m done for the day, and we head back to his house.
Again, the wolf does not remember me. She growls again.
BAD GIRL!
Not sure why she’s acting like that, he says.
Ummm cause she’s a fucking wolf dude.
Then comes the one and only hour we discuss business.
Okay. Take a look at what I’ve been working on.
He leads me down the stairs to a room that is fully incapsulated with ventilation systems and lighting systems and all sorts of hydroponic shit and I stare at about twenty-five plants, each yielding nugs that weigh over an ounce.
Northern Lights over here, Silver Haze over there, and Sweet Island over there.
We put on gloves, grab some cardboard boxes, the vacuum sealer and begin packaging up seven pounds. Each pound was so fluffy it was the size of three pillow cases. I had three massive boxes full of weed. We head a few towns out to the local post office and begin the process.
Delivery?
Overnight please.
New York?
Yes ma’am.
Contents?
Art.
Value of content?
Art is priceless. A trillion dollars.
She laughs. I gulp.
There’s no scent at all. I’m clear.
Okay should be there by tomorrow at 8AM.
Great.
We leave the postal joint and head straight to the airport.
We bid farewell, I leave him with the twenty-three grand and I board the small plane to get to the bigger plane in Denver and get back to New York at around 6AM the next day, precisely two hours before the packages are scheduled to arrive at my front door.
As soon as we land at JFK I send a mass text out that says “A Wonderful Winter Full Of Exotic Arrangements. 8AM to 10PM. With love.”
It goes out to forty people. Lawyers, celebrities, real estate moguls, talent agency execs, artists and high profile photographers.
Within fifteen minutes I receive appointment requests. 8:30AM in the East Village, 4PM in the Lower East Side, 5PM UpperWest Side, 6:30PM Harlem, 9PM Jersey City, 10PM Williamsburg… and so on.
All of it, sold.
But I still had to get home and sign for the package… and that’s not all. Those packages may never get there. Those packages may arrive with the DEA. Those packages might send me to prison for five years.
I jump in a cab and scurry back to my apartment in Murray Hill, Manhattan.
I take another Xanax… ready to go to prison if something goes wrong.
DING DONG
Through my speaker I say, Yeah?
Package.
One sec…
I go down my four flights of stairs and stare through the first set of doors to make sure it’s just a delivery man and no feds.
Yup. I’m in the clear.
I sign for the packages and haul all three massive boxes to my apartment.
I have to be very quick about packaging them in their respective jars. Even one minute of that pot fully exposed to air would reek the entire building.
I move methodically and package up two pounds in one bag, two pounds in another bag. That’s four pounds for my two wholesalers. One in Harlem, one in Jersey City. Only three more pounds left to sell, and those all get taken care of with my appointments. Minimum purchase is one ounce. That means I need to do roughly 48 appointments in 48 hours to translate all that pot into cash.
In New York at that time, an ounce went for around $400. I sold my ounces for $600 and never had a problem with haggling. All the customers knew the deal. I’m risking my life to smuggle the best pot into New York, and you pay me accordingly… inflated as fuck.
Now.. What happens in the next 48 Hours is the story of my life as a drug dealer for nearly three years…