He has regular hours and regular customers. He accepts new clients reluctantly, and only if they are the good friends or adult children of his existing customers. He is very, very careful.
This man is an important person in my life. He is my dealer. Photo Credit Chris Silas Neal
He has been dealing grass, and only grass, from this location for some 35 years, and he has been my personal supplier for almost that long. I go down to his place every couple of months, but some of his customers visit twice a week. My standard purchase of an ounce or two is dwarfed by what the others are buying.
It’s easy to park in his neighborhood, so I always drive down from Westchester. On this Monday night, I park right across the street. His downstairs door is painted a bright, acrylic yellow. I insert my key and turn the lock. The door opens smartly — upon the dirtiest hallway I have ever seen. I breathe between my teeth; the hexagonal tiles haven’t been washed in decades.
The stairway is no better. The walls are covered with graffiti, and there are five flights of stairs. Most of my fellow customers are in late middle age, and I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to make it up these stairs. I picture us in knee braces, gripping the banisters, panting.
I catch my breath and push the doorbell.
It’s one of those bells that gives no indication about whether it works. There’s no buzz and there’s no light, so sometimes when I don’t hear movement inside, I press the bell again. This gets him annoyed, so tonight I just wait. And yes, I do hear noises now: the click of the peephole, the clunk of the lock-bar. He beckons me in, finger to lips. He is 63, with curly gray hair and a friendly face, and he insists on silence at the threshold. He doesn’t want his neighbors to notice the many visitors he gets Monday to Thursday between 8 and 10 p.m., his “office hours.” The rest of the time, he’s at his boring day job or his real home with his wife.
We have to go sideways down the interior hall because of his bicycle. (This will pose a problem when his clients start using walkers.) We get to the studio, and it’s 1969, with posters, books and vinyl records from the Woodstock era. Three old hippie types sprawl on two ancient couches. The small room has been partitioned. There’s the outer area, where the customers wait. And through an open doorway there’s the inner area, where the dealer sits at a desk, weighing the goods.
I nod to the others, a weathered lot, all of us. I’ve seen one of the guys here before — Hank — and the rest look vaguely familiar.
We make small talk. There’s always a festive atmosphere here. Hank gets four ounces of Mex and two ounces of sensi — he must be a dealer himself. He puts his purchases into a backpack and says, “See you Thursday.”
Finally, it’s my turn...
Catherine Hiller is the author of the forthcoming book “Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir,” from which this essay was adapted.
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