HASH DEALERS WHO NEVER CUT OFF MY HEAD

Reports released yesterday state that the production and dealing of weed is behind a new wave of violence in the UK. It's a bummer that Chinese guys are chopping up Jamaican guys just so you can witter on about the doors of perception, but it never felt like I was the small end of a blood trade when I spent 12 to 17 stoned. I had a soft spot for all my dealers. Here are my favorites.

1. STORM

When I was about 14, picking up weed suddenly went from pant-shitting emasculation to a fantasy my porn-sullied mind would never have had the nuance to conjure. Storm was about 18 and when she drove up to my school gates at lunchtime my dick would do spirographics. Getting into her small Ford peppered with trance tapes and roaches was like crawling onto Venus' oyster, and exchanging 15 quid for an eighth of hash was the closest I came to making love until about eight years after I lost my virginity.

Odds of her cutting off my head: 100/1 – She could have blown it up by kissing me though.

2. TYLER

Tyler was a rude boy in Moschino when I first met him, he was about my height and about my age. A year later he was driving a Beemer, wearing suits, and had a team of four motorcyclists who delivered skunk. I remember him once marching into my front room while my parents were away and screaming at us for wasting his drivers' time. I apologized like an idiot but my elder brother's mate wasn't so smart and squared up to him. Tyler headbutted him lightly and continued to reprimand me.
I remember one day a courier of his called me, (which wasn't the direction a call would normally go in) and asked to meet up. We stood in the Health Centre by my house and he told me that Tyler had been caught downloading child porn and that all business should go through him now. Word eventually got back to me that this was bullshit and that the courier had simply been trying to steal Tyler's customers. When Tyler found out, he ran him down in that lovely Beemer.

Odds of him cutting off my head: 10/1 – Still a long shot, but he was definitely the most real weed guy I knew back then.

3. SLAZ

Slaz was the first guy I bought hash off. He was named because he was very passionate about Slazenger tennis rackets. He was always impeccably dressed in the freshest Nike tracksuits, and in the mid-90s, was the only person we knew who had more than two pairs of sneakers. He also wore gold rings on every finger, (one was a half-leaf sovereign). We once went to pick up an eighth, only to be told our credit was bad. Assuming we owed him twenty quid or something, we pleaded with him, only for him to turn around, do some mental arithmetic, and tell us: "You owe me 150 pounds lads," which was a lot back then. We paid him back eventually and he never stopped ticking us. Nice guy.

Odds of him cutting off my head: 60/1 – Maybe if we'd scuffed up his trainers and hit his mum with his Slazenger.

4. JIM

Jim went to school with me. He was one of about five competing dealers in the year who sold to a group of stoners which couldn't have been more than 15 members deep. Jim was an unremarkable dealer, his skunk was OK, he wasn't intimidating, or exotic, he was just a Jewish kid we didn't have a reason to talk to until he started bringing dope into school. When he got caught though, he took everyone down with him. Sitting in the headmaster's office he wrote a list of everyone at school who sold dope, everyone who bought dope, and everyone who smoked it. All the dealers across the years were kicked out (I think Jim got to stay until the end of the year and do his GCSEs). Everyone else got a long assembly about drugs education.

Odds of him cutting off my head: 70/1 – I think he'd have liked to, but let's face it, he crumbled in front of a teacher.

5. MARCUS

Marcus was really posh and used to steal hash from his dad and sell it to us. I don't know how much hash that dad went through, but if he didn't miss enough dope to keep five teenage boys stoned for a week solid, he must have been buying, or smoking, a lot. Marcus went on to become a gay golf caddy and I can genuinely say I never saw that coming. Oh, and the racket stopped when we were banned from his house after one of my sixteen-year-old friends got Marcus' twelve-year-old sister high and had sex with her in a bathroom. That guy wasn't friends with us after that.

Odds of him cutting off my head: 150/1 – He's now a gay golf caddy for God's sake. The odds of his dad cutting off the head of our pervert friend seemed quite high at the time.

DEE DEE RINGTONE