Why Christmas with My Drug Dealer Was the Worst Idea

I'm not really a fan of Christmas in general. I'm not festive, and the seasonal formalities tend to be too much for me to handle mentally. Plus, my family doesn't live nearby.

So, because of this, I spend most Christmases alone, or with my best friend, Cheyenne. Five years ago we were cokehead drunks, and it was during this low point in our lives that I thought it would be a good idea to invite our drug dealer over for Christmas dinner. Looking back, this was probably the worst Christmas I've ever had.

I grew up having polite, traditional Christmas dinners with my family, and I wanted to try to mimic some semblance of those traditions at my dealer dinner. I'm a good cook, and I went and picked out the cutest turkey I could find, and even bought a brand new roaster to cook it in. Unfortunately, from the get-go, there were some key factors working against my efforts to make this dinner as nice as I wanted it to be in my imagination.

My apartment was really gross. It was always dark because I blacked out the windows, and everything had weird stains on it. Stained carpets, ceilings, furniture…everything.  I lived in this hellhole for four years, and in that time I had infestations of:

• Mice

• Cockroaches

• Bedbugs

• Rats

• Scabies

• A pigeon that moved in for a while and laid an egg under my bookshelf

• Ghosts (80 percent sure)

Worst of all, the walls were decorated with my shitty art school paintings. I never really cleaned in there either, so factor garbage, overflowing ashtrays, and beer cans into your mental picture. This was the venue for my wonderful fantasy dinner. Now let's get an idea of my drug dealer.

I'm changing my dealer's name to Garbanzo, because he sort of looked like a garbanzo bean. He was a bald, round, white rapper who glared at me a lot. Something tells me he wouldn't have been my friend if I didn't buy drugs from him. He hinted at this once when he told me, "I don't usually like gay people, but you're OK." Thanks, Garbanzo. But it was mutual. I wouldn't have been his friend if he didn't have drugs to sell me. Anyway, I called and invited him to my come over on Christmas, bring an 8-ball of cocaine, and feast on the delicious, delusional Martha Stewart meal I was preparing. He said yes! (I think he agreed to come out of a mixture of holiday loneliness, free food, and a drug sale.)

I don't know why, but I was really excited to be hosting Christmas dinner. It took my mind off of how depressed I was, and using my mom's holiday recipes made me feel some abstract connection to spending time with her. Most of the day I was cooking with Cheyenne and drinking whiskey. Dinner was scheduled for 7 PM, and we were wasted by 5, in preparation for Garbanzo's Christmas cocaine delivery.

Everything was going smoothly (as smoothly as this wacky plan could) until my phone rang. It was Garbanzo. He said he couldn't come to my dinner! I was upset because I wanted drugs and to brag about my turkey to someone I literally didn't give a shit about. After some pleading, I convinced him to come by for a little while. But before he hung up, he said the confusing words, "just don't stare at me." I had no idea what the fuck he meant by that. Did he think I had a gay crush on him and wanted to deflect it by not letting me make faggy eye contact with him? My mind was racing through the possibilities. When he arrived, it all made sense.

At 7, all the food was ready, Cheyenne and I were still whiskey drunk, and Garbanzo knocked on the door. When I opened it, I realized why he asked me not to stare at him. He looked like a monster! One eye was swollen and purple, almost sealed shut, and the other one had some sort of homemade eye patch on it, fashioned with what looked like cotton balls and black electrical tape. His bottom lip was split down the middle and sagging off his face. Garbanzo explained he had gotten into a fight over drugs the night before at a bar, and someone had beaten him with a pool cue, and poked one of his eyeballs with it as well. Honestly, I think it made him suit my apartment a bit better.

I invited my bruised dinner guest inside, and we settled in. I carved my stunningly beautiful turkey. I didn't have a kitchen table, so I put all the food on a weird old ironing board that the previous tenants had left behind that I had never thrown out.

I gave Garbanzo money for drugs. Out of his puffy jacket he pulled out a tightly twisted ball of cling wrapped cocaine. He said that because he could barely see, he didn't bother breaking it up or splitting it into grams. So Cheyenne and I set up a little drug station at the end of the ironing board and did a bunch of coke and drank a bunch more whiskey. We all picked at our food and talked about how bad the holidays were. Garbanzo even tried to freestyle rap about it through his busted up lips (that were now shimmering with the help of turkey grease). He kept fiddling with his eye patch because electrical tape isn't sticky enough to hold a wad of cotton balls onto a face. When we were finished, the three of us cleaned up our dishes and wrapped up the leftovers.

That's when things went downhill. I went over to the ironing board to do some more cocaine, only to find that the ball of plastic wrap had gone missing. I was drunk and I had a very bad temper at the time. I freaked out and accused Garbanzo of pulling a fast one on us, like a true blue Coke Pirate. I knew Cheyenne wouldn't have taken it. We were Christmas orphan twins. We were in this together. I told Garbanzo to get the fuck out. He agreed, but insisted that he didn't take the drugs. As he left, I remember saying something snotty like "what did I expect, inviting my drug dealer over for Christmas?" as if him coming to my shanty was some sort of major treat.

Cheyenne and I kept drinking, laughing about our stupid lives. In a moment of quiet, surrounded by my imitation domesticity, I saw her face go blank, and her eyes widen. She shouted, "Check the trash!" and I knew exactly what she meant. I got up, went over to the trashcan, and plunged my hands in. Rooting through the potato peelings and giblets until I felt it. Cheyenne had thrown out the cocaine bundle, thinking it was a scrap from dinner left on the ironing board. It was totally salvageable. We laughed, and never saw Garbanzo again.

I'm sober now.

Jaik Puppyteeth is an artist working in Vancouver. Check out his work on Instagram and Twitter.