I had just lost a job and I had a friend that was dealing ecstasy. I was like, “Fuck, I need to do something,” so I got my hustle on with that shit and it started going well. I met one dude and then I met another dude, and so on. It went from selling ten hits to selling 100 and then before you know it, I got wrapped up in this shit for five months and made a shitload of money. I was fucking young, too, like 22. So one night I was leaving that old nightclub Coney Island High to go meet this guy who supplied me. I had $30,000 cash and about 1,000 hits in my bag—I smelled like ecstasy, you know what I mean? I was going to meet this dude and I had the backpack on and I saw him about three blocks in front of me, so I waved. All of a sudden a cop is right in front of me, and he’s like, “Excuse me,” and I was just about to pass out. I thought that was it, I was being set up. I mean, I was looking at 25 years in the feds. Then the cop just goes, “Do you know where there’s a good coffee shop near here?” I don’t know why the fuck he asked me that. I just stammered out something about a bodega around the corner and he thanked me and walked on. When I met up with the guy he kept asking me questions about the cop that I had no answers for. I quit dealing drugs the next day. TRACEY HAWTHORNE
ΔΙΑΦΗΜΙΣΗ
All right, so I was flying back to L.A. from Chicago. I can’t remember what the fuck I was doing there, but it’s a four-hour flight so I figured it would be a great idea to take some Vicodin because that would knock me out. I hate flying because I’m 6'4" and I’ve got knees that go all the way down my legs so it’s impossible to get comfortable on a plane. I take a little nap as we’re taxiing and then I wake up and we’re in the air and the lights are off and everyone’s asleep because it’s kind of a red eye. Then I notice there’s three empty seats a few rows up, so I go over there and get ready to sleep and I’m thinking, “This is going to be awesome.” I ask the flying nurse or the flight attendant or whatever, “Do you have any light beer?” and she wasn’t sure what she had so she came back with two and before I could choose she just said, “Oh go ahead and take them both.” I said thanks and then she added, “But drink them fast!” I had no idea why she said that—we have another, what, three and a half hours to go? But I laughed and said, “OK, I will!” as she walked back. So I take the two Vicodin and slam both of the beers and on the second beer, halfway through it, the captain comes over the loudspeaker and says, “We’ll be landing in Los Angeles in about 15 minutes.” What? That “nap” I had while we were taxiing was almost four hours long! The flight was already finished. I had my car parked at the airport and I remember thinking, “All I have to do is make it to my car and I’ll be safe.” That’s right, all I have to do is get into my 4,000-pound murder machine and I’ll be just fine. When I got onto the road it was terrifying. So terrifying in fact that I pulled over to call a friend to come pick me up. I can’t remember this part very well but I know I vomited into a shopping bag and threw it out the window. After driving home, I stepped out of the car and before the other foot could touch the pavement I fell asleep. I was leaning on the door, dead to the world for what must have been half an hour. I woke up and limped up the stairs to my house and there was a buddy of mine waiting by my front door. He didn’t see me sleeping in the parking lot so he was waiting for me as I stood, snoring, about 30 feet away. Anyway, he reminded me that we made plans to go out so I said I was just going to drop off my stuff but collapsed face-down on the couch the second I opened the door. I woke up the next morning still face-down with half my body strewn on the floor. My friend was gone. He must have tried to wake me up for a while and then just gone back home. JAY JOHNSTON Pole-Sitting On Shrooms
I went to Japan for a little while between high school and college, and wound up staying at this pretty cool cheaper hotel. It was kind of on the outskirts of Tokyo but real close to the subway, so it was a good trade-off. All the other people who stayed at it were foreigners too, mostly backpackers who’d be there for a few days before moving on. After about a week, I started talking with this Egyptian dude who was there for a longer haul. He made money selling these little Egyptian trinkets by the side of the road. He had a whole bunch of little papyrus scrolls with a pyramid and like the standard hieroglyphics guy printed on them that said Muhammed Ali at the bottom in cursive. These little guys cost him something like 40 cents each in Alexandria, but he was able to sell them to whomever would fork over $15 to $20 a pop. At the time I was there, Japan still hadn’t outlawed magic mushrooms, so it was perfectly legal to just sell them on the side of the street. This Egyptian guy had kind of a side business dealing shrooms from next to his big blanket of papyrus scrolls. I started chatting with him one night, and he invited me to come help him sell the scrolls, telling me it’s good people-watching and stuff. I figured that’d be a good break from what I had been doing, which was spending a ridiculous amount of money every minute of the day, so I went with him. I “helped” him sell his crap for about a week, and every night he’d give me a little bag of shrooms as kind of compensation. So for that whole period, whenever he’d pack his stuff up for the night, I’d just start tripping and go wander around town. One of these nights, I was walking back to the hotel and came to the decision that, despite my being completely afraid of heights, it would be really awesome if I climbed the telephone pole across the street. I had a little Canon Elph in my pocket that, being safety-minded, I didn’t want slipping out during the climb. I took it out and looked for somewhere good to set it. I’d had a really good experience with a Japanese homeless guy right when I’d gotten into the country, where I’d bought him like a 40-cent can of coffee from a vending machine and he’d turned around and given me $10 in yen for my trouble, so I was kind of sold on the idea that the homeless in Japan are all really great guys. There was this one guy right under the pole I was getting ready to climb, so I handed him my camera, let him know nonverbally that I was going up the pole and would be back in a little bit, and started shimmying up. I got up to the top and found a way to sort of sit down on the crossbeam, and it was really awesome. I chilled out up there for a while enjoying the view and all, then started to head back down. When I got back to the ground, dude was gone with my camera. I was like, “Aw man,” then I checked a clock to see how long I’d been up there. Oh, only about three hours. DAVID SPECHTI Turned Myself In
The night I turned myself into the police it was rainy as fuck and unnecessarily cold for an April evening. It was also the last night I worked as a bicycle burrito-delivery boy for Benny’s on Sixth and A. This particular night I’d shown up to work late and bummed, withdrawing from heroin. The dope places were closed so I’d copped two bags of coke for later. I went into the washroom at work and, since I had it, shot up almost all the coke at once. I loaded the orders on the bike and, peddling into the rain, started to cry uncontrollably. Thanks to cocaine psychosis, the dope withdrawal, and my crushing guilt, suddenly everybody on the street was an undercover cop just about to arrest me! Even the homeless people were all cops. The only people who weren’t cops were kids under the age of eight, who were all laughing at me. I could overhear them talking about me, monitoring me, discussing my myriad transgressions, how I possessed contraband. I rode around for an hour or so, sobbing, wondering how the cops could be so cruel, then I finally gave up. I wandered into the 9th Precinct on Fifth and First Ave, walked up to the desk sergeant, and announced, “I’m the guy you’ve been looking for.” The dude looked at me, sighed, shook his head, and told me to have a seat. Twenty-five minutes later, a super-kind cop came over and asked me what I’d done. “A lot of cocaine,” I answered. “Do you have any on you?” he asked. “Nope,” I lied. “Go home, kid, and don’t do it any more,” he said. So I went home, did the rest, and went out in search of more. The wet burritos lay in the bicycle basket, still undelivered. MIKE MCGONIGAL Quads On Hash
I have a friend, Danny, who was in a really serious motorbike accident about six months ago and which left him an incomplete paraplegic (which basically means that he can’t move his lower body but has a good chance of making a recovery). He was put into a rehab ward with a few other paraplegics, but mostly quadriplegics who were paralysed from the neck down. Danny is a natural comedian and instantly became the hit of the ward. Danny is also known for his love of a good time and penchant for copious amounts of drugs and booze and after being couped up for a week or so, decided to do something to help alleviate the boredom. He managed to convince one of his friends, who came to visit one time, to smuggle in beers and hash cookies and voila, Danny became the rehab party king and would keep the beer and cookies in his drawer and feed everyone when the nurses weren’t watching. Can you imagine how intense it would be being stoned on super strong cookies if you were unable to move any part of your body? According to Danny it was the first time he had heard any of the patients laugh and they all kind of bonded in their fucked up state. Anyway, some of the more switched on nurses obviously became suspicious when the patients began to act strangely and occasionally freaked out, but Danny managed to silence most of those nurses with extra cookies his friend would bring in. For a while it was a regular pot-fest in there and it was actually pretty therapeutic for the patients who could handle it. About three weeks ago though Danny started to get movement in his left leg and the doctors are saying he should be out soon so I guess all the people left in rehab are going to have to find another dealer. TRACY OK, I open this envelope and it says Driving On Vicodin so the winner is Driving On Vicodin. WINNER: DRIVING ON VICODIN Jay Johnston: “Wow, this is an honor. And I’m so happy to be here. It’s funny because two people told me today that my horoscope said my ‘magical abilities were lying dormant.’ Looks like they’re fucking wrong.”SANDRAI grew up in El Salvador. I went up to Mexico with my friend and stayed with her for a couple days. Then I went to Tijuana and walked across to Los Angeles with four other folks. My sister lives here in New York, and she sent me the plane ticket to fly out. The whole reason I came was for my daughter, who has severe scoliosis. She came up after me with a visa and is getting treatment in Pennsylvania. I have a work permit, which should allow me to travel, but I really don’t want to risk it. I feel more or less stuck here. Plus I have a son in El Salvador I haven’t seen in 14 years. He only knows me by voice and by pictures. What do you think of Americans? They’re like everybody, there’s good folks and bad. Do you like our TV? Sure, you can learn English from the shows. My favorites are Animal World, Superman, and that one with the three sisters who are witches. You mean Charmed? Yes! I like it cause it has a lot of fantasy.