Chapter 6: Middle Man

By my junior year in high school, I was already selling weed. I started off combining my money with a group of different friends who also smoked weed. Each Friday I would collect everyone’s money during school. Then after school I would ride my bike over to the local dealer’s house. I bought the weed and then split it up into everyone’s specific portions. I delivered each portion to each person one by one on different sides of town.

Most of the time I smoked a bowl or two at each stop with my friend. By the time I was done giving everyone their weed, I had a bit extra left to add to my own purchase.

Because I took the risk and did all the work picking up the weed no one complained about my larger share.

Eventually I approached our local weed dealer and convinced him to front (loan) me $150 worth of weed in exchange for my PlayStation 2 as collateral. He gave me 14 grams. I split the weed into separate single grams and sold them for $20 each. I almost doubled my money and after a few weeks I was able to get my PlayStation back and buy the weed myself.

I created my own crew by gravitational force. Some of the guys I sold weed to started hanging out with me at school and after. I made friends with some Seniors who had a classic rock cover band and practiced in one of their parent’s back houses.

They also smoked a lot of weed and drank alcohol back there too. My new friends looked like they were members of Led Zeppelin.

I joined the band initially as the lead singer. I eventually got a bass guitar for my birthday and started playing bass and singing.

The lead guitarist in the group was named T.J. I thought the two of us really bonded. He taught me about guitar. We also played video games together.

We were both in Film Studies at school. Our class did a whole course where we watched Mafia movies like the Godfather and Goodfellas. Hardly school appropriate.

By the end, T.J. and I were obsessed with the idea of starting our own weed selling mafia at school.

I realize now as an adult how dumb this sounds.

I started to front different kids at school eighths (3.5 grams $50) and quads (7 grams $100) of weed and having them sell it for me.

This helped me acquire customers with other younger students I may not have known and took advantage of all the wannabe drug dealers at school.

If someone did not pay, T.J. and the boys paid them a visit at snack or lunch. I am sure some of them ended up begging their parents for money so they would not get beat up.

There was one kid who excelled at selling weed the most out of all of them. T.J. and I called him “The Riddler”. He basically looked like the Riddler from the classic Batman television show without his Riddler hat.

The biggest Riddle of all was how he sold so much weed so quickly.

Most years in high school I took soccer as my physical education class. My dad is from England and while most kids were raised on football, baseball, and basketball, I was raised on English Football aka Soccer.

I have always been a Liverpool fan since I was young. I even share a last name with one of the greatest players of all time. My dad also played Professional Soccer.

Of course, every year in high school I played soccer.

One of my friends in soccer named Jaden was mixed race and had dread lock hair. This group of Mexican thugs in soccer used to constantly tease Jaden with the dread locks.

They called him Bob Marley, Boob Marley, or Jamaica and he hated it. He was not even from Jamaica. For majority of the year they always used to harass him. Finally one day I had enough.

These guys thought they were tough. There were a few gangs in town and they claimed to be in one of them or had older brothers who were. Anyone who stood up to them was going to need to be prepared to do more than talk.

I never had any proper boxing or fight training as a kid but as I said before I had an anger problem growing up. I got into a lot of fights on my block over Pokémon cards and Goldeneye matches.

My parents bought me a punching bag to try and harness and direct my anger. So, although I had no formal training, I knew had to throw a punch. I even had combos, and little moves I made up when hitting the bag.

Our class was out on the football field doing warm up exercises and stretching. Our teacher for P.E. always left in the middle of class for about fifteen minutes routinely. Most likely to use the restroom.

I waited till the teacher left. Of course, the thugs were still harassing Jaden.

I went up to their leader, the fattest one of the group, a guy named Martin Chavez.

I told him to “Fuck off and leave Jaden alone!”

The three of them laughed at me. Martin got in my face, claimed some gang, and asked:

“What are you going to do?”

I pushed Martin hard onto the floor and out of my face. He got up ready to fight but his stance showed a lack of experience. I punched him twice in the face in swift succession, steady hard punches. He fell backwards on to the ground trying to avoid the third.

I don’t think he ever expected anyone to actually stand up to him or fight him. I don’t think anyone in the class knew I had that in me. Martin looked scared and confused on the floor.

Martin’s buddy jumped on my back like some monkey wrestling move. I reached up behind myself and grabbed him by the neck. I started choking him and then flipped him off my back, over my shoulder, and tossed him onto the floor in front of me. He hit the ground harder than Martin did.

The third guy then got in front of me ready to fight. He stood there moving with his hands up. We faced off like a boxing match. He hit me in the chest once. It was not very hard. I hit him in the side of face connecting perfectly.

The teacher returned a few seconds later and told the two on the floor to stop messing around laying on the floor getting a suntan.

In the locker room Martin approached me challenging me to fight after school in the usual place high school fights happened in an alley behind a hospital down the street.

I asked him “How many friends do you plan to bring to help you this time?”

Martin’s face kind of changed.

I told him “I am not interested in fighting you and ten other Mexicans. If you want to fight me one on one like a man, we can do this anytime. But you already know, you are going to lose.”

“I am sorry for punching you and your friends. Sometimes I lose my temper. But you need to leave Jaden alone and stop harassing people at school. I am sick of that shit. He is not even Jamaican!”

Martin and his goons did not say anything. He just walked back to his locker and glared at me.

There was no fight after school. Nobody jumped me or started a problem.

Although things were uneasy with me and Martin and his friends the rest of the year, they did stop picking on Jaden. I knew Martin had older brothers and cousins. I had to avoid the teen center in North Redondo where Martin and all the thugs hung out for a while just to be safe.

Everyone at school heard about the fight. It had happened right out on the football field in the middle of P.E. where numerous students had witnessed. It does not hurt your reputation as a school drug dealer when you take on three thugs that terrorize the school and walk away unharmed. Not many of the kids I fronted weed to needed visits from T.J. and the boys after that.

A year later I ran into Martin outside the supermarket. If he still wanted drama and trouble, he could have started something right there. Instead, he acted like we were old friends smiling and laughing.

Unfortunately, towards the end of Junior year I got busted for smoking again. Someone at the school turned in an anonymous tip that I was selling weed.

Although the school never caught me in the act or with weed on me, my parents heard about the accusations and grounded me again. This brought a pause to my miniature weed empire.

I ended up putting T.J. in charge of the business in the meantime.

T.J. had gone with me to my dealer’s house before, so he was able to meet with him in my absence. The security was now watching me at school so I could not do any business there. T.J. was able to distribute to the kids I was fronting and collect money after school without anyone the wiser.

On the last day of school, I got off my banishment, and I was ready to take back my business.

I met up with T.J. and the crew to smoke a blunt a few days after my punishment was over. I felt like they had been avoiding me and ignoring my calls the days prior.

Right away things seemed sketchy. Everyone was quiet. I was excited to be out and about and able to hang out with my friends. We were all sat around T.J.’s garage. I was in a cheap wooden chair while T.J. sat across from me on the couch.

Before we had even rolled the blunt or each contributed weed, T.J. says to me,

“With everything going on with your parents and the school maybe it’s best for you to just retire from selling weed. I just graduated I have plenty of time now. I’ve got it from here.”

I thought he was joking around so I said:

“Naw I haven’t made enough money to retire yet. Besides I am just getting into my prime. What would you guys do without me?”

“I talked with Alan and we both think it’s for the best if I take over from now on.” T.J. replied.

T.J. could see I was starting to become irritated and take him seriously.

A million thoughts began to run through my mind. T.J. had gone behind my back and convinced Alan my dealer I was a liability. All the work I did building this weed business, the risks I took, were all for nothing if T.J. took over.

That is when I noticed T.J. had a baseball bat propped up on the couch beside him. It was like something straight out of one of our mafia movies. He apparently had it hidden ready for the big reveal knowing I would not take it well.

He picked up the bat and gave me a serious stare.

I looked around the room, and no one wanted to make eye contact or say anything. I suddenly realized my crew was loyal to weed not me.

I left without making a scene, but I was furious.

After a few days to think about it, I decided I wanted the chance to compete with them, but I had no money now. I had to start over. I called up our dealer and explained the situation. I asked him to front me again for my PlayStation as collateral like we did before.

He told me he was worried about the school watching me. He did not want to front me when T.J. was paying cash.

If I wanted to buy weed, I would have to do business with my former crew and buy from them or someone else. He could not front me. If I wanted something for personal use. T.J. was handling all his smaller orders now.

I was back to square one again.

Chapter 7: Dougie and Donkey