Skip was my former pot dealer. He’s dead now, casualty of an evening shootout with police forces less than 200 yards from his suburban house.
Skip liked to talk to me. Anybody who’s bought pot illegally (which is everybody I know) discovers that in addition to the illicit transaction taking place, there may be involved a period of polite subservience, bonding, in order to obtain the sought substance. I’d bend the knee and dutifully listen to Skip’s monologues because his environment was so threatening.
At Skip’s home, I’d ring the bell and after a second, he’d holler for me to come in. I’d open the door despite the drooling pit bull and bulldog raring and clawing at the glass storm door. “Nice doggies,” I’d soothe his nipping hellhounds as they sniffed at my balls. Skip would beckon me to his kitchen or his bedroom and I’d sit across from the heavyset man with a chinstrap beard and shorn head.
He kept ounces of pot in mason jars and he’d set the containers before me so he could name the various strains he had available that week. As a smoker, I’m seasoned but as a connoisseur I’m a dirt roach neophyte (If it’s green, smoke it and see). I’d ask him to hook me up with whatever blitzed him the most and he would assemble a mélange baggie, the suicide option that resulted in dizzying highs and substantial headaches.
If we were in his bedroom, he would have You Tube open on his PC. He’d ask if I’d seen this video about honey badger and oh shit, you gotta see this. I’d wear the bemused smile of feigned interest and effuse when it seemed appropriate.
I tend to play along with the guy with a bunch of guns. Skip was a firearm enthusiast if there ever was one. Here was one former felon who sloughed the shackles of federal law for he so loved his weapons. Opposite his computer screen on a table was a disassembled AR-15 and various rounds of ammo, strewn like a kid who was building a Lego tower but got distracted midway.
He offered for me to touch and admire his functional guns. I’m not a gun guy because I’m also not a guy who stands too close to high altitude ledges.
While he would weigh out my order, we’d smoke a little bit and Skip would espouse conspiracy. Some, I could appreciate. Illuminati-like overlords pulling the strings is a good one because I enjoy how it totally overestimates human competence. Others, like the gov setting up straw men tax foils went over my head and I also just didn’t give a shit about financial scandal. He’d give me free legal advice regarding the handling of cops and fourth amendment procedures (basically, you tell a cop “No. I don’t consent to ‘whatever.’ Yeah right. Don’t tase me.). He’d dial up vids featuring Russian FPS controlling machine gun mounted drones with an ipad and he’d forlornly warn, “This shit is coming. And when it does you know what to do,” he’d pat the presumed holster under his armpit.
Meanwhile, I would nod. Nod at crazy and maintain eye contact and hope that crazy dosen’ t believe you are condescending to them. The problem with US drug laws is that it puts nonviolent waster voidoids like me right in the jaws of pro criminals like Skipper. He and I had virtually no association other than the drug dealer/drug abuser symbiotic relationship. Pot isn’t a gateway drug. It’s just the gateway to shady motherfuckers who have embraced outlaw status and will sell you pills that’ll make you feel drunk.
The process of obtaining my meager supply of marijuana was needlessly drawn out and colored by the personality of Skip. I utilized his services for nearly six months. He maintained his connect and despite my uneasiness around his deadly peripherals, I continued to return to his guard dog survivalist compound located in the placid incorporated township of Redacted.
The second to last time I saw Skip, he instructed me to meet him in the parking lot of a grocery store a mile from his house. I waited for him in my car, eyeing my phone and scanning for police. He pulls over in his white Saab. He nodded at me and I got in his car. We U-turned out of the parking lot in the direction of his house. He explained that with all the motherfuckers rolling through lately, this way is just better. Hey, I’m all for discretion. He clicks the button of his automatic garage door opener. It shuddered upward and he parked us in.
Inside, the routine was basically the same. I pushed his beasts down and kneaded their sweaty haunches. Skip tells me he’s in the middle of Glenn Beck’s book. Though I’m impressed he’s reading a ‘book’ It occurs to me that I would buy weed from a Nazi. I’m seeing a man unhinged.
Skip was feeding his crazy with a continuous news cycle. His theories were encouraged by the restless internet, each rabbit hole leading to another, larger hole, until he got way down in the six mile borehole of despair. He dreamt of cultivating fields of weed in the rural country, maybe leader of a righteous militia or sponsoring one. He believed they were coming for us and for an hour, I went along with it because I wanted to get home with my weed so I could listen progressive British ambient-step on weed.
As he drove me back to my car, we talked about David Koresh. Mainly, because he referenced a Waco if police happened to interfere with him. I asked him if he remembered the Branch Davidians because I remembered vividly the standoff that took place. It had been on Channel One in school and we were about the same age. He frowned grimly and said, “I fucking remember that bullshit. That same shit is happening now. The shit is coming down.”
He took me back to my car in the grocer’s parking lot and I drove away, relieved. Over the months, Skip had said unsettling things to me but most of it, to my ears, fell in the camp of bullshit. Skip was full of machismo and shit talk because he was an expert. Experts spend a lot of time explaining shit to people who don’t understand and sometimes gross hypotheticals are required to illustrate a point. Despite his cache of undoubtedly illegal weaponry, I honestly felt that Skipper was a mostly harmless drug baron protecting his supply by deterrence, real and assumed.
I had become weary of it if not wary. I wanted another connect to come along, something easier and less charged by dangerous association. Once Skip escorted me to his home because he feared that the traffic around his place might be incriminating, I felt I was treading close to a line that could have disastrous consequences for myself. I told all my friends how nuts my pot dealer was. We’d shake our heads and smoke and acknowledge how fucked up some people are.
I never had a personal epiphany regarding Skipper and how I was to disassociate myself from his services because this was the last time I saw Skip:
Skip loved dashboard cams.
@estuteville 