July 15th, 2008

Stoop went to The Ten last night. He looked clean. We talk but I try to stay away from him.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I mean I can never sleep, but last night was really bad.

I kept thinking about smoking crack. I think about crack so much that I could teach a class on it: SMOKING CRACK 101.

Normally when I decide to smoke crack it happens like this:

I lie in bed thinking about it. I mean really thinking… it’s not even fair to call it thinking, it’s like I’m there.

I think about how if I smoke it in a certain way then I won’t get paranoid this time.

I think about how much I’m going to buy. $50? nah $100? hmm, no $200! Yeah!

I never buy less than a hundred of crack. I mean, unless it’s like put in front of me, then I’ll fucking buy fifty cents worth if it’s right there in front of me. Or if I don’t have money, I’ll just plead and beg for someone to “just let me get a hit.”

Anyways, I lie in bed thinking about the crispy brand new stem, I think about taking the stickers off each end, pulling the little plastic rose out, I think about calling Sydney, whether or not he’ll answer. I gotta see if maybe he’ll answer. My stomach starts turning. I think about that rock, that thick flat crack rock, so tight, when you break a piece it snaps… that’s what you want, that’s that funky crack. You want that shit to fucking SNAP when you break a chunk, you break that thing and lay it on the copper. Burning the end of the glass, getting it hot, roll it, get it hot and puff on it, that’s how you don’t waste it… that’s how Doc taught me. You puff on that bitch, like you’re sucking on a girls clit, then that smoke comes, its not smoke, the tires burning on a fucking hemi, it’s a fire, all this smoke fogging up the glass, that once crystal clear glass is now dense as fuck with dark ass smoke. I inhale as hard as I can, hold it in!! Hold it!! Hold it!! Don’t let it out! The stem is hot as fuck, fuck fuck, its still smoking but my lungs are tapped out, fuck i can’t hear shit, fuck fuck, it sounds like spaghetti, oh shit, exhale thru the nose!! not the mouth! the nose!! exhale through the nose! that’s how it hits you hard as fuck!!

Fuck it. I call Sydney.

“Damn Bryan it’s late as fuck, wassup?”

“Ugh, I need a hundred.”

“I ain’t getting out of bed for anything less than a hundred so if you fucking show up here with forty dollars or I ain’t giving you shit.”

“You know I never did you like that. Except that one time with the blues. And that wasn’t my fault.”

“You did it a few times.”

“Yeah, but never with hard.”

“Aight, come through in twenty minutes.”

“The Laundromat?”

“Call me when you’re on 10th street and I’ll tell you where.”

I get out of bed, put on some basketball shorts, a t-shirt, and socks; just socks, no shoes yet. Those I put out on the floor by my window. It’s 2am, but I’m wide awake, like a fucking navy seal. I slide my feet past my dad’s office, in my socks. His door is open and if he’s awake and looking you can see from his bedroom to his office door, so I’m extra careful. I go into his office; his keys and wallet are right where they always are. I grab his keys, grabbing them quietly all together so they don’t clink around and make noise. I go into his wallet and take out his debit card. I can’t believe after all the shit I pulled he still keeps his wallet and keys on his desk like this… I slowly slide back to my room, opening the door softly, then closing it all the way before I slowly let the doorhandles go back up and then I lock it. I open my bedroom window and slide out, inch by inch. I can’t open the window all the way because the alarm will go off. I rigged the sensor so it's connected to itself but it doesn’t let the window open all the way, so I gotta get my body through this 8 inch gap, but I always do. I put my shoes on and make it to my dad’s car. I know that now, my dad can wake up, but I’m getting high, he can freak out, he can call me, it can all collapse now but I’m getting high…

I drive to the corner store and take out $120 using the pin code that’s actually my birthday, 11-09. I can take out money from this ATM with my eyes closed. Checking, withdrawal from checking, YES I will pay $2.99 to take out money that’s not mine, yes yes yes. Then I hear the magical sound from the machine of money being counted. If you don’t hear that sound then shit is fucked up and you’re about to see an “INSUFFICIENT FUNDS” sign pop up. Nothing worse than going to cop crack, with your guts bubbling and then you get hit with that shit.

If you go to any hood they have drugs, but every hood has different drugs. Broward County has the crack game on lock, they don’t sell anything else unless you really ask. When you get to the hood sometimes they will ask if you want “soft or hard,” soft is coke, hard is crack. The coke on the street almost always sucks, stepped on, garbage. It’s pretty easy to find a hood, you just go to any low income area and just go deeper and deeper, a lot of people are scared to go into these neighborhoods but I never was. I fucking loved it.

If you’re unsure how to buy crack you can just ask any homeless person. Don’t be scared of the homeless people, they are more afraid of you than you are of them. At least that’s been my experience, that they will point you in the right direction. Sydney is the best dealer because he sells it all. Crack, blues, Oxycontin, heroin, needles, readys. A ready is a crack pipe already made. Sydney doesn’t sell readies per say but he sells his own little crack kit in a brown lunch bag that I usually ask for just because it’s convenient and I don’t want to stop at a gas station. He sells them for twenty bucks.

But if you need to get your own SOME gas stations sell the same crack kit. It’s a pipe, a chunk of Brillo, and a lighter for $4.99. Only gas stations in the hood do this, and it’s gotta be hood as fuck. Don’t ask for a crack pipe, just ask for a rose. But man, since I’m so young, sometimes they play games and don’t wanna sell me it…

Step 1. You get one of these:

Or one of these:

I prefer the glass pens, they are thicker and wider but mainly because you can use the ink to push it (you’ll see what that means soon).

Step 2. Buy some Chore Boy.

Chore Boy is a copper scrub you use to scrub pots and pans, but you will be using it as a screen. You rip a piece off, it's not easy to rip off, I can rip it off with my hands but a lot of people can’t. Rip off a size of about a dime. You want to roll it into a ball, get a lighter and heat it up in your palm, and mush it hard together into a ball. It should be bigger than the width of the stem (crack pipe), so when you put it in it doesn’t move around. You want it about a quarter inch in one of the pipe… get it tight! You don’t wanna suck on this thing and the little chore gets sucked back, it should look like this:

Step 3. Get some crack. [Not an endorsement!]

Regardless of what most people will say, crack dealers are pretty nice. This is how they make their living. Legit crack dealers aren’t running around with guns acting retarded, they know that crack possession and a gun is twenty years in prison. I’m not saying they don’t have guns, but they aren’t waving anything around or pistol whipping crack heads. Selling crack is a JOB. This is how they feed their families. Every one of my crack dealers was a family man. They all had like five kids. If you’re coming to them every week spending money, they are going to want you to keep coming back. It’s a business to them. A lot of them have been around crack and dope their whole lives, it’s like selling health insurance to them, or maybe your moms little jewelry parties. It's so normal to them, most of my dealers weren’t making thousands a day, they sold crack at night and worked at FPL or Comcast by day. I’m sure there’s a horrible dark side of crack dealers, but I’m just saying I ain’t seen it, it was usually me doing the dirty and fuck shit.

When I’m about five minutes away from 10th street, I call Sydney.

“Yo, I’m here.” I say.

“You at 10th street?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Alright, meet me at the Laundromat.”

I fucking knew we were meeting at the laundromat, I don’t know why he always does this… like I’m being followed.

I get to the Laundromat and call him again.

“Where you at?”

My stomach is turning just thinking about getting crack. I feel like I’m going to shit myself. Crack is like a hundred shots of Cuban coffee, cumming, and jumping out of a plane all at once, so that’s why people feel like they are going to shit when they’re about to smoke it. It happens with coke, we used to call it yayo-shits. You just do a bunch of uppers and you gotta shit but crack is sooo powerful, you SHIT BEFORE YOU DO IT.

“You at the Laundromat? Okay, come to the gas station down the street, where the liquor store is at.”

Jesus Christ, it's always ring around the rosy with this guy.

I drive to the gas station, and before I pull in, I cut my lights off. There are a few black guys hanging outside smoking weed. I lower my window and Sydney walks up, wearing basketball shorts, a white t-shirt and Jordan slippers, smoking a Black&Mild. He hands me a brown bag and I simultaneously hand him the six twenty-dollar bills, one hundred for the crack and twenty for the ready kit. Inside is a stem, some chore boy, two lighters and a hundred bucks worth of crack.

“Get on the highway quick, popo was riding out on sunrise boulevard, some shit about to go down,” he says and then he looks back at his homies and says, “This my nigga, Bryan.”

I feel cool as fuck!

I take what he says seriously though and head straight for the highway.

Crack looks like flat pieces of shells at the ocean. The best is when there’s a tint of yellow. I put the bag between my legs and drive off.

I turn my headlights back on and eye out the crack. A hundred of crack is probably like half the size of a credit card if the credit card was one flat piece of crack. But it’s never one piece, it's usually like five pieces about the size your pinky nail.

As I’m driving back in my dad’s car, I turn the A/C off, I rip off the perfect piece of chore, roll it into a ball in my hand, get it hot in my palm with the lighter, roll it in a tight ball the size of a dime, jam it into the glass stem at one end, push it down in there about a quarter-inch… no, you know what… a half-inch, so I can put a big boulder on that son-of-a-bitch. When you get fire crack it makes the most subtle sound when you break a piece off. It snaps. I put on that first piece, in the shape of a triangle, one triangle piece, big as fuck, and two other pieces next to it, to re-iterate.. there’s 3 big ass pieces hanging out the pipe awkward as fuck. You gotta hold the pipe straight up on the first hit so the rocks don’t fall out. This is important, hold it up like a fucking snorkel, that’s the only way you’re gunna get a big boulder on it and be able to smoke it without them falling out!

I lean down low in my dad’s car, carefully holding the pipe straight up, driving with my knee. I get the glass hot first, hearing it melt, puffing on it hard but not too hard, like a cigar at first. You gotta melt the crack onto the copper gently or you’ll waste it. I let the flame hit the crack just a little, the pipe fills with smoke, it looks like a foggy night. I look at the pipe and watch it fill with smoke and I inhale; it looks like a fucking Nascar driver smoking his tries. I can’t fucking do anymore and I take a big fucking hit, as much as possible, the smoke seeping out my cheeks. I hold it in, gotta hold it, gotta hold it as long as possible… I finally let it out of my nostrils, slowly. Breathing out of your nostrils lets it absorb through the blood vessels in your nose too. My head is fucking ringing, the bells are ringing, my eyes are bulging out my head, I can’t hear anything but electricity, loud fucking electricity, everything sounds like spaghetti. Everything sounds like techno music but there is no actual sound or noise or music, just the car tires running on the pavement.

I hit the pipe again, and again, I grab the pipe with my hand, it’s hot as fuck, I hold it down and try to drive straight, oh shit, fuck, cops cops cops cops cops, fucking cops! I look in my rear view mirror, oh shit, are they behind me? Fuck the’re in front of me! Fuck, fuck, this is bad. I put the pipe in the center console, scared as shit. There’s a road block! Oh fuck, there’s a road block on the highway! Both hands on the wheels Bryan! Fuck, Bryan! Both hands on the wheel! Music! Turn the music on! Act normal! Fuck!

I drive with both hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead; I pass the cops and all the flashing lights. It's not a roadblock, they’re just doing construction because it’s 3:30am in the morning. It's just construction… its just construction.

ONE MORE HIT!

I hit it again, and again, again, again…

Wow. Why did I write that?…