Quandary Part 1

It was after midnight but the place was lit up like a baseball stadium. I had planned for this unwelcome deterrent by paying an employee to steal a janitor uniform from an unsecured locker inside the bus station days earlier. I had purposely not shaved or showered that day to look as unkempt and in the role as possible. This was going to be a quick score but the getaway would be dangerous. We were going to steal $100,000 from my drug dealers boss.

The plan started forming weeks earlier when I went to the flop house to pick up my usual supply from my main guy. I had put in a lot of low level work, and had built up a reputation with him over the past year because I was always on time, always had what I owed, or communicated with him if anything wasn't right. I was going to leave that house with a quarter pound, or 112 grams of meth. By itself, it's possible to pick up 10 years Federally if I were caught with it. Have that quantity near a pistol or a sizeable amount of cash, 20 years no problem.

This particular night my guys boss was there making his weekly delivery. I knew him by his nickname but we had never been formally introduced. King was a giant Native man that had been in and out of prison and in the game his whole life. He stood to introduce himself and towered over me by what seemed like a foot. Covered in Native tribal tattoos from head to toe, he looked deep into my eyes. Was he reading me? I struggled to maintain myself but I was able to keep my cool. He was a very intimidating man, but he said he had heard good things about me and wanted to show me something.

He pointed to a gym bag on the floor and motioned for me to get it for him. I obliged, half expecting a gun in my face when I turned around, but he just took it and set it on the couch. He unzipped it and I saw what looked like emerald city inside. Two kilos of meth, almost five pounds, was just sitting there. I wasn't nervous or afraid even knowing if the cops came through the door right now, all of our lives would be completed from behind bars. He said, “Now you have access to anything you will ever need. You’ve proved yourself time and time again, and you have earned this opportunity.” He went on with the standard talk about me being brutally murdered if I ever fucked him over or ratted him out to the cops. He said he knew a lot of my friends, and could easily have people find my family if I were ever to go astray and spend his money on my desires. We locked eyes again and I nodded, and we shook hands.

I left the house with a pound of methamphetamine. I slinked out the front door and around to the unlit back alley which I would take down the block to my car which I parked far away from the actual meeting location as to not arouse suspicion from police with traffic coming and going from the stash house.

It was so dark it was nearly impossible to tell in which direction I was walking. Aside from the usual paranoia of being up for too many days, I was sure I was being followed. Somebody pacing me. Maybe it was just my echo bouncing off of the bushes aroun-- That’s when I felt a blinding pain on my right temple. I tried to run but I was already crumpled in a heap on the cement. I knew who and where I was, and I knew what I had. My first and only thought was that I was getting robbed but I couldn’t even fight back because my arms and legs were limp. It was quiet, but I could hear somebody or something pacing around me. Whatever it was it was breathing excitedly, like a hyena circling an injured gazelle. And then he said, “Listen very carefully, and do everything I say or I will gut you right here.” I felt cold steel against my stomach. I was fucked.

To be continued.

Lightly Roasted

They say that the most flavorful coffee comes with a longer roast. I beg to differ.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to see coffee being roasted from its raw state, you’re not missing much.  Essentially, the beans go into what looks like a commercial laundromat dryer for a set amount of time determined by the desired outcome. While the beans are being tumbled, the little casings on each one falls off and is dried at a much faster pace, and removed through a vent. The color changes from green, to light brown, to dark brown in the most severe cases. Burning it. You’re God Damn burning it! I learned all of this at Pedal Pusher’s Café in Lanesboro many years ago. It was a mess, and I’m glad I wasn’t responsible for cleaning it up. Or, at the very least, I didn’t clean it up.

Anyhow, I’m writing this because I want to portray for you why I like light roast coffee. First, I think it has much more flavor. When it comes to steak, I’m the same way. Some people would say that a steak that has been charred has the most flavor, but what has really happened is the piquancy has changed from meat, to char. They sell whole bags of charcoal if you’re into that sort of taste. It is my belief that the closer you can get to raw when it comes to anything perishable, the closer you are to its true essence.

I’m sitting here at Nina’s Coffee Café on Selby and Western in St. Paul. I come here every weekend for a few reasons. First, it’s a good place to sit down and type. I could do that anywhere, but the second reason is that here, I’ve found the world’s most perfect cup of coffee. And although the country from which it comes is different every week, I know that when I sit down and take my first sip, I’ll taste something closer related to a berry than a campfire. It’s sweet, bitter, and full of life. It’s not complex. The true flavor of coffee has been hidden behind a dark roast for far too long, and I love that they have this option here. Yes, other coffee shops have light roasts, but there is no comparison for me: this is it.

One significant difference I’d like to point out is the higher level of caffeine in a lighter roast. The good stuff is burned out more the longer you roast. As I down the last sip of my first cup of the day, a bead of sweat forms above my brow so I know it’s working. When I was in prison, many of us would drink Folgers Crystals in relatively excessive fashion, because that was the only form of buzz we could create. In St. Cloud especially, I would mix water and crystals 50/50 and chug it because it would get me all jittery, a feeling I had been familiar with up until my incarceration. I was attempting to recreate a high. Of course that’s not possible, and the actual result was just me sitting and sweating in a hot concrete and steel cage writing out my life story with the pages sticking to my arms. There was no relief from the heat in that place unless you had enough money to buy a fan, which I did not. So, I would strip down to my tightey-whiteys, put a towel on the cement floor, and pace back and forth. There was no relief, but it was something to do. I remember being jealous of the gangsters and pimps who would make their bitches[i] send them money for T.V.s and fans, and comfortable clothing. If only I had been a womanizer, maybe I could have enjoyed my stay in prison.

But I digress. It looks as if it’s going to be a beautiful, if not hot day, so I’m going to go home and get Willie and head to the river.

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[i] This is not how I refer to women. It is exactly the term used by many men in prison. In this case, the truth would probably sound racist coming from a white male, so I will say that the people in prison that most commonly referred to women as bitches were a dark roast.

The Round Up

The overall success rate in the program of A.A. is estimated at somewhere between 5-10%, probably around 6%. Roughly one in 15 people who walk through the doors is able to become and stay sober. Yesterday I was surrounded by over 6,000 people who had made the decision to quit drinking. It was cool.

There were meetings everywhere, food plentiful, and conversant faces all around at the Gopher State Round Up. Whatever XLIII means, that’s how many Round Up’s there have been. I had attended one previously in 2001 when I went with a group in Hazelden. I spent most of my time with a friend handing out pamphlets we had stolen from a kiosk to random people. We thought it was hilarious.

Yesterday, I went to a meeting right when I got there, and then began circling around the main court searching for food and friends. It only took a few minutes before so many memories came back.

Joe, Ben, and myself were alike in so many ways. We were fun, friendly, caring people, who had lost their way. We had all met nine or so years ago in Rochester shortly after I had come back from my cruise. Joe and I actually lived in the same duplex, and we started hanging out and drinking right away. It didn’t take too long after we had a conversation about never doing hard drugs again before we started doing hard drugs again. And that’s how we met Ben. Ben had drugs. Drugs, Ben, drugs.

Like I said, I was pretty fresh off the wagon, but I started hitting it pretty hard. Within a few weeks, my group of friends had changed exclusively from one set to another. I could now stay up all night, because of the active ingredient in methamphetamine. And I used my new found time to play cards and search for agates with my new best friends. Truly, honestly, Joe and I became good friends even in the world of shit. And Ben began to come over, and we went to his place more often because I believe we offered an escape from the reality of his life as he knew it, and there was some comfort for him in having a place to just relax and get high with some “normal” people.

My life, my job, and my family were quickly slipping away, and that’s when I made the decision to start my career as a professional drug salesman. It looked easy, and I would surely reach peak popularity with the masses in no time at all. So naturally my life slipped away from me. I became isolated, alone, and afraid of every movement and sound. People became my enemy, and everything was being stripped away from me at an alarming rate. My pride, my dignity, my self-esteem were all washed away with every hit I took. I could see myself wasting away in the mirror, and I weighed in at 135 pounds. I could see my heart beating through my chest.

Flash forward nearly a decade as I’m wandering through the poolside area of the largest sober get together in Minnesota, and I’ll be damned, there they were. I saw Ben first. He turned when I said his name and I don’t think it quite clicked, I mean it had been a while. That’s when I saw Joe. That’s also when I couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. The last time I had seen these guys we were all so disheveled and desperate I definitely had thoughts that I never wanted to see them again shortly after I got out of that mess. But here they were, sober and smiling. And they had some time under their belts which I was happy to hear. I’m not going into details about an anonymous program but we spent a couple hours catching up and it was by far the highlight of my day, my week, maybe even since my release from prison.

We are part of the tiny little miracle: the 6%. I’ll finish by stating the obvious, that leaves 94% unaccounted for out there. Any of you who know somebody out there still struggling, there is hope. I found proof of that yesterday over and over. It’s never too late.