The business aspect of dealing attracted me because of the power the dealer had over his buyers. He set the prices. He determined where meets happened. He made all the rules. Imagining having that kind of control lit a fire in my soul. It made up for all the other places in my life that were out of control.
From the second I witnessed that lifestyle, I fucking wanted it.
six
“Yo, bitch, let’s go to my house after school and hit the bong,” Alex said as he playfully shoved me. “We can get Chicken Basket and watch Family Guy.”
“Yeah, your fat ass would be thinking about Chicken Basket at 9 a.m.,” I said, shoving him back.
Alex Finnegan, or “Finn,” as we called him, was a tall, porky guy with a jolly attitude. Even as a sophomore in high school, the kid was probably six-foot-four, 250 pounds. He played on the football team, and his father owned an architectural firm that we would all eventually work for at one point or another. Alex was a massive ball of energy and a force to be reckoned with both on and off the field.
Out of the four of us, Alex was the only one who still had married parents and an intact family. He had two sisters and a large extended Greek family who were probably the loudest people I’d ever met in my life. Throughout high school, Alex and I shared a strong bond and knew every intimate detail of each other’s lives.
As our sophomore year inched on, Alex, Jeff, Kenny, and I became inseparable. We had each other’s backs unconditionally, and it was known that if you messed with one of us, then you were buying a fight with all four. We were brothers. We had a bond that couldn’t be broken.
It wasn’t long before our small group of friends started being known as a group who liked to party, smoke weed, and get “fucked up.” Other groups like ours started to take notice.
One day after school, we were all at Alex’s house, ripping on a bong. A guy named Jared stopped by. I’d met him a few times before at Kenny’s house.
Jared was one of the main weed suppliers in the area, and much of it trickled down to the students at Foran. He picked up pounds and sold mostly ounces. The people who bought off him would then break down $20 bags and eighths and sell to kids who had extra money from doing chores or saving up unused lunch money.
During Jared’s visits to Kenny’s house, he’d observed my curiosity for the business side of weed and was more than willing to help me make a jump into dealing. He was only a year older than me, and although I’d never sold anything in my life, he saw potential in me. He also saw a lucrative opportunity for himself by adding another dealer below him.
“Mike, right?” he said as he sat down next to me on Alex’s shitty old couch in the smoke chamber he called a bedroom.
I nodded.
Jared appraised me. “Hey, let’s go out on the porch and chop it up for a few minutes.”
We walked down the creaky old steps of the 1940s raised ranch and out onto the wooden deck. It slanted so hard I’d almost toppled off it during many a drunken night.
“Hey, man,” he said, “if I start giving you some weed, you think you can off it to your friends for me? You’ll have whatever you want to smoke and even some scratch on the side if you do good.”
“When can I start?” I said without a moment of hesitation. Secretly, I’d been hoping for this since the moment I’d bought my first bag of weed.
Five minutes later, we were driving in Jared’s Acura to his house, where he introduced me to the game that would change my life forever.
Over the next few months, he taught me everything a kid needed to know about selling drugs. He taught me how to balance a digital scale, how to bag up, where to meet people, and, most importantly, how to behave around customers and connects.
I didn’t understand the leap I was taking. I looked at it as an opportunity to meet a couple friends, sell them a little weed, and in the end, get a bit of free weed for myself along with a few bucks in my pocket. I couldn’t begin to comprehend the road I was embarking on.
The first bag of weed I ever sold was to a freshman from Foran. I met him at a park around the corner from school after class let out.
“Let me just get a twenty,” he said, meaning as much weed he could buy for $20.
“That’s fine. I have eighths too,” I said, trying to upsell him. “I’ll do one for you for $50 today. They’re normally $60.”
“Fifty is all I have until Friday, man,” he said reluctantly. “I gotta eat lunch and shit.”
I sat on a wooden bench and just looked at him. I said nothing.
He hesitated, and then said, “Yeah, okay, you know what? Fuck it. I’ll figure it out. Give me the eighth.”
He placed two crumpled twenties and a ten in my hand.
I’d just sold my first eighth of weed. After that, I used upsell tactics on everyone I met, no matter how close a friend they were. The more I moved, the lower my price. It benefited me to sell a bit lower to move quantity, and there was always more weed to replace what was sold. I never waited more than a night for a “re-up,” or to replenish my supplies.
Within a very short time, I began to sell larger amounts. Profit of hundreds became profit of thousands. At first, I would get a quarter pound from my supplier and then bag up eighths and twenties. I took calls from kids who’d raked their parents’ lawn or washed a car to earn $20 and wanted to get high.
I met students from Foran in parking lots or in their parents’ homes, after school and on weekends. I became highly efficient and good at marketing myself, upselling customers way above their original orders.
I was also effective at bagging the weed up and making sure there was just enough in the bag to register a gram up on a digital scale. I saved a half gram on almost every 1/8 bag I sold, which added up and allowed me to pocket even more profit.
It all came so naturally to me. I wondered if that was due to the marketing lessons I’d gotten from my dad, along with his endless teachings on the art of the sale.
As I started to sell more weed, so did my connect. Jared quickly rose through the ranks in our small town to become one of its biggest suppliers.
“I got ten pounds coming in from Canada this week,” he said to me one day during a “blunt ride.” Since it was difficult to find places to smoke, we would often ride around town in his car with the windows slightly cracked. We’d burn while listening to Jay-Z, Nas, and The Lox.
“Ten pounds?” I replied, taken aback by the quantity. “I’ve been moving QPs, but I guess I can take a half pound at a time…”
“I was thinking you should just start taking whole pounds, man,” he said. “Make it work. You’re like me, man. You were built for this shit.” It was clear he was confident in my ability to step up my game—which I did.
At just sixteen years old, I was now the youngest kid in that town making that volume of moves. Over time, I’d built up an impressive customer base within Milford and the surrounding cities. I’d even started giving ounces to kids younger than me at a premium to sell to their own friends.
As I continued to move up the chain, I made fewer sales of larger quantities. When I showed up to house parties, everyone would clear the room so I could weigh out ounces on the digital scale.
In school, I was still the same strong student I’d been my whole life. I’d always been able to balance my extracurricular activities with my studies—but this new hustle wasn’t exactly intramural basketball. I’d found my niche and was getting attention from everyone around school.