October 7th, 2008

Sean was at the Ten last night, he shared a burning desire. Those Roxys got him in a headlock. He said all he keeps thinking of is his drug dealer’s number and just like that it flashed in my head:
652- 8139

That’s Sydney’s number.

I met Sydney when I was 14 years old. I was at Doc’s house; he came inside and served Doc a couple grams of coke. It was so garbage, I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. I got Sydney’s number and we started to talk. He would serve me up when I had no one else to go to. When I started smoking crack, he was always there, 2am, 2pm – whatever, he would get out of bed for a 20 rock if I asked him to. Then like out of nowhere he just became the plug. It seemed like overnight he went from this fat dorky black kid to this big time D-Boy. I knew him before he got big so he never really intimidated me, but when I would bring people with me to go cop they would freak out, like, “Holy shit, who is that guy?”

Sydney had tons of Oxys, Roxys, crack and heroin. He went from driving that Impala to driving the Porsche Cayenne. Over the years I got to know him really good, I even met his whole family a few times. 

I remember this one time, it was a few days after Thanksgiving. I was blowing him up trying to get crack. He wasn’t answering, which was weird. It was like two in the afternoon, he finally called me and said “Yo, I’m at Shoney’s, I'm with my whole family, chill. I’ll hit you later.” There was a pause on the phone. I knew he regretted telling me where he was. He hung up and I got a text immediately after: “DO NOT COME HERE!” I called Patrick and told him the story. “Bro, he said not to go there!” I lashed back, “Bro, just take me! Please!” He took me and I walked into Shoney’s, my eyes and Sydney’s locked and I could tell he was thinking, “This motherfucker…” I walked in and went up to Sydney like we were old friends who strayed. “Yo! Oh my God bro! Happy Thanksgiving man!” He was sitting with his whole family. I knew they knew what I knew. I did not know Sydney, we did not go to school together, we did not grow up together. I was merely a crackhead... Sydney played the part though, saying what's up to me and dapping me up, he took me introduced me one by one to his family. “Dis my cousin, Latrelll, dis my auntie, dis my other auntie, dis my momma, dis my daughter, dis my youngest…” I had met his mom before and I acted like I really was interested in meeting her again. “Oh my god! Hey!” and then Sydney motioned me to get the fuck outta there. I stood by the bathrooms and kept staring at him. He finally got up and when we got in the bathroom he laid into me. “Nigga you crazy, duh fuck is wrong with you?” I looked him in his eyes. “Sydney, I’m sorry man, I just needed this shit.” He looked back at me, “Nigga why the fuck would you come here? How you even know I got shit on me?” I looked at him. That had never even crossed my mind…”Well you do, right?” He started searching in his pockets and I gave him the hundred and he broke up some crack and put it in my palm. I didn’t care if he didn’t have any baggies, he turned to walk away and I stopped him. “Yo… ugh… can get I little more?” It was Thanksgiving, it was worth a shot asking but he totally ignored me and didn’t respond. When I got back in the car with Patrick he said, “What happened?” I slumped down in my seat and put on my best sad face. “He didn’t have anything on him.” Patrick laughed and called me a dumbass. He dropped me off.  I lied because I was suspicious he’d ask me for some but looking back I truly think he just felt sorry for me and didn’t care about a hit.

I really like Sydney. I robbed a lot of people but I really didn’t want to rob him. He was too good of a connect to fuck over. But that day always comes — when you gotta do another thing you really don’t wanna do.

I was sick as fuck and there was nothing else to do but buck Sydney. I was with Stoop at the time. I called Syd and told him I needed 14 blues, and he told me to come through. I gave him a twenty wrapped over a bunch of singles in a rubber band, and he didn’t bother to count it. He tossed me back a cellophane baggie folded over with the pills inside. Stoop drove off and Sydney called me five minutes later. 

“Oh that’s how you gonna do me Bryan? Aight nigga, just wait till I catch your bitch ass.”

I was never scared of anyone coming to get me and I wasn’t scared of Sydney.

But I felt bad…  I felt like a loser.. 

“See I was on the North, North side in the projects cutterfield
And dats where the the dope dealer nigga really live
See they sold crack, and they sold weed too
They specialize in cooking up the dope food
To get it out, so the junkies can smoke too’’  —Three 6 Mafia

…

Did I tell you about the time I got carded for crack with Crackhead Amy? She wasn’t really a crackhead — she had never smoked crack before — but that’s just what everyone called her.  It was her first time doing hard, and I told her it was just like powder. It really wasn’t that hard to convince her (no pun intended) but yeah she called her dad and said she was going to be working late on a group project for school. I hit up Sydney. He was being weird on the phone and then he said, “I heard from Mark that you were 15, I can’t be selling no shit to you man.” 

I was pissed. “Fifteen? You think I’m fucking 15? You been serving me for a minute now, the fuck? How could I be 15 if you've been serving me up for over a year. Fuck Mark, he’s just talking shit.” 

He paused for a minute. “Aight,  if you ain’t 15 then bring your ID. I’m heading to the Walgreens now.” He hung up the phone. 

“Fuck.” 

Amy looked at me and asked, “What is it?”

“My crack dealer is carding me…” 

I really was 15 at the time and when we pulled up to the Walgreens on 441 and Peters he really did ask for my ID while he held a brown bag in his right hand outside the car. My heart was pounding. It had been pounding the whole ride there, my stomach was turning, I’m about to get high, ohh shitttt... I did the only thing I could think of. With my hands shaking I handed him Amy’s ID. He looked at it and then back into the car, and he blurted out, “Shit, that ain’t you, that’s HER!” 

I looked up at him and said, “Then sell it to her, I don’t got mine on me.”

He shook his head and we did the trade off. “Y’all rich kids are crazy.” 

The brown bag... just writing it makes me feel so vulnerable. You hold that bag up and it stops me in my tracks, my stomach starts going. It’s a small bag someone would give you at a liquor store, with a brand-new stem, some Chore Boy and a cellophane bag of crack. Amy drives off, and we’re both kinda laughing. Then I was thinking, “Well how old do you actually have to be, like what’s Sydney ’s age limit? He never mentioned it….was it 18 or 21?”

Amy laughs and looks over to me. “I guess 19 was good enough for him.” 

Before we are even out of the parking lot, the bag has already been taken apart. First I eye out the hard, make sure the pieces are what they are supposed to be. Man… I can feel my stomach going even as I write this.

Shaking, I pull out the stem. It’s a glass tube about the size of a Sharpie, with two stickers on both ends and red plastic rose inside. It's supposed to be some cute gift for a girlfriend, but you can only find them at shady-ass gas stations in the hood, often behind the counter. Coming to think about it, I got carded in Orlando for one of them but that time I had a fake ID. What is this world coming to? I tear off the stickers on each end and pull out the rose, throwing them out the window. Then there’s an orange ball of wire called Chore Boy. Its like that metal sponge wire people keep in their sink but this one is made out of copper. You need a knife to rip off a piece or just cut the fuck out of your hand ripping it then you roll it into a ball about the size of a dime. You take a lighter to it to heat it up and mesh it together real tight. Taking the ball of copper and pressing it into one end of the stem, pushing it down hard about half an inch. Struggling to open up the baggie, careful it doesn’t spill out. They call crack “hard” because it really is hard. Cocaine can come in rocks but you can mush them easily and cut them up into powder, but once it’s crack it's pretty much just pieces. I got like a hundred of hard and have about five pieces the size of your thumbnail. I break a piece in half and place them on top of the half inch space at the top of the copper. You have to hold it straight up the first few hits or it will spill out. I place the glass to my lips, leaning down in the car, pointed the pipe straight up. I place the flame from the lighter on the glass first, getting it hot. I tap the crack a little back and forth with the flame, like when someone puffs on a cigar. You can hear it crackling, slightly. The stem fills with dense smoke that tastes like cocaine. It rushes through thick and strong. My heart is exploding. Smoke is seeping out the side of my lips and I hate that I’m wasting some of it. I swallow as much smoke as I can and then some air, holding the smoke deep in my lungs. My ears are ringing, filled with a blast of adrenaline, eyes popping out my head, teeth clenched. I let the smoke out through my nostrils and it sounds like static electricity. Amy is talking to me but I can’t hear her or even move. I try to make a noise but I can’t. Her voice sounds like the beginning of the Benny Benassi song, “Satisfaction.” And I’m not joking or exaggerating, like that’s what it sounds like… I breathe slowly and start to look around. Cops! Are people looking into the car? Who saw me blow out the smoke? Was the light shining? We’re on the highway, fuck…

I can’t talk. Amy takes a few hits, but she doesn’t really know how to hit the pipe and keeps wasting shit. I grab the pipe from her and get her to drop me off at home quickly. I can tell she’s mad. She gave me $40 and didn’t even get high. I convince her that she definitely smoked $40 worth and smoke the rest by myself in my room.

I shouldn’t have written that. I feel like using. I feel like doing one more, one more hit. God I don’t know if I can stay clean. This shit sucks, I can’t escape it. 

I can taste it.

I look up from my diary. 

I’m in school. 

I don’t think I can stay clean going to school.

I hate it here.