In what I don’t want to say was a long time ago, in a place that feels like far, far away, I was once a terrible, terrible drug dealer. I lived near the border and there was a place just across it, that would sell me beer and crappy food, for a price that was so low that I couldn’t believe. I was a broke-ass college student, just 19 at the time. But, 19 meant beer was legal. Strip clubs, too. Everything legal in Canada was open to me...what more did I need?
Other than drugs and money, I had it made. While I had a job that paid barely above minimum wage, I was having a lot of fun. And, sometimes, I was crossing an international border to do so. So, one time, as I was finishing off the last chunk of rice in my dish and ordering my third beer of the afternoon, I struck up a conversation with a guy. I was about to ride my bike back to America, but needed a smoke first, anyway. We started talking about music we liked, then somehow, it came back to the age-old topic of getting high.
As we were smoking bowls in his van, the guy asks me if I like ecstasy. I mean, it seems like a dumb question, because who doesn’t want to start down the path of getting into some serious drugs, in a stranger’s van, in a restaurant’s parking lot in a foreign country? If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. The good news is, I was wrong. He just wanted me to ride home—to a foreign country. And, he wanted me to stuff a bunch of pills into my bike’s frame. That’s easy enough, right? Because that all was so easy, I made sure to let him know that I’d have to go hit up my roommates for some more cash, since I only had enough for lunch, beers and the tip.
Of course, this guy was a professional and I hadn’t yet lived through the financial crisis of 2008, so when he said I could do this with no money down, I was all in. All I had to do was come back to get more pills, take them home, sell them and come back with his cash.
Now, I know I’ve said I was a terrible drug dealer—and I was. The problem wasn’t that I was using my own stash (I mean, I was, but that wasn’t the big problem) and it wasn’t that I had to sell enough to cover the costs (that was easy). Rather, the problem was the border. The first time I rode my bike across the border, it was a really windy day—and that was good. I would have been sweating bullets if not, but as I recall, I was a sweaty mess anyway, by the time I was at the border crossing—a border crossing I had used enough times not to worry about it. Was I nervous? Hell yeah.
That’s when I saw the familiar face of a student from my college, who had some classes with me. It turns out, he had a part-time job working as a border patrol agent. That he recognized me was even better, because he somehow bought my bullshit story about getting beer and lunch and laughed off my joke, about how I hoped I wouldn’t get a DUI for riding a bike across the border after a few drinks. That all went fine. According to plan...if I had been smart enough to have a plan.
The problems, they came later. For a while, everything went according to the plan I was making up on the fly. I rode my bike over the border, I used the same border crossing at the same time every week and everyone knew who I was. I was just Norm, just riding my bike across an international border to subvert the laws that say you have to be 21 to consume alcohol. Cheers! Just ignore that my bike disassembles easily, please. The problem was that, one day, as I’m leaving class, someone asks me if I can hook them up with some E. Of course, I can. By then, that’s how I was paying for my books, food, tuition, etc. I kept a day job, but holy crap...I was a bad salesman. "I know if you take two of them, you’ll be fucking high!" That’s not a way to sell drugs. You’re supposed to give away coffee mugs and shit, too.
So, I’m talking about selling some ecstasy to my classmate, when I realize that Mr. Customs And Border Enforcement is standing right there.
I was terrible at selling drugs, because I sold them to the fucker who let me into the country with them. That’s like sticking your dick in the mashed potatoes—just because it sounds like a good idea at the time, well...you’ll regret it, eventually.
I didn’t go to jail (for that), but holy shit did it fuck with my income, when I realized that the next time I crossed the border, I might have to say "hi" to a guy who owed me $60 for some narcotics. I’m sure there’s a lesson here. Maybe, it’s that you shouldn’t don’t do drugs. I doubt that was it. Don’t sell drugs? Probably also not it. I bought a shitload of concert tickets and paid my rent and tuition for a while from selling them. Don’t smuggle them? Probably a bad idea, now. Before 9/11/01, crossing the border was like going to Taco Bell. Maybe it’s don’t buy drugs from a shady guy in a van in a fast food parking lot in a foreign country, while hoping that the guy at the border isn’t a classmate that’s buying drugs from you? That seems oddly specific, but if it comes up, it’s not bad advice.
