One time I watched someone step into a room, close the door, then leave fifteen minutes later and head for his car. In a world filled with ex-felons carrying suspended licenses or no licenses at all and constantly bumming rides, this dude stood out. He was clean, barbered, and confident. But not cocky. He exuded… ownership. I caught up with him just before he pulled out and asked what I always asked: “Any hard?” Interactions like that were usually the beginning of one of two things: getting completely ripped off or a steady connection.
That’s how I met John, who was the beginning of both.
John was a crack dealer from New Haven who’d already spent a decade in prison for dealing crack. In his mind, it was his only option. He said he had a family to feed. In a low, deliberate baritone, he told me stories about his life and kids. He engaged in discussions about world events. He was a rare thing in this particular universe: interesting. I ended up believing most of what he told me because I wanted to—because I had to.
John was never threatening, never even raised his voice. His power was far more debasing.
Much like Curtis in L.A., he was a master at feigned empathy. But Curtis worked in broad, easily detectable strokes that I just chose to ignore. Curtis wasn’t a full-time dealer. As a wannabe music impresario and jack-of-all-trades hustler, he had other revenue streams. He could afford to show some humanity. He would sit me down and encourage me to get cleaned up. He knew I was killing myself, and he told me. But virtually in the same breath, he’d sell me more crack and keep the party going.
John was more of a miniaturist, a detail-oriented inveigler in the way he manipulated the human condition. Every gesture was purposeful, loaded, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
John would be considerate in small, symbolic ways that felt momentous in this hypertransactional setting. He’d pick up a sandwich and a bottle of orange juice from a convenience store for me before he came by to drop off some crack. “You have to eat, Hunter,” he’d insist, spilling the contents of a bag onto my motel room bed. “You have to hydrate.” He’d show up sometimes simply to check on how I was doing, see if I needed anything, make sure I was caring for myself.
Those minor acts of kindness were a seduction, of course, a kind of grooming. They were often followed by his insistence on the most trivial actions at the weirdest times. I’d be five dollars short on a $200 buy and he’d insist I go to an ATM immediately to get the cash—right after he’d bought me five dollars’ worth of OJ and a ham sandwich at a mini-mart. Or he’d say that he’d given me more product than he was supposed to the day before, so now I owed him an extra $100. Or he wouldn’t answer his phone for eight straight hours after he’d checked in on me and told me to call him anytime. As my frustration reached a breaking point, he’d call me back, say that he was on his way. He’d bring me a thermos of soup his wife made.
It was Drug Dealer 101, as seen on TV. Except I didn’t have the option to dismiss him. He was a legit, reliable connection who allowed me mostly to avoid all the other knuckleheads out there who displayed many of the same deficits without any of his advantages.
He was most masterful at making me dependent on him. I was forced to adhere to his schedule, his whims. Once he had his hooks in me, he’d raise prices, make me jump through more hoops. I’d be waiting for him in a parking lot where he was already an hour late. He’d call to say he was pulling in now. He’d pull in four hours later.
He knew I wouldn’t leave. Every move he made reinforced the power he held. He was humiliating, which was the point. The more he could humiliate me or any other customer, the more beholden we’d become. He had a steady source of income, and I had a steady if exasperating source of crack. It created a constant, back-and-forth tension: he was my jailer and my savior, both at the same time. I assume it’s like Stockholm syndrome. There’s an enormous amount of abuse you have to take as an addict, much of it by design. The abuse perpetuates the addiction by feeding the addict’s sense of worthlessness, which swells the dealer’s profit.
Still, after he’d shown up hours late and charged me way too much, I’d take a hit off the pipe and a sweet, welcome relief would wash all over me.
No one hooked me as mightily. No one played the game so mercilessly.
I felt trapped in my addiction’s deepest, most hollowed-out hole yet. Alone in dim, mildewy motel rooms, unable to reach out or be reached, I sometimes called on the only emotional anchor I still possessed: the Hail Mary.
I repeated it over and over and over.
I was raised Catholic and worked for the Jesuits, but the prayer’s effectiveness for me in times of distress is not tied to a deep-seated belief in the Church. At least not directly. While it’s a prayer every Catholic kid memorizes in the first grade, I learned it far earlier. It was the prayer my grandmother recited to me and Beau when she came into our bedroom at night to put us to sleep. She’d lie with us and scratch our backs while she told us stories about our mommy and what a wonderful and amazing human being she was. When she saw that our eyelids were heavy and about to shut, she would recite, aloud, three Hail Marys and one Our Father.
When she finished and left
