CHAPTER 3
Back in Rhode Island, it was time to find a new apartment and set up a new grow room. I was up for the challenge. I decided to get out of Providence and find a place in one of the suburbs. My roommates, Charlie and Chris, were invited to follow along but all guests had to be cleared with me first. Basically I could have anyone over that I saw fit but they couldn’t.
The apartment I settled on was nice. It had three bedrooms with two full baths, newly remodeled, on the third floor of a multi-family. I could tell from the outside that the house had a huge attic with space big enough to walk around. The entrance to the attic was in the middle of the hallway and consisted of a large opening covered up by a board. I found this to be very inconspicuous. The attic window that overlooked the street was the first thing I covered up when I got into the place so that I could begin to build my grow room. We were moved in and the garden was up and running in no time.
Greg visited often, staying for weeks on end almost to the point of living there, except he didn’t pay rent. I suppose you could reason that he did live there since he didn’t have any other place he called home. I enjoyed having him around at first and he began to fill me in on what was going on with his business. He bought pot in quantity from Mexicans he had become acquainted with in San Diego,California. It all started when he was down there in San Diegoand saw this hippie-looking guy with dreads crossing the street. He got into a conversation with the guy, gave him a ride, then asked him if he knew where to buy a few pounds of pot. Kind of a bold question to ask but it has been my experience in life that it’s amazing what you can get if you simply have the guts to ask for it. It just so happened that Greg picked up the right hippie dude who was well connected in that town. After a while of dealing with the hippie dude, Greg cut him out and started dealing directly with the Mexicans. All was well for a while.
Recently however, some of the people he sold to got busted and were under investigation by the DEA, the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, his ex-girlfriend had gotten busted driving a load across the country. She was speeding with one hundred and eighty pounds of pot in the back of her truck. By the way, make a mental note here. If you have one hundred and eighty pounds of pot in the back of your vehicle, don’t speed. Remember the girl in the hotel room inBoston? That’s her, Heather - Greg’s ex-girlfriend. Except, I found out later, Greg conveniently forgot to tell Heather about the “ex” part. So Greg was in the hole pretty big. Not only did he lose all of the pot but he had to bail Heather out and pay for a lawyer. He was in debt over one hundred grand to the Mexicans. People get killed over numbers like that but somehow Greg’s style and charisma kept him going for a little longer with the Mexicans.
My first crop in the new apartment was high-grade. It was spring and the Grateful Dead were on tour again, so I brought a bunch of my homegrown pot to the shows to make some money. Joe, Ron, and their friends bought all of my buds the first day I got there. This was nice because I didn’t have to deal with anyone I didn’t know.
We were inChicago. Joe shared a room with me at a Hyatt. One day when we were hanging out in the room before it was time to head over to the parking lot, Joe was all stretched out on the bed. He looked over at me and he said, “Be spontaneous.” I know he wanted to have sex and he wanted me to come over to the bed and start kissing him but I didn’t. I loved Joe and I cared about him a lot. Maybe that’s why I didn’t do it, I don’t know. I did know that I didn’t want the deep friendship I shared with Joe to change. There have been times I wish I did go over and kiss him. Things might have turned out much differently if I did sleep with Joe. Maybe I would have ended up with him instead of with his friend Greg. Joe was very kind to me. He called my pot J-bud. We always had a fun time together.
