A Harrowing Account of Fast Times and Big Money and Ohhh What a Tuesday It Was (Also I Think I Got Ice Cream Too but I Ran Out of Room to Mention That Part so I Left It Out)” ...or, “Tuesday”... by Duck Frites.
...I guess it was a sunny and pleasant enough day to be juggling a roster of dispensary accounts, a fire in the grow and several hundred pounds’ worth of under-the-table sales. For that I was thankful. Shit can go off the rails real fast in the weed game; sometimes a pleasant backdrop is the only handhold your sanity can attain and every once in a while, it can get you through some incredible circumstances.
Which occur with alarmingly unexpected regularity, in succession, and very often all at the same time.
This whole shitshow was X number of years or months or hours ago, I won’t say which, not that it matters, but...out of necessity big parts of the set and setting are gonna be kind of vague and I hope you’ll forgive me. Let’s say it was in early fall. Let’s say I was day-jobbing doing sales for an indoor grow, battling it out with the light dep mobs trying to keep a reasonable price point on our units in a flooded market. Let’s say I was also hustling black market light dep to the east coast, because nobody in Cannabis who has kids or car payments has only one job.
Read that last part again. If you take anything away from this whole tirade: THAT should be it. To pay your bills in this thing means no hustle left unturned. Your day job won’t save you.
Anyhow, the fun all started...actually, it started a couple different ways simultaneously.
—Two days prior, one of the rubber heating mats keeping the seedlings warm had an electrical short (the older shittier ones with the stupid fucking dial knob are kind of legendary for this, but when the new ones are $25 and you need like a hundred of them to fill ten flowering rooms consistently, you cover payroll first, cross your fingers, and generally sleep deprive your way through the next however many cycles until a harvest comes back from the lab at 38% THC and you can charge $2800 per pound for a change). They melted through the trays, they caught fire to a bunch of plants, they shorted out some other shit, the fire got in the walls. This was on Friday night after everybody went home, the managers came in on Monday and just replayed the security footage over and over and drank beer until you got there two hours later to start your week, only to receive the news. By the end of the day the cheapest estimate for repair and cleanup was 34K; the decision was made quickly and automatically and absolutely out of necessity that we could do it ourselves for the cost of supplies and approximately four cases of beer. So, it frickin goes. Paint and rollers and rags and hazmat suits and respirators were acquired.
Also on Friday—you set your boy up with your brokers to move the 186# of light dep Sour Diesel and Wedding Cake, and I can’t remember what else that he grew that was now binned up in the barn on his dad’s property. He showed up a couple hours late, everybody was irritated but the bud was on point, and they agreed to work it and cash out in increments starting on Tuesday. This being their first meet, there was a lot of pins and needles and nervous phone calls late Monday night about whether or not he just lost six months’ worth of work and expensive dirt and paying out trimmers to some guys he didn’t know that you were vouching for. In a very real sense, he was betting the farm: mortgage was due, and this weed HAD to sell immediately.
Also, all this was garnished with the standard dollop of polyamorous drama and a moderate to severe psychedelic hangover. The paisley lights bouncing off frantic heart emojis texted every five or two minutes in multiple directions really set a tone to the whole proceedings.
...so here we are, now Tuesday morning. Sunny and mellow, a gentle breeze and a breakfast burrito, reality wading its way drearily into things. Everybody came in early. Cigarette consumption skyrocketed. The first few bottle caps satisfyingly flipped off their hosts. Wordlessly we donned our hazmat suits and respirators and blue cloth booties.
Holy fuck we worked. The crew at this grow were a bunch of old-school Portland skaters and metalheads; liberal doses of Slayer and Minor Threat were applied for good measure. The tone was both jovial and extreme and sweaty, the soot scrubbed away by brute force of will. The cleaning products ate away at the grime, the polished metal racks, the linoleum floors, our very souls. Even through the mask I could taste it. Even through the face protector shield it stung my watering eyes.
There’s a particular type of high-functioning dissociative acuity
I’ve only ever been able to achieve with a chaotically curated smorgasbord of good beer, cheap paint, industrial-strength solvents, and raucous laughter. It was a vicious cycle, requiring increasing amounts of beer every ten minutes or so, if for no other reason than to duck outside real quick for some fresh air also. The texts to all three girlfriends grew more frenetic and less coherent. We were all, despite the grind, having a fabulous time.
The plan was to quit drinking by 2; I wasn’t supposed to meet up with the brokers for the cash until 6 so I figured this would give me a few hours to sober up, get paid and get things in order to drive two hours south to pay out the grower, capping off a long and dirty but otherwise wonderful and profitable and overall, very organized and decent roster of events.
At 1:30 the phone rang, it was the broker. I always get apprehensive getting called four hours early on a deal, that can cover a lot of hypothetical ground in this biz.
“Heyyyy, what’s up?”
“Doing good man! I’m at your house. Your roommate let me in, I’ve got funds for you.”
“Oh! Oh....Umm.... shit.” My mind raced head bobbled; 7000 RPM stuck in neutral. But with guys like this you gotta show up if you want the work, and I NEEDED the work. And he was sitting in my living room across town with a large stack of paper. And that was probably weird for my roommates.
“Ok, no worries, man, I’ll be there in 20 minutes.” I found my boss in his office doing bong hits and hanging up a new “Trump as Rambo” banner and watching Tucker Carlson rave about Covid or foreigners or some shit and we both grumbled, and I dashed out the door.
34 minutes later I pulled up to the house and parked behind the giant black SUV and ran inside. Homie was chilling on the couch, big smile, somewhat casually trying to get my roommate’s phone number. He had a Luvs diaper box full of money next to him, the first eighty grand of the deal. There was the standard rushed Wassups and handshakes, he left in a hurry, more so than usual. Whatever, I thought. I made it here. The pleasantries can wait.
I took to counting. My roommate was both flattered by Homie’s advances and clearly intoxicated by the sight of the roughly 5 gallons of 20s and 10s I had to sort through.
Frankly, when I see a pile of cash larger than 10K, at this point in my life: the only thing I feel is an advanced throb of carpel tunnel syndrome. I don’t even like the smell of it anymore. That said: my landlord, Wells Fargo Bank and the Polk County District Attorney’s Child Support Division seem to never get enough of the stuff, so I stick to acquisition the best I can. The roommate reeeeeeally wanted to help, I said fine, here’s a pile. Everything was in neat 5K stacks, I went to work methodically opening them up and verifying amounts.
After the third stack I looked over, my roommate had for some reason decided to open up like 35 grand all at once and was trying to count them in some weird Fibonacci sequence I couldn’t comprehend on the floor, in her defense I don’t think she could either. The cats were amused, they strolled right through it all for cuddles. I politely but firmly thanked her for her help but dismissed her services.
I was maybe sixty-five thousand dollars of aching fingers and sore back into the process when I saw it: there was a small white slip of paper in one of the last stacks. I looked some more, saw a few others. I slipped the rubber band off the next stack, pulled the slip out.
It was a fucking $800 money order from a Publix in Florida. With a name on it. That I didn’t recognize, much less wanted to have anything to do with.
Same for the next several. Grand total: $8,800. The time was now approximately 3:48 P.M. “Flabbergasted” isn’t the right word. Even now I’m too worked up typing it to think clearly. Made a call to Homie.
“Heyyyy, so...these money orders?”
“Oh yeah, hey, I probably should have mentioned those...do you have a bank account you can just cash them at?”
...for the uninformed: the standard answer to this question is HARD NO. It kind of defeats the purpose of an untraceable income to make it clearly traceable, also it ABSOLUTELY defeats
the purpose of conducting yourself within the realm of the common sense necessary to being even a one-half-bit hustler to attach your name to another criminal across the country, particularly one WHO PAYS FOR DRUGS WITH MONEY ORDERS FROM PUBLIX. Bottom line: I was getting worked. My boy needed the money right away, now the broker is telling me I’d have to wait a week to get actual cash to make up the difference. Things got just tense enough. I had to hang up.
I paced around the living room a few times, ... it had been a day, I was tired, I was still more drunk and on industrial fumes than my adrenaline would let me realize.
Fuck it, I thought. Time to just get this done.
I drove down the road to the neighborhood Safeway with a Wells Fargo in it.
My demeanor approaching the teller was brusque, rushed, frantic. She eyed me with supreme suspicion.
“I need to cash these,” I huffed, fumbling for my ATM card, and shoving a wad of weather-beaten money orders from across the country towards her general position. I started scribbling my signature on a couple of them.
Her response was flatly toned and firmly resolute. “We can’t cash these here.”
I sort of growled, sort of asked, she was obviously somewhat
terrified but made it clear that they didn’t have enough money at hand in the Wells Fargo office in the front of the local Safeway to cover $8,800 of what was clearly extremely suspicious activity. I left grumbling. I got in my car.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror, that’s when I noticed it. I stopped, mouth agape, rapt with wonder and shock.
There was a black ring around my mouth and eyes, from where the mask had been. I was absolutely filthy. My eyed were searing with pain still, and were dark bloodshot red. My beard had streaks of grease. There were splotches of red and crusty dried brown from the paint. I had come into the day purposely wearing my shittiest clothes anyway. I looked - at best - homeless, deranged, beyond reason.
Exactly the sort of shady character who just knifed some poor soul in the parking lot of Safeway for $8,800 in money orders.
...I chuckled, guffawed, laughed. Chest heaved and sighed uncontrollably beyond rhythm or self-control. I cried hysterically. It was all too perfect; it was all too ridiculous.
That, O Perspicacious Reader: That’s the Cannabiz.
The rest of the story was a lot more enjoyable but a lot less exciting. I went home, cleaned up, went to the actual bank in the nice neighborhood, got to the teller by 4:56 P.M., was perfectly charming, watched with a satisfied grin as her polished nails deftly worked their way through the stacks of green.
The funds just barely fit into the lead film photography bags I had on hand (because these days, when the cops have their radar guns out: they’re much more often checking you for denominations of cash than the speed you’re traveling), I hit the highway, cranked the good-luck playlist of Britney Spears and Al Green and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, got down to homie just in time to rescue a three week old kitten stuck in the abandoned part of the barn, a real cutie and a fellow ginger to boot. Her mew was sharp and vibrant and alive and so were the blackberry bushes on the outer wall of the backside of the barn and essentially everything stung a bit but if you’re living the right kind of life, it’s sort of supposed to, I think. Everybody’s bills got paid. We laughed it all off.
Now slightly bloody, entirely exhausted, hung over and a good bit more bald and sore and old: I fuckin drove home, crawled into bed.
Several thousand dollars richer.
And on and on...
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Duck Frites is some 15-year-old wannabe shitbag who responded to your comment on a Jungle Boys Instagram post, talking mad flex about how he’s flipping boxes in NYC @ 3K a unit still and you’re letting your quality slip and it shows and you’re a newbie punk and definitely haven’t been in the game as long as he has. Also, he knows Berner. Boy I’d like to kick his ass. I bet his parent’s basement has a sweet home movie theater though, and he’s probably got a super dope trampoline, so maybe we’d be cool, I have no idea. Anyhow goodbye for now and thanks for putting up with him, just to be clear HE’S DEFINITELY A MADE-UP CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T EXIST NONE OF THIS SHIT WOULD EVER HAPPEN IN THE ACTUAL REC MARKET, MY GOD. For serious tho, stop asking.