Pubdate: Sun, 11 Apr 1999
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 1999 David Syme & Co Ltd
Contact:  http://www.theage.com.au/
Author: John Elder

THIS MAN IS A DRUG DEALER

He started pushing pot at 14. Now 27, his trade is heroin. He'd like to give
it up, but...

You see him as the Devil; he sees himself, this man who deals heroin from
his lodgings, as just another battler trying to make his way in a difficult
world. If only the right woman came along, then he'd change his ways and
become the good man. That, he says, is his only ticket out.

"I do want a normal life and want to live as a normal family," he says. "I
idealise a family situation I could be involved with. I would really like to
settle down and get married and work legitimately as a loving father and
husband, for sure. It just hasn't worked out that way."

It has worked out like this: he's been selling drugs since he was 14, since
his mother died in alcoholic ruin. He hangs a lot on his mother, the bored
housewife who went wild. He was raised out Doncaster way, in a regular house
with a regular pool in the back yard. 

"The bulk of my upbringing was really good. But then my mum started drinking
a lot. She was doing a university degree and she failed and it went downhill
from there. My parents split when I was 12 and it was a pretty horrible
breakup. My Dad raised me and my brothers while trying to make a living and
he didn't see a lot of what was going on." That is, he didn't see his boys
get into drugs.

"This was before the days when just about everybody in year 7 smokes pot. I
was the youngest doing it at school and I turned my friends on to it. I was
always the opportunist. I've always been a dealer. Selling it at school,
selling it to mates, it's what I've always done."

"I'd buy a quarter of an ounce with money from a parttime job after school.
There are seven grams to a quarter, which cost you $120 back then. You'd
have to sell five of them to get your money back at $25 a gram. That left me
two grams for myself. That was all right. Two grams at 14 will last you a
week. I'd get stoned before school."

He is now 27, a mobile phone man, dealing heroin to his friends and their
friends and acquaintances and, when she's being greedy and stretching their
bond, to his girlfriend. She got into it because of you? "Yes. Definitely.
Yes she did."

Are you worried about her? "Was. When she was coming over in the middle of
the day, because she started to get sick from not having it. And I started
to think our relationship was developing into just a drug relationship."

"It got to the stage where she was using so much that I felt ripped off
because I'd been giving it to her for free. And I had to ask her for money.
If she was going to have a habit, she knew she had to pay for it. I couldn't
afford to support it."

The first time I called he was cooking her dinner. "Pasta sauce. Can you
hear it sizzle?" You call him the Devil, but today he calls himself Roy. He
doesn't want to be identified and it's nothing to do with the police or
public opinion. What worries him most is his closer friends finding out that
he's ripping them off.

"They don't want to go out to Russell Street and score. I let them think
that I'm going to Russell Street and scoring for them. They don't know I've
got a big rock and I'm cutting it down and that I'm making my money back. I
wrap it in foil and stick in a little water balloon, so it looks like a
street deal. It might sound that I'm doing a bastard thing, but I've got to
support myself."

"They have no idea that I'm seeing some guy and getting a discount price.
It's only because I've been out on the street so long, I could find a guy
who could do me a good deal. I feel that I've earned the right. I sort of
managed to run into him one day. I said, `Wow this is a good size for $100'.
So once more I saw the opportunity. From one of his $100 deals I can cut 10
street deals and sell them for $25 each."

Roy's dealer is a fulltime man. "My man operates out of Abbotsford, out of
the Housing Commission flats. It's his living. I meet with him at his place
several times a day. If I don't call him he'll ring me up. I'm a good
customer of his. He's moving a lot through me. He often gives me freebies as
well. Occasionally he'll give me a free $100 block. He's a nice guy. We're
friends."

Do you feel he's using you? "I know he's using me. But I use my customers.
It's not an issue."

The issue is that he's been on the heroin for three years. His habit costs
$100 a day and he has a dozen customers to help pay for it. He has a job
with flexible hours that pays for rent and food and he gives
this money to a trusted friend because he doesn't trust himself with it. Roy
says oblivion runs in the family. "It's a genetic thing." He mentions an
uncle, a drug fiend from the 1970s, who taught him one good thing: never use
a needle. "That was something I listened to." Indeed.

We are sitting in his lodgings and he's packing the cone of a bong with
marijuana and tobacco. On top he sprinkles a smidgen of heroin, as if he's
dusting a cupcake with icing sugar. He lights up, sucks it
down, holds it and gives me a nod as if to say, "I'll just be a moment".
Twenty minutes later, he packs another cone, sprinkles another sprinkle.
It's just after noon, Thursday.

An hour ago, one of his regulars shot up on the kitchen floor. "He left on
his pushbike. I don't mind friends shooting up here and I keep a store of
needles for them. If it's a new guy I've started dealing to and I don't know
him that well and I don't like him, I just sell him the deal at the front
door." Do you ever feel moral unease? "When my childhood friends get into
it. I know they're better than that and they're only getting into it because
I've influenced them and a habit isn't a nice thing to have. This guy this
morning, he's been saying,
`I've got to stop coming around. I'm not coming around any more'. I'll say
that's fine, but in my mind I know that he'll be back. I worry about it but
I think of the benefit for me. He can look after himself. I might mention it
in passing, but at the same time I don't want to lose him as a customer."

"The guys I've been introduced to by my friends, where the sum total of our
relationship is heroin, I don't give a shit about. I watch them come around
daily and see them get their habit and some of them start having a hard time
financially and they're starting to sell things. Then I start to think it's
getting serious for these dudes. It gets so I'm surprised if I don't hear
from then. I'm concerned. Sometimes I do get concerned because they might
have overdosed. I'd be pretty disappointed if that happened."

"I mention to my people who use needles that I don't want them to drop
(overdose) in a jokey manner. emotionally, I don't want the shit on me. If
they die, I don't want. It's not regret, I just don't want
that on me." He says it hasn't happened yet.

If Roy has moments of selfloathing, they are born from his own habit.
"Because I know I'm better than this. I'm on a credit situation with my
dealer, so I'm always liquid. I always have money coming in which isn't
really my money and I'm always broke. I just want to have money to do
things. Having a habit is no fun because you can't go away for a week to a
tropical beach, because you'd have to carry as much heroin as you use so you
don't get sick."

So why not quit? "If the right woman came along I believe I could give it
up. If the relationship was fulfilling." Why can't you do it for yourself?
"I don't see the point. I need to be fulfilled. At the
moment heroin fills in a big part of the picture. When I've spent my last
dollar on smack and I've got no food in the house and I owe people money and
have people knocking on the door, I've still got this hope that I can
maintain my use and get on top of it again. And I need to deal to keep on
top of it."

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