I walk up to my friend Laverne’s place, which is in a scabrous two-story wood frame house near Florida Avenue in the Nation’s Capitol on a street presided over by several dope dealers.

Laverne’s block is a heroin—called here-oh-on by the locals—spot, although crack is sold there from time to time, mostly via a dealer that I know well. The here-oh-on is dealt from a vacant lot next to the house by a couple of guys who look like they’re perpetually working on their cars and oftentimes from a barbershop around the corner where they do a lot of haircuts in addition to dealing dope and hosting a back room craps game.

Verne, as everybody calls her, is a black chick in her early forties, who looks like she’s in her mid-fifties, with short hair that is dyed blonde. She sometimes sells both dope and crack on consignment to support her own dual habits, which makes her a convenient person to know especially when the full-time dealers are nowhere to be found.

She is one of my friends nouveau, acquired in the two year’s I’ve been deep into the dope scene in Washington, as opposed one of my friends vieux.

I don’t see my friends vieux as much as I used to, as there is little reason to. They don’t shoot dope, go on 12-24 hour crack smoking binges, frequent neighborhoods that make the 11 o’clock news because of gunfire or hang out with here-oh-on dealers and hardcore crackheads.

Here-oh-on and rock most definitely change the social circles in which you travel—slowly at first and, then, quite suddenly.

A kid hanging out in front of the building recognizes me.

“Yo, whass’up?” he says.

“Is Laverne around?” I say.

“Verne here. She busy.”

“Busy?”

“She be servin’ somebody.”

The local dope dealers don’t sell drugs to people. They serve their customers. Like they’re working the deli counter, serving people who want Swiss cheese and smoked turkey breast on a Kaiser roll, extra mayo, lettuce and onion, hold the tomato.

Good to serve you. Yo, you want chips with that, big man?

I wonder if Laverne is serving rock or dope.

I’m set with dope, still being in possession of some Mexican black tar that I have had imported directly from Tijuana. However, I’m seriously on the market for rock.

I need all the mind and mood altering substances on which I can get my hands.

About five hours ago, my girlfriend, with whom I have been staying for nearly two months since my hasty return from the Baja California, threw me out for being an incorrigible dope fiend.

Turns out my beloved found my stash of dope and syringes in the pocket of one of my pairs of jeans. I had been swearing up and down that I am done with that shit.

Permanently.

For good.

As in, absolutely 100 percent clean. Like a newborn’s conscience.

Because dope is for losers.

And so, I am now, technically, if not officially, homeless.

Little does Laverne know that I may be moving in with her for the night.

Or longer.

The silver lining to this terrible domestic meltdown is that, at least, the suddenly ex-girlfriend didn’t throw out the dope and the dope implements in her fit of rage about my sotto voce junkiedom and at coming in a distant second to narcotics.

“Can you tell Laverne that Bob’s here?” I say.

“I know who you is,” the kid says. He turns and screams at the house, “Yo! Verne! Yo! Verne! Somebody here fo’ you, yo!”

“Verne in her ‘partment!” somebody shouts out a window.

“Tell Verne the white boy be here!” the kid hollers.

“Tell her yo’sef!” the person inside yells back. “I ain’t no ‘septionist.”

“Hode on,” the kid tells me.

He goes inside and returns in a minute.

“Verne say wait,” he says. “She comin’.”

Several minutes later, Laverne comes out of the house trailed by a thin and nervous looking black woman of indeterminate age.

The woman she’s been serving splits, walking away with a post- being served peppy step.

“Hey, baby,” Laverne says.

“What’s up, Laverne?” I say.

“Ain’t nuffin’.”

“People like the stuff I gave you?”

Several days ago, I fronted Laverne several samples of the Mexican Tar to give away and sell, preferably the latter. My friend Richard, who lives in the Baja just south of Tijuana, is hoping to set up a small import-export business bringing the stuff to DC, where far less potent white powder is the only thing available.

“People be liken’ the here-oh-on, baby,” she says. “The one’s they tryin’ it, anyway.”

“Good,” I say.

“I be liken’ it too. Yo’ friend, he got mo’ samples?”

“Samples? No. We’re looking to sell, Verne, not give away.”

“Yeah. I jus’ be aksin’, anyway.”

“Did you sell any?” I ask.

“I soul a couple.”

She hands me $20.

“An’ people interested,” she says. “Thas’ the troof.”

I relate my tale of woe—the apparent breakup with my girlfriend, if the eviction is any indication that the relationship has run its course—to Laverne.

I tell her I’d like to hang out for a while, and she invites me inside. I have never been past the front door before.

The hallway beyond the front door is hot and stuffy with humidity. It reeks of cat piss and exudes drug-induced squalor.

We sit on the small bed that is the primary piece of furniture in Laverne’s tiny and dark apartment.

She looks at me and asks, “How much rock you be lookin’ fo’ baby?”

I do an algebraic calculation involving my dwindling supply of cash, the cost per bag of rock and the likely rate of crack consumption, assuming that Laverne and I are the principle smokers. My tenuous life circumstances—like having no secure place to live at the moment and, possibly, a much higher level of overhead than I had only hours ago—are extraneous factors that don’t quite fit into the calculation.

It is like a problem in a math workbook for drug addicts studying for their GEDs:

Bob visits Laverne’s apartment on a street controlled by drug dealers in inner city Washington. He and Laverne wish to consume crack cocaine, also known as smoking some rock. Rock in this particular inner city Washington neighborhood costs $10 per small bag, the small plastic vials they have in Harlem and other neighborhoods known as deuces ($2) and tres ($3) being unknown in D.C. A single D.C. dime bag is good for up to six blasts. Bob has $150 in cash. Laverne does not want any extra money for scoring, but may “tax” the bags before returning, removing up to one blast per bag and pocketing it for herself. Because of his precarious life circumstances, Bob does not want to spend more than one-third of his money at this time. He and Laverne will probably do eight blasts per hour between them. If X is Bob’s spending money, Z is the price per bag, Y is the number of bags, N is the number of blasts per bag and O is the number of blasts per hour, how many blasts (B) can Bob hope to purchase? How long can the supply of rock be expected to last?

Let’s see….

(X x 1/3) ÷ Z = Y

($150 x 1/3) ÷ $10 per bag = 5 bags

Therefore, Y = 5

Y x Blasts Per Bag (N) = B

N = 6

So,

5 bags x 6 Blasts Per Bag = 30 Blasts

Therefore, B=30

B ÷ by Blasts Per Hour (O) = Length of Time Supply Will Last

30 Blasts ÷ 8 Blasts Per Hour = 3.75 Hours of Supply

And so, my drug addict problem solving skills—which have been refined and honed as the result of countless hours of trying to figure out how much here-oh-on and rock I can afford to purchase given various flows of income and how it must be rationed in order to avoid withdrawal and/or insanity—tell me that I can afford to buy about 30 blasts, which could turn out to be 25 blasts after Laverne’s bag tax. At eight blasts per hour, I will be purchasing 3-4 hours worth of decent crack high for two people with a $50 investment.

Who says crack is a cheap street drug? It may be “street,” but it is most certainly not inexpensive once one learns how to smoke it properly—which is in large quantities with great frequency.

“Let’s get five bags,” I say.

“Jes’ fi?” Laverne says. “Don’t be makin’ me run back and forth. Jes’ get what we be gettin’.”

“Okay. Let’s get eight.”

So much for algebra.

I give Laverne cash and make myself at home, such as it is, while she runs around the corner to get rock.

She returns fifteen minutes later, with two people I haven’t run into before.

They are Lamont and Brenda. They have their own supply of rock (at least for now) which makes them okay by me.

We break out our glass crack stems. They are all stained brown, in shades ranging from tan to a rich and deep shit brown to black. Crack pipes are like woks. The more seasoned they are, the better. Crack liquefies as you smoke it, running down the inside of the glass tube before re-solidifying again. Crack smokers take great pleasure in heating the residue on the sides of the stem and smoking it, which is why the average “blast” is good for several hits.

It turns out that Lamont and Brenda are professional pickpockets. In fact, they are on their way to New York City to work a basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden.

“Gig like this be prime,” Lamont says.

“How prime?” I ask, exhaling a cloud of cocaine smoke that has come from burning residue in the glass stem.

“Boo-koo money.”

“Like how much?”

“You wanna write about us? That be okay, long as it ‘nonymous.”

“I’m just curious.”

“Two or three thousand for the weeken’.”

“We be doin’ some mad smokin’,” Brenda says.

How much smoking? Well, let’s see….

Robert Guskind has been writing for a long time. An award-winning Washington-based journalist and contributor to major national magazines and newspapers, he now lives very close to Manhattan, where he continues to write, shoot photographs and work on a book based on his travels and experiences as a reporter and formerly disreputable dope fiend. He is all better now and is a regular contributor to Cherrybleeds.