One of the biggest blizzards of my lifetime, by New York City standards, has begun.

A few inches of snow is already on the ground, and the white stuff is coming down so hard you can only see a couple of hundred feet. The over-excited weather people on TV say we’re going to get a couple of feet.

Limited visibility.

White out conditions.

A genuine blizzard.

Bliz·zard (blĭz'erd) n. 1. A violent snowstorm with winds blowing at a minimum speed of 35 miles (56 kilometers) per hour and visibility of less than one-quarter mile (400 meters) for three hours. 2. A very heavy snowstorm with high winds.

What an awful thing.

Blizzard = Difficulty Procuring Dope.

Difficulty Procuring Dope = Much Prayer on Bended Knees to the Porcelain God.

Blizzard + Difficulty Procuring Dope + Dope Sickness = Complete Human Misery.

Jesus H. Christ.

I should not have set foot out the door. My old BMW fishtails insanely, and I don’t know how to drive in snow.

But I could care less about becoming one with a telephone pole or sliding sideways down the highway. I am in my car on Interstate 80, driving like a madman through the building blizzard toward the George Washington Bridge.

Mush.

The car is slippy-sliding, the wipers are freezing and ice is building up on the windshield. A small clear spot, maybe a foot across, is all that I can still see through.

Mush, you BMW Bastard.

I did my last shot of dope an hour ago. Who needs to see, especially when all you can see is snow?

I’ve got to get over the bridge.

Mush, you German Motherfucker. Mush.

Going Over the Bridge and down the Harlem River Drive will get me to East Harlem where I can get my hands on dope to ride out the storm, even if I’ve got to ride it out in a cardboard lean-to under the highway.

Without dope, by tonight my stomach will feel like I drank water from a street puddle in Cairo.

Going mano a mano with an ass-biting snowstorm is entirely normal behavior.

Stocking up on supplies is the traditional response to bad winter weather. For 48 hours, the TV news has featured people filling shopping carts with products:

Milk.

Bread.

Cans of soup.

Bags of rock salt and snow melt.

Etc.

The only difference between them and me is that I don’t care about food or snow melt.

If I am to be stranded inside the house for days because of snow up to my ass, my only priority is ensuring that the demanding monkey on my back is fed on the rigid schedule it imposes.

This means using the fifty dollars I have to my name to buy dope before it’s too late. Which it may already be.

The average dope dealer is not the kind of guy to hang out on a street corner all day turning into a human snowman in a blizzard so he can move the product and keep the junkies happy. Once the storm is bad enough, most of the cop spots will be quiet and deserted.

The Harlem River Drive is like a bobsled run, but I make it to my Puerto Rican friend Gavi’s apartment on East 143^rd Street without mishap. I have no idea how I will get out of there; most of the exit routes involve going up or down hills so steep they would shock people who picture Manhattan as a flat place.

Getting out is a problem for later.

Right now, I need to retrieve Gavi and get moving.

I go into the filthy lobby and up the dark, cold, piss-and-crack-smelling stairs.

I knock on his door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Nothing.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Again, nothing.

Where could he be in the middle of a snowstorm?

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

The door opens a crack. When Gavi sees that it’s me, he opens the door.

“Whattchu doin’ here?” he says. “Snowin’ like crazy. I wuz in bed.”

“I want to get some dope,” I say, walking inside.

I sit on the filthy old sofa. It is against a window that’s so drafty it might as well be outside.

“Man,” Gavi says. “Snow like this? I dun think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dun know who gonna’ be out. Prahly nobody.”

“We can try, right?”

“Chure, we can try. But it prahly too late. You chould come more early.”

“I was asleep early.”

“You don’t watch weather?”

“I thought it was going to start later.”

“You chould watch Eyewitness News. Ahhkooweather. Good chit. You gonna’ hit me off with a bag, right?”

Gavi expects payment in kind for his services, but I wasn’t planning on it today. I have fifty dollars and God knows how long I’ll be snowed in.

“Gavi, I’ve only got fifty bucks.”

“Whattchu sayin’?”

“I’m saying I need the money to get five bags for myself. I might be stuck.”

“You chould plan better. I gonna’ be stuck and get sick too.”

Gavi’s wife, Madeleine, has been standing in the kitchen listening.

“Help him out, Gavi,” she says. “Chu know Bob good to us.”

Damn right I am. I always look out for them.

“Madie,” Gavi says. “Chu knows we dun got no dope.”

“We okay,” she says. “We drink our meth and we dun get too sick.”

“Fuck,” Gavi says.

“Please?” I say.

“Yeah, okay,” Gavi says. “But only cuz you a good guy.”

“Thanks.”

“And I dun wanttchu doin’ this chit no more.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

All this time, Nani, Gavi’s Pekingese has been running around in circles and barking. The dog doesn’t know what a dope run is, but she knows that when I show up she goes for a car ride. Nani digs riding in cars.

“Nani can come?” Gavi says.

“Sure,” I say. “Nani always comes.”

Gavi puts on his coat. The Pekingese charges down the stairs ahead of us.

My car, which is parked out front, has accumulated snow in the brief time I’ve been inside.

“Where should we go?” I ask Gavi.

“We try 123^rd Street firs’,” he says.

“Good. No hills.”

We drive to 123^rd Street and First Avenue. Gavi gets out. I drive around the block. When I come back around, Gavi is standing on the corner. I give him a thumbs up, but he shakes his head and motions to me to drive around the block again.

I drive around once. Twice. Three times. Four times.

On circle number ten, Gavi opens the door and gets in the car. He is covered in snow.

“No luck,” he says. “Ain’t nobody.”

“Shit.”

“You wanna’ try someplace else?”

“Yeah. Where?”

“First we try Lexington.”

I drive down Lexington Avenue.

Gavi gets out at several corners, only to return empty-handed.

“Okay,” Gavi says. “We try Amsterdam.”

Great. The dope spot on Amsterdam Avenue, at West 135^th Street, is at the top of huge hill. The only way there is uphill. The only way back is downhill.

Here we go.

Getting to 135^th and Amsterdam is like driving up a ski slope. Gavi gets out on a couple of hills and pushes to help get the car moving.

When we get to the block, it is eerily quiet. Gavi tells me to circle the block. Under normal circumstances this would be okay. Today, it involves going down a big hill and coming back up another one.

Gavi get outs. I drive off. The car slides sideways at the bottom of the hill, but I regain control before careening into an oncoming cab. By the time I come around to Amsterdam again, Gavi is standing on the corner. He waves me over and gets in the car.

“Chu lucky,” he says. “I got five bags. Was a guy in the buildin’ across the stree’. I hadda’ go inside.”

“Great,” I say. “Thanks.”

I feel better driving back to 143^rd and Lennox. I drop Gavi off, figuring that as insane it is to have driven into the city in the first place, it is even crazier to delay driving back to Jersey.

Five bags of dope is enough to get straight for a couple of days, assuming I make it home in one piece.

Six inches of snow is already on the ground and the snow is blowing so hard that it is nearly a white out.

It is definitely time to go.

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.