Right about now you’re probably thinking: What does a Jewish girl from the Upper West Side know about drug dealer etiquette? It’s a legitimate concern, but I’ll have you know that I am actually quite informed on the topic and if my parents would just close their browser, then I can delineate why.
You see, I lived with a drug dealer during my freshman year of college—one who I came to love and adore. I was privy to the late-night knocks, the weighing, the distributing—the whole 9 yards. But most of all…the etiquette. Even years after I lived with her I was still always impressed by her in-and-out selling technique; even with me, business was business. It’s a commendable trait and one that I appreciate now more so than ever, after copious encounters with drug dealers of the lingering variety.
Here are 6 other rules of etiquette that drug dealers would do good to live by.
1. Don’t swindle your customer, especially if he/she is a friend.
The first concert I ever attended without any parents chaperoning was Counting Crows and John Mayer circa 2003. It was fucking wild. It also happened to mark my first foray into the nebulous world of drug dealer etiquette. OK, maybe it was our guy friend who was only a year older than us and not a bona fide drug dealer at all, but rather an over-privileged, metrosexual wasp—but he still charged us $70 for two poorly-rolled joints. And well, I won’t lie to you—we were thrilled. We were naïve, feeling like Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in Bad Boys II, and we were fucking thrilled.
And now, to this day, I still feel duped. Frankly not a day goes by where I don’t think about that time I was bamboozled so thoroughly.
2. Use the restroom BEFORE delivering (insert drug here).
There’s nothing that makes me quiver more than a drug dealer entering my private home and asking, “Mind if I use the restroom?” Fact is, buddy, I DO mind. I don’t know you, I don’t know what you had to eat today, and I certainly don’t know your level of personal hygiene. All of which is to say that I’m neither comfortable with you aiming your piss-filled dick at my just-cleaned toilet, nor am I comfortable with your bare ass touching my toilet seat.
Unfortunately, by the time I have mustered up the courage to say all of this to the purveyor in question, the faint hum of my flush has already signaled and the offender has already emerged from my bathroom bearing an unfortunate grin.
How I wish they would just use the bathroom before! It’s really in their best interest too. One time a drug dealer asked if he could use my restroom and then, 15 minutes after he left my apartment, I heard someone frantically knocking at my front door. Being freshly high and paranoid, I naturally assumed it was the cops and ignored the noise. But persistence prevailed and not only was it not the cops, it was the same drug dealer looking for his suitcase of weed. Again, due to my freshly-high and deeply paranoid state, I failed to notice the suitcase of weed sitting in my bathroom. But damnit, the fun that could have been had, had I seen it in time! Which brings me to my next point.
3. Make sure you take all of your belongings on your way out.
If not, you run the risk of perhaps outing yourself as a middle-aged pimp or—worse—losing your clientele. My friends and I used to have a last-resort weed hook-up who we’d only call under desperate occasions. The reasons for his last-resort status were quite flagrant upon meeting him: the dude wears full-on, spandex biking gear with goggles that makes him look like a scuba diver; he is visibly homeless; he smells of hepatitis; and he lingers in an Asperger’s, I-can’t-take-a-hint kind-of-way. The last day I ever saw him was, as expected, a desperate kinda day. He came over, over-stayed his welcome, and then left, but not before leaving behind a business card of an apparent female sex slave with her handwritten number on the card. As I said, make sure to take all of your belongings on your way out.
4. Just…just leave?
“One sec, just gotta send this text,” is something I’ll often hear drug dealers say AFTER—and only after—my couch has fully molded into the contours of their ass. And yet, 10 minutes might go by, which makes your excuse seem ever more dubious.
I’m a hospitable woman, but sometimes enough is enough. Like my freshman year college roommate, drug dealers should be in-and-out, quick as a cat. Why they’d ever want to linger and risk their chances of being caught is something I’ll never understand.
5. Don’t hit on your clients.
Because, again, that’s another surefire way to lose them. Drug dealers are people too, I know this, but most customers don’t like to be reminded of this. They like to think of drug dealers as a kind of mirage that appear whenever they’re in need and disappear, just as fleetingly, as soon as a cop is in sight. My best friend and I used to pick up from this guy who I’ll call Damon until one time, after we left him, and he texted my friend this: “I think ur very pretty.” She was creeped out and so stopped using him. I was slighted—k Damon, guess you don’t like girls with an ass, huh?—and so stopped using him too.
6. Try being on time.
I know they’re drug dealers, but can’t they just TRY being on time? I realize that they have little to no incentive to be on time, that most customers will wait upwards 2 hours because they might not have another hook-up, but for god’s sake will SOMEONE PLEASE raise the bar. Because if just one drug dealer was timely then it might persuade the rest to be too.
Of course, there are also exceptions. The first being if you walk with a cane. Because that makes you a) a baller and b) kind of crippled. The second is getting into an accident on your way over. I used to use this guy—let’s call him Randall—who was notoriously tardy. One time, however, while my friends and I were waiting for him on the upper east side, we saw him running across Park Avenue towards us, clothes shredded to pieces, with two scraped knees and a limp. “I just got hit by a bus yo!” he told us as he finally made it across the street. It was a public bus. Like an angel, he wanted to keep making his rounds for the night. We send him to the hospital. 
