What is it about tricking people that so appeals to humans?
...that time cops were checking our arms...
rache, joel and i had just been out the western suburbs scoring off our rumanian. Around 1997 I guess.
We'd taken Joel's green Ford Escort, a bedented underscaled delivery van. This vehicle turned out to be the hero of a court case in which Joel was being framed by the Brisbane pigs, but that's another story.
Tonight we were heading back along Moggill road through Chapel Hill when cops tailed us. We didn't turn straight off the main road, which was an action that always resulted in a pull over, instead we headed straight on. However the cops' dope radar was functioning that night and they pulled us anyway.
So they got the three of us out of the vehicle and separated us immediately.
Standard cop procedure. separate all suspects, question them as to what they were doing, and if they were involved in something unlawful (and therefore would make up some story about what they were doing) the stories would not match, the cops could compare what they had been told and detect dodginess. Not direct evidence of illegality but a good tart that would allow the cops to search the car.
Anyway, our stories weren't matching, surprise surprise - I mean, were this a professional task for us we would have agreed on a cover story before heading out
- "lets say we are all going over to our friend Harry's house to cheer him up - his girlfriend left him last week". But we were just three kids who had managed to scrape together $250, and we wanted to get stoned. Cover stories seemed a bit too James Bond for a thirty minute drive through the 'burbs.
So the cops moved on to the determination of whether all three of us were dodgy or just one or two.
The cops asked to see our arms. They obviously had worked out it was IV drug use they were looking at, not just pot smokers, perhaps our frail bodies told them that, or maybe that's just what they were seeing lots of at the time. Smack was pretty florid in the mid 90s in Brissie. The Roms (Rumanians) had distribution pretty organised, and they were just a small subset of a much bigger market.
Joel and Rach showed them pockmarked arms. At the time I was using my upper forearm, just an inch higher than where a watch face would sit. I held out my arms, forearm down, in the typical junkie-being-searched pose that they expected.
They shone their torches in the crook of my arm, saw nothing, and lent in.
I had correctly judged their expectations, given them exactly what they want, and managed to trick them by living up to a stereotype.
This was a satisfying event. Powerlessness is one of the key requirements in the cop-victim relationship, and I had managed to subvert, if only for a moment, my powerlessness, and turn the relationship around.
Suddenly the big bust two years prior and the months of anguish faded away.
One of the cops drove me home while the others continued their car search. I still had the halfweight of gear in my pocket still so was able to have a shot as soon as the cop dropped me (200m up the road -thanks for the discretion!) near my parents house.
Rache and Joel dropped by an hour and a half later, stressed but grateful the gear had not been lost.
That had been the original object of the whole exercise - to obtain gear.
Mission accomplished.
*******
It's a Friday night. S is up north visiting fem-sibling and nieces. I scored alone, and had a nice chat with dq who i met at the shopping point. Stress back at home with things getting hectic about the old MR2. I really need to buy a $95 battery so I can try to start its engine. I only have ten days to remove it I think. I ran into the old manager of torbs whilst shopping out at Mt Gravatt. I was actually in Woolies doing the weekly shop but I think he knew what the score was, he insisted on delving into "what I was doing out that way". I guess it is a high-Asian area, and well known for gabo-concentration being above average.
But maybe I was just paranoid. He is a regular drunk after all, but seemed fairly sober tonight. Then again, so did I perhaps, so what measure is appearance after all?
Anyways, he brought up my MR2, when I got home the rego was in the lift, and then fifteen minutes after getting home another resident, one who has been bugging me constantly about the car, sms'd me to tell me about the lift notice.
I hope he was just being nice and warning me, but it flipped my switch. My mobie went off for half an hour until I remembered S was going to prank me when she wanted me to ring...Now it's near ten, I think I missed her.
This weekend is my "buying a battery weekend".
Once the car is sorted, the only way is up for my self esteem. I am getting financial issues well and truly under control. Looking at house purchases with Sim. But we still have the ever-present lack-of-physicals issue. I cannot commit to a girl who is not physically attracted to me. Does that make me selfish, or just honest?