Who’d think it would be so difficult delivering marijuana? Two weeks open and just four calls. I’d done as suggested, I’m listed online. The phone was supposed to start ringing, right? I remember the words of a free-slinging friend. “Dann,” she said, a big grin on her lips, “this shit has a way of moving itself.” I wonder if that still is true? Maybe when breaking the law outright: If I sold to my friends, and soon to their friends, until I made one sale too many, and found myself in a little room with a hard wood bench and a low metal toilet, hunkered down for the night. But where was the revelation in this? This is, after all, a journalism project; a means toward trying to understand what happens when somebody plays the game straight?

I hadn’t gone in unprepared: Months of training in San Diego, the need for connections, the need for stock. But also, I wanted to understand the law. Our attorney general has issued a lengthy set of guidelines for medical marijuana caregivers; a rulebook, if you will. It wasn’t something that everyone was interested in following. Some got bud and passed out a number, gambled they’d thrive as little fish. But I wanted to do things right. I went to the Secretary of State, filled out all the official forms, wrote a check for $30, and Yahtzee! State non-profit!! Of course, behaving like one is something else altogether. And finding patients in a city with hundreds of legal and illegal alternatives is something trickier yet. Triplicate was the easy part.

I was in a coffee house in Studio City the other day when I saw a large, colorful magazine piled high in a metal rack. At the top in white letters: The Los Angeles Journal for Education on Medical Marijuana. It had a staid and scholarly feel, though the masthead below took a turn toward splashy. LA JEMM, it read in brief, dressed in lime and canary gold. I picked up a copy and thumbed through the pages. Many had flashy, full-page ads for medical marijuana distributors. Like me, some were non-profits, meaning they’d filled out the same sets of forms. When it came to substance, some were good citizens, offering help to the seriously ill, while others took a shriller demeanor, boastful slogans set over fine print. A few were baldly cavalier, right down to the slant of their slickly-tuned logos, pot spots with names like Hollyweed and KushMart. “Just like in Amsterdam,” a vendor says, when I marvel at all of my competition. “Soon, everyone’ll be hustling around with a big old bag of weed.”

What do I do? I’m learning that competition is fierce. Some co-ops offer free samples, while others are holding daily raffles. There are places specializing only in clones, and others catering only in Kushes. Some have discount shopping cards, while others have hash bars and vapor lounges. And still others hawk cannabis ice cream or other cannabis treats for the holidays. Everyone seems to have a shtick. Right down to the guy who’s pushing his 420 energy drink, along with a hemp-fortified assortment of shampoos, body oils and skin cremes.

It’s the kind of portrait that makes you wonder exactly where you are? This isn’t the state that I grew up in, or even the place it was five years ago. On the bright side, at least one American industry is thriving through a plummeting Dow. The question is: Can I compete? Me? An itty-bitty caregiver, trying to start a creative non-profit and stay on the right side of the law? Can I compete with Big Kush? Good service? Fair prices? Free delivery? Money creating artistic grants? Does anyone even care anymore if the weed man knows their name? And as a non-profit, is it even my role to fight for business? Do the Red Cross and Salvation Army rumble for your donation dollars?

But I don’t have the luxury of reflection. I somehow have to make this work, even if I don’t know how. My parents are in trouble. My mother cries almost everyday as dad struggles to plug the holes. Their savings have been wiped out and their travel business is foundering. My whole family is headed toward bankruptcy—aunts, uncles, cousins, all of them. Yet, few who we know seem to care. At the moment, it’s tempting, here in front of my computer, to take a lighter to sweet/sleepy, and hibernate for the winter. To escape from the pain and disappointment, the loneliness and uncertainty. To leave it all behind. But my family is drowning, and it’s not like writing is paying the bills. (Every year, my confidence slips. Maybe I’ll never be a writer.)

I look at the jars on my kitchen table. Are they my future? Do I have a future? Will I be alive in five years? How am I supposed to save my family? How am I supposed to save myself?

Next Week: David vs. Goliath

Artists Collective is Walkabout Jones’ social action project, a medical marijuana non-profit that will dedicate a considerable percentage of proceeds toward creating opportunity grants for deserving artists. For more information about Artists Collective, go to www.artistsforaccess.org

There are many ways that I could answer. I could say I’m a writer, flip a coin on whether or not she reads. Or tell her I work in medical supplies, if I want to kill the conversation. Or break it down legally: I’m the director of a licensed California non-profit, a caregiver to medical marijuana patients in accordance with state law. But often, should it get to the point where I choose to tell the humdrum truth, and it doesn’t happen everyday, I’ll say it softly, almost shrugging, as if my job is housed within parenthesis.

(I run a marijuana delivery service.)

Though it doesn’t matter how I say it—whether it’s a whisper or full-throated shout, the aftereffect is always the same: Heads square themselves on necks, as miniature bombs go off in both eyes, mouths working at every angle, as they try to wrap their heads around the news that I’ve just broken.

It usually takes a minute or two before I am deluged with questions. How did I get into it? Is it really legal? Am I scared when I go places that I’ve never been before? Scared I’ll be arrested, or that somebody will rob me, or god forbid  something worse?

It’s awesome to be reminded of all your catastrophic scenarios while out for a quiet evening with friends, trying to be a regular joe. But the truth is—of course, I’m afraid. Though that probably isn’t the operative word. A better one would be aware. I’m aware of what could happen. I’ve heard stories ending badly, and in terms of handling such awareness, at least a journalism background offers the sense that I’ve been tested before. Am I out of my depth? Most likely. But no more than when the gunman opened fire in the Capitol, or the starlet tried to use me to get back at her cheating boyfriend. As a reporter, you learn to think on your feet. To watch and then work around the long knives. I wanted to bring this skill to deliveries, control borne out of concentration, if for no other reason than merely believing I still held some small hand in my destiny.

When going places I haven’t been, I’m aware of the shadows that mark my surroundings. I look at the houses and figures wandering the streets. I check my mirrors to see if the cars behind me look familiar; whether they’ve followed a little too long. I haven’t canceled a delivery yet, but I find myself on many voyages searching for reasons to do so. More than most jobs, deliveries require a measure of instinct, the ability to separate very real threats from the darker corners of imagination.

And trust me, at night when you’re alone, and you’re delivering marijuana to an absolute stranger—even medical marijuana to a verified patient—the world will descend into shades of sinister. Even ice cream trucks can seem ominous in sketchy neighborhoods at night, their playful songs tired and hollow, as a steel-eyed driver ogles you like a specter who doesn’t belong.

This is the world that I presently inhabit, for better or worse. One morning, I’m delivering to a terminal cancer patient. The next night, I’m in a bad neighborhood, circling the block. When something is legal, but at the same time illegal, you never know what you’re going to get. Whether your next delivery is to a house of stoned surfers, or a woman beaten to an inch of her life, now blind and in a wheelchair.

I’m a medical marijuana caregiver, and in the coming months, I’ll use this space to paint a picture of exactly what that means. All while giving you a front row seat to the in’s and out’s of medical marijuana delivery in Los Angeles.

What do I do for a living? I try to help people. If only life was so simple.

December 7th: Making it Legal

Artists Collective is Walkabout Jones’ social action project, a medical marijuana non-profit that will dedicate a considerable percentage of its proceeds toward creating opportunity grants for deserving artists. Artists Collective delivers to medical marijuana patients around Los Angeles. For verification and appointments, call 323-979-7822.

Ginger sounded more like a medical receptionist. First, she thanked me for my patronage, then identified the establishment, and then with a felicity that’s fading from the modern day, asked how she might be of service. A place with lucid employees was a twist I hadn’t expected. She wasn’t rubbing Maui Waui from the edges of her words. I heard no Spearhead in the foreground, just the double-jab of a stapler.

Funny the things we learn on the phone. I was learning, most likely, Maurice was not a part-time junior college student, running a collective out of his car. I’d met a number of pot-repeneurs who neatly fit this bill. They were young, enterprising, media savvy, able to quietly run their rackets with a Verizon plan and a Yugo. Theirs were bare-bone, nimble ops, that thanks to the magic of digital technology were able to present themselves in any way they chose.

My favorite was a delivery service where the website evoked a pastoral setting, as though this wasn’t the Mexican border, but the Irish countryside. There were offers for deep tissue massage and new age spiritual counseling. Marijuana and cannabis were not mentioned; the only way to know you had stumbled into a marijuana business were references to health and safety code 11362.5. But who isn’t up on their legal code, right?

There were other clues, if you knew what to look for. Many linked visitors to state Senate Bill 420, and its voter-mandated predecessor, Proposition 215. Back in 1996, California became the first state in America to decriminalize marijuana for the seriously ill. It didn’t come without a fight. Even in pinko California, this was a hotly contested race. Critics called it “backdoor legalization” while supporters trotted out the critically ill. A vote against medical marijuana, they said, was a vote against anyone suffering the scourges of things like cancer and AIDS.

I agreed, but still I couldn’t help notice a cheshire cat grin on some activist faces when I asked if total legalization remained their lattermost goal. I was in college at the time, so clearly weed wasn’t so hard to come by. What did I care if folks wanted to get stoned? What bothered me about “The Compassionate Use Act” was a sense it was dancing around the truth. “If you want legalization, then say it, fool.” There is no such thing as medical marijuana. It isn’t grown in special labs and the term “medical marijuana” refers not to any chemical properties, but to the people who are smoking it.

All marijuana is medical marijuana—if you have a doctor’s note.

I voted yes as an afterthought, more interested in girls on the quad and nickel beers at Jimmy G’s than nascent forms of political activism. And because of me, and others like me, marijuana was decriminalized in a portion of the United States for the first time since 1937. This made some I knew very happy, but it didn’t rock my world. And while I’m sure there were epic celebrations in Humboldt, Bacchanalian festivals lasting many moons, at the time I don’t remember thinking anything more profound than,

“Cool.”

Marijuana was legal, well, sort of. With thanks to old-fashioned grassroots campaigning, a mass collection of supermarket signatures, and a slew of television ads to slickly seal the deal, voters had approved a new law, which at a scant four-hundred words, presented more questions than it answered. Who was eligible for the new program? What if counties decided that Federal law should trump the popular imitative? How much bud could I legally grow? The new law set no limits. It directed the state to create a dispensary system, but when that didn’t happen, in neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, cannabis clubs opened shop. Some were headed by idealists—the spiritual descendents of Marijuana Mary, the Castro District nurse/granny who became the Mrs. Fields of pot. Mary Rathburn baked brownies by the bushel, then gave them to San Francisco men, many gravely ill. She called them her boys, and marijuana seemed to ease the disease that was taking so many in the 1980’s. Soon, underground collectives opened, many operating in the same good spirit, providing safe access to the sick, while attending to other health problems as well. Theirs was the bright side of the law. Though it plunged the state into legal chaos, it served as instant absolution for do-gooders on the down-low, now permitted to do their work as state-sanctioned non-profits.

The bad news would come later. Whether by accident, or design, the authors of Proposition 215 had written a law so utterly vague, they’d essentially dropped the allusional lever and brought to life a monster. Many will think of Frankenstein now—mad scientist, bolts of lightning. And this was where my mind went too, until I remembered Sunday school and stories of the Golem.

The Golem is a vestige of middle-age mysticism, sometimes a tormentor, other times a protector. Made by man so he is imperfect. Brought to life by the word of god. Able to do extraordinary good, but fallible, corruptible, and capable of evil. Golems are both angel and devil. They’re monsters of conflicted purpose.

Medical marijuana would soon become a Golem. Its diviners were an alliance of political and moneyed interests—some from top universities, others breaking out of the underworld. Together, farmers, doctors, and businessmen (henceforth known as potrepeneurs) collectively held the means of production, distribution and access. The more new patients a doctor signed up, the higher the demand; and the more patients a collective accepted, the more crop its favored farmers could grow. And the doctors needn’t worry; the new law shielded them from any form of punishment. Excellent news if you’re an oncologist, but also a mile-wide loophole for unscrupulous prescription-mills, some charging $200 for a doctor’s letter.

Things would soon fly out of control. As marijuana activists got to work outgrowing big brother, opponents had their own cards to play. Arguing the proposition violated federal law, many conservative California counties sued to overturn the result. They cited the Supremacy Clause, arguing that because marijuana was illegal on a national level, no state could make a law saying otherwise. This seemed straight-forward on the surface, yet it wasn’t the easiest case to make before a state judge: “Your honor, please rule that the federal government may overturn any law voters approve should the government disagree with it.”

Um…

As far as state judges were concerned, this was no longer strictly about medical marijuana—it was now a question of state’s rights. Should Washington be allowed to strike down voter propositions? Are states “laboratories of democracy” or should their excesses be reined in by a federal judge? And if so, who defines excess? Judges who never smoked a joint in their life weren’t about to compromise their legal authority. Both liberals and conservatives, time and again, ruled in favor of the proposition and against the dissident counties. Some gave way, and medical marijuana grew available in more parts of the state. But other prosecutors held their ground, turning the map into a checkerboard: legal pot in some places, while the county next door maintained zero-tolerance. And this is how it went for years—seven years, to pick a number—until lawmakers finally clarified things in the form of Senate Bill 420. The new legislation, at five-thousand words, established a voluntary state i.d. system; set rules for co-ops, collectives and caregivers; and among other things, instructed counties to set cultivation limits—to the anger of marijuana growers. The law also set statewide possession guidelines, effectively killing zero-tolerance. No one was celebrating this time. Many activists were livid at the new, tougher standards, while prosecutors bristled at enforcing a law they believed was unconstitutional. Once again, some counties sued, including where my parents lived, San Diego county.

Now, wait, hold on, I know what you’re thinking. “San Diego doesn’t like pot?”

You’d think California’s southern coast would be an ideal place to run a marijuana business. When I picture San Diego, I think of lazy, sun-soaked scenes like the introduction to Three’s Company—blonde and bronzed Suzanne Somers at the San Diego zoo. Or, Ron Burgandy (“Stay Classy, San Diego”) though lately such daydreams have tested my ability to watch the local news. And, yes, San Diego is plenty mellow, a sparkling, seaside Shangri La, where weathermen report surf swells and girls blading on the beach look to have rolled off of magazine covers. But don’t confuse the sun and surf, and endless chances for al fresco dining, as Seattle ney the clouds. San Diego, very quietly, is the most socially conservative big city on America’s west coast—a portrait clearly at odds with its easy-breezy mien.

When my parents retired, they sold our home near San Francisco and moved to a tract development in the north part of the county. Their new house cost considerably less—and that had been the plan. After a lifetime of nine to fives, they were ready for a change of scenery. Both had lived in the Bay Area for almost forty years, my dad originally from New York, my mom from Melbourne, Australia. Theirs were solid, practical lives, though it’s safe to say they were drawn to the border more out of wanderlust than planning. They’d come for a weekend and purchased a home right on the spot, lulled by dreams of eternal sunshine, easy living and endless rounds of golf.

They’d never spent time in San Diego, busy as they were, so it was easy to reduce the town to its chamber of commerce particulars. But there were other dimensions to their new home, less familiar permutations, though it took awhile to find this out. Mom would go for afternoon drinks at the Hotel Del Coronado and watch as Navy jets flew maneuvers, screaming over the antique cabanas en route to the northern part of the island. At night, from their new living room, they could hear the thunder of ordinance fire distantly off the Pacific coast. They were twenty miles east of Camp Pendleton, but still explosions filled the evening, a tangible reminder that we were at war.

San Diego, they learned, was a military town, a place that had gradually taken on a sort of Jekyl and Hyde duality: tasty waves in some quarters, Blackwater consultants in others. There were 95,000 active military personnel, including seven Naval and Marine bases, and on any weekday, driving north on I-5, you could look to your right and see the dust scatter on desolate plains of government property, chopper-blades reeling, sun striking Kevlar helmets, as soldiers board whirlybirds off in the distance.

When my health took a serious turn for the worse, I saw no choice but to move in as well. Just two hours from Hollywood, and less than a day’s drive from San Francisco, yet San Diego in many ways felt like a different world. It attracted old soldiers and D.O.D. contractors, most far more conservative than your average coastal Californian. Over the years, they elected like-minded representatives: Congressmen like Duncan Hunter and Duke Cunningham, who spoke to their craving for military readiness and a return to traditional values. With the Mexican border a dozen miles off, illegal immigration was a red-meat issue. Patriot militias guarded the border—but they weren’t the only ones. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) keeps its largest field office outside of Washington in San Diego county, mostly to address narco-smuggling out of Tijuana. But in the wake of Proposition 215, and with the approval of county elders, the DEA had doubled-down, launching a systematic effort to stem the spread of medical marijuana cooperatives throughout San Diego.

Together with local prosecutors, the DEA posed an existential threat. As the number of cooperatives grew across the state, San Diegians watched as their services were driven underground. In 2006, two years after S.B. 420, San Diego DEA agents conducted a massive countywide sweep, where every medical marijuana service was raided and shut down. Some went to federal prison, while others left town, and by the spring of 2008, there were less than a dozen services advertising—a pittance compared to the hundreds open in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Almost all of the survivors were delivery services; moving targets, so to speak, who delivered only to private homes and kept under the radar.

Even so, they lived under a federal microscope, and most behaved as such. Their hands trembled when the phone rang, their voices betraying a search for probity, but also a sad understanding that the stranger on the other end might not wish them well. It wasn’t like law enforcement was going to protect them from criminals plotting to steal their stock. Maybe bust them after offering a bum doctor’s letter and seeing if they make the sale. The point being simply, when you’re advertising marijuana over the telephone, anyone can call. Which made Ginger’s greeting so surprising and remarkable. The workaday malaise she captured was well-removed from the paranoia of her present business. I remembered her now from a cold call made the other week. I’d been on a patio near a state university, enjoying San Diego’s winter, while running through a list of calls. A throng of college girls sat close, gossiping as they sipped ice coffees. A few peeked over now and then, and I couldn’t help wonder what they were thinking: clean-cut, well-spoken, slightly-older guy sipping on a tall Starbucks, making a string of business calls. What job did they imagine me doing? Certainly not this one. Mostly, I left voicemails for men who didn’t sound far out of high school. Boys in their chem labs, for all I knew. The few who answered did so mostly to explain they acted more like sole proprietors, doing all of the work themselves. Employees were a drag on earnings, I heard this many times, and I assumed that Maurice would fall into this group, until Ginger answered that first day and made me believe I was talking with an actual non-profit.

When I said I was looking for a job, she didn’t brush me off. Sometimes the littlest things help our cause, and I got the sense she was impressed with how I handled words. She said there might be an opening soon and copied down my name and number. A few weeks later, Maurice called, and here we were once more.

“Thank you for calling Green Medical. This is Ginger. How may I help you?”

I introduced myself again, said I was returning Maurice’s call.

“Oh, the driver,” she said, as though it was a job of importance. “Maurice is in the back. One moment please.”

I smiled, happy to hear her voice, believing if someone so straight-sounding had been hired by Green Medical, maybe I stood half-a-chance. Ginger ran a good game. She was just who you wanted answering phones. She chose her statements very deliberately, while Maurice—I would discover—fired paragraphs at will. Somewhere in her past, she’d worked in traditional customer service. There were hints in how she handled things. Opening with the business’s name, for example, instead of hazily shouting, “Yo.”

But looks could be deceiving—as I’d lived in LA long enough to know. I wondered what Ginger meant when saying Maurice was in the back? I stood and wandered my parent’s living room. Nobody was home. My heart had raced as I dialed the number, as it often does when I call strangers. But now the page was filling in, though it only left me with more questions. I looked at photographs on the mantle—pictures of babies, weddings and proms. I was trying to picture the world I was entering, trying to put myself within it. But then I heard big feet approaching and knew reflection time was over. I felt the phone move into his hand, and then by way of introduction, “This is an intense, fast moving opportunity.”

“I understand.”

His voice was large and I tried to picture him and Ginger—but all I could piece together was a giant man holding a tiny phone. I didn’t even know where Green Medical was located. The area code was San Diego, but such fingerprints are obsolete in our brave new cellular world. Green Medical could be squared away in some godforsaken bunker—an abandoned shack out in the high desert; poor Ginger dutifully answering calls, while Maurice stands watch out in the back with a semi-automatic.

“This ain’t no come when you feel like it job,” Maurice said firmly. “Let’s be very clear about that. So if you’re going to take your pay, go to the bar, and wake up at three in the afternoon, face deep in your own spit, this ain’t gonna work. I need somebody reliable. Reliable.”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“Somebody who will do what I need them to do, when I need them to get it done. Even if it means coming here at eleven at night because I have carry issues and need another doctor’s letter. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

Maurice was saying that each doctor’s letter allowed a patient to drive around the state with half a pound of marijuana. Two doctor’s letters allowed one pound. Four doctor’s letters allowed two. I noticed the trace of a southern accent. He held his words very tight and close, but now he seemed to breathe a little.

“Good,” he said, and everything seemed to loosen up. I decided he’d been burned before, probably by family and friends. Which likewise explained his willingness to entrust such a delicate job to a total stranger.

“What kind of car do you drive?” he asked.

“I’ve got a 2006 Mazda 3.” It was leased but I wouldn’t tell him this. I’d been sick for years and the miles were low. I was willing to take the hit.

“Any alterations? Window tint, custom rims?”

“Nope. I’m just a boring white guy with a boring stock car. No bling on me.”

“Funny guy,” he chuckled, and now the rest of the edge left his voice, as if he had decided it was nearly impossible that anyone from the DEA could crack a decent joke. “The reason I have to ask these things is we get a lot of nineteen year olds wanting to deliver in their low-rider trucks with their blacked out windows. We can’t take on that kind of heat. That’s not the image we’re trying to project. We have to be the opposite of that.”

“I’m a thirty-three year old who drives a Mazda.”

“What do you wear? What kinds of clothes?”

“Boring. Just t-shirts and jeans. Sneakers. Shorts and flip-flops. Baseball caps.”

“Any writing on the shirts?”

“Some, but plenty just solid colors.”

“We can’t have writing on the shirts,” he said, and again you could cut meat with his words. His moods seemed to ebb and flow, one minute calm and conversational, the next wearily intense. Currently, he was intense about shirts, “Whatever it is, political, philosophical, religious, whatever, it’s not appropriate uniform attire. It might be funny, I’m aware of this, but we’re a patient service business, and we don’t want to offend our clientele.”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“Do you have a criminal record?”

My chest tightened. I didn’t have one, but there’s something about being asked this question.

“Some speeding tickets, nothing else.”

“Ok.”

“To tell you the truth,” I said, running a mile away from the subject, “I’m just a regular guy whose had some health problems and is looking to come in, work hard, and get back on my feet.”

“What kind of health problems?”

“I have a hormone deficiency, but I’m doing better now. I take a big hormone shot every week and I’m fine. I’m under full doctor’s care, good diet, all of that.”

“When you say hormones, that means….?”

“Testosterone.”

“Anabolic steroids?” Maurice whispered, and I could tell he was intrigued. Then he gave me the talk about answering him truthfully, and how he wouldn’t suffer fools. I nodded, let him go, stretched out and relaxed in full Beta-man mode. Maurice was a hurricane twisting close, while I would quietly stand firm. I would play the role of dream employee. All I wanted was a job, and the last thing I wanted was any trouble. I would be a team player, do as told.

Maurice gave out a few more details. During my probationary period, I would make twenty dollars an hour. With tips, more than a thousand a week. The longer we spoke, the better I felt about my chances. After hundreds of job interviews, I recognized the signs. I knew I would pass my background check and suddenly I had exotic intangibles: I was a regular guy, with a late-model car and a clean criminal record, which made me in some twisted way the industry’s dream candidate. But at the same time, it all seemed too good to be true. It felt far too easy.

“I’m about to take a gamble on you, Dann,” Maurice said. “I’m about to risk thirty-five dollars on a criminal background check. So last chance. If there’s anything I should know about, you have to tell me now. Because, trust me Dann, even if you don’t say nothing, I’m gonna find out later.”

“You’ll find some speeding tickets, that’s all.”

He wanted to believe me, and he said they’d be in touch. I would get a call in the next few days, assuming everything checked out, and be given an address. A few days later, it happened. Ginger called, but gone was the easy, velveteen voice, replaced by obvious concern. She gave me an address, released it to my pen and pad like a tiny test of fate, and told me to be there later in the morning. Maurice shouted eleven-thirty.

“Eleven-thirty,” Ginger said.

This much I knew as I got in my car. It was Monday morning, but late enough to miss the traffic. I was driving to an address outside of San Diego county—along a winding maze of highways and charming country roads. Green Medical wasn’t around the corner. It would be a rather long commute, assuming I got the job. Maurice had exhaustively explained that this was just an interview, that things could end right on the spot. But I also knew, if things went well, I might get to make a run. As I drove up the highway, I passed scores of price-slashed houses, their banners begging easy payments. The economy was going down while gas was surging toward three bucks a gallon. I no longer questioned what I was doing; I was doing what I had to do when there was nowhere left to go for help.

After an hour on the road, I pulled into a Central American neighborhood; bungalows cutting squat figures beyond rural driveways. I pulled up to a little house, lawn wild, fresh wire fencing nailed to the perimeter, killed the engine and got out. As I neared the front gate, I saw a big padlock, then heard dogs. There were two of them—one a pitbull, the other a mix of German Shepherd and wolf. They came at me barking, their bellies banging against the wire, their snouts poking through the holes. I’d smoked a joint shortly beforehand, so at least I didn’t panic. I sleepily took a few steps back and waited for the door. Maurice appeared a minute later, big as a continent, head shaved, tattoos running up his arms. He told me I should hop the fence, that the dogs wouldn’t eat me.

I put one foot in front of the next. If this was the end of my story, so be it. There was no turning back.

Next: Drug Runner: Day One

Maurice was a man who could tear apart phonebooks, a big, menacing, mean motherfucker. I could tell this even over the phone. He had one of those booming auditorium voices, grandiose like a professional wrestler’s. But Maurice was young, he couldn’t be much past twenty-five, and while his roar was thick and imposing, his rumble was presently cloaked in despair. For the hundredth time in recent months, Maurice had lost his driver. Now he wanted to discuss delivering medical marijuana, a career with good pay and excellent perks, if I could follow orders. But first, questions, character inquiries, all delivered in the hard-restrained voice of a special forces operative. “You should always answer me truthfully,” he said, the timbre of his words giving them an added urgency. “Because Dann, I’ll know. One way or another, I’ll find out. So save us both the trouble, guy, and give it to me straight.”

“Ask whatever you want,” I said.

My last interview was with Ernst & Young. Their office was in downtown LA, seven blocks from my apartment. They’d had an opening for a writer, something stable, if not fun. I’d taken a hard shot at it: pressed suits, haircut, wind sprints through their company gauntlet—but like every classic losing streak, I was destined to go down. This time I lacked corporate writing experience, and H.R. feared I might get bored with earning a steady paycheck. All of which was true, I guess. I wasn’t a teenaged blushing bride nosing the Ernst & Young bouquet; I was a grifter after their health insurance.

Sickness, like addiction, can lead to places of desperation; settings like Maurice’s chain link fenced driveway. For me this was an unlikely career. I’m in my mid-thirties, feeling my age, and the thrall of fast cars and easy women seem better left to younger men, boys uncertain of who they are and still dependent upon their accessories. Running green wasn’t a plea for acceptance. It was a cold, financial calculation; a finger-in-the-wind of a failing economy; a conviction my health might not improve unless I escaped my HMO.

Fate had brought me to Maurice, impelled that I consider rogue options. I saw two doorways, one heading downward, the other leading out. Which way was I going to go?

I wish I’d scored a cooler illness, something with some more cachet, maybe a telethon or benefit album. But I’d been hit with a hormone deficiency—a soul-castrating hormone deficiency. Even worse, because it didn’t sound painful, or at first glance appear worthy of pity. It was a fire on somebody else’s porch, no one took it very seriously. But for me, it was like life’s dark gray end, that moment when you question if you even want <em>to be.</em> At its worst, I slept sixteen hours a day, but all my doctor thought to do was prescribe a mild anti-depressant. Diet, exercise, none of it helped. My only real choice was anabolic steroids, but doc wasn’t ready to put me on these.

My friends, meanwhile, found it darkly amusing. Girls crowed when I listed my symptoms: Fatigue, moodiness, nocturnal sweating. “You, my dear, are living through your very own third trimester.” They were oddly thrilled by my spontaneous androgyny, like a mating call caught in reverse. <em>Oh, look how he lies there, so cute and docile, like a toothless, sexless octogenarian. </em>“You’re man-strating!” they cried.

I’m often full of smart remarks, to the point you might want to hit me eventually, but at my very lowest point, nothing thinned the fog of my perpetual exhaustion. I watched everybody running around, as if their lives moved in fast-forward—marveling where they got their wind? I couldn’t think clearly for months at a time, or stay awake for more than three hours. And forget about work or earning money, so forget about love in its healthiest forms.

One year lost and with no end in sight, I met an acquaintance at a Costco parking lot. It was late morning, early summer, and we sat in the front of his beaten-up car, sweating through the fabric seats. I was buying two bottles of testosterone enthanate, syringes and draws, all stuffed in a box of girl scout cookies. Cops patrolled a nearby street. We would have to move quickly; he’d give me the shot, right here in the car, and at the same time, he’d do his best to properly bring me up to speed.

“I’m giving you a cc as a jumpstart—then one-half cc every week.”

He cleaned his hands with an antiseptic wipe; then opened another and told me to roll my shirt sleeve over the round muscles in my shoulder. He blotted a fleshy patch of skin, loaded the syringe with an amber colored oil. “Always inject into the muscle. Pull the plunger back to check for blood in the chamber. Wait to see bubbles, then push down.”

He was thorough, generous with his words, far more competent than my physician. Within hours, the fog in my head began lifting, as though I was awakening from a long troubled sleep.

Maurice first called on a Thursday afternoon. I checked my messages later that evening, heard his bellowing, brooding, voice, and took advantage of the small hour to put off any decision til morning. I could see the dude wasn’t messing around. He was guarded, terse, wary of recordings, all of which was understandable. In a business where jobs go to family and friends, I was a guy flat off the street. As a move, it seemed reckless, even to me. And maybe it did to Maurice too, as he didn’t waste a lot of breath. He left two numbers and said to call. I wrote them down, turned out the light and sat in the dark unable to sleep. My mind grew thick with possibilities. Could I afford to turn this down? How long since I’d had steady work? Especially after I’d gotten sick.

The road runs fast from there to here: One lost job. One hard turn. It occurred to me that Maurice could be anyone. Cop, stalker, swindler, freak. He could have a dungeon under his grow room stocked with crates of rusty implements.

He was also my only return call. And given the current state of the world, my phone didn’t promise to ring again. I called the next day, ready to work. It wasn’t one of my wiser moments, but I didn’t feel I was in a position to spit in the face of opportunity.

First Person is Walkabout Jones’ firsthand look into timely subjects. “Will Work for Bud” was originally the second part of Dann’s upcoming book, but now it’s the beginning. Correct reading order: “Will Work for Bud” and “Californicating.”