Fear and Anxiety in the Speed Lab: My Disastrous Attempt at Meth-Making

By John Dolan, Buffalo Beast. Posted April 9, 2009.

He had this idea. Saved it for when Terry was out of the apartment. Terry never even locked the door; we all went in whenever we were on Dwight, threw darts at the map of the universe and made instant coffee and played first-generation games on Terry's first-generation Mac.

And then of course Paul had to move out because I betrayed him with Marian and wrecked his life. And Terry offered Paul's room to Butler. Who sat around the formica table talking about how smart he was, and he was, in a mean way, one of these people who hit their peak at the SAT and scuttle around like gifted little scorpions for the rest of their lives.

He had this idea. A lot of money in it. A thousand dollars an ounce. But where would you, uh, sell it? I said, trying to sound cool, like a movie.

Oh, that was no problem either because he had a dealer, very cool guy. Named "Pink Cloud." That was his actual name, apparently, right there on his CA driver's license, "Pink Cloud." Did that send me fleeing for the hills? Obviously not.

Let's do it, I said. Yeah but we need a place to cook it, Butler said. I know, I said, we can use this house my parents have in Benecia. I never hesitated to offer him our one asset, our one hope of something appreciating and lifting us out of the demographic where you wince at every knock at the door, because in those days collectors could come to the door. I winced, knowing I was betraying my parents, but so much was betrayal, what wasn't? I was trying to adjust, and that seemed to be the way things worked, like it or not. And besides, I'd spend the money on them. Little selfish dumb coughing pedantic overage baby Robin Hood, that was me.

Butler jumped at that offer, and the next thing I knew we were in our stupid disguises, in my parents' surplus cop Plymouth, driving down the access road to that chemical supply warehouse. Butler had mentioned that the DEA staked this place out, but by that time I had too much momentum. I was going to crash the bad world's party, I was going to be in it but not of it, robbing the tweaks to pay the … something or other. I'd get my mother that Cadillac, heads would roll, Heidi would be sorry.

It was time to cook up our batch of speed. We were going to do the cooking at the house my mother owned in Benecia, just over the bridge from Martinez. Benecia is one of those sad historical towns. It was the capital of California for a while until Sacramento up the river bribed someone to steal the title. There are a lot of plaques all over Benecia to remind you of the great defeat, and photo exhibits of even sadder-looking camels. The town was also the headquarters of the California Camel Corps, one of the U.S. Army's nineteenth-century boondoggles. They imported dromedaries to cross the great American deserts, except that there was this thing called "railroads" that could do it faster. I forget what happened to the camels. They were shot, probably.

California is full of places like that. They just never get mentioned. It's surprisingly easy to lose your shirt there. It just doesn't make the news. People who succeed are news, people who fail aren't news unless someone dies in the process. And even then it better be someone who's succeeded. The difference between the two groups is very stark there. It wasn't until I went to New Zealand, a place where no one is really famous, that I even glimpsed the notion that non-famous people could have lives.

It was just a matter of what theme song you picked for your stab at fame and fortune. That was the first issue that Butler and I talked about as we entered our criminal enterprise: what movie we should see to launch, to brand, our career as speed producers/dealers. I suggested Scarface, but to my surprise Butler winced and demurred. Risky Business, he said, would be a better choice. Scarface was a little too heavy. Risky Business was more what we wanted to be, it had a light side to it. And Rebecca DeMornay leading a cast of thousands of cheerful prostitutes. We watched Tom Cruise in his first big role, playing a college student turned pimp to pay off the damage his friends do to his parents' house when they're away. He did that famous air guitar to Bob Seger in the empty mansion. It was a mansion, which seems noteworthy in retrospect, but I never bothered about that at the time. Why shouldn't it be a mansion? If you don't have a mansion, why not? That was the correct attitude in 1983, rather than whining about how mansion-y the house in the movie was.

And we were out to get ourselves mansions. That was the point: money. I'd never thought about money much. Glory seemed infinitely preferable, and the life of a famous impoverished band, taking all kinds of glorious drugs and having all kinds of glorious sex on mattresses in a trashed apartment, infinitely preferable to the correct prosperity of the rich suburbs.

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John Dolan is the author of, most recently, Pleasant Hell (Capricorn, 2005).

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