By Brett Selmont

It’s two hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, and I’m on the corner of Essex and Delancey. Mr. White has now kept me waiting for two hours.

It’s not like I didn’t expect this. Mr. White is a cocaine dealer, who has agreed to let me ride shotgun on his busiest night of the year.

Mr. White finally calls: “Yo, I’ll be there in like a minute.”

That’s his favorite saying. Everything with him happens in “a minute”, or only takes “a minute.” Everybody wants his attention and it’s easier to say, “I’ll be there in a minute” than it is to explain what’s keeping him. It could be a better party, or a prettier girl, or traffic, or that he’s tired or has to wait in line for the bathroom.

(Which is how we met—standing in the bathroom line at a downtown bar, watching the twitchy, jaw-grinding bar hoppers enter and exit the bathroom two at a time. Mr. White was directly behind me in the line, annoyed as I was about the ordeal, even though he was probably responsible. The two of us were the only ones actually there to piss.)

No matter how long that minute might be, they all wait for Mr. White—all night if they have to. And when he finally shows, they’re not angry anymore, not pissed off for keeping them waiting so long. They have to be nice, because they want him to come back again. They need him.

Mr. White finally pulls up in a black Nissan. “Sorry, man, I been mad busy, already dropped like 20 bags on early orders. Then I had to bounce to see my boy in Brooklyn for like a minute.”

Yeah, a minute.

“My boy just hollered from a club. It won’t be a minute. I don’t usually do clubs on New Year’s. It’s too obvious.”

His cell phone rings several times on the way. He looks at the numbers and ignores the calls.

“They can wait,” he mumbles after each one, as we roll up to a club in Tribeca.  “Wait here I’ll be back”—you guessed it—“in a minute.”

He pops out of the car and heads past the line to the door, giving one bouncer a pound and doing the pound-hug with the other. About two cigarettes later, he returns. “Man, those punks are messed up. Just sold like five grams, bro. That should get them off my ass till 4.”

Next, we make several stops in the West Village, mostly hit and runs where Mr. White has clients meet us on the street, and deals straight from the car.

“I like to keep things in a circuit,” he tells me. “Arrange all my clients in one area at the same time so I don’t have to go uptown a bunch of times. I hate backtracking. Nothing’s worse than hitting the highway, getting a call, having head back to where you left, especially when it’s a small deal.”

Earlier this afternoon, I spent an hour watching Mr. White break apart an eight-inch square of cocaine. He placed each white chunk into a small glassine bag, weighed it, slightly crushed it and then tossed it into a larger bag with the rest of his stash. 175 one-gram bags in all, worth about $11,000 on the street, rested on the coffee table in front of me.

“I’ve been doing this shit all day,” Mr. White said. “But now I gotta bounce. Going shopping for some new clothes for tonight. Gotta dress nice to get into some of these places tonight.” His tone became more upbeat. “Gonna get some new jeans, shoes.”

I’m astonished cocaine hasn’t been marketed like soft drinks. I see it with a variety of desirable flavors, blended with food coloring and citrus extract and exciting names like Citrus Blast, Tropical Rush or Clear Passion—“Now With Flavor Crystals.” If coke wasn’t illegal, it would surely come displayed in tiny zip lock bags with Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger logos. The premium uncut Columbian would be clothed in a Kate Spade bag, with a special pouch for your mirror, accompanied by a designer glass straw and gold plated spoon, like an expensive manicure set.

Just before midnight we stop into an expensive Mexican restaurant where Mr. White is greeted with affection. He knows these people well and it seems to be a family event. He introduces me as Oliver, his old buddy from college. We toast the New Year with champagne and Mr. White dances with a lovely Spanish girl while I hope no one asks me where I went to college. (Mr. White wouldn’t tell me where he went school.) His phone rings, and his mannerisms completely change.

“Hi, how are you?” he answers. “Sure I’ll come by. I’d love to join you for a glass of champagne.”

We ride uptown, stop at Grammercy Park and walk a few blocks into Edith Wharton territory. The doorman lets Mr. White and me in, saying hello like they’ve seen one another on several occasions.

“These are the best kinds of clients right here,” he says in the elevator. “I like going to the houses. They call ahead, I know its safe and they usually have all their money together. And know how much shit they want right away.”

The apartment is immaculate: Six young professionals, men and women, are getting ready to go to a club. They have champagne waiting and we toast the New Year again as I watch them empty one of the bags on the glass coffee table.

Our next stop is in Midtown East, but it’s just a money drop. Mr. White has a set of keys for a few places around the city, which he calls “safe houses.” They belong to friends who let him stash money or coke at their apartments. The more the night goes on I begin to see how paranoid he is.

“I don’t like to have too much money or drugs on me. The cops catch me with five, six grand and 80 grams, my life is over.”

After we drop some cash and drugs, Mr. White and I head to the West Side for a penthouse party. Again a friendly doorman lets us right in with a “good evening” and we ride up the elevator to the penthouse. Inside, there are floor to ceiling windows with a panoramic view of the city, and a baby grand on a small stage in the corner. It feels like Billy Joel might start playing at any moment. Several expensively-dressed people mob Mr. White, offering him drinks. A few girls give him warm hugs and kiss his cheeks.

The next half hour is a chaotic struggle of attempts to arrange deals. The party is large and people are scattered about trying to find this or that person who wants coke. Mr. White gets dragged through every room in the place. After he makes his deals we eat some shrimp cocktails and knock back some Dom Perignon. His phone starts ringing off the hook, so we’re off again.

“See, those people sucked. I usually love going to the houses,” he says, as we start off downtown. “But they’re different. They didn’t have their shit together. Wasted a lot of my time, totally unorganized. Did unload ten bags, though.”

Mr. White tells me about the clients he dreads most of all as we hit 14th St. He calls them “one baggers”—people who make him drive all over town for only one bag and usually try to get it on discount or credit. They’re commonly located in the East Village and Williamsburg. “The struggling artists get old, man,” he says as we pass Tompkins Square Park on Avenue B. “They’re always trying to talk me down and shit, always owing me money.”

We make several stops. Punks, professionals, whites, blacks, men, women, gays, straights—everyone buys some coke from Mr. White. We even make a quick stop to the Lower East Side apartment of a very polite couple, both of whom are school teachers in their forties. They offer us a drink but Mr. White declines, as his phone continues to ring incessantly. We then jump to a college bar packed with NYU kids. He makes a quick deal, grabs a beer and takes a much-needed break.

Mr. White gets a drink everywhere we stop. He usually doesn’t finish them; he’s just ordering to blend in. His best defense is to never draw any attention.

“It’s funny,” he says. “I didn’t start dealing ’till I got to college. I went there to get away from this life. I guess it’s fate or something. Who goes to school to become a drug dealer?”

He looks at his beer and takes another sip. “At first it was easy. Sit in my room and sell weed, make money. College kids need to get high.”

I ask why he still sells drugs.

“The perks are good, money’s good. It’s underground and kind of exciting. I left for a while, and had a real job dubbing tapes at a big television network, but I got too bored. This keeps me on my toes.”

“Do you like selling drugs?” I ask.

“I hate it,” he says. Mr. White tells me about his struggles with selling drugs and how he has developed a social disorder and anxiety problems, which he attributes to the stress of dealing.

“Cops, rival dealers, bro, I’m constantly looking over my shoulder. I can’t trust many people, and I believe people even less. After seeing all that I have, people lying, cheating, stealing, even dying, I don’t believe in any institutions, marriage. I don’t even have faith in relationships. It’s a tough life to maintain relationships in.”

His phone rings several more times, and we shoot off to a wild party at an East Village bar. The clock strikes 3.

“I gotta talk to an old friend. Be back in a minute,” he says.

I grab a beer and sit next to two drunk girls, covered in tattoos and glitter. They’re talking loudly about going to Europe and waving cigarettes in the air, so I light up as well and watch as glam girls with lots of piercings dance and make out in front of me.

When Mr. White returns he apologizes and I tell him what he just missed.

“Girls, bro, they’re the worst with coke. Guys, if they don’t want to share they won’t but girls will hide the shit, sneak the shit and flirt with anybody to get their hands on it.” He looks at his phone as it lights up. “Never fuckin’ stops bro.” We leave again, this time on our way to Red Hook.

When we get to Red Hook he parks the car a few blocks away from his destination and tells me to wait. We’re in the projects and the streets are dead except for a few teenagers walking by. I wait a long time, about 30 minutes for Mr. White to return.

“Sorry bro, I had to walk a ways. Didn’t want anyone around here to see you with me. I’m taking a chance just having you in my car around here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause this is where I get fronted.”

He turns the ignition and revs the engine slightly.

“What do you mean fronted?”

“I’m not telling you more,” he says. “We got the crazy late night coke fiends now.” He laughs and shakes his head.

On the way to Williamsburg I try to talk to him about shootings and whether or not he’d ever seen anybody killed. He just shakes his head and says, “I don’t like to talk about that stuff.” It is almost 5 a.m. and his phone is still ringing. We pull up to the building, deep in the heart of bohemia, where a loft party is winding down around a few diehards who refuse to surrender the night. In an ashtray on the coffee table are several empty plastic packets of coke and a red plate smeared with white residue. The partiers are thin artists, musicians and their would-be model girlfriends. They sit around wide-eyed, talking rapidly about their lives. One pale girl with dark eyes and a runny nose tells us about her art and shows us some drawings. As the sun comes up, a sweaty guy reads me a short story he wrote earlier tonight on coke. They think they are acting normally.

We left the party, which was still running, at about six. Mr. White’s eyes were red and narrow. He’d been working since noon—19 hours of dealing with people and drugs. He wouldn’t tell me how much he’d made, but I  knew he’d sold around 100 grams, maybe more, which meant he’d made that night what he’d usually gross in a good week. I figure it at seven or eight grand. All I know is he worked his ass off and at the end of the night he didn’t look too happy. As we got into his car, his phone rang again. n