mereggie - the story of reggie macdonald

In the summer, my cousins would come down from Montreal and stay for a few weeks.  They were older than me and I didn’t spend a lot of time with them.  But one of them, Mike, was selling drugs and he would bring pot and hash down with him.  He told me that if I would sell five joints for him, he’d give me one.  For every five I sold, I’d get one.  So I started selling pot.  I was 12 years old.

Mike also said that if I picked mushrooms with him, he’d buy them from me.  That first year that I started picking, I got three ounces. I sold them to Mike for $100.00 each.  That’s $300.00.  My first drug deal.  I was on my way.  The next year, I picked about a half pound (eight ounces).  The mushrooms would grow in the fall, from September to November.  I’d pick them after school and sometimes I’d get up before school and go picking.  I soon had enough money to buy a motorcycle – a Yamaha 200 street and dirt.  With this I could travel around and find all the best fields for picking.  Most years, I would get about 2 pounds.  Instead of selling them for cash, I would mail them to Montreal and Mike would send back hash on trade.  I would sell the hash by the gram.  It was always good hash and I could get $20/gram.

By the time that I was 16, I was making a lot of money.  Enough money that I could afford cocaine.  Soon, I was having that sent down from Montreal too.  I was a sixteen year old cocaine dealer.  This was in the early eighties in small town Prince Edward Island.  Cocaine dealers were few and far between at that time.  But I was headed for the big leagues...

... But there was one prank that I don’t think that I’ll ever top.  I used to hang around with my friend [Jay - not his actual name].  He dropped out of school in grade 9 or 10, but we stayed friends, even after this devious prank.  This happened when I was 16 or 17.  One day, I was reading a magazine and I saw an ad in the back from a guy in prison in the states who was lonely and wanted girls to write to him.  Now [Jay], as you know, can also be a girls name. 

So I composed a two-page letter from [Jay].  I made it sound like I was a horny young girl without actually saying that I was a girl.  I told the guy that what I’d like to do with him when he got out and I signed the letter with X’s and O’s (hugs and kisses).  And off to the post office I went. I thought that [Jay] would get a letter from this guy in prison who wanted to fuck him and this would be pretty funny.  I could never have imagined what really happened.  You see, a few weeks later, the letter comes back in the mail marked “return to sender”.

[Jay]’s father picked up the mail.  He saw that this letter from his son was addressed to a guy in prison, and, justifiably curious, he opened the letter.  And, as it happens, my handwriting is very similar to [Jay]s.  So [Jay]'s dad reads the letter and he flips out.  “My son’s gay!  My boy’s a fucking faggot!” ([Jay]’s father was a macho guy, spent most of his time out in the barn fixing motorcycles).  He didn’t take the news well.  I hadn’t ever told [Jay] about the letter so he didn’t know what was going on and wasn’t able to put up much of a defense right away.  So after hearing about this, I told [Jay] what I had done.  He wasn’t terribly happy but he saw the humor in it.  He explained things to his mother, and after a few days, his mom was able to make peace with his dad and everything was ok.  But only for a while …