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When I asked him if playing Dope Wars made him want to throw his life in the air and become a real drug dealer, he told me flatly that it had not given him the urge to do so. I found Fatboy through his website, Veteran of the Dope Wars (com/fatboywhitey), an homage page to the great game. 'Even now, I can spend a total of 12 hours in one day playing a game,' he told me in our e-mail correspondence. FB Whitey nearly ruined himself in high school by spending too much time playing computer games. He's 'partial to '60s music.' He's 28 years old. He's an IT specialist in Sydney, Australia, which means he's smart, and winter is upon him. And everyone wants our deal.įatboy Whitey doesn't know any real drug dealers. We have business meetings with oddly dressed men and women from all over the world. We park our bikes in front of a lone and unmarked building. On our ride, the streets are empty in deference to our power. In my dream, Ben and I ride on old Schwinns that we just plucked from an empty parking garage. We all felt a protective veil start to shade his shady character. Something new started to fill the space between us. Independently, Sheila, Marcia, and myself started to have dreams about Benjamin.* Ben is the toughest, realest drug dealer we know.

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We would dance between conversations with clients about how their vices were destroying their lives and soft-spoken conversations behind closed doors about how to sell the optimum amount of drugs. All of us-drug counselors and social workers-loved being drug dealers on our 10-minute breaks and during our lunch hour. Soon (the next day), we were all addicted. (She admitted too that she never does anything else on her Palm Pilot.) There are others like her in Germany, England, France, Australia. The game, in fact, is wildly popular worldwide. She quickly informed me that she wasn't the only one who loved to play this game it's the most popular downloaded game. She was addicted to the computer game Dope Wars. She then guiltily admitted her hidden addiction to me: Sheila loved pretending she was a drug dealer. Risking my job, I grabbed the Palm Pilot from her one afternoon. I found the device an immodest statement in a homeless shelter that can't afford computers made in the '90s. When I saw Sheila with a Palm Pilot early in the year, I was suspicious. We don't make any money doing what we do. The intake, making, and availability of heroin, speed, crack, seems to be regulated by something that governs cycles-a moon or a sun we are always aware of whether it is low or high tide. The organization we work for is a drop-in center for homeless youth. Professionally, we help kids quit these drugs and any other addiction they might gather up for comfort's sake while living on the streets. The three of us work together we're on our lunch break. Her eyes get wild and patient at the same time color spreads through her cheeks. I don't know how you couldn't invest in a gun.' Right? I never buy weed.' She turns to Marcia,* a co-worker. 'If you start buying everything on the market, you can't really keep track of your profit. Sheila likes the system too she's attracted to anything that makes you categorize your thoughts. That's why I like it, because there's a system to be memorized. I try and keep the breakdown straight in my head. Don't ever buy acid, unless it's homemade and really cheap-like $400.' You gotta buy cocaine when it's $15,000 or lower, and heroin when it's around $7,000. 'ONLY DEAL IN HEROIN, PCP, and cocaine.' Sheila* leans in her eyes dart to each occupied table in the restaurant.