On the Price of Ghost Tobacco

On the Shelf:	Behind the Counter:
₵$36 Ghost Tobacco (20)	₵$41 Memory Coffee
₵$20 Bloody Mary	₵$30 Christian Repellent
₵$50 El Dorado Green (1/4)	₵$100 Anti-Flimflammatory
₵$24 Black Meat (g)	₵$6 Extrasolar Teas Box
₵$1 Slut Root (kg)	₵$1 Rare Minerals (g)
₵$30 Marital Aid Potion	₵$16 Fine MRE Spice (g)
₵$5 Quetzalcoatl Feathers (doz.)	₵$10 Magic Coat Hanger
₵$5 Blue Roses (doz.)	₵$46 Cleansing Ale
₵$30 Mythril (oz.)	₵$292 The New Shampoo
₵$4 BZTCN	₵$410 Four Pack of Beer

This Week's Special:

Ryan chose a fraying 70's weatherboard home, on a street of equal peers, as his debt.

Easy: 'Why?'

'So that I can grow Ghost Tobacco.'

Dorothy: 'Ok, why?'

'So that I can trade Ghost Tobacco for stuff.'

'Yeah, but why?' Mamta peels paint off with single scratch of fingernail. 'You don't seem, hm, status oriented. What's your end game?'

'No end game.' He offers her a glass of Chaffey Bros Salvis Gratia 2021 Eden Valley Sémillon. 'May as well do something, for the time being, in case that changes.'

Ryan's backyard tobacco is grown on an American Indian burial ground, but not the politically incorrect kind. His crop is Ghost Tobacco, which resonates with lingering spirits. The smoke, second hand or otherwise, gives mass to ethereal issues untended by shrink during flesh-time.

Ghost Tobacco is useful for peeps looking to commune with those clinging to mortal realm. But, like, face to face, none of this Ouija board social-media bullshit. The usual market is someone familiar with ghosts, professionally or personally, or perhaps dead and craving.

That market is Sinead and Graham.

Sinead is a counsellor who can talk people through psychological issues and, whilst very good, is handicapped by her death. Graham has picked up some psychology but is primarily the guy who deals with the clients, due to being alive. They have a functional partnership in enterprise that stops shit from being haunted. Their primary tool of trade is Ghost Tobacco, so their working relationship is calmer during work.

Their latest job is not a ghost. Sinead has smoked herself into physicality, which is unfortunate. Graham and Sinead duck behind ingredients bar, dodging pizza bases which are first thrown vertically spinning then frisbeed at themselves.

'Fucking stoner poltergeists.' Sinead spits dough. 'Get the thing.'

Graham does: a roll of raw cookie dough for weed cookies. A meat-cleaver on slate splits the roll in half and food fight ensues. High-THC dough globs through poltergeist before pancaking onto walls, equipment and utensils. About 90% of the cookie dough, which absorbed the poltergeist, is collected (with some pizza base) inside traffic cone. Which is good enough. This mixture hardens and sticks, making the Self-Righteous Traffic Cone.

Ghosts are human spirits that procrastinate their journey to the afterlife. Poltergeists operate on different mechanics. Like how Curses are the product of accumulated negative emotion, poltergeists are the accumulation of schoolboy dumbfuckery.

So now the Self-Righteous Traffic Cone poses as a regular, if heavier, traffic cone. Hence the name. If passed arrogantly by unauthorised pedestrian or motorist, the Traffic Cone will raise and hurl itself at the transgressor. The benefits of this are primarily emotional, for those who place said knee-height warning.

That market is Yvette.

Breaking down the shopping centre's cardboard boxes is not part of the contract. Unbroken boxes prop up layers of cardboard and form caverns within dumpster. Sufficient people are slack-ass in breaking boxes that the dumpster quickly fills with empty space. When the dumpster is 'full', slack-asses pile cardboard (unbroken) in mound. This wasted opportunity for box fort is classed as tripping hazard, which Yvette is paid to deal with. Pre-emptive, she spelunks twice daily, knife between her teeth. Sometimes she finds cool shit.

Such as twenty-five stickers.

 

Labels for foreign drink sold on the Australian market and the ten-cent recycling deposit has been paid. Lo, whack one on something and have it recycled: nuclear waste, political dissidents, cardboard boxes. Yvette has a use for these Disappear Stickers but prices determine best use.

That market is Saperavi.

'Heeeeeey. Pedro's back.'

An inner-suburban pub, starting to quiet down whilst also edging towards fighty, bursts into mirth. Saperavi heads to the bar and pays for a round and then double it for Pedro. Said Pedro is taking selfies with a dozen glazed-smiling dudes under leathery wings, no homo. Pedro has fully recovered, as proven by smugglings to and from the Ōoku. They brought back goodies.

The Sacred Sword, or Sword of Exorcism, is a sword that fucks mononoke up. The downside is that every use requires a mystery to be solved and said mysteries do not stack. As a previous owner put it:

 

The upside is that when mystery is done solved and mononoke are in process of being fucked up, shit is wild.*

Q: Who the fuck wants this junk? A: Someone with an empty desk. Someone with disposable income to spend on impractical bad-assery. Someone with their finger on the pulse of local hauntings.

That market is Ryan.

 

*And the fact that I cannot find the fight scene on YouTube, glorified plagiarism machine of yor, pisses me off.

On the Price of Slut Root

On the Shelf:	Behind the Counter:
₵$36 Ghost Tobacco (20)	₵$63 Fire Chicken Feathers (doz.)
₵$15 Bloody Mary	₵$16 Fine MRE Spice (p/g)
₵$50 El Dorado Green (1/4)	₵$340 Four Pack of Beer
₵$28 Black Meat (g)	₵$20 Sex Doll Goon Sack
₵$1 Slut Root (kg)	₵$120 Bux. Semp. X Cannabis
₵$30 Marital Aid Potion	₵$47 Bottled Emotions (qt.)
₵$50 Quetzalcoatl Feathers (doz.)	₵$20 Self-Cooking Olive Oil (375 ml)
₵$5 Blue Roses (doz.)	₵$205 Brick of Cocaine
₵$29 Mythril (oz.)	₵$86 Memory Coffee
₵$14 BZTCN	₵$40 Christian Repellent

This Week's Special:

The backyard is a dull grey blanket in dawn's blue. April loses her shins in foliage heavy with last night's rain. The garden fork's teeth sink into earth. April levers fork - the crackle of tearing roots and a tuber is raises above canopy.

It screams: 'Venus! Cock! Trap!'

April removes fork, twists it 90° and stabs it into the tuber again. And again.

Slut Root, or 'Dull Man's Drake', is a weed endemic to April's backyard. April's front yard is mostly a heap of the dried tubers topped with a tarp, like immodest boob with nipple tassel. Dried Slut Root tubers have an energy density of roughly 24 megajoules per kilogram but are a slow burn.

April throws her latest harvest/victim into the front yard pile to dry. Parked on street with trailer, Kev leans on black Toyota Prado. He has two coffees.

April, thank you: 'You? A morning person?'

'I have chores.' Rizz. 'First on my list, buy some firewood. The best firewood.

Click of the tongue: 'Sorry, eftpos is down. Must be another software update. Perhaps you'd like to barter?'

Passing her a newspaper clipping: 'Oh, I would.'

Kev is a mortgage broker but moonlights as Australia's leading K-Pop girl group: 'So I've got connections. Bought a smaller, household prototype from Hanwha. Consider the opportunities. Fast food could one day be delivered by drone, and you could shoot it down for two-fifty. Fish and chips. For two-fifty.'

Yeah, that checks out: 'How much do you want?'

'My trailer carries half a ton?'

#####

Ryan slips between dream and light, every roll comfortable with yeah, a little longer. His rational mind is amused by his sleeping brain's murmuring, because they mean returning descent into sleep. He was woken earlier but he does not recall how. He recalls upon the screech of 'seeemen deeemon'.

Ryan sculls bedside water and turns the coffee on. Pissing out the door, he admires his backyard. It is a crop rotation of illegal tobacco.

(The price of Ghost Tobacco has continued to trend downwards due to this new supply. Ryan had hired a landscaper to swap his backyard with an American Indian burial ground, atop which he planted tobacco. Julielle had been paid to negotiate with the undead strata. a cemetery just outside Kadapa favoured by US expats.

Ryan throws on a dressing gown and, coffee steaming, strolls down street. He waits patiently through a shriek of 'commuuunity kiiitchen' followed by laugh and start of chainsaw. April eventually comes out front with a full kindling box.

Ryan blurs: 'You? A morning person?'

Of course: 'I'm doing Dry July. I have more energy in my mornings.'

'It's August.'

'If everyone did the same sober month, there'd be an oversaturation of designated drivers.'

'Fair.'

Magdalene pulls up in her Toyota Hilux. She used to be Australia's leading trans alchemy YouTube personality but the algorithm has since fucked her. Not that she minds - free of trend chasing and upload grind, she can pursue her side hustle at (still rigorous) ease. Perhaps this inspired her throwing spice bag of Retrograde Amnesia into pot of water before keys hit counter.

'But I'm still an alchemist.' She assures. 'And I have a Potion of +2 Enjoyment Derived From What You Enjoy.'

'Uh.' April chooses her words. 'Have you heard of marijuana?'

'Everybody says that.' Frustrated, but: 'What if what you enjoy is smoking dope?'

'Still.'

'Now now.' Ryan tuts. 'What did we talk about?'

(He had previously insisted: 'Accept every taker. The more this root gets around, the more word of mouth about its accessibility.')

April: 'Fine. Fifty kilos.'

#####

Noon has risen on this mostly clear day. April has removed jumper and Ryan has opened dressing gown. They lounge on deck chairs in her front yard. They drink glasses of Lipton, with ice cubes and mint garnish and Pina-Colada umbrellas.

Janessa and Shane come skipping down the street. Their arms are linked and they each carry a carton of beer on their spare shoulder.

Ryan demurs: 'There is no image more wholesome than skipping with beer.'

'True.'

 Shane does the brewing and Janessa does the books. One tends to kids whilst the other tends to drunks, then they swap roles. A microbrewery greater than the sum of its beers. Shanessa* have (has?) become good at this dance. They do-si-do. They allemande left and right. They weave the rig and box the gnat. They grand the wrong way but everyone holds their tongue, pretty sure that Shane and Janessa are unaware of their own dancing. The in-joke amongst patrons has grown customer base by 8%.

Alcoholics of taste are not the only sentients to notice. A rearrangement of the heavens had placed the Beer Gods' keg in the Square Dance Gods' hall. Their first week had been icy, both parties cliquey and everyone wishing to work from home. Then a moment from Heavens above (management): both parties sharing Janessa and Shane's dancing, looking over to the other party and realising.

'Colab?'

'Colab.'

'Colab!'

Their enthusiasm was somewhat premature. There was dancing, there was drinking, there was too much electro-swing. The interns of respective factions produced a British sitcom's worth of discrete hook-ups.

Still, they looked on the tank of dopplebock and smiled. It became a West Coast IPA. Janessa waved down the panic of Shane's tastebuds:

'Magic's happened before. Let's sell it again.'

They tapped it and found their regulars returning, driving licences unmolested, because they were skipping home. Janessa and Shane canned a batch of +3 Skipping West Coast IPA. The 7.4% alcohol increases confidence in skipping and the +3 Skipping improves skipping. Shane and Janessa skip past April and Ryan.

April: 'Mo-ther-fuck. I wanted something to drink tonight.'

Ryan chuckles.

#####

Overcast afternoon. April is a salivating troll silhouetted in shed door. Eyes darting before she selects her latest implement, a Dutch hoe:

'Hne hne hne. Amsterdam.'

The blade is plunged into earth.

Muffled: 'The people's dildo.'

The Dutch hoe has killed the slut root and April is disappointed. Blue boobed. she unloads her dishwasher. The doorbell plays Crazy Frog.

April answers the door: 'I don't know who you are but you have a bottle of McWilliam's 'On the Grapevine' 2022 Pinot Noir. Come in.'

Elise and Todd take stools (the sitting, uh, wooden kind) at April's kitchen top. They are crypto-zoologists with a knack for uninvasively profiteering from their research subjects. Low-hanging urban fruit has already been picked, much like the Mirelurk dung, so they have been venturing further out. A stockpile of lightweight firewood is therefore useful.

April empties bottle, refilling all glasses: 'And what is useful for me?'

So. On the 16th, the lovely couple (they brought booze, after all) had been walking down a main road when heavy rain hit. Todd had brought an umbrella but it proved insufficient, so they ducked into a convenient shopping centre.

Elise's white shirt became transparent. Fortunately, their corner of the shopping centre was unoccupied, no foot traffic. The Asian grocery was expanding into the space vacated by Commonwealth Bank. There as a piece, elevated in the corner between tenancies, where they could both sit. Todd expanded umbrella vertically for privacy whilst Elise peeled off her shirt. The cleaner came by to empty the bin, gave no shits and left.

The Gods of Public Sex had long ago subscribed to Elise and Todd. For reasons. They hang around their celestial water cooler, scrolling phones for shit to talk about, but that shit is public sex. They talk about public sex - after all, it is public.

Todd and Elise kissed before the umbrella popped. The Gods were indulging electro-swing and their reaction was definitely premature. The umbrella became the Umbrella of Sex Discretion.

'But.' Elise adds. 'All I did was change my shirt.'

Todd: 'And now it looks like this.'

April's glass is done, so she's done: 'That's cute. 25 kilos.'

Elise: 'Mmm.'

            Todd: 'Higher.'

Because the Umbrella of Sex Discretion carries a list of other bonuses:

a) +1 sneak

b) Once per day, the wielder can cast a giant umbrella that is used specifically for people doing it

and, c) just to cover all linguistic bases, a +2 Gender Ambiguity and Everyone's Okay With That

d) +110% melee damage

'Hm. All right.' April thinks on her feet. 'Four perks. 25 kilos a perk. 100 kilos for your penis umbrella. Now, if you don't have any more booze, get out of my house.'

 

*Ew..

Slut Root

Tingles bloomed behind April O'Glock's ribs when she found 20 Schmocken Street for sale: a three-bedroom bungalow on a quarter acre in the bogan fringe of suburbia, with no prospect of gentrifying for two generations. It was the front and back yards, a moat of plain, flat, brown dirt that signalled April's preferred virtue of 'fuck gardening'. Twelve years of long shifts and frugality paid off the mortgage. Now April casts a love-lost gaze, inwards to that youthful folly, outwards to the stemless weeds, with horizontal 45cm leaves and five stalks of pale blue flowers of equal height, that cover her yards.

But as someone or another has sung, presumably, April 'will not give up on love'. She gives two weeks notice to her employer with a healthy bank account and an itch, which she intends to scratch later, for new employment. Two deep breaths before she plunges into Bunnings, getting lost and paralyzed near the bird netting for five mute minutes, fists in pockets and heart rate a little higher than usual, until a staff member approaches with an eyebrow raised 'Caaaan I help you?' April thusly acquires a shovel and sinks it into earth adjacent to the weed closest to the backdoor. She presses the shovel down and the plant lifts 15cm, revealing that the top of its woody root is shaped like a 10cm diameter human head now screaming:

'Sluuuut. Fucking sluuuuut. You fuckin looove it you fucking sluu-'

Despite being more closely related to the dandelion, Taraxacum Tuberosus is known as 'Slut Root' or 'Dull Man's Mandrake'. Subspecies of mandrake, the sort of interest to alchemists, have evolved a defensive mechanism where, upon being uprooted, the tuber releases pent gasses to produce potentially lethal sonic waves. Slut Root has evolved, parallel but unrelated, a tuber with similar properties, including a vaguely humanoid appearance, which serve to repel or repulse the uprooter. April instead splinters and mashes the Slut Root's 'head' with 14 stabs of the shovel.

A month later, April answers knocking on her front door to find a tall man, blonde with sparse 2cm beard, in jeans and grey t-shirt, who says: 'Hello, my name is Ryan. I live a few houses down, at 26. I believe that you have been -'

'Sluuuut.'

'- burning off for the past three days. It is not my concern what you do with your land. I use my -'

'Floooozy. Promiscous. Gaaaping.'

'- own property similarly. However, I've recently done a load of washing and the smoke coming from your land may get into my bedsheets and -'

'Time for smoko. Get some pooooole.'

'- and and what the shit is going on back there?'

April giggles: 'Do you have a sledge hammer?'

Ryan does. He sinks a pitchfork next to a Slut Root and pushes down whilst April pulls the plant up at the leaves. The Slut Root screams:

'Rooooastieee.'

Ryan reels back: 'The fuck?'

April swings sledgehammer over shoulder: 'Hiii-yah!'

The Slut Root's head turns to mush and April smiles into the distance, hair down and wild:  'Imagine a men-children, man-childs full car, the sort that always has a spoiler, and you can legally mangle those catcalling faces.'

'What are, what, ahhh those sentient?'

Smile puckering: 'I hadn't thought about that.'

They are not.

Ryan points at fire crackling near the shed: 'Is that one?'

'Petrol's cheap and I wanted to burn one while it was still screaming.'

'Just the one? It's been going for three days?'

'Yeah. It stopped screaming pretty quick. No fun.'

Ryan gazes over the backyard lush with green and pale blue: '50/50?'

Thinking: 'I am looking for a new job, but we need a market. How would we go legit with Big Coal's ScoMo in power?'

Ok, ok, maybe: 'What if I can find a black market?'

Sarcastic: 'I wouldn't dream of depriving big business of subsidies paid out of my hard earned taxes.'

Smiling: 'Cool. I'll need a few of these, uh, roots. Down payment. Investment.'

'Throw in a chainsaw and you've got a deal.'

Ryan hereby wants a market for Slut Root - therefore, a greater demand for Slut Root, in turn for more people to know about Slut Root, thereby a means of telling people about Slut Root or, more specifically, the Taimatsu Hakkō Ichiu. The Taimatsu Hakkō Ichiu had been developed by Akiko Tanizaki, fascist Japan's Leni Riefenstahl of pyrotechnics. The Taimatsu is eight dormant sets of aerial shell fireworks, dispersed globally but connected with a precursor to wi-fi known as 'magic'. The pulleys and levers jutting from each piece of the Taimatsu can be used to modify the resulting fireworks display - colours, words, ect. - which will also alter the display of the other seven pieces, so that all of the firework displays are the same, translations withstanding. An operating manual in ten languages comes attached.

One piece of the Taimatsu had been smuggled into Australia, where it was supposed to activate upon Axis Japan's conquest of the Pacific. Other pyrotechnics stopped this from eventuating and the Taimatsu has been long forgotten, only recently found by Ignatius, Rasmus and Poppery, the former Knights of the Galaxy Klaxon. The three had spent a hermetic decade together, protecting their namesake Galaxy Klaxon until forsaking their duty in order to save their balls. They found that being apart from each other felt unwholesome, unnatural. Having spent significant time alongside a mythic artefact, they also discovered their unconscious habit of dowsing for items of magical value. Unable to find an employer with three vacant, closely working positions, the Knights instead:

·         Camped atop a bed of grass flattened by carnality between Quetzalcoatls, which is similar to basilisk sex if both basilisks are screamers. Two dozen Quetzalcoatl feathers had been shed during that enthusiastic romp. The Knights had traded the feathers to Amy, a bow hunter, for Floor Pizza, a large-sized pizza box which, if left on carpet for 21 hours, materialises three slices of Ima Funghi.

·         Wandered Paul's bush block until finding an Adler Shotgun modified to carry 90 rounds. Paul was initially pissed at the trespass but, upon calming down: 'Thanks for finding my gun. You want some bitcoin?'

·         Rented a boat and spent three days floating, carefree with fishing poles, above a sunk dinghy with an esky preserving two cartons of Dirty Granny. Renee: 'I have a quarter of El Dorado Green and a get-out-of-jail-free legal precedent. Take it.'

Ryan has heard about the 'three purple robed nutters living in the reserve near Brian's place' from the guys at the warehouse. That evening, Ryan visits the Knight of the Galaxy Klaxon, finding them huddled around and all sort of trying to teabag a small fire.

Ignatius: 'Rasmus, Poppery, let us sacrifice Floor Pizza for some shavings of heat.'

Poppery: 'That's our food.'

Rasmus: 'Lest our balls climb and, like the cat up the elm, hesitate in their descent?'

Ignatius, ironic: 'All for one, one for all.'

Poppery thinks for a moment: 'Shit.'

Ryan: 'Aaaare you guys looking for some firewood? I've got some real good stuff.'

Rasmus: 'Ho! Another roving merchant, in circumspect time.'

Poppery, thumb over shoulder: 'You looking for those fireworks? We burnt the manual, but I can show you the ropes.'

A deal is struck. Ryan and Poppery finagle with dials and levers until a suitable fireworks display is plotted. The long lever with big red knob is pressed down.

Antarctica: a sky dense with stars is instantly painted with red, green, blue and silver explosions. A hundred penguins flap, squawk and drop shit in the summer night.

De Geuechts-Truepvan de Paramaribo Circus performs to a home crowd. A clown-and-pie act is back-dropped by acrobats somersaulting with pails of water to two elephants, who take the water into their trunks and spray it onto a three metre tall bushfire. They outdo themselves: fireworks breach the canvas roof of a wooden trailer and colour the towering smoke.

Hiroki walks with head down, despondent at a coffee date gone stood-up, seriously contemplating the pros and cons of the French Foreign Legion. A grinding noise lifts his gaze: the tip of the Heiwa no Tou (Tower of Peace) has opened and launches fireworks that pop in sync with the rhythm of Dare, by Gorillaz. He looks up and down the path for other witnesses and meets the bright eyes of two smiling girls he is yet to meet. A conversation starter becomes readily obvious.

Seattle, WA: business as usual. The nearby Taimatsu had been dismantled and sold for scrap in '84.

Atop a hill in Rhineland-Palatinate, Frieda and Sofie stand slightly hunched and wide eyed. They shout back and forth in German: 'Do you see this?'  'Is this the acid?'  'Is this real?'  'Does that say "Slut Root"?'  'What is Slut Root?'

Naked on a bed dragged halfway onto a hotel balcony, Julielle hands a cigarette of Ghost Tobaco to Tony. (Aw yeah, he dead now. Tractor.) She notices sparkling over the desert beyond Dubai and squints to make out words.

'Excuse me?'

In southern Morocco, a Sahrawi man sits cross-legged by a pile of smoldering camel turds. His tribe is admiring an unexpected kinetic fresco, but he alone smokes a pipe of catnip and tobacco, glancing now and again to words and prices materialising on the Catnip Page. Sure enough, Slut Root is 'On the Shelf' and going for ₵$1 a kilo.

Value Added

Ryan Johnson told all his teachers to get fucked in Year 11. They had stopped caring if he was right or wrong or learning, which he was, having mathed the fastest route along the six points of profanity and into expulsion. Anything the school could offer was quicker over the internet and worth less than the title of 'bloody cunt of a legend'. That social standing had translated into a network and a step into employment ahead of those who had preferenced their grades, many now languishing and left behind over the past eight years.

Walking through the university does not sting Ryan with regret but he feels like a tourist. The blokes at the warehouse are always theorising about millennials of totalitarian political correctness but Ryan reckons it's just fashion - different clothing, mannerisms, cultural activities. Students bitch about the plight of transgender Eskimos in order to fit in, get along, get by and get laid. Fuck, man, Ryan knows he could give a shit about anything if it got him in the pants of these uni girls. No, these uni women - no mere girl fills jeans quite like that.

Onto the coffee shop, where Carl Reid has already ordered for both: 'A good morning for some wood, Ryan.'

Indeed, Ryan has a subtle bulge: 'How are you not straight, surrounded by - ' pointing eyes at a passing pair of wiggling asses ' - all of this?'

'I experimented during my youth.'  Sliding over the newspaper. 'Cops found fifteen acres on a Victorian property. Five point eight mil.'

Ryan sits, scans the story, that's good coffee: 'Doesn't affect me. Started because of a tax fraud investigation and, besides, their product is a matter of volume. We provide quality, add more value.'

Meaning chop-chop, black market tobacco. Ryan has a mortgage on a quarter-acre wreck on the suburban fringe, having converted the backyard into a tobacco crop (value added) and renovated the garage into a small tobacco barn (value added). 'Chop-chop' is so named because of the minimal processing (a tobacco shredder from the U.S. adds value) but Ryan also applies home-made organic pesticide and fungicide (value doubly added) and an aniseed glycerol (value added) whilst curing. Sure, the shelf-life is shorter but the nicotine hit is more natural, healthier, less addictive.

None of these added values matter much to the blokes at the warehouse, who aim for the cheapest convenient hit every two hours. Therefore, the market for Ryan's product is the young affluent with money to spare, pleasure centres unwarped and appearances to maintain. A chance drunker encounter (Ryan had been flirting with Carl's wingwoman) established this market in Carl's network (value added) with Carl's brand (value begrudgingly added). That queer bastard (both technically true) appeared to have more money than sense but, on later reflection, seems to have the sense to make some money from his appearance i.e. sell shit.

Ryan produces a small sandwich bag with this batch's sample: 'Back when Australia had licensed growers, before our time, the profit was in the stuff sold on the side.

Carl spreads a pinch on rolling paper: 'No licences therefore decreases the illegal supply, then they increase the tax.'

Nodding, smiling, he gets it: 'Which makes the crop on the back acre high risk, high reward.'

Carl lights for three seconds and quaffs: 'Good man, tastes just the same. I suppose there are still the smuggled darts.'

Ryan smiles polite, the product has been consistent for two years now, begins rolling his own: 'They tend to come from China or Indonesia. More for the pack-a-day guys.'

Carl twists to rest his left arm over the chair-back, has another drag. He cuts a handsome figure in a yellow shirt, skinny jeans, clean shaven and Wil Anderson hair. Ryan reminds himself that he is dealing with a young queer (never use 'fag' unless everyone else in company has) with all the emotion and ego of a uni student. Thus Ryan continues:

'Smuggled cigs are convenient when you know where to get them. What you want to avoid -' Remembering Steven, the brief mentor and right Ivan Milat motherfucker, '- is stolen ciggarettes. Bad crowd.'

Carl exhales, sets up a joke: 'That just leaves vaping.'

Ryan takes the cue: 'Vaping is for pussies. And gay men don't go for pussy.'