Jake the weed-dealer

Jake was an amazingly fat ugly bikie with a bushy red beard and moustache and scars all over the rest of his face. His flabby arms were adorned with tattoos of stupid-looking creatures and there was even one on his throat of a spider creeping up a web.

The guys bought weed off Jake and I chipped in even though I didn't like to smoke it much. The guys would look at you a bit strange if you didn't smoke weed with them.

The thing about Jake was you couldn't just go to his place and buy weed off him. You had to sit there on his lumpy old couch that always smelt like his mangy Staffordshire terrier General Lee had urinated all over it (to say nothing of the nauseating reek of weed, tobacco, stale beer and body odour that pervaded the entire apartment), and him sitting there with his hairy white belly protruding from between his black T-shirt and the studded belt he wore in his jeans.

And you had to sample all the weed with him, like weed connoisseurs or something, while he ranted on about the quality of the weed, the fertile valleys where the weed was grown, and how much more than him other less honest dealers were charging for weed of vastly inferior quality.

Next he'd start on about his Triumph motorbike, how fast it could go in a variety of highly unusual situations, and what ingenious maintenance he had performed upon it to make it go so amazing.

Then he'd get onto the fights he'd won lately, and these were invariably many, always against guys who were such unbelievable ass-holes it would have been impossible to imagine had Jake not taken the trouble to describe them in such meticulous detail for you. He taught them a lesson they would not forget in a hurry!

Jake would often glance across at me while he was gossipping away like this, and by the way he held onto my gaze for a moment, smiling toothlessly, I could tell he was under the impression I was sitting there thinking, "Man, this Jake is a hell of a guy!"

But in reality I would be sitting there bored out of my skull, looking at his ugly scarred face and wondering how on earth anyone as fat as him could get on a motorbike to start with, let alone go around pulverising people as though he were Bruce Lee or something.

What would fascinate me even more was the way the guys appeared so interested, all of them chipping in now and again with exclamations of awe, or else laughing raucously at his jokes. Some of Jake's jokes were pretty funny. I had to give him that much. I sometimes thought he would make a better stand-up comedian than a weed-dealing bragging bikie.

Regardless, I was always intensely relieved when the guys finally wrapped up their deal and we were able to get the hell out of Jake's smelly little pad.

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