Photo by Joe Stump
So you’ve got the wife and the kids. You’ve got and are just barely hanging onto, the co-op in the chic enclave, you’re so middle-aged. Some men, finding themselves adrift in a wood in their middle years, go to the gym: I troll whores for coke.
After you’ve seen the horrors of Chelsea Pier’s ice rink on a weekend afternoon, nothing raises the spirits of the inner-borough salary man like secret afternoons and evenings spent in Bushwick or Washington Heights trolling whores for coke (TWFC).
TWFC consists, at its simplest, of asking hookers to buy you coke and seeing where the relationship takes you.
Some say TWFC is nothing but safe sex for geezers. Maybe they have a point. I’m not a critic. I don’t want to start thinking about why I TWFC, I just want to tell you how great it can be and how you can do it too if you want to.
For starters, you must have the whores and the retail coke outlets in reasonable proximity. TWFC doesn’t work if you have one and not the other. So this means, in my experience, doing your trolling in poor neighborhoods. I like Bushwick and Washington Heights, but beginners can start with whatever slum is closest.
Maybe its just parochial favoritism on my part, but I don’t think you can beat Washington Heights as a place to TWFC. So I think its worth a trip uptown for most neophytes.
The first thing you have to do is find the whores. You tell them you don’t want sex, at least, not at first. You ask them if they would get you some coke. You tell them you’ll pay as much as for sex or close if they come back with the drugs. Since a lot of the whores are drug addicts, this is kind of like finding something in common with some woman in a bar or office and going from there.
One of the most obvious risks is that the whores take your money and that’s the last you see of them. You have to accept you’ll get ripped off a lot. If you can’t afford to lose the bucks, then TWFC is not for you. But it is cheap. You say you want a twenty of powder and you’ll pay them more than the twenty you’ve giving them to get it, like $35 or $40 or something when they come back with the drugs. Since a lot of them are crack addicts, you have to specify that you want powder or you’ll end up with useless crack.
A lot of times, if they want to do it, the whores will give you some worthless ID or a really cheap radio or CD player or something for you to hold to prove that they’ll come back. These gestures by the whores are all well and good, but whatever they give you is likely to be easily abandoned by them and certainly doesn’t mean they will come back. But there’s no harm in accepting these items. Soon, you too can have a collection of really cheap transistor radios at home.
If they do come back with the drugs, it means you can trust them. You can get to know them. Maybe you’ll do the drugs with them though they usually won’t have anyplace to go to do them. And you’ll just have to endure the whore’s complaints about what a waste it is to snort, rather than smoke the coke. I suppose, though, if you find yourself smoking coke with your new friends, you may be getting deeper into TWFC than I have. This article is really more of a how to get started piece, if you’re smoking coke with your hooker-friends, then, congratulations, you’re well past the beginner stage of TWFC.
The other obvious thing about TWFC is that you could get laid. They are whores even if you’re pretending just to be drug buddies. I never had sex while TWFC, but I tried to keep an open mind about it. Responses from a hooker-friend like “I’m not taking my bra off because I’ve got some kind of abscess on my breast,” or “I don’t know if I have AIDS or not,” or “If you think that when I’m on the roof of a six-story walk-up with one of my Chinese johns that I’m going to go all the way downstairs to the deli for a condom, you’re nuts” can be off-putting. Maybe I’m too sensitive.
I have supplied the following text based on an actual TWFC encounter for the beginner to get an idea of how conversations with your new drug buddies might go. This is how the TWFC apprentice might start up a conversation. Say you spot a young, white woman standing on the corner of 180th St. and Ft. Washington Avenue. Determine she is a whore. A sexy outfit and or waving at passing cars can be a tip-off.
“Hey, what’s up.”
“Nothin’”
“I’m trying to get some coke, some powder. Can you help me with that? Get me a twenty and I’ll give you a twenty and a tip.”
“You a cop?”
“Nah. I know the drill. Wanna take a look, make sure there’s no badge hanging on my neck?”
“Yeah.”
Lift your T-shirt or whatever you’re wearing. Don’t worry about this question. The whores always ask this. For some reason, they also always think that there is some rule that if they ask you if you are a cop, you have to tell them.
If you’re white, as I am, the whores and anyone else you meet TWFC will think you’re a cop. This can be a pain in the ass. On the flip side, when you run into real cops even though you are a white man walking along with a frequently deranged looking, druggie woman in a neighborhood you don’t belong in, they don’t bother you.
“I gotta go to a spot on 173rd. Give me the money.”
“Promise you’ll come back. I might go for a blow job later.”
“If you don’t trust me, then forget it.”
“No, here’s the money. I’ll be at the back of the Port.”
(This is what the whores and dealers call the uptown Port Authority bus terminal, a center for your Washington Heights TWFC).
“Whatever. Be back in twenty minutes.”
Then you wait around to see if she comes back. If she does, often she’ll have gotten some crack for herself. Sometimes an invitation to get high together will follow. Sometimes she’ll want to see you take some coke to make sure you’re not a cop. But finding a place to do this is usually hard. Other times, you’ll just take your drugs and go home.
I like the frisson of TWFC for its own pleasure. You have to have a sincere appreciation for the women, their scene, and of course, for the drugs. I don’t think you can TWFC successfully if you don’t like coke. Nor will it work if you don’t have at least some slight erotic interest in the whores. Even though some people say TWFC is more about drugs than sex, (and maybe they’re right), you still have to have some slight bit of interest in the whores themselves to balance the thing right and make it work.
If you’ve seen the horror of kids running everywhere and wives yelling at husbands that is the weekend afternoon scenario when you’ve doing your parental duties at Chelsea Piers or other such outputs of the domestic life in New York, you can well imagine what a pleasant couple of hours of vacation TWFC can be.
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Nice and straight forward seems like you might need some seed money to start up in TWFC.
Well, when the venture capital guys come in, you risk losing control of the company. Glad you enjoyed it,
Cheers, Kent
I love it…… As a 43 yo male with bitchy no sex giving wife and 2 sass mouthed kids looks like I might be heading out to the city this weekend….. Only 2 hrs away…
but no use in ruining such a wonderful thing
isn’t it dangerous to be a mealworm to their ocd pimps on the go?
and use your own bill or straw please! god sake
Jesus. Are you me?? Nicely done.
Hmm I should have said me about 16 years ago. Just saying.
Holy shit this is some fine journalism. Funny and straightforward and oh so true. Lived in Washington Heights for two years, what a zoo!
Just came across this and think its discusting how you use vunerable girls who are not in a good state with a shit life for your own pleasure and showing more people how to do it :S but that guys noways ay
So, the cops out that way give you a free pass if you are a middle aged white male skating around the periphery of life? What might they do if you weren’t white? Blow you a kiss?
Thanks man trying this in the dirty D tonight I mean Detroit
You’re not trolling hoes but college students from Columbia (Washington Heights) and NYU (Bushwick). These neighborhoods are so gentrified they have bypassed Whole Foods to get forager groceries and pizza joints with chef’s tables.
I thought that there was no one like me left in the city until I read your very funny and very true blog. I know that it’s 4 years since you wrote it and therefore I could be wrong but I would really appreciate a reply just so I know whether I might get back into my once favorite past-time.
Until about 7 years ago I usually had no trouble navigating the heights. Started about 18 years ago then from 2000 it was on and off (my choice). I think I stopped going there during a very hot and dry summer, when I had shoulder surgery and was out of commission for a few months. About 4 years ago I found a girlfriend with whom I had the best of both of the worlds, then another a year later.
My plight is that things dried up for me almost 2 months ago and I don’t know what to do.I live in el barrio but the girls here keep beating me down.
Even just a push in the direction might help me in my quest.
Nicely done. Asked a whore to get me some “smoke” coming out of a strip joint. I ended up in a crackhouse which I remember as the biggest fing trip of my life. I was looking for weed…
I could easily write the antidote to this piece entitled, TJFC. It involves coming back once with what they want, getting them high, then taking them for all they’ve got. The End.
I work at an incredibly large auto plant here in Ohio, where a lot of us can most certainly afford a measly $30 or $40. I see a lot of guys talking to all the hot temps and Forklift girls that are temps as well. I can tell by the look at a lot of them that there is something going on, like prostitution or something. There is most certainly something up with a lot of them. So I knew it involved drugs and it involved sex, but I could never understand just what in the hell was going on. Now it all makes tons of sense. There is a high probability that there is a lot of trolling going on here and you wouldn’t believe the guys that are pulling it off, I mean I am talking old guys, foreign guys, but ugly guys, druggy guys, even dirty looking hipster types or rapidly aging punkers, white dudes trying to be all street with played out bucket caps, gay guys, lesbians and black guys. And it is not just at an associate level, Team Leaders, Coordinators, Upper Management, not to mention the probability that some of the hotter looking female associates who have all of a sudden developed a relationship with some of the the more attractive looking FL drivers be it man or woman. Something tells me there are dealers right there in the plant. My wife said she was walking through one of the tunnels once and there was four black guys, associates that were fighting, when they saw her they said that they were just playing, sounded like BS to me. The other thing I noticed is that only certain people get promoted and the promotions almost always seem rigged. There are metal detectors at all the entrances inside to prohibit the carrying of guns or is it badges? But there are such things as Orange 9s maybe black ones or what would be even better…white ones…our uniforms are white and a lot of us wear them baggy. I wonder if some undercover carry IDs instead of badges? Interesting…Only thing I am sick of is the rigging, I am trying to move up and there is extreme rigging going on to keep me from doing so, so I am just flying low right now so that this too shall pass. The other thing you see a lot of is pretty girls that either do all easy stuff or get promoted way too easy. The trolling is nuts though, I always wondered what it was. I bet that is it. I didn’t realize that so many people in there do drugs, but now it makes tons of sense. I would love to see the whole thing come crashing down though…that would be freaking awesome…that would most likely dissipate most of the cool people though. That part would suck. I bet there is a lot of rival dealers in there… maybe rival whores too. Do you think something like this would exist? If you think about it doing your trolling on the street can be dangerous, but if you had an incredibly large building, I’m talking a half mile, mile long that had providers right there on site, it could be a total win win situation. I have also noticed it is almost impossible to get fired there. I wonder if the folks that have a hard time getting fired there are dealers or clientele. Anyways, I love this article.
Too funny. My favorite line was:
“For some reason, they also always think that there is some rule that if they ask you if you are a cop, you have to tell them.”
I will never understand why people still believe this myth….i heard it and vbelieved it when i was a 12 y/o dumabss. uhh are you a cop….uh totally, you got me. i guess you outsmarted me and aren’t getting busted tonight. Maby you’ll forget to ask tomorrow.
Great story. I want to join you
Hmm…not sure what to think about this. A part of life I never really saw, since in my youth I was a puritannical, fire-breathing Marxist living in…Washington Heights, for a while anyway. Then I left the city, then I came back. Now I’m older, a lot.
Did I miss something in life? Probably.
Very sad for the girls, though, as much as I admire the honesty of the piece. Seems like something William Burroughs would write, not that he’s a good writer or anything, but he’s okay, I guess.
Boy, sadness all around…