The Burger King bathroom

It seems like a cliché for a drug dealer to be working his stash out of a Burger King bathroom, but I hadn’t personally encountered it before. Or if I had, the operation was more subtle than this guy’s.

Not that he needed to be subtle. The place was mostly deserted, as often seems to be the case for legacy fast-food joints in the 21st century, at least in the suburbs. When did people stop dining in at these places? Is this GrubHub’s doing? And when did the “fast” part become so slow? I remember as a kid ordering at the counter, paying, and getting your food almost instantly, all in the space of a minute or so. No standing around with a receipt, waiting for a name or number to be called.

The wait on this occasion gave me plenty of time to observe the dealer plying his trade: playfully talking shit with employees, boasting to teen boys of his wheelie prowess, chatting up a parked car. He and his patrons were the mundane embodiment of a cautionary after-school special, going through the motions of their overlapping social circles while making regular rotations in and out of a Burger King bathroom.

I grew up a couple miles away, oblivious to this kind of illicit activity in my white-bread community, unlike the boys here tonight. I couldn’t help thinking we’d all be better off if I’d been a little less sheltered and they were a little more. Which begs the question: Do you feel those narc vibes radiating off me? The dealer didn’t. He pitched me on a nearby brewpub he’s involved with. Less enviable margins in that business, I thought to myself. But hey, good for him. He’s young, charismatic, his investments diversified, his money laundered. A hustler through and through.

I never got good at business myself, and as it happens, I’m feeling the squeeze this year. The industry got away from me, the market got away from me, the referrals dried up, and I’m loathe to participate in the corporate cosplay of cold calls and preening on social media. But maybe I have tunnel vision. Maybe my business interests are just too narrow. Maybe I should try setting up my own Burger King bathroom.