For the Love of Money

by Sam Polk

  I’d started buying weed from Randy earlier in the semester and had been invited to smoke with him a few times. Randy kept his stash in a huge jar, and for me he’d carefully pick out a few buds and weigh them to the decimal. For his friends, he’d stick his whole hand into the jar, forearm deep, and pull out a fistful, buds raining down on his desk. Percy and Jim would smile and lean back with the easy comfort of close friends.

  I overheard Randy tell Percy he could buy Ecstasy cheap in bulk: $17 a pill, for fifty pills. It’d take him less than a month to sell them all at $25 each, he said. I wanted so much to be a part of this group, to be invited to every session like Jim and Percy. So I offered to fund the deal. I was expecting a check from the government, a Pell Grant that student athletes receive. I was supposed to sign it over to my dad, but I’d just tell him there was a delay.

  Randy would sell the pills and split the profits with me. But once I got a taste for Ecstasy, all I wanted was more. When I was “rolling,” I was comfortable and charming in a way I’d never been before. Walking into The West End was like walking into Cheers. I’d find myself in conversations with women I’d stared at for weeks but hadn’t found the courage to approach. Sometimes I’d even get their numbers.

  I started asking Randy for pills two or three times a week, telling him to take it out of my end. After a while he started saying no, that I was swallowing all the profits. One day he got fed up.

  “You don’t have any discipline, dude,” he said. “After this batch, we’re done.”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. That night I heard him, Percy, and Jim talking in Randy’s room. Then I heard my name, and they all laughed.

  The security guard waded through the files. When he got close, he started going one by one. Finally, he pulled out a manila envelope from a folder and removed the key from inside. He set the key on the counter and put a form down for me to fill out.

  I started with NAME, writing each letter of Randy’s name slowly, then ROOM NUMBER, DORM, PHONE EXTENSION, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. Halfway through the last line, I realized I’d been filling in my social security number. Idiot!

  I slid the paper across the smooth counter. He picked it up and looked at it. My jaw tensed. He looked up at me, then down at the key. “Thanks,” I mumbled. I turned around and tried to walk slowly but found myself walking very fast.

  I flew by Neo. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him start up and jolt after me, scrambling to catch up. “What the fuck, man? What the fuck happened?” he said.

  “I . . . I . . . I messed up.”

  “What?”

  “They asked for his social security number, but I wrote in mine. Only four or five numbers.”

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “I doubt they’ll catch it,” I said.

  Neo stopped. “Should we even do this, dude?” he asked.

  I didn’t break my stride. It would have been a good question for someone else. But I had to do it. Randy had made me feel small, and he was going to pay. And in the process, I’d earn Neo’s respect.

  “Don’t be a pussy,” I said.

  Neo and I walked through the front doors of my dorm, took the elevator up, then walked down the long hallway to my room. Randy’s room sat to the right of mine. In my room, Neo took a pillowcase from one of my pillows. I pulled a suitcase with wheels from the closet.

  “See if anyone’s out there,” I said.

  He carefully opened the door. “It’s clear,” he said.

  He held the door as I pulled the suitcase into the hall. My hands felt thick, clumsy, and I fumbled with the key. When I finally opened it, we stepped inside. The door closed behind us with a click, which echoed in the stillness of someone else’s private space.

  I opened the closet and reached up to the top shelf, where I’d seen Randy store his drugs and money. Only clothes. We searched his room but there wasn’t much: some CDs, a video game system, and a three-foot bong. I found a large ball of resin he’d been collecting. Pot leaves a residue, and if you collect it by scraping the bowl after smoking, you can build up a dense, sticky ball that you can smoke; it lasts a long time and sparks and crackles and gives a different high. A resin ball is a prized commodity among serious smokers; it’s earned, not bought.

  I zipped up the suitcase, and we hustled back into my room. I lay down on my twin bed. There was an inflatable armchair next to the bed, one of those ridiculous pieces of furniture only found in dorm rooms. It squeaked as Neo lowered himself into it. We hadn’t been settled for more than two minutes when we heard steps coming down the hall. We froze.

  The light changed under the door; a shadow fell, grew. The steps paused, right in front of my door. It was as if the person were in the room with us. Then a key slid into the lock on Randy’s door.

  We heard the door swing open and held our breath. We didn’t have to wait long. Randy’s shout exploded from the silence like gunfire. “I’VE BEEN ROBBED! OH NO! FUCK! FUCK! THEY TOOK THE BONG. THEY TOOK MY FUCKING BONG!”

  We heard him rip the phone off the cradle. “Dude. I’ve been robbed . . . yeah . . . robbed. They took, let’s see, they took my bong, my CDs . . .” The drawer to his desk was ripped open. “THEY TOOK MY FUCKING RESIN BALL. WHO THE FUCK WOULD STEAL A RESIN BALL? No, man, no one is here. The building is fucking empty.”

  Just then, Neo shifted and the inflatable chair squeaked.

  “Hold on a second,” Randy said.

  We heard him stride into the hallway. As he moved to my door, the steps grew louder, heavier. All of a sudden, fists hammered the thin wooden door; it quaked in its frame. My body, which was already tight, clenched even tighter and went cold.

  “SAM. SAM,” Randy yelled. “SAM, ARE YOU THERE?”

  Neo and I were statues. I clenched my teeth and didn’t breathe.

  Randy pounded again and again, then gave up. He went back into his room, gathered some stuff, and then left. His steps faded down the hall. We were quiet until the elevator bell dinged and the doors opened and closed.

  “Holy shit,” Neo whispered.

  Blood pounded through my temples. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  As we rode down the elevator, I imagined Randy at the bottom with a phalanx of cops, a K9 dog. The doors opened. No one was there. Neo and I hustled past the security guard, hats pulled low, out into the cold air.

  CHAPTER 10

  ON24

  ¤

  A month after I broke into Randy’s room, I was summoned to the Columbia Security Department. The head of security, a mountain of a man, pointed to the social security line on the form I’d forged to get Randy’s key. He said I could either admit my guilt, in which case they’d handle the matter internally, or I could deny it, in which case they’d turn over the evidence to the NYPD. I stared defiantly at him for a moment and then burst into tears.

  Two days later I was suspended from Columbia for a semester. As I walked down the hall toward my dorm room to pack up my stuff, Randy emerged from his room. I hoped he’d try to fight me; I could be gracious. Instead he looked hurt and said, “I can’t believe you did that, man.” I wanted to crawl inside myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  That afternoon I sat on one of the other wrestlers’ beds and called Dad.

  “You fucking idiot,” he hissed. A cold wind blew through my body.

  I didn’t want to go home, so I rented a tiny room in an apartment near campus. Whenever I passed other students, I’d keep my eyes glued to the sidewalk. I couldn’t bear the thought of running into people I knew, seeing their judgment, feeling my shame.

  I found an internship at a two-man Internet start-up called Virtual Stock Exchange that paid $8 an hour. That job was my life raft—my bosses didn’t know what I’d done, so at work I could hold my head up. I started to fantasize about the story of a boy kicked out of college who joins a start-up and becomes
a millionaire. I imagined pulling up to campus in a Porsche.

  The office was a large, single room, and my bosses coded silently all day long. My job was to forge partnerships with other websites, and to do that I needed to send out hundreds of e-mails per day. I started taking Ritalin in the afternoons to help me finish work strong. After work I’d come home and drink a bottle of wine. After a while, that wasn’t enough to put me to sleep, so I started topping off with NyQuil.

  There was only one person I could stand being around: another Columbia student named Elyn Walker, who was in as much trouble as I was. Elyn, a thin girl from Michigan with short, sandy-blond hair, had been arrested with twelve wax-paper packets of heroin. Columbia suggested she take some time off. She’d rented a tiny room on 120th and Amsterdam, and we’d stay there all weekend, me doing coke, her doing heroin and coke. Sometimes we’d have sex. After, we’d go to the corner bodega and Elyn would get Diet Coke and an extra-large Tootsie Roll. Dinner.

  Aside from the drugs and the sex, the reason I loved being with Elyn was because she was the only person in the world I didn’t have to hide from. A few weeks after we met, she told me she was bulimic, and I told her I’d been, too, and after that we had no secrets. She was my refuge.

  One day at work I came across a beautifully curated website with a blue-and-yellow logo that read “ON24.” I saw an address in San Francisco. I clicked on the Career Opportunities link. They were looking for someone to do business development—the requirements were a college degree and at least three years’ experience. I typed an e-mail to the CEO:

  I’m 19 and in college, but I can do this job.

  I said I’d taken time off from Columbia to participate in the Internet boom. Within an hour the CEO, Sharat Sharan, e-mailed me and asked if I was available for a call that Friday.

  That Thursday night, Elyn came over to my apartment. When she arrived, she pulled a tiny Ziploc bag out of her pocket. It was filled with powder the color of brown sugar—heroin. I’d asked her to bring some for me.

  She sprinkled some powder into a pipe. I smoked it, then sat down on the bed. I finally understood what the big deal was about heroin. It was like I was wrapped in the toastiest blanket in the world, wearing thick slippers, sipping hot cocoa in front of a roaring fire. Comfortable. Safe. Content. I’d never felt like that before.

  I lay in bed and Elyn pulled up a chair. I nodded off. When I came to, I shook Elyn and she sprinkled more heroin on top of the weed in my pipe and I smoked it. We stayed there all night, waking intermittently, but mostly off in our nods.

  When I woke, it was light out. The clock read 10:00 a.m. I was already two hours late to work. I walked to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and dialed the number Sharat had given me.

  He came on the line and asked about my experience at VSE. The residue of heroin in my blood left me calm and relaxed, and I answered his questions slowly and fully. He listened for a while and then, satisfied, started telling me about ON24. He said he wanted to fly me out to San Francisco to interview but didn’t want to waste the money if I wasn’t absolutely sure I was willing to move out there. I smiled, looking at Elyn in her tight tee shirt and big jeans passed out on a folding chair, her leg up on the bed and her left arm dangling straight down, a needle sticking out of the vein in her arm.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m ready to leave New York.”

  • • •

  Two weeks later, I sat across from Sharat. He slid a piece of paper toward me. I picked it up: $30,000 per year, three thousand stock options. If you broke it down by hour, it was close to minimum wage. But to me, $30,000 was a fortune. Plus, those stock options could be worth millions if ON24 did an IPO.

  I moved into a ground-floor studio apartment I found on the Internet, four blocks from the office. Four blocks in the wrong direction, it turned out. The drab, gray apartment building sat smack in the center of the Tenderloin, a notoriously seedy neighborhood littered with strip clubs, XXX theaters, liquor stores, and a dimly lit pool hall.

  I worked with the laser focus of a zealot. Ritalin—which I’d begun ordering online from a pharmacy in Mexico—helped. When I’d start to flag in the afternoon, I’d head to the bathroom, a single-seater with a fragile slide-bolt lock. I pulled my pants down and sat on the toilet. I took a blue plastic pill crusher and a foil sheet of pills out of my pocket, ejected one into the crusher, and rotated it two or three times until the pill became fine powder. I rolled a dollar bill from my wallet into a tube and snorted the pile of powder.

  My armpits immediately started sweating, and most times I’d have to go to the bathroom, which was pretty convenient. After I finished I put everything back in my pocket, flushed, and went to the mirror to wash my hands and splash water on my now-hot face. I checked my nostrils for residue, then walked back down the hall, ready to fire off a thousand e-mails. I worked furiously for hours, barely looking up when people passed on their way out for the night. It’d be eight or nine at night, the office would be empty, and I’d still be grinding my teeth and firing off e-mails.

  I was building a network of partner sites that would display ON24’s content and generate advertising revenue. The size of the network was critical, and Sharat set ambitious goals. I handled conference calls myself. At first I stumbled over words and would scurry into Sharat’s office with questions. But after a dozen calls, I knew the answers, found my pacing. It’s amazing how smooth something can sound once you say it a hundred times. Ten partner sites became a hundred. At the company meeting each week Sharat began to ask me for updates on new deals. I would stammer and flush, but afterward I’d be proud.

  Late at night, I’d stand up from my desk, put on a jacket, lock the office door, and step into the night. Ritalin screws up your body temperature; in the office, I couldn’t stop sweating, but in the cool San Francisco night I was freezing, even with my jacket on. I always listened to Tupac on the walk home; it made me feel aggressive, my angry face a protective shield against the bums and dealers. At home I’d drink NyQuil and a forty-ounce Bud Light, and my shoulders would relax as warmth spread through my body.

  Sometimes at lunch, I hustled a mile into the Mission District and through the door of a squat, dingy building, an underground kickboxing gym filled with the sounds of knees hitting bags and fists hitting heads. I changed into shorts, wrapped my hands, and worked myself until sweat dripped off me like a rain gutter. Then I showered, changed back into my button-down shirt and glasses, and headed back to the office.

  I had no friends and no girlfriends. Sometimes I went to bars, hoping to meet a woman. I’d grab a stool, order a drink, and look around, trying to catch someone’s eye. I never met anyone. After a while I felt foolish and sad, and I’d leave, embarrassed.

  In those first months, I talked to Dad on the phone every day. I’d call and ask him for business advice. I’d tell him about the deals I was signing, how big the network was growing. One night I came home to find my ground-floor window smashed, my apartment robbed. I called my dad and asked him to pay for a hotel that night because I was scared and the window wouldn’t be fixed till the next morning. It wasn’t that I needed the money—I actually had a couple hundred in the bank. I just wanted him to take care of me, and thought that this time he wouldn’t be able to say no.

  “Too expensive,” he said. “They likely won’t come back.”

  A few weeks later, my friend Sabrina, who played tennis for Columbia, drove up from Santa Cruz to visit me. She brought a freshman teammate with her. Sloane Taylor’s blond hair cascaded down her back. She had caramel skin, full lips, and a tight figure. She walked into my studio apartment like she was starring in a movie.

  From the moment I saw her I wanted her. I reached for a handshake; she laughed delightedly, threw her arms around my neck, kissed my throat, and asked if I had any pot. Sloane was way out of my league, the class of women I’d always coveted but neve
r got—cheerleaders in junior high, prom queens in high school.

  They wanted to party. I took them to a club in the Tenderloin. Sloane smiled when I pressed a Ritalin into her palm, but when I tried to dance with her, she’d move away. We all took a 4:00 a.m. swim in the pool in my apartment complex. When we got back to my room, Sloane leaned in to whisper something in my ear.

  “Do you have a Valium?” she asked. I fetched two and took one myself. We fell asleep at dawn. When I woke up later that morning, she was gone.

  A month later, I called Dad to tell him about a new deal I’d signed. I thought he’d be proud of me, but instead he seemed irritated. “You are building this company,” he said. “You need to get compensated for it.” He seemed almost angry, as if he were being slighted. The previous week, the deal to sell his company had fallen through.

  I brushed him off, but the next day my gaze lingered suspiciously on my coworkers, wondering how many stock options they had been granted. Soon it was all I could think about. I seethed during meetings, silently disparaging my better-­compensated coworkers. After a few weeks, I was fed up. I strode into Sharat’s office.

  “What is it, Sam?”

  “I want to talk about changing my compensation structure,” I belted out.

  He sat back in his chair. “Again?” he said. I’d asked for a raise a few months after I arrived.

  I may be twenty, I thought, but I am building this firm. I’d heard people refer to me as Sharat’s protégé. What was I doing with just three thousand stock options?

  Sharat looked miffed. “Sam, I understand you are impatient, and in some sense that’s good. But these things take time. Keep your head down and things will work out. You can’t just tell people how valuable you are; you need to let them discover it themselves.”

  But that was bullshit. No one ever suddenly discovered my value. I’d had to scratch and claw for recognition my whole life.