Savages

until the biker gang responds.
    They don’t.
    He never hears from them again except by word on the California Bongo Drum Communications System that they’ve decided to get out of the herb business and focus their efforts on meth.
    A sound management decision.
    Do not expand horizontally until you have achieved maximum vertical capacity.
    Also: do not fuck with someone until you know exactly who the fuck you’re fucking with.
    And then don’t do it.

34
     
    “Don’t fuck with people at all”
    Is a central tenet of Ben’s personal as well as business philosophy.
    Ben is a self-described Baddhist, i.e., a “bad Buddhist,” because hesometimes eats meat, gets angry, rarely meditates, and definitely does consciousness-altering substances. But the
basics
of Buddhism, Ben is down with—
    Do no harm
    Which Ben articulates as
    Don’t fuck with people.
    And he doesn’t think the Dalai Lama would argue with that.
    In addition to the interest-accruing deposits in the karma bank, it’s been a very successful business strategy, the very foundation of the very successful Ben and Chonny’s brand.
    A brand it is.
    You go into B&C’s as either a customer or a sales partner, you know exactly what you’re getting:
    As a customer—
Top-o’-the-line, not-to-be-bettered, safe, healthy, organic, prime hydro at a fair price
    As a sales partner—
a superb product that sells itself
profit participation
excellent working conditions
day care
health care
    Yes, health care, written through Ben’s corporation that e-markets Third World crafts made by Third World women.
    You see, Ben does adhere to the Buddhist belief in making a “right living,” which mixes in quite nicely with his childhood socialist indoctrination and his somewhat Reaganite entrepreneurial sense.
    Not for Ben the rigid, top-down vertical integration of the Baja Cartel. B&C (and the ampersand is everything, in Ben’s opinion) has a loosely organized, horizontal, flow-out (“Money doesn’t shoot upwardto then trickle down, it flows
out
”) pseudostructure that allows for maximum freedom and creativity.
    Ben’s logic on this is that it’s impossible to organize marijuana dealers anyway (for reasons that are probably obvious), so why try to herd (cool) cats when they do better on their own, anyway. So—
    You wanna sell dope? Cool. You don’t? Cool. You wanna sell a lot? Cool. You wanna sell a little? Cool. Maternity leave? Cool. Paternity leave? Cool. You set your own targets, make your own budgets, set your own salary, it’s
all
cool. You just order however much you want from the Mother Ship and then do your own thing.
    This simple philosophy, plus the care he takes in growing his primo product, has made Ben a very rich young man.
    The King of Hydro.
    The King of Cool.

35
     
    There are, of course, some critics—and Ben is one of them—who will say that Ben can be Ben because Chon is Chon.
    Ben acknowledges his own hypocrisy on this issue.
    (He is nothing but self-aware and self-analytical. See:
    Ben, parentage of.)
    He and Chon even have a noun for it:
    “Hydrocrisy.”
    The hydrocrisy is obvious—Ben strives to be nonviolent and honest in a business that is violent and dishonest.
    “But it doesn’t have to be,” Ben has argued.
    “But it is,” Chon countered.
    “But it shouldn’t be.”
    “Okay, but so what?”
    Well, so what is that Ben has taken 99 percent of the violence and dishonesty out of his business, but that other 1 percent is—
    —where Chon comes in.
    Ben doesn’t need to know what Ben doesn’t need to know.
    “You’re the American public,” Chon tells him.
    And Chon has ample experience with that.

36
     
    Guys dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and the headlines are about
    Anna Nicole Smith.
    Who?
    Exactly.

37
     
    Ben watches CNN in the airport.
    On his way home from the Bongo Congo.
    Etymology—
The Congo River runs through it, and
It used to be called the Belgian Congo, and
It’s fucking nuts there.
    Otherwise known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
    What was Ben the Baddhist doing there?
    Funding psychotherapy clinics for rape victims.
    Traumatized women, multiply raped and often mutilated—first by rebel soldiers, then by the soldiers who were sent to protect them from the previous set of soldiers. So Green Is Green writes checks for health clinics and counselors, for pregnancy and STD tests, and—
    —get this—
    —for instructors to go out to the soldiers and hold workshops to teach that rape and