Everybody smoked once. And once everybody smoked everywhere. There was something enveloping and convivial about it, almost as if it was part of the general social glue.
Yes, I know that not everyone smoked; but it sure seemed like it.
There was a satisfaction in sitting back at your desk when you were thinking about something and lighting up and taking that first draw that filled your mouth with taste. Since we all must have smelled like that, smokers and the few non-smokers alike, you didn't notice.
These days you get on an office elevator with someone just back from a smoke break and the smell will nearly nauseate you. It even did when I was still smoking, so I made a special effort to do a walk while having my break so that I didn't get my smoke and all the smoke of the others on break in the same spot. I hope it helped.
Though just recently quit for the third time in as many years, I have not smoked in the houses I have lived in since the early eighties, except for short periods when I was on my own. I have not smoked in an office for even a little longer. I have smoked in the cars, but even stopped that about three new cars ago, with only a break of an instance or two.
But we are old movie buffs and often get reminded of the ritual aspects of the habit: lighting up after a meal, or after sex. Been a long, long time since I have had a cigarette in bed under any circumstances, and with the women in my life since the early eighties all non-smokers, there have been no after sex smokes.
It's really too bad it is so unhealthy and so nasty. There was always something soothing and pleasurable about it: the texture of the smoke, the smell of fresh tobacco, the narcotic effects. I'd be lying if I said I never miss it.
For some of the time I smoked, I smoked a pipe. I still love the smell of pipe tobacco. My father had taken me to Erlich's in Boston on my seventeenth birthday to select a pipe. He claimed it would be better for me than cigarettes. Of course I've since heard the horror stories about tongue and throat cancer. His father smoked pipes.
The story goes that the only time he smoked cigarettes was when he was in formal wear--pipe smoking acoutrements take useable pockets--when he would tuck a bag of Bull Durham in his cummerbund and could roll cigarettes one-handed as if on horseback. The other hand was for the martini, not reins. Must have been the old Maine Guide in him. He also apparently trained the women who worked in his offices to fill his pipes so that he could just pick the next one up and light it. Chain smoking pipes strikes me as really crazy. BTW, learning how to properly fill a pipe isn't easy. Those women either had a lot of patience or really needed the work.
I remember the pipe I bought. It was what is called a lumberjack or Canadian. Basically a straight-walled plain bowl with a long straight briar stem and a very short hard rubber mouthpiece. It's a shape I favored for a long time.
I ended up smoking cigarettes more and more as smoking was more restricted. Pipes and cigars were the first things outlawed from restaurants and airplanes, even those with smoking sections. And pipe smoking is maybe even a little messier than cigarettes and inconvenient. You have to carry stuff--tobacco, cleaners, tampers, and good matches or a good lighter. A bic would not quite do. And you can't really just light up and have one the way you can with a cigarette. Pipe smoking is a more deliberate act and one that should be done sitting at leisure, with a good book or a nice port.
Almost as satisfying to think about it and write about it as to do it.
And it is satisfying to not be smoking now. Three months and counting.
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