Smoking Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

June 29, 2023March 20, 2024

Campsite Reconciliation with the Cold Cousin

Mao Sr. aka Dad and I were camping by the river, a grassy area out in the open. Our tents were already pitched, plain white Boy Scout V shaped tents, one for us and another for a friend of his.

Geri, a cousin, was there too; she showed up unexpectedly, and I thought to bring up some of the past grievances that kept our two families apart. She came by bike and she stood propped against it using the angle of the bike to lean back. And she was wearing a white chemise with plain dark trousers, and talking random stuff.

I too was sitting on my bike, only I was backwards on the seat.

Then I asked over to Dad.

“Might as well,” he replied.

And I told her. “When you came over to Coring Road all those years ago, one of you, I can’t remember who, said, ‘Is there a TV in this joint?’ as you walked in.”

I paused and thought about telling her about the cucumber sandwiches, how lousy the cousins thought them, and also the card game. Instead, I looked past Geri towards Dad again, but he was unpacking large bales of tobacco by the river. I wanted to tell her that Dad was playing cards with her, she was all of twelve or thirteen, and she was F’ing and blinding as she kept losing with each hand.

Then I thought not.

Geri needed to get some cigarettes from in town and we started walking, or rather she walked while pushing me on my bike, with me still backwards on the seat, and I thought we would veer off and I would fall but she held the back wheel and the handlebars and kept pushing firmly.

I was conscious of her white shirt close up, her breasts ample beneath. I wanted her to stop but then suddenly Geri stood back and pulled out a cigarette, ready to light it.

Dad was still behind her, him and his friend shaking the leaves from their clear plastic wrap. The leaves fell, wrinkled and brown, large and loose, from the wrapping into the water. And I thought I would be cool, because I too smoked the occasional cigarette, that I’d do the same.

I looked in my bicycle pouch and there was only one cigarette left, it was one of the long ones, the 100’s, and it was slightly bent and cracked. I took it out and held it to my lips then I leant towards Geri to light hers first, but hers was even more cracked than mine, and the paper barely held in the tobacco, I could see the brown of it poking through the slits.

And I could not see how to light it without the thing falling apart.

Cucumber image by Kai Reschke from Pixabay
Bikes by Barry MacHale via Flickr

June 16, 2023June 17, 2023

Two Women, One a Smoker the Other a Drinker

I am in a bar with two couples some years younger than me, maybe in their twenties. They are hooked up already, one couple, one side of the booth, the other couple opposite; with me sitting on a chair, next to the second couple.

I fancy the platinum blonde with the long curly hair and would like to go out with her, especially now they talk about swapping partners.

She’s a drinker rather than a smoker, whereas as the other woman, her hair straight, shoulder length and dark copper, she smokes but does not drink.

They are all going to another bar, one that is a bit rough and dark, they say, even though it is raining outside. And when they get up to leave, the smoker pulls out a large green golf umbrella and I think to get mine too. Only I have to hurry back to my flat to get it.

I leave the couples waiting at the entrance, and on my way to my flat I call Ricky G to describe what’s going on and which woman I should hook up with.

Then on my return I pass by the White Resort, pass through the side alley where all the workers bustle about, behind the view of the patrons. To my right are the tall white columns of the front entrance, and as I walk side by side with a Hispanic worker wearing the white tunic from the resort, the alley gets darker. I explain to him that I am going to the rougher part of town, a black neighborhood where it isn’t so safe.

And then upon my return I see the couples are still waiting for me by the old bar. The blonde sees me, holds in one hand a flagon half filled with red wine, holds it up with a finger hooked through a small circular handle at the neck of the bottle.

“You have the same umbrella!” she says and indeed I have the same matching dark green golf umbrella.

The smoker peels off. “I have to get something first,” she says. And I suggest to go with her, because it is not safe.

Her hair is darker than I first thought and I go with her to a local supermarket, black owned, with dark wood paneling and an empty feel.

I follow her in as she walks through empty aisles with low wooden counters that would normally have goods for sale; until she arrives in a new room, at a corner where a black man closes in on her. The man hems her in between a brown wooden counter that lines the wall and another counter that stretches out perpendicular.

I see him adjust his shoes so that she cannot move, so that he can further close in on her.

I think he is going to threaten her but then she turns away from him where, the other side of the counter, sits another black man on a stool. He’s older with a greying Afro.

And in the bright voice of recognition she cries out to him. “Hello!”

Photo by Shima Abedinzade on Pixabay

May 5, 2023June 17, 2023

Cheerleaders for the New Guy, Join the Fun!

The office’s older parts of the building, red orange stone arches and brick walls interplay with modern smoky blue grey glass facades, overlooking green rolling hills. I am at a new place of work, or a new company or a company that acquired us.

And I have a desk in Lesley’s office at the end of the building, only she does not look like Lesley. She is sporting a brown, almost bronzed, bob.

They need to reassign me as the location is temporary.

When one man comes in, and hangs out in an alcove formed by the stone arch in our office, and starts smoking a cigarette, I realize it is probably time to move on.

Another man has also been promoted and they are reallocating spaces. Outside on a grassy knoll there is a whole fanfare for him. I walk out to where a group of workers are gathered, and in the center of the circle, is one of the higher-ups.

She is dancing like a cheerleader with angular thrusts of hips and high energy fist pumps to welcome the new recruit to management. She is dressed in a gold bodysuit which spangles against a clear blue sky backdrop.

I could never get that enthusiastic about work. It must be exhausting.

Behind both her and the gathering, a few young men in aqua colored tunics who were going to a football game, join in.

They have plastic water spray bottles in their hands. They make a dance out of the sprayers, fist pumping them too.

“I come from a foreign state,” I explain, “so I never understood what you guys do.”

The jocks choreograph claps and sprays from their bottles. Their tunics remind me of the car wash guys over on Connecticut. Then one of the jocks aims his sprayer at me, and jets water at my hair.

Instead of joining the hoopla, I try to get my new place aligned. One of the watching crowd tells me to ask HR or building facilities, but I cannot use some-one’s influence.

“I shared an office,” I start to explain, but then I cannot remember Lesley’s name. Was it Pamela or Nicole?

How can I get an office if I cannot even remember who I shared the previous one with?

“No, you will not be able to get an office.”

“Well I need a window seat, next to a window. Bright sun.”

One of the jocks pulls out a silver pointer from his back pocket, then he points it south to show the best sun facing location.

“Yes, we may have something for you!” he shrieks.

“But it needs to have sun,” I repeat. Then I add hopefully, “and be a window seat.”

Main photo by Conrad Poirier, pioneer of photojournalism in Quebec, via Picryl. Miracle sign photo by Dayna Bateman via Flickr.