SITTING THERE QUIETLY MUTTERING "OOP ACK" TO HIMSELF

Everything got done that needed doing today, never-the-less I feel a sense of accomplishment quite lacking. As well as the deeply rooted need to light up a pipe, which, being at home at this hour, I cannot do.
The old friend with whom I share digs is due home soon, and she is rather opposed to tobacco smoke; necessarily I let the place air out for several hours in the afternoons of my weekend, which falls on weekdays. She works a regular schedule, so her and my free time only overlap in the evening.

Tea, of course, is always an option.
Strong tea with milk and sugar.

I think it will merely fuel my lament over my lost youth. What with being a bachelor, and having not felt the touch of a woman for over five years.
Oh woe is me and all the rest of that bullsh*t.
Somebody really ought to slap me.
Before I start wailing.



Which, if you think about it, is insane. Women cannot bring happiness. Certainly not the unpleasant office bitches earlier on the bus, with their sense of white middle class entitlement.

Perhaps I should stop taking the Number One California line home after eating a late lunch in Chinatown.

I would walk, but the hill is somewhat daunting.



The pipe I sorely wish to smoke right now is a black sandblasted stack Dunhill, group 5, which I bought over two decades ago, before I met Savage Kitten. Savage Kitten never did like the smell of smoking, and it's more than a little ironic that despite her keen distaste we have continued to live together in the more than half decade since we broke up.
No, my tobacco habit was not a factor.

There is no need for me to detail what the causes of the break-up were, NOR to explain why despite all that we still share an apartment.
Nor, for that matter, why I put up with a non-smoker.

It works. That is all anyone needs to know.

I do rather miss the San Francisco that used to be before we met, however, when you could walk down the street with a fine briar jutting out of your jaw and no one would say anything.

In that day the air in the Caffè Trieste or the Caffè Puccini was usually blue with smoke, and the concept of pairing a mid-evening Cappucino with a pipeful of aged Virginia flake would not require one to stand out in the cold with the importunists and crazies.
Sadly, the Occidental does not serve espresso drinks, and Madame Shrekzilla has the counter on Monday and Tuesday evening.
So going there is out of the question.


I'm looking at a tin of Orlik Golden Sliced right now. It lies on top of a stack of books near where I sit, and beckons most powerfully. As yet unopened, so the imagined taste in my mouth is all to go by. A nice flue-cured tobacco blend pressed into thin slices that break apart nicely, and provide a slow sweet smoke which is ideal for Autumn evenings. Such as right now.
Tangy, with a grass-like or floral echo, and profoundly satisfying.
I've never smoked it in the Dunhill at my other eye.
It would probably be very nice indeed.
With a double espresso.
Indoors.


Pipes look rather dashing.
Distinguished, even.










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