INNOCENT, INNOCENT

My apartment mate seems a little grumpy because the lengthy break-up with 'Wheelie Boy' (her 'boyfriend') is nearing completion. She no longer wants to deal with him and his bizarre personality over the phone, she's tired, her door is snecked firmly shut. Okay, I sympathize. It's been what? Five months?
A soft and gradual disengagement.
Big. Hairy. Deal.

This pipeful of blonde Virginia that I'm smoking will be over soon too. And is infinitely more lamentworthy. Sympathy for him, for her, and their operatic split, is not something I'm good at.


I have been a single grumpus for nearly eight years. Oh sure, I'd really love someone nice and soft and warm next to me while I doze, or even a nearly naked person flitting in and out of my room when my apartment mate is off at the salt mines, but this is San Francisco, and most candidates are too eccentric to be realistic possibilities.

Mental checklist: Do they like porkchops? Do they not mind tobacco too much? Do they like warm beverages which aren't Starbucks, and don't have weird tapioca things? Do they read? Are they okay with Dutch and Cantonese language comments / outbursts / snide remarks?

Well, that leaves nearly nobody.


Vegans and the gluten-phobics can find their own damned vegetable to hug. This rutabaga is stolidly not interested. The closest I've come to other female companionship in recent months is casually commenting on the inebriated conversation of two darling black lesbians exchanging tales of their church-going relatives. Having lived around severe Calvinists telling me I'd go to hell, I can sort of relate. Minus the fried chicken and grits.
With or without hot sauce or creamy ranch dressing.
Severe Calvinists don't eat that stuff.
They disapprove.


This Orlik Golden Sliced is seriously good. There is a subtle sweetness, and an old-timey perfume to the smoke. It's rather like having a wife or girlfriend, but different.


It's nearly three in the morning, and I'm sorry, but it's effing cold outside, so smoking on the front steps is out of the question. Good thing your bedroom door is shut. I'm enjoying a late night smoke while sipping "Old-Syphilitic Bastard" Scotch, and listening to the silence. Three hour nap, the briar that's associated with the intersection in between several places that do good porkchops in Chinatown, and two days off.
My life is by no means perfect.
But it's good.

["Old Syphilitic Bastard Scotch": Loch Seann Phogan Losgadh ('Uisge Beatha').
Cheap Scotch whisky. Peaty fire-water. Paint stripper. Plonkum.]


My apartment mate neither drinks nor smokes.
This is not objectionable.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================