A SPLENDID EXAMPLE

My apartment mate has called in sick and is staying home today. Which means that I cannot happily smoke up a storm in the television room while cruising the internet, enjoying my first pipe within ten minutes of pouring coffee, lazily puffing resinous whisps into the crisp air. It is crisp because the heating is on the fritz. Traditionally I keep the windows open and her room door shut while doing this. Too crisp, perhaps.

This is, as you would imagine, a sabot in the oiled machinery of my day off.

But on the other hand, sometimes a woman just needs to stay home, dozing in a warm bed with her Teddy Bear. Rather than heading down into the maelstrom of the city to spend many hours in a badly ventilated institutional building surrounded by glib shop-a-holic Filipinas and fellow Aspy Chinese.
None of whom I have met, but after several years can imagine.
She's in her room with her Teddy Bear and the roomies.
It is quiet in the apartment.

Glib shop-a-holic Filipinas can seriously frazzle nerves. I have worked with them in the past. They are alive, they are vibrant, they are vivacious (alternating with bitchy), they are always in taga-shopping mode, and they are superficial, with a tendency towards snootery and brashness.
And, like Imelda, they are predators.



Unfortunately, a sick day, in most people's minds, hardly ever includes a pipe smoking Dutchman in another room. Oh, his presence is okay, even though he is not a particularly social sort and likely to say something goofy at some point, or argue with one of the stuffed animals, but the pipe is a problem.
And, even if there is no respiratory ailment -- it is that time of year when coughs and aches are common -- the fragrance of fermented dead leaves slowly combusting in a briar may not be everyone's cup of tea. Not quite as comforting an odour to everyone else as it is to the Dutchman.

So the Dutchman will not light up indoors today.
The Dutchman wishes to be considerate.


What this city really needs is a holding tank for Dutchmen. Someplace warm and quiet, with reading material, where a cup of tea may be had, and there are pastries. Where a discreet pipe-full of aged Virginia leaf with a touch of Perique and Fire-cured will not disturb whoever else is there.

If we're out on the street, we are a fine example to the easily impressionable children, who will be awed by how impossibly cool and with-it we look, with our calmness, debonair attitude, elegant smoking equipment, and lumpy clothing holding in pockets of stale air.

"How hip", they will say, "when I grow up I wanna be just like that".

It's for the public good that you chase us back inside.
I'm thinking of the children.


"How hip! I wanna be just like that."


I am looking forward to the first pipe of the day. Sometime around late afternoon or early evening, probably near the intersection of Clay and Stockton or Clay and Waverly.

In the rain.

TOBACCO INDEX


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