UNDERWEAR WEATHER

When I got back to the city it was still well over ninety, in Marin it had gone past one hundred. And somewhere, a pipe smoker whom I know has had a shower, followed by ice cream, and is now guzzling a tall cold beer. With either a Weber pipe or a Savinelli from forty years ago. Another pipe smoker elsewhere is being supercillious while enjoying his home bar (a pervert who likes tobacco that smells like a cheese custard Danish, the sicko). I myself just spent a while on the landing of the back airwell stairs in my underwear. I'm pretty certain no one could see me.

Thirty years ago this heat would not have fazed me one bit. Now I find myself blaming the Republicans and streetpeople, plus various other crazies, for this state of affairs.
This heat is outrageous! I must write an angry letter to the editor!


I know about A.R.'s pipes because I buffed his stems today. They had over time oxidized a bit. Now they look splendid again. Lovely pipes.


Normally I do not ponce around in my underwear unless there are more garments on top of them, which there were during most of the day. But that changed remarkably once I was home. I suspect that all over the city there are pipe smokers in their underwear sitting on the back landing or the front steps or out near the compost heap at the far end of their yards because their wives or husbands or health freak children don't let them smoke inside.

Not that it would make any difference, as most of us here lack airconditioning.

You cannot smoke in parks in San Francisco, but poncing around in your underwear there is fine. So, by the way, is shooting up or smoking crack. Which Is how many non-pipemokers cope with the heat.

In the years since enjoying tobacco products in public was made problematic, shooting up and smoking crack have skyrocketed. For which I'm blaming the healthfreaks. As well as, on principle, republicans. The wide-spread availability of illicit substances is due, entirely, to capitalism, pure and simple.

You'd think that there would be airconditioned places where one could smoke one's pipe and have a cup of tea, but unlike drug addicts we're not a large enough demographic. There are three to five marijuana dispensaries within easy walking distance, and several times that number of bars, so druggies and alcoholics are quite profitably taken care of, but pipe smokers are relegated to underwear and compost heaps. A sad and unfair situation!

I heard my apartment mate from her room saying that it was too hot to sleep.
And she's not even a pipesmoker, so she shouldn't complain.



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