THE SMELLY ZONE

Alas, I have no idea what the rabid old rightwing rattlesnakes think about the Epstein thing, because the subcontinental derailed that by talking about Gavin Newsom instead, and got them riled up on the wrong track. Also, I avoided them. It reeks back there. I am not paid enough to deal with the stench of moral rot. Even one Republican would be horrendous. There were five of them. To the best of my knowledge they are all married.
Some women have no sense of smell.

Which I've noticed at times about my apartment mate. She dislikes smoking, yet does not notice If I lit up a bowl half an hour before she comes home. I doubt that it's because she's Chinese American. While many of them have relatives who still smoke, and some of them are the relative that still smokes, to the best of my knowledge she has no smoking kinfolk, and doesn't habitually hang around with smokers.

[Well, other than me, of course. And I smell bad to her mostly because I'm white. Seeing as she can't smell some things at all. Stealth tobaccos smoked late at night in the teevee room. Especially if her door is semi-shut, almost closed.]

Personally, I find the fragrance of good Virginia leaf smoked in a pipe quite comforting and home-like. One of those old fashioned smells that awaken memories.

Smells like the old days. You know, son, back in Burma .....
Yeah, don't mind me. I've got a rich inner life.

Although I do have to be careful in the morning when I'm in the bathroom. "Toad, are you SMOKING in there?" she might holler, based on olfactory evidence from the open kitchen window on the airwell. Whereupon I will lie and say "no, of course not".

It's probably someone next door.
Trust me.


It doesn't often smell of Burma here. Even though aged Virginias were keenly appreciated by trim scholarly civil servants posted to the edge of the distant jungle (it comforted them during the long hours of stultifying boredom in the tropic heat), I seldom smoke my pipes inside the apartment, and always with the windows open, no matter the freezing cold. Usually it will be outside pissing off the white Karens from half a block away or across the street. It's almost always white women who find the imagined smell of a pipe offensive.
Probably because it smells like the jungle's edge.
Or like something English.
Foreign.


I've already got the pipes I will smoke tomorrow set aside. Nice old briars, made in Ireland. All of them are stamped 'Dublin & London'. Which tells you their age. Some Fribourg & Treyer Cut Blended Plug. Goes very well with tea. Fruity carotenoids.
Some women might like it.



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