A COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO PLEASURE

People obsess over all kinds of things. And pipe smokers are, of course, more obsessive than most. I often tell people who are new to the field that if they weren't neurotic before, they will be soon. Minutiae such as packing, lighting, tamping, degree of moisture in the tobacco for optimum pleasure, company not to keep when enjoying the finest mixtures ......
Certainly my friend the bookseller has heard me gibber often enough about such subjects, which I have recompensed by patiently listening, Sigmund-Freud-like, to him talking on and on and on about baseball.
Lord knows baseball is boring and insane.
Hit ball, run around.
Yay.

Or NOT hit ball, run around anyway.
Yay also.


My apartment mate occasionally obsesses over cake. She recently bought a strawberry Swiss-roll. And was wondering what it would taste like with butter ice cream melting into it. Seriously, I worry about that girl.
Such excessive appetites!

I am far more Spartan (downright Puritanical) in my tastes, and consequently I am gloat over an entirely different thing.
A squat bulldog, Comoy shape 331.

Here is an illustration I lifted from Smokingpipes.com

Well gosh darn, isn't that just a gorgeous pipe shape? Comoy's always had the best designs. The one that has recently entered my collection does not have two-tone finish like the example pictured above, being more of a waxed dark-natural hue, and like many Comoy pipes it has someone else's shop-stamping (they did that a lot between the thirties and seventies), but it has not a single fill, and the briar is good old wood.

It is the second example I have acquired in the last decade or so. A rare and beautiful shape, pretty much the very piss-elegant paradigm of squat bulldogs. Yes, I had to re-cut the mouthpiece, because the previous repair dude did a piss-poor job of matching it to the bowl -- not unusual, but this was a particularly loathsome attempt -- and I've already smoked it a few times with a lovely Virginia-Perique blend of my own devising.
But I will continue to gloat over this shape.
Yay me, a Comoy shape 331.
Yay again.



Cake and baseball, good grief. Sometimes I just cannot understand other people. Shapes make sense. Shapes are what life is all about. Shapes are something you can hold. Whereas baseball and cake are far too soon exhausted, and do not lead to any lasting pleasure.
Or gloating. Gloat gloat gloat!




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IT STICKS OUT AT A JAUNTY ANGLE!

All over San Francisco today crowds of people dressed like Santa roved around, having congress with each other, lamp posts, and run-away housepets. They did this because they craved the attention they did not get at home, baby it's cold outside, and Santa Con. There were also fratboys getting into the spirit by wearing Santa or Elf hats, and either normal autumn gear or nothing at all.

As was to be expected I bailed out of the city early, and left the civilians to their own devices. Yes, conceivably cans of Raid were used, and umbrellas wielded, to keep the frenzied crowd of at bay.

A festive time was had by all.

Bah, humbug.


Marin is actually kind of beautiful in the rain.

Long lines of traffic moving at a gravid pace, sheets coming down, grey fog over the hills behind Mill Valley, and only the rare stumbling drunk. Perfect weather for pipe-smoking indoors, while the world swirls slowly around the building. I had four bowls-full. With buckets of tea. While ignoring the cigar smokers, one of whom looks like an evil elf. There are also the foul-mouthed bad-tempered leprechaun, and the sexually deviant gnome (I'm just assuming his peculiarity, he just seems a ripe degenerate).

I am, as you expect, presently at home in the television room. There are sounds of revelry outside; the festivities are barely started, there is still an entire night of drunken outrage ahead. I passed two naked people and someone with red body paint and a gold Lamé bikini on the way in.

Polk Street is a venue for intemperate carryings-on.

[IMAGE SOURCE: G. L. Pease.]

I think in a short while I shall head out to a nice quiet cigar bar to enjoy a bowl or two and a glass of whiskey. Two bulldog pipes and a pouch of aged Virginia leaves.

Very sporty briars, though restrained and old-fashioned.
A thoughtful tobacco blend for civilized people.
One or two of whom might be present.


Unfortunately they don't know jack from tea there. Stale coffee, yes, and I have become quite the connoisseur of that beverage. But not a teapot on site. Which is not right; I'll have to speak to them about that.

TOBACCO INDEX


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ALL THE WEIRDOS HAVE NAMES

As long as my apartment mate and I have lived here, the stuffed animals (hereinafter referred to as "the roomies") have had their own voices. They probably spoke before, but if Savage Kitten (the aforementioned apartment mate) is not around, they are silent. Mostly so.


MS. BRUIN

Five years ago, Savage Kitten and I ceased to be a couple, and became just friends. The roomies were, in their own way, supportive. When Savage Kitten went through a tough period with her new beau ("Wheelie Boy"), the chief roomie -- a valiant and wise teddy bear -- became violently inclined, and was forced to take a sabbatical, during which time the she-sheep (Angus) took over her duties. The roomies sympathised with all three of them, but fell short of co-conspiring to whack the brute.
It was an interesting time.

The guy in the wheelchair had no friends among the roomies.
Still doesn't; they don't want to meet him.
He's not their type.

[Ms. Bruin wished to lure Wheelie Boy with a trail of Swedish Princess Cake down to the pier, where just one small push would topple him into the bay. She thought the plan was failsafe, and it purely was my selfishness over the funds required that nixed that plot. Damn me!
I occassionally bring that up, because the idea does have a certain charm. That, along with giving his wheelchair a good shove down California Street, so that he becomes airborne.
But I am a man of peace, and would never do something like that.]

It's probably just as well that Ms. Bruin never did succeed in offing the sap, as Savage Kitten and Wheelie Boy got back together. And broke up again. And made peace and resumed their relationship. Then had a falling out of several months. And started dating again. Fought. Separated. Reunited.


TYRONE THIBBET

A few months after that, Miss Purr (aka 'Stormee') and Mr. Tyrone Thibbet (the froad) broke up, over the very forward attentions of Louise the Cow, which Mr. Thibbet did nothing to discourage. Sometime later the froad started acting threatening toward the one legged monkey, Urasmus Wazzoo. Who is not, strictly speaking, responsible for what he says.
He has a rich inner life, and is by no means reality-reliant.


Well, neither is the froad.


When I came home this evening, Tyrone was perched on my bed, proudly striking poses with one of my favourite pipes. That being a handsome quarter bent Peterson bulldog with a silver band, nice and squat.
Apparently he is now the famous detective, Sherlock Froad.
That's MY pipe, you green weirdo!
Mine!


The other day I had a panic attack in the morning before leaving for work, because the little black kitty had "found it". Meaning she stole the wallet, and was sitting upon it looking studiously innocent. Naturally I called her names. This was after my apartment mate had left for the day, so the kitty did not say anything, but just glared at me.
She has, at times, called me cruel and unusual.
Manifestly a weirdo.

I came home that evening to find her and the head sheep together manning a machine-gun emplacement on the northwest corner of my bed, with the fearsome weapon pointed directly at where my head should be.

Both Gigi (feline) and Snidely (ovine) have it in for me.
And now the froad is "borrowing" my stuff.
Which magically becomes his.
I feel threatened.


At some point, when the froad is asleep, I shall repossess my Peterson pipe, and head out for a quiet smoke, in a peaceful environment.

Surrounded by cigar smokers shrieking and carrying on.

Peaceful, I say, and quiet.

No weirdos!




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PARENTAL INFLUENCE

As a young man growing up, I was distinctly odd compared to my peers. Which was entirely without my planning, it just happened. Most young men living in Valkenswaard in that day and age were not reading Nabokov, Bunyan, Voltaire, or Simenon. If anything, they read adventure comics, Asterix & Obelix, and Multatuli, in addition to the sports pages and mechanical handbooks.

[Nabokov because of the elegant prose and refined depravity, Bunyan because of Blake's stellar illustrations, Voltaire because there was a naked breast on the cover of a paperback edition, and Simenon because of the frequent evocative mentions of food and mood.]


I also ended up smoking a pipe. Many teenagers will experiment with such a thing, but I went about it quite by accident. There was a beautiful item in the window of the local tobacconist, which I only purchased because it looked so nice. I was thirteen at the time.
Several weeks later, when I had turned fourteen, I bought some tobacco to smoke in it, thinking that owning a piece of smoking equipment without anything to burn therein was rather silly. It took me about two months of secret burl-fondling to come to that staggering conclusion.

Several months after that the cat discovered my equipment and the jig was up. When I came home, my mother gave me a stern lecture about how smoking causes lung cancer, kidney disease, esophageal scarring, shrunken testicles, slope brows, bad breath, gum and tooth decay, inflamed pustules on the privates, baldness, and severe social damage. She laid it on thick, using all the medical terminology at her command.
Given that one of her favourite books was the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, her command was immense. I had read much of that book too, so I knew what she was talking about.

And, because she chainsmoked three Kent Filter Kings during the speech, none of it sunk in.

Then she handed me over to my father, a former pipe-smoker, who lowered his newspaper, disdainfully held up my half-finished tin of 'Scottish Mixture' (fine Cavendish and Heather Honey with a touch of whisky), and informed me: "son, good pipe tobacco does NOT smell like a Turkish cat house, please smoke clean stuff".

All I heard was "please smoke".
So I did.

I had bought a pouch of Voortrekker that afternoon.
Clean stuff; I was in the clear.


PLEASE SMOKE!

In the last few months that I lived in Valkenswaard, my father went to London for ten days, leaving me more than enough money for necessary household expenses and a few small indulgences, an unlocked liquor cabinet, and an empty house, because my brother studying in Tilburg would not return home for several weeks.

This was too good an opportunity to miss!

Empty house! No one to cramp my style! Unlimited freedom!

Huzzah!


No sooner had the VW beetle disappeared from sight down the alley than I raced upstairs to his desk in the hayloft, went directly to the second drawer, and pulled out his box of pipes. Filled the Comoy Blue Riband squat bulldog with Balkan Sobranie, and lit up.

Ten whole days!

His pipes were so much nicer than mine. And they had a special smell.
He had only smoked clean stuff in them.


No, I didn't touch the liquor cabinet, nor did I bring home women.
At that age I had no idea how to approach the female of the species (they still confuse me), and I wouldn't have had quite the confidence to pull it off. But I smoked heaps of Balkan Sobranie (a necessary household expense if ever there was one), drank buckets of strong coffee, and re-read Nabokov, Simenon, and Pilgrim's Progress.

I regret that last one.
It's rather dreary.


Other young men by that time were reading Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, and several of them had girlfriends. But, as they did not have Balkan Sobranie, an empty house, tons of coffee, and a fevered imagination, I did not envy them.
The old Balkan Sobranie mixture has not existed since the early eighties when Redstone sold out. But the imagination is more feverishly toxic than ever before.

Caffeinated beverages are (still) excellent.

I have become a man of sober habits.
Yes, it surprises me too.


Let's call it 'maturity'.

TOBACCO INDEX


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