Flavor Country City

"If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you're alone or with friends, it's a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper? I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth." - Luis Bunuel

"A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is quite exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?" - Oscar Wilde

My first drag from a cigarette was taken over Christmas vacation when I was in 5th grade. It was late one night while sleeping over at my childhood friend Mason's house after spending the day sledding in his backyard, one of those rocky, slushy slopes common to northern Massachusetts McMansions. I'd brought a VHS copy of Animal House over to watch that night, a coveted R-rated movie during which my friend dozed off about halfway through.

Sidebar: Animal House is a fine illustration of one of those great secret childhood fallacies: if the movie is "old", every parent assumes it must be okay to watch. "Oh man, the fools!" we'd snicker in glee. "This movie's got swears and boobs!" High five.

As the film ended, I looked around to discover Mason fast asleep on the couch, his older brother Spencer lurking about the darkness of the house's main floor. His brother, a beefy Wiccan who would spend his teen years in and out of court for motor vehicle and marijuana offences, had appeared downstairs to fish half-smoked cigarettes from the ashtrays peppering the room's limpid southwestern motif. Mason's mother and father smoked Marlboro lights, and how they never found it odd that the house ashtrays were magically emptying themselves each night gave me pause even then. In elementary school, it's a special thing to be spoken to like a normal person by your friend's older brother, so his invitation to "have a puff" from his mom's sooty, lipstick-smeared cigarette butt was accepted with less trepidation than such an offer would normally spark. Pursing my lips around the filter, I blew out, and Spencer laughed.

To this day, the phrase "puffing a cigarette" makes no sense to me. If someone is asked to puff their cheeks, they blow air out. Puffy jackets, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, all things that have an inference of expansion about them. Huffing may be inhalation, but puffing is most definitely exhalation.

Once the whole sucking part of smoking was explained, I "puffed" correctly, and hated it. Really hated it. It tasted, well, like my best friend's mother, and I didn't touch another cigarette until I was 16 years old. I've come to adore cigarettes much since that second try, instead hating the mere fact that I smoke. Liberal application of the flawed logic that if a person is aware of a problem, they're not still somehow contributing to it is true of teenagers aplenty, but I'm not a teenager anymore. Instead, I'm simply young and bullet proof and untouchable and will never die from anything, ever. Variety is the spice of vice. I need a cigarette.