Now you’re home and the thing is more or less safely in your possession, in your bedroom, right there on your bed. You didn’t have much time to think when you bought ‘em but here’s what you chose: Camels, unfiltered. Camels because there’s something about them, the pyramid on the front, the letters. Not like Winstons or Kents. Unfiltered because why would you to let anything come between you and this experience?
When to smoke was another problem. You couldn’t light up in your room, blow it out your window. For sure they’d know. You know someday you’ll take them to a friend’s house and share them in the woods, something like that. But you want one now. It’s snowing outside, piling up.
You offer to shovel the back porch and the stairs down to the yard. Mom’s a bit surprised, but pleased. And in the glow of her gratitude, almost as though she gave her blessing, you bring out a pack of matches and a cigarette. You hold them in the bottom of the pocket of your coat, not afraid they’ll fly away really but just wanting to hold them. To feel the pulse of their illicit power in your hand.
Outside you shovel, shovel, shovel, long enough to establish that you’re really shoveling and then you stop. Down a step or three on the stairs, mostly out of view. You pull one out and put it between your lips and take out the matches, tremblingly, and make two false starts before a spark flies and the thing is lit, and you protect the nascent flame, you bring it to the tip, and draw in the fire then the smoke. Glorious, sweet, poisonous smoke. You discard the match and it hisses in the snow.