The ticket window was on the side wall of a head shop in an old Victorian in the sad little town between us and the city. My mom dropped me off there to wait in the freezing cold for spring tour tickets. Sweet coffee in a dented thermos. Camel unfiltereds snuck in my coat pocket. Just putting my hand in there would make it reek of that dark, sweet perfume, Turkish and domestic blend. But my mom didn’t know. Or she did.

The line snaked back into the dirt parking lot behind the building, filled with beaters and VW buses. It became amorphous there, people playing hacky-sack or huddled in little circles to get high. I sat on the embankment by the wall and watched. Someone blared a live tape circa 1979, “He’s Gone.”

A Deadhead invited me into his car, a beat-up old boat, to warm up and smoke a joint. He put on Neil Young, “Down by the River.” I’d never heard it before and it took a hold of my brain, that da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da on the guitar and the refrain, which I didn’t understand at first but then I understood and then misunderstood again, in circles and circles, shudder day, shutter day, shotty day, shut her day, shot her dead, shut a day, shudder day.

Adventures in Smoking, pt. 3

When we got sick of playing guitar Jeff and I would walk out to the dike between the airport and the reservoir. Watch the planes come in. Little ones—Cessnas—turning in big, wobbly arcs around the water and over our heads to land. Some higher, some lower, some so low you could almost touch. I remember one swooped down below us, pulled up just in time to buzz our heads, trying to scare us, and it did. And we smoked.

We drank if we had anything to drink, and we smoked pot when we had it, but we smoked all the time.

Back at his house we smoked between tunes. I would light one up and stick it between the strings and the headstock, then play, letting ashes fall wherever. Jeff had a burn mark there on his. We’d take a break and sit cross-legged around the ashtray and listen to his hissy tape of Starlight Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri, August 3rd, 1982. Franklin’s Tower. To Lay Me Down.

Adventures in Smoking pt. 2

A cigarette machine was magic because maybe you could sneak away from Mom and Dad just long enough to plonk in three quarters, pull that plastic puller and hear the whoosh of the cellophaned pack shooting down the chute to land right there for the taking by your illegal, little hands. You’d grab it furtively, looking over your shoulder, and tuck it in the waist of your pants, above your cock, so your shirt would drop down to hide the bulge.

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.

Adventures in Smoking pt. 1

Across the pub the green sloped down gently and there were benches where you could bring your pint, and possibly a little pond. My sister and brother-in-law sat there with theirs as I approached with my shandy. He wore his biker leather jacket and lit a cigarette.

“Here. You want to try it?” he said. Like a father offering his baby a new food.

I took it between my fingers, by the filter, like I knew I was to do. I drew in the smoke, cautious but determined. I was proud to see the ember glow, and then to see it dim, all by my doing; to exhale the smoke that had been in my body back out into the air.