Wherever I May Roam
I'm smoking Parliament Lights because my bodega ran out of Camels and I was too tired and hot to go elsewhere. Not that I'm complaining (really) about the heat, mind you. I ran out of Camels because I was sitting outside at my coffee place and a woman in a black nylon and spandex body suit came and sat down next to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her eyeing me over the straw sticking out of her ice cold lemonade. I knew she'd strike up a conversation any second.
3-2-1.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" She asked.
"Not at all. I smoke too." I said.
"Do you have a cigarette?" she asked.
Tricked!
So I gave her one of the three Camels I had left and lit it for her. Her long hair was dyed vampy red and needed a good V05 Hot-Oil Treatment. Or two. She was clearly in her late fifties and not happy about it. Also, something was wrong with the left side of her nose. Her nose was half Michael Jacksoned.
"You always have to ask these days if people mind you smoking," she said. "Even when you're outside. That Bloomberg. Soon we won't be able to smoke in our own houses. Well, at least I'm polite. People get so angry about smoking."
She placed a well-manicured hand to her lip-penciled mouth and inhaled deeply. Smoke came pouring out of her nose hole. "I work for lawyers," she continued. "About 750 of them. They had a party recently over on 56th and Sutton Place. So I walk in and in the middle of the room there's a big glass salad bowl and it's filled with coke."
She looked at me then to make sure I knew what she was talking about. "I mean coke."
"Gotcha," I winked.
"So everybody's snorting the coke all huddled around the bowl. I light up a cigarette and they all freak out and tell me I can't smoke in there. Can you believe that?"
When I laughed she said, "Yeah. I knew you'd like that one."
Shortly after she left another woman came and sat down in her place. By that time, I'd opened my book and was smoking and reading.
"Can I bother you for a cigarette?" the new girl asked. "I'm sorry. You know, I always get PMS a couple of days before my period, but I've had an awful case of it for ten days. I am seriously about to kill someone."
I handed her my last smoke.
That's when I headed to the store on my way home to buy a pack of Camel Lights, which, as I said, they'd run out of. So I bought Parliaments without really thinking about it. Then as I was walking home, I thought of an old college friend Nicole whom I haven't seen in years. I think she lives in L.A. now. Nicole used to buy Parliaments because no one smoked Parliaments and she thought that if she smoked them, no one would bum cigarettes off of her. I was always bumming cigarettes off of her.
We'd drive off campus into the tiny Vermont town to Smoker's Den to purchase cartons of Parliaments and Camels with our measly work-study salary and to peruse the tattoo magazines. We'd buckle up in White Lightning, her rusty mustang, careening over the highway and the hills, the mountains all around us, banging our heads to what now seems like our endless soundtrack. "Sliver" by Nirvana, Black Sabbath's "N.I.B", "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica and all of the "Electric" album by The Cult. Then we'd stop at Tastee-Freez on Route 7 and sit at the picnic tables licking our soft-serve watching the cute townie boys drive by in their monster trucks.
So the store ran out of my brand of cigarettes, but as it turns out, I'm smoking this Parliament for Nicole. And, no. You can't have one.
