Smoky daydream

In my daydreams, I drift back a decade or two, and picture a warm day in late spring, early afternoon. I sit upon a bench, enjoying the perfume of the flowers and the chirping of the birds.

She drifts into my view, lovely in Jordache jeans and golden hair sparkling in the sunshine. She sits upon my bench.

Nobody has cell phones in this bygone age, so instead, she just joins me in enjoying the sounds of the park – kids laughing in the distance, the barking of a dog.

Then from her purse, she extracts a little box – her cigarettes. She shakes one loose with her lips against the pack.

She is not going to ask my permission. No more than she would if she were taking out a piece of gum to chew. This is 1983. Few people care.

With a cheap pink plastic lighter, she sparks a flame to the tip of her cigarette and inhales deeply. I contemplate her craving and the relief that spills through her as nicotine floods her body. The cigarette arches upward in her lips as they squeeze the filter. The narrow ember glows like a blacksmith’s coal and grows into a pretty little cherry of fire.

I hear the soft pop as she pulls the cigarette from her lips and seals them shut with a ball of smoke snuggled inside. I imagine it dancing around her teeth and tickling her tongue before her hungry lungs drag it down.

She holds it inside her as long as she can for maximum effect, then parts her lips and expels a cloud of smoke thicker than London fog. I inhale as a bit of breeze blows it fully into my face – sweet, rich, intoxicating, a moment ago inside her, pleasuring her, now mine to savor. I inhale fiercely until she finishes exhaling and I hold her secondhand smoke inside me until I begin to see stars, not wanting to let it go, ever.

She is watching some kid off to the left of us, now, out on the swingset, maybe her little brother, and so her pretty lips face me and her next exhale is so close and so perfectly, if absently, directed, that I can feel it hitting my face, as if she were a child and I were a dandelion from which she wanted to blow the seeds. The smoke couldn’t be any thicker, any richer, any more potent, if I had her cigarette to my own lips.

She is so beautiful, from the curve of her face to the curves of her womanly body. I feel a positive hatred for the college clods that she must be wasting her time dating – clueless, overgrown adolescents with no realization that they are in the presence of a goddess.

She flicks off a bit of ash and it lands upon my knuckle gripping the edge of the bench. It stings for a moment as it cools. But she does not seem to notice. She is becoming agitated.

“He’s gonna hurt himself,” she says. She suddenly seems to notice me for the first time. She takes a quick but deep drag from her cigarette and blows it in my face as she asks,
“Sir, can you please hold my cigarette a second?”

Of course I agree and our hands touch briefly as I take from her the precious little half-smoked cylinder.

She leaps up and runs towards the swings, giving me a delightful view of her curving hips shifting up and down.

“Peter, you stop fooling around like that! Stay seated in your swing, dammit.”

Ah, such a naughty word for such a pretty mouth!

She leaves the boy brat and returns to the bench. I meekly stretch out my hand and give her back her cigarette.

“Do you smoke?” she asks.

“No,” I say, hastening to add, “But it doesn’t bother me.”

“Bad habit,” she says. “My boyfriend hates it.”

I feel the urge to find this boyfriend and squeeze his throat.

She is sitting back down now. We talk. She grinds her cigarette out beneath her Jelly shoes and immediately extracts another one.

“Mind if I light this one for you?” I ask. “I need the practice for the social scene.”

She laughs and the unlit cigarette dances in her lips.

“Like in the movies? Why the hell not?”

So I will my hands not to shake as she drops her lighter into my palm. I lean close. Her eyes are big and blue and beautiful. I flick the lighter into flame and pray all the gods in heaven to make my damn hands stay still as I hold the glow to the tip of her cigarette. She narrows her eyes and inhales, hungrily, as if the cigarette that she just smoked never existed.

I let up on the flame. She parts her lips. She is close enough to kiss but it is her stream of smoke that hits my lips – this time purposefully and fully directed my way, a daring gesture as flirty and come-hither as a sultry wink. I inhale, pulling her breathed-out smoke into the depths of my own lungs and manage a smile though my eyes are tearing up from the fumes and my body is buzzing, completely unused to the power of nicotine.

“Maybe you should smoke,” she says, teasingly. “You seem to enjoy it.”

She leans back. Her breasts push against the thin fabric of her top and her nipples, pointed and aroused, are quite visible beneath it.

Damn, I want her. I want to bury my face in those breasts and kiss them in moist and wide circles. I want to unwrap those Jordache jeans and kiss her silky panties and then slip them off and plant a kiss upon the soft golden hair of her womanly mound. Want to caress her firm, ripe bottom, run my hands over its curves and then bury my face in her sweet, hot, wet vagina and nibble it until she explodes. Want to explore the succulent puckered star beneath her hips and bury my tongue deep within it.

But of course I restrain myself.

“I seem to have a good teacher,” is all I say.

She laughs.

She shapes an exhale into a wiggling ring of smoke blown my way. I snap it up like a silly dog being tossed a treat. She blows another and another and we play this game until she can’t hold back the laughter and she blows the remainder of her smoke out in a gusty mess and laughs until she is practically gasping.

One more drag – this time she keeps her mouth closed, eyes me mischievously and leans close and before I know it, two thick jets of smoke are streaming from her nostrils. I draw them in, pulling them greedily down into my tortured lungs, inhaling until the last wisps of smoke have escaped her nose.

She bursts out laughing again.

“That wasn’t disgusting? I didn’t look like some fricken horse?”

“Looked like a dragon. A gorgeous dragon, blasting out some fool knight come to slay thee,” I say.

She snorts.

The cigarette is practically burned down to the filter. She examines it sorrowfully. She takes one more drag, exhaling it away this time.

“You make me laugh,” she explains. “I can’t smoke and laugh at the same time.”

She flicks the burning butt away.

We are silent. Her eyes turn again to her little brother, again attempting to kill himself on the swing set. She stands up. This time, she grabs my hand, like an eager little girl, and pulls me up.
“C’mon, let’s take Peter the Pest home and then …”

She trails off, suddenly shy.

“Then I would love to invite you out for coffee,” I say.

And she is pulling me towards the swings and I am in love and I hope, I pray, that she is, too.