"Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" Eddie the Rummy to Harry Morgan in "To Have and Have Not"

Last night, at dinner with friends, the subject of pipe smoking came up. I thought back to my own pipe-smoking days in the early 1980s and wondered. I know I lost a promising relationship to the aromatic swirls of Tobacco Village Butterscotch blend. I simply wasn't going to be told what to smoke by anyone. I enjoyed the comraderie of the fellows who hung around the pipe store. I smoked and joked with old genius Charlie from the gun lab. I learned about cigar-rolling from well-traveled Don. I bought a hand-made Kabik pipe from sculptor Mike Kabik, himself. Kabik was the custom supplier of pipes to Anwar Sadat and Gerald Ford. Pipe smokers had panache.

Unfortunately, I failed to notice that all of these older men whose favor I sought to enlist for one purpose or another had no wives. I was dense. As I gently bit tooth marks into the stems of my 6 pipe rotation of bowls, I was throwing away a series of possible relationships to the smell and the juicy spit that grossed out the vast majority of my dates. I was oblivious to the swirl of smoke-the cloud-that followed me. It was bad enough I had the stench of cigarettes already with me; I had added cherry blends and dank latakia straight tobacco odors to all of my suits and shirts.

There is an old saw about a pipe giving a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth. I think back now and know that I was not a member of the former class. Old genius Charlie used to call the shop "the last bastion of male chauvininity(sic)!" and I bought into that male bonding mantra.

Late in 1981 I began to come to my senses. I started dating a woman who smoked, but couldn't abide a pipe or cigar. This one was able to break my addiction to the cumbersome world of tobacco bags, pipe cleaning fluid, creasote cake development and blend experimentation. Though the cigarette habit followed me for another 20 years, I gave up the lonely world of guys laughing hard with old men in chinos in a smoky tobacco den. I tired of teak-lined pretensions and being able to discern a quality humidor from a cheapie. I began to see the reason why the wooden Indian in the corner bothered some people.

I spent the best part of that decade with the woman who I deemed worthy of the sacrifice. In the end, we too fell apart due to other pretensions and things not abide-able. Now, today the Tobacco shops and their smoky lounges are all but gone, victims of the new sensibilities. I still own the hand-made Kabik. I regard it more as a piece of art or a momento now, rather than a tool. It was a tool of former ignorance and vanity. I probably alienated 10 non-smokers and potential friends for every loud-talking buddy I had in the English Straight Tobacco scene. Now, when I smell an aromatic blend, I cringe a little. Not for the offensiveness of the smell, mind you, but for my own folly of youth.