"The nametag on your jumper," she replied, paused while she livened her Pall Mall with a short tug and opened her mouth packed with the downy cloud. And then instantly, with her gulp of air, it vanished within, revealing her delectable mouth. For a space of three heartbeats, there was stillness, broken by the muted rush of her opaque breath. "You must have forgotten you're wearing that."
Her fingers are fatigued after hours of gripping the steering wheel; and at intervals, sporting a cigarette that glows like a smoldering spoke. A two-stemmed film of translucence unfurls up and away from the Winston’s constant ember as a reminder that it awaits another of her anxiety-tinged kisses. Weary from this night driving, she’s been fighting sleep by clouding her GMC Acadia with bored, mechanical chaining and singing smoke-blended ballads along with her CD companions Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift.
Marge was aching for a cigarette. It had only been twenty minutes or so since her last cigarette break when she’d polished off three unbelievably delicious Winston 100s in rapid succession but now she was craving a juicy Newport 100 and she couldn’t wait another second. Yet wait she must... for forty more excruciating minutes.
As Mark drove home, his work colleagues' comments were ringing in his ears. The subject at work had gotten around to second hand smoke and smoking in general, and everyone had voiced their opinions in one way or another. Most were negative as most of the people who worked with Mark didn't smoke at all or had quit a long time back. But Mark's manager's words were ringing in his ears the most, as he glanced at the road sign saying he was only three miles from home.. He though about the conversation as he stopped at the next light.
This is a brief excerpt from the September–October 2010 issue of Smoke Signals magazine, and one of my first columns for the free/public version, "My First Decade at The Orgy":
Boardhost shut down my forum and multimedia archive near the end of March because they recently implemented a ban on smoking and fetish content. Way back in 2000 when I opened the first incarnation of "Sublime," I asked the then owner of Boardhost (who was pretty much a one man band at the time) if he had any problems with SF content. He told me flatly that he absolutely did not.
La petite mort is French for "the little death." The expression is most often used to describe the experience of having an orgasm, but is also used to describe the release of emotional energy (catharsis) that accompanies experiencing the climax of a creative expression, as well as the experience of going through a shocking life-changing event.
