To my faithful readers, if I have any yet, thanks.  I guess I need an outlet to talk about smoking, since I can't do it at home.

In our last episode, I brought up the fact that I have started smoking clove cigarettes, which are nice, but damned expensive.  I guess if I lived in Indonesia, where most of them are produced, they would be a cheaper habit.  Six bucks a pack is a little prohibitive.  But then, I guess that's the idea.

I first heard of clove cigarettes in college.  It's funny how you go to college to study academics and learn so much more about life than economic theory or calculus.  The guy that had a pack wouldn't share because they cost him $4 a pack.  What a deal!  Of course, that was about 12 tax hikes ago.  This was the same guy who tried to make a cigarette out of peanuts.  According to The Anarchist's Cookbook, you can take a pound of peanuts, shell them, and smoke them.  Of course we didn't realize until the peanuts were eaten that it's not actually the shell that you smoke, but the little red wrappers around the nuts.  We weren't saving those, so there went the peanut cig.  We never tried it again.

Anyway, the keeper of the cloves said that they didn't act much different than "real" cigarettes, but they, of course, smelled and tasted like cloves.  I was interested, but as I didn't smoke and couldn't afford a $4 pack of cigarettes, I never tried them and lost interest.

I regained my interest when I was talking about smoking with an assistant manager from another store.  Now this lady, who smokes every time she steps outside a door, didn't believe me when I told her that I had started smoking.  My pack was laying on my desk, but she still wouldn't take my word for it.  She, of course, gave me the usual warnings and told me to stop it.  I never miss a chance to point out her hypocrisy.

So the two of us and another, non-smoking woman I work with were talking about smoking, and the freight train smoker brought up cloves.  She said that they were her guilty pleasure.  The smell was relaxing to her, and it was something that she tried sometimes to have something different.  Well, I thought about them, and thought some more, and decided that I was going to track some down.

There is a tobacco shop a couple blocks from my house, so I tried them.  They don't sell cigarettes and said that they used to carry cloves but didn't get enough business on them to keep them.  Fine.

So I went to a bigger, chain tobacco store.  If you've never been in one of these places, you should go just for the experience.  The first shop and the chain shop both had not just a humidor for cigars, but an entire humidor room.  Multiple cases full of every kind of cigar that you can get legally and for less than $5 apiece.  Just amazing to me.  Not only that, they have racks and racks and racks of packs and cartons.  I could see a smoker walking into one of these places and having an instant orgasm.  And on top of that, the clerk was smoking.  In my county, you can't smoke inside a restaurant any more, let alone a retail establishment.

Well, this place not only had cloves, but they had at least 12 varieties.  So I ask myself, where the fuck do I start?  There are blacks, specials, lights, cherry, vanilla... all of a sudden I'm in a spice aisle.  I asked the clerk if there was a big difference.  In the typical style of someone who would be a clerk in a cigarette store, she told me that they sold a lot of the specials and the blacks.  Ok, not what I asked, but I'll try the blacks.

I couldn't wait to get back to work and try my first clove cigarette.  I didn't want to do it in the car, because God knows what it would smell like, and with my luck I would smell like I was trapped in a burning cigar factory.  I opened the pack, smelled that lovely smell (I love a good clove seasoned ham), and put one in between my lips.  It had promise. 

I got back to the store, hurried to the back door, and lit it.  Lo and behold, the filter was coated in what seemed like clove nectar from Heaven!  That taste on my lips was grand!  And the cigarette didn't taste bad either.  I took a few drags, exhaled through my nose, tried to take it all in.

I gotta say, it was a mixed bag.

The artificial flavoring on the filter was great.  If I could spread that on a ham sandwich I could dig on that for lunch every day.  The smell was great too.  I didn't get much of a buzz (that's a discussion for another time, but I hadn't had any in about 36 hours, and at this stage, I should have gotten a buzz at that point), but I thought that was ok, because I really was meaning to quit, and getting the same effect for $2 more wouldn't do me any good.

On the down side, it seems that the smoke is heavier.  I had to exhale almost completely before the smoke stopped coming out.  That seems like a bad thing to me.  And in the final analysis, I'm still not sure if they are any better than smoking Marlboro Lights.  The taste is there, the smell is there, but sometimes I felt worse after smoking them.  Maybe it's just because I cut down and I'm not used to as much.

Needless to say, after giving away 5 or 6 to my fellow smokers (hey, it was Christmas Eve, and $6 today isn't as bad as $4 in college) and finishing the pack, I went back for more.  I chose Vanilla this time.  They are about 30 cents cheaper, and you get two flavors for one!  But, as with the Blacks, the jury is still out.

Keep the comments coming, as I'm interested in the experiences of others, and would like to try other things if you have suggestions.  Preferable other legal things.

Buh-bye!