Etiquette In Public Places: The Woman Who Smokes, taken from the "Standard Book Of Etiquette"

Listen here,

Below is a photo, backwards since i don't know how to flip it, of a page in a very old book I found on a very dusty bookshelf in my living room:



Transcribed, it reads:

"Nowadays, women everywhere smoke as freely as men do; and there's no objection to it provided they maintain their dignity and avoid offense to others.

It's not dignified, for example, for a woman to walk along the street smoking a cigarette. It may not be wrong, actually, but it is a habit that's neither charming nor feminie, and an intelligent woman always considers appearances.

Women smoke as publicly as men, of course, in restaurants and night clubs, during intermission at the theater, in hotel lobbies, in waiting rooms, on trains and planes--everywhere, in fact, except on city streets. However, one should bear in mind that the attitude toward women smoking in public varies widely in different sections of the country. What may passed unnoticed in New York or Chicago may cause lifted eyebrows in Little Village. The woman who visits a community where smoking in public is looked upon with disapproval or distaste, should be understanding and gracious enough to do her smoking in private.



The woman who smokes should avoid careless or sloppy smoking habits that offend people. She should never talk with a cigarette in her mouth, nor dance with a cigarette in her hand, nor hold a cigarette and coffee cup at the same time. Such actions do not help make a woman more popular or appealing!

Needless to say, the woman who smokes regularly and should not forever "borrow" them from others. But if she is with a man and he offers her one of his cigarettes, it's better manners to accept it that to say, "I have my own" (unless, of course, his brand is positively distasteful to her). And he should always let him light her cigarette; it's a courtesy a man expects to perform for a lady, and it's somewhat disconcerting to have her do it herself."



After reading this, I have one question and one statement. First, where the fuck is "Little Village"? I'm almost certain I'm not the only person who has never heard of this place. My statement being, I think I would quit smoking, or certainly cut down (although, I haven't smoked nearly as much as I used to in these most recent months) if I were to be dating someone who didn't like it. I think, I would even quit smoking for the right job, or right apartment or the right pet. I did quit smoking indoors in my current apartment, as my roommates don't even know that I am a smoker and aren't smokers themselves, as far as I know. I find smoking to be something my hands enjoy doing more than my brain, and I might just start looking for other hand-habits, like flipping off trees, or something, to keep them busy. I don't know.

The book was published in 1948 and includes etiquette of drinking, tipping, and hostessing. It was apparently purchased at Strand in 2007 for one dollar.

the after sex cigarette

welcome a year of tattered moments.


new york: plain, cold, and grey.


today is the sort of day to make an entire pot of coffee. these types of days come in pairs for me (or they don't come at all). this is day four, or so, of a make-an-entire-pot-of-coffee sort of day. i have yet to make that entire pot though, on any of these past days.

my solemn-self wants to stay exactly where it is. i want to revel like a pig in a pool of mud in my self-established depression. i want to say things like, "today is so depressing," or, "god, isn't it just awful out?", etc. and, as readers, i want you to understand why i can say things like that on days like these. and get away with it.

i just paused and stared through my computer screen, fantasizing about a cigarette. no, not just any cigarette. no, the first cigarette i had since i got out of the hospital, when i hid myself from all the people who know me daily and found myself at a bar, momentarily, in my old life, with my whiskey-shivers and a cheap draft beer. i walked along the length of the crowded bar, with the noisy people chattering nonstop about their personal, worldy, mother fucking life changing ideas. i wanted to scream, "shut the fuck up!" at the top of my lungs, but couldn't dare manage to accumulate such a scene in one of my favorite old time pubs. it was just a thought, one of those moments buried deep within our minds that give balance to a certain reality situation that, without that crazy daydream irrational thought, we could not get through the real moment at hand.

anyway, what i'm trying to say, is that everyone is so fucking caught up with their own goddam concerns, especially during this time of year, which brings me to feel as though nothing matters. what matters? nothing.

i wanted to walk down the length of that bar, right through the people on their stools, like a ghost, with one hand in my pocket, dragging my sexy-ish fingers and thin wrist along the ledge, knocking people dead quiet as i shifted my transparent-self through them. with red lipstick, of course. and a goddam cigarette...

...which brings me back to that cigarette. that after sex, jesus-fucking-hell-everything-is-perfect-don't-touch-me-i-don't-want-to-be-touched-anymore-let-me-just-exhale, you FUCK.

a cigarette for a bird:

the after sex cigarette, as described above, reigns my mind as a full three hundred and sixty plus degrees bring it back around the circle, do it again... orgasm. the before the shower let's get ready to wash this cigarette out of my hair cigarette. the five minutes before you leave while you wait for you car cigarette. the typical with coffee or beer, cigarette. the not so typical, with warm milk cigarette. the last cigarette you have before visiting the house you grew up in, in front of grand central station in which you swear you will go the duration of that measly weekend without any more cigarettes. the cigarette you have at twelve thirty in the morning in the garage where you stored your first bicycle and lovely red wagon, which is now a planter in your mother's garden, in response.


i will never forget the moment where i though it might be possible that god does, in fact, exist, where we were in bed together.


i want what i no longer have. what i hated when i did have it. i want home.

you are home.

that sound, the slight ching, ching, you can hear when you put out a cigarette in a cheap ceramic ashtray. the taste of your dirty, dirty mouth, filled with all the vices we have allowed to please our daily selves. the look of the floor surrounding a bed with ripped bed sheets; the passion of a condom wrapper that doesn't exist, far from sight and forgetting to brush our teeth that same night. the smoothest skin i can feel between my fingers when i just close my eyes. the prospect of a traditional american dream, a marriage that will never come. an old, dirty brooklyn loft where mice race through the walls. moments that we cannot find by ourselves, but sit still beneath our surfaces. planted, waiting, to be ignited, only on drunken nights and bright mornings, between hectic schedules that revolve strictly around money and no actual gratifying success.

something that is lifted, simultaneously, while we lay curled around eachother, eyes blinking daintily at the flat, white ceiling. we are bigger then, stronger then. the gripping moment where i held your hand tightly before the plane skidded down the wet runway. and i was swept high, high into the air, to look down at the city, my city, and profess my love for my parents, God, my general manager, and the asian woman who held back the doors of the L train, as they went ping, ping... only to land four hours later, to the open arms of people i had never met.