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Re: A little help never hurts
Author: P	June 19, 2003 at 09:52:15
in reply to: A little help never hurts posted by Candy on June 18, 2003 at 02:33:39

	Great descriptive writing, would love to hear more please Thanks P > My name is not Candy, but I do not mind if the gentlemen here are pleased to refer to me that way. Actually, it pleases me too. That’s the number one thing I learned from my mother. > > > Calling myself Candy was not my own idea though; six years ago the man I began living with started calling me Candy, even when we were with friends, to the point where almost everyone who knows me now thinks Candy is my real name. In a way I suppose it is. Privately though I’m his ‘candy girl,’ or sometimes ‘cigarette girl,’ and even ‘Candy cigarette.’ Are any of you old enough to remember candy cigarettes? Well, that’s me; to one man I’m now a candy cigarette, and he’s getting a lot of pleasure from me, from smoking me in a manner of speaking, I suppose. Smoking me a little more every day, deep on the inside of me where no one can see what I’ve done. > > > Sometimes I find what I’ve just written humorous to think about; it’s sort of a funny image, ‘Candy cigarette.’ Sometimes it’s also a bit upsetting, but not too much. And for now I mostly don’t mind his thinking of me that way, and I know I would continue to take my pleasure from a cigarette a while longer, another few years, with or without him. I am still receiving at least as much pleasure as he is, possibly more as you will see. > > > * * * > > > I think most men are not especially good at looking into themselves; they’re just not wired right in their minds for a lot of soul-searching and such. Also, they don’t seem to have very much interest in understanding relationships. That seems a terrible loss, since I know I’ve gotten a lot of insights from looking at events in my childhood, using that to understand myself better, more than thirty years later. And I have spent so much time looking at my childhood that I have pieced a lot of it together into a sort of mental movie—in full color, with sound, stop-action, and instant-replay. > > > But don’t worry, I’m not going to run the whole feature film for you now, only the tidbits that have helped to model much of my life into something I believe will interest you. > > > Please forgive me if I do happen to dwell over-long on something that seems too dull for your desires; I will try to keep the story moving along. And I will try to color in the parts of the movie that would otherwise be just black and white. What I mean is, do I really remember thirty five years later the exact color of the cigarette smoke, or precisely what my mother said to me on some occasion, or what I wore? Of course not, but I do remember a great many impressions as well as detailed specifics in places from all of my childhood, enough that I may now select the right crayons to color in certain frames in the movie, along with the right sound track for the actors and actresses involved. > > > Okay, so let’s roll the film. Get your popcorn and enjoy. > > > * * * > > > I was two weeks past twelve years old and had just started the 6th grade when I got my first period. It came in the middle of the night and it was terrifying: a nasty wet mess in my bed, and it scared me enough that I went and woke up my mother. > > > Yes, she and I had talked about my eventual ‘lady’s-visitor’ as she sometimes called it—my mother was pretty old-fashioned in certain ways, so lady’s visitor was a phrase that suited her style and approach to femininity—but I was not expecting to be visited so soon. My mother didn’t get hers until she was thirteen, and that’s what I had planned on for me. I was a year early. So much for plans, huh? Or as the man I love today would probably say, “life’s a bitch when you are one.” > > > I love him, but his humor needs help. > > > Aside from the mess, the thing I mostly remember from that night was how happy my mother was. I was scared; she was all smiles and joy. She cleaned me up, put one of her pads into a fresh pair of panties for me, and together we remade my bed. In the middle of the night, after we put the sheets in the washing machine to soak, we had another of our mother-daughter conversations at the kitchen table. We both had a cup of hot tea—mother was a fan of tea: hot tea at night, iced tea in the day, tea, tea, tea. I learned to drink it more often than water, milk, or soda. We sat and talked and sipped our tea while she had a cigarette or two. (Whenever I mention that my mother had a cigarette, you can usually assume two, if time allowed.) > > > At first we talked about all the things I’d need to do now to take care of myself, what to expect, and all of that sort of thing. We’d been through this before but she needed to have something to say and I was happy to listen. We also talked about how I was now a woman, a real woman she told me, underlining those words, and that by being a woman I now had certain privileges. She told me men are mostly idiots and pretty much never grow up, and are not really adults until they are at least twenty or so; but women are fully women from their very first visit. In our hearts and minds and our bodies we are already quite mature and ready for the many feminine things life has to offer. > > > That’s how she saw the world. I might have been only twelve, but I was no longer a child to her. > > > She bled. Now I bled. > > > There were things she enjoyed as a woman. > > > Now I could enjoy them too. > > > For my own part, I was still thinking about the word privileges, and if that meant staying up past eleven on a school night. However that was not really what was in her thoughts. > > > (Soundtrack: deep ominous music rising in the background. Scene: fade to black.) > > > The next morning she kept me home from school; I was delighted and made no protest. She told me some things are more important, so we went shopping! This was her way of welcoming me into her world. > > > In the car on the way to the mall she asked me to get her cigarettes for her from her purse, and if I would mind lighting one for her since she was driving. I think I started to perspire immediately. I took a cigarette from her pack—she smoked Salem 100’s—and tried to light it without even touching it to my lips. I felt embarrassed and stupid, and I didn’t understand what she wanted. She saw what I was doing and told me I would need to hold it to my lips and take a puff from it while I lit it. I knew that but said nothing. I tried again, bringing it to my mouth and taking only a tiny puff that I did not inhale. That was many years ago and it’s crystal clear in my mind. Certain things you just don’t forget. > > > I gave the cigarette to her and at some point she asked, casually, if I had ever smoked. My heart dropped to my toes, buried deep into those shiny black leather Mary Janes on my feet. I told her no—a flat lie. She always had lots of packs of Salems around the apartment, and I had been sneaking cigarettes from them since I was eleven. I knew how to light a cigarette; I’d seen her do it thousands of times, and had done it myself enough to have the essentials if not the style. I just didn’t want to do it in front of my mother. Did she guess any of this? Looking back, yes, absolutely. She knew very well. But at the time I’m sure I thought my thievery was both very clever and very secret. I’ll tell you later about those first few cigarettes I tried—you may find that time interesting—but for now let’s continue. > > > So I tried to keep my voice steady and just told her no. She took a puff from her cigarette and nodded or something. She let it go. > > > I retrieved my heart from my toes and replaced it to original position. The beads of perspiration on my forehead evaporated. > > > I don’t remember all of that day, my ‘first day as a lady’, but I know that was the day I wore my first girdle. Girdles were becoming unpopular in the late 60’s, thanks to that absurd Sexual Revolution that began turning women into jeans-and-tee-shirt wearing tomboys. Fortunately, girdles have since made a remarkable comeback, especially among career women, and even corsets and other fancy undies are in style again. > > > So I wore my first girdle home under a new dress with the perfect belt and a cute jacket, cut to flare at my waist. My feet displayed the new shoes I’d been given, ones with a nice heel, not too high, not too narrow, but enough of a heel to let me learn how to walk in them. My old Mary Janes rode home in the shoe box, now mostly reserved for days at school. In the backseat were a few bags with other items. Under my new dress I wiggled to feel that perfectly wonderful new girdle, comfortably snug against me, wrapped around my bottom and my waist to give me some shape. I looked very stylish; maybe not entirely a woman’s style, but far less of a young girl’s school clothes than I had known before. It all made me feel quite new. > > > Men do not understand this about women; the way that a woman, even a young girl, can feel when wearing something wonderful. You men should remember that; if your lady is in the right dress, her usual ‘no’ can change to ‘yes.’ > > > Anyway, that shopping trip and that new girdle was a very big deal for me at age twelve-and-two-weeks. And in case the male readers here don’t know, girdles have garters, and garters hold up nylons. That means I was also wearing new nylon stockings for the trip back home, being very careful not to snag them on anything. I sat with what I hoped was demure poise, my legs crossed as we rode in the car. Yes, that was a very big deal to be sure. I had lots of pantyhose, but never any nylon stockings until the day I started bleeding. And if you think I’m talking too much about my first period or new clothes or the special way I felt, it’s just so you will have a chance to really understand everything that follows, how much these new feelings were in my thoughts and how important it was to myself and my mother. > > > So after shopping we’re driving home, and she says she’s busy driving and would I please light another cigarette for her. > > > *Gentle reader, this is where the plot thickens.* > > > I was now a tiny bit less scared to be holding a cigarette while with my mother. I lit it and took a puff, drawing the warm, minty smoke into my mouth, but again without inhaling. I let the smoke curl out of my mouth to form cloud of blue smoke that hung in the air directly in front of me. As I said, memory has blurred some things in the passage of time, but I can remember the cloud of smoke that clearly showed I had just lit a cigarette, and the taste of the menthol in my mouth and the feel and look of that pretty cigarette between my fingers. That was always a special temptation for me, just to see a cigarette held in my hand. I was wearing lipstick that day, which made everything almost perfect, seeing my pink lipstick on the filter. But it was only almost perfect because as I said, I didn’t dare inhale with her right there. And by the way, as for the lipstick I wore, I might only have been twelve, but I was allowed to wear pink lipstick to school, and any makeup at all that I chose when not in school. I sometimes could borrow makeup from my mother, if I asked politely. > > > So my lipstick was on the white filter of the Salem when I handed my mother her cigarette. Still, even if I hadn’t inhaled, I began thinking of myself as a twelve-year-old woman riding in a car, wearing a pretty dress, a girdle with nylons, bleeding into the pad I had borrowed from my mother that morning, and for a moment, just for a moment, I was holding cigarette between my fingers, pretending it was my cigarette as the last wisp of smoke escaped from my mouth. I actually wanted to take a second puff, but I didn’t. I didn’t quite have that much courage. Mother took the cigarette from my hand with a smile and a thank you. > > > I really wanted it back. She absolutely must have known this, but said nothing. > > > Halfway through her cigarette she spoke again saying it was perfectly acceptable for me to light her cigarettes for her now and then, and how it was a real help for her when she was driving on a busy street. She was trying to help me feel more relaxed about it and to tell me she did not think badly of me for doing this. It worked, because I really did feel better, if still a little jittery from what I had just done. Lighting a cigarette for my mother may seem trivial, but please remember, I had only started the sixth-grade. > > > I went to school again the next day and shared my period news with one of my new girlfriends, leaving out the smoking part though. That was clearly in the realm of secrets. She later spilled the beans about my period to the other girls, so that killed any idea of telling her any new secrets. > > > For the next couple of weeks or maybe the next couple of months, I don’t really recall, every time my mother and I were in the car to go buy groceries or whatever, I would light her cigarettes. I held her purse in my lap, found her pack of Salem 100’s, tapped one out and held it to my lips as I raised her lighter to the tip. The only change was that at some point along the way I made a choice; I let myself inhale a tiny bit. > > > Maybe I wanted to see if she would even notice and if she would get upset, or maybe I just did it because I wanted to. It was a good, full puff, the best way as my mother had told me to get a cigarette started, and I inhaled almost completely, enough so that I wouldn’t have that nasty thick cloud of smoke around me. I knew I had the smoke well inside of me before I pursed my lips and let my breath out. I just handed her the cigarette and turned my head to the side to exhale. Yeah, I was trying to hide the fact that I had inhaled, but I had done it and gotten away with it. After that, when lighting her cigarettes, I always inhaled. In time I more or less stopped trying to hide the thin stream of blue-white smoke that I blew out toward the windshield. Everything with my mother remained smiles and joy, so I kept doing this. Every trip we made in the car I would light one or two or three cigarettes for her, and every time I started taking a double-puff right when I lit it so I could enjoy it, sometimes holding my breath, and always exhaling slowly, like she did. I did this so often that I would almost say I became relaxed about it, but relaxed is not quite the right word, more like I knew I’d been given one of those feminine privileges my mother had spoken about. > > > Eventually, I crossed another line with help from my mother. She was busy driving and didn’t take her cigarette from me right away after it was lit. This had happened before. I remember tapping the ash, and as before I had this temptation sweep over me to take another puff. Would it be okay? The cigarette was in my hand, I had already taken one good puff, yes, temptation said I could take one more, it was the proper thing to do. My mother might not even notice. I brought it back to my lips again and gave myself that second puff, my mother sitting right next to me. I inhaled and waited. A nice exhale, straight ahead of me. > > > No comment from my mother. > > > I was enjoying my extended moment as an adult. I tapped her cigarette, waited, treated myself to another good puff with another nice inhale. She never said a word about this. She finally took it from my hand, thanking me in a pleasant voice for lighting her cigarette. When she finished it, she had me put it out for her in the ashtray. The next day this happened again. It became a common deal. Sometimes I had one puff, sometimes two or three. She finished it; I put it out. > > > Curious. > > > It’s such a curiosity that I’ve spent a lot of time over the years looking back on those days and trying to recall as much as I could. I will also tell you that at one point not many years ago I talked about my mother with a therapist I was seeing. The short story on it is that my therapist and I agreed that my mother probably had two passions in her life: clothes for certain, and I think just as certain, smoking. There were a lot of clues to this that I haven’t mentioned to you yet, but yeah, she loved a tailored skirt and jacket over a tight longline girdle, and she loved her Salem cigarettes. > > > Talking to that therapist also helped me understand that my mother tended to manipulate people when she could get away with it, and it’s easy as baking pie to manipulate a young girl and daughter. She was also clearly in love with the notion of me as a twelve-year-old woman. My mother saw me mostly as a small, and now essentially sexually mature, adult. She put me into high heels and put me on display for the women she knew. Knowing all of this about her explains a lot, I think. She was a kind and considerate lady, very loving, but maybe she had been hurt too much in her life, especially with being divorced, and maybe she also released some of that on me, and through all of it, even with all the love and kindness and help she gave me in growing up, I think she always intended in some corner of her desires that I would smoke: I would dress like her and carry myself with modest poise like her, I would be happy and confident with displaying myself as a graceful lady, and, like her, I would come to love the taste of a cup of tea mixed pleasantly with the rich menthol smoke from a freshly lit cigarette. > > > That’s how she saw me, even when I was twelve. Her passion for clothes gave her permission to dress me in nylons and heels and padded bras, and her passion for smoking gave her permission to ensure that a lady’s style of menthol cigarette would very quickly find a young and welcoming home between my lips. > > > Sound a little melodramatic? Yeah, I suppose so, but it is the image that has pervaded my life and it also describes my mother’s interests pretty well, I think. > > > Okay, so that’s my best understanding today; back then I didn’t have a clue. I was just learning to enjoy the new things that were becoming part of my life, letting my mother teach how to dress and behave in her vision of what was appropriate for me. > > > * * * > > > My thirteenth birthday: a kitchen table with a few nice presents but no cake—I was way past the cake thing—instead there was a bottle of red wine. Sitting around the table were my mother, another woman, and myself. I barely recall the woman, I had only met her a few times, and don’t even know her name now. I do remember though that she smoked. > > > We each had our own glass of wine sitting in front of us. My mother and the woman each had their pack of cigarettes, plus matches or lighter, and an ashtray: nothing of that sort for me, of course, just a glass of wine. I’d had wine before a few times before, maybe once a month in the last year, and I did not really that care much for it, but this was my birthday and so we three ladies (okay, two ladies and one little girl) each sat sipping a glass of wine. And no, I did not get drunk; in my mother’s home a glass of wine was like a cup of tea, or even a cigarette: a special treat and pleasure to be savored, not simply consumed. Still, she treated herself infrequently to a glass of wine, but to many cigarettes every day. > > > Both of them were smoking and we’re all talking and laughing, trading girl stories (I mostly listened, since I didn’t have a lot of interesting girl stories at that age). I opened my presents: blouses and bras and skirts and panties and probably a small bottle of perfume as well—all the standard and perfectly wonderful thirteenth birthday stuff. So I go to my bedroom to try on the blouse and such to check for fit. I come back and model it all for the two women, with hugs from my mother and compliments from the woman. After a while the other lady left, so it was just the two of us. I think mother refreshed my wine glass with another touch, and right out of the blue she asks me to light a cigarette for her while she did something in the kitchen. She had never done this at home before. > > > All of that I have pieced together over time. The main image in my memory though is having permission to reach across the table on the day of my thirteenth birthday to get her pack and lighter, holding her tall green and white pack in my small hands, seeing the word Salem attractively written on it, and of my little fingers with pink-painted nails pulling out that long, white cigarette. Now I had been given permission to do this at home. The filter was gently against my lips and I clicked the lighter to produce the small flame. I lit my mother’s cigarette for her and gave myself a nice full puff—I wanted it now, now that she was in the kitchen and not right next to me. I was feeling very adult as I enjoyed the sensation of smoke slipping so nicely inside of me. I didn’t really understand at that age about nicotine, but you don’t need to understand nicotine to enjoy it, or to begin needing it and wanting it. > > > I loved that moment and have replayed it many times in my thoughts. > > > My mother didn’t come back to the table right away though to get her cigarette from me. She was in the kitchen, then in her bedroom, then in the bathroom. She was everywhere but where I was sitting with her cigarette. So I let myself have another puff, inhaled, pursed my lips and blew out my little stream of smoke, and I waited. She was gone long enough that I just kept giving myself little puffs and inhaling them all. I smoked all of her cigarette and put it out. It sat there in the ashtray, with my lipstick on it. I was amazed. > > > She came back and sat down, stating more than asking, > > > “You’re smoking now, aren’t you?” > > > Maybe she smiled or did something like touch my hand—something, anything to soften her question—in any event, I finally told her mostly the truth. > > > “A little,” I said, in what must have been the world’s softest whisper. > > > She took a Salem from her pack and lit it, then slid the pack back to me. She told me I was old enough if I wanted to, and that it was best to not have to feel like a little sneak. She told me to please have one now. > > > That was the hardest thing I ever did. The cigarette I pulled from her pack became *my* cigarette the instant it touched my fingers. My mother took the lighter and said she would light my cigarette for me. When I had the filter to my lips she leaned across the table to touch the small flame to the tip. I took only a small, uncertain puff, and softly inhaled—a scared little girl’s inhale—tasting the menthol like it was the first time, before it vanished inside. I didn’t want to exhale; doing so would prove that I was really smoking. I kept the smoke safely and privately inside of me for a few seconds, then finally had to let it go. Out of habit, I tilted my head and pursed my lips to create a thin stream of pretty smoke. > > > My mother told me again that it was all right, she didn’t mind my smoking now that I was older. > > > She watched me take another puff, inhale and exhale. I tried to imitate her smooth, graceful manner. She began chatting, I listened, we smoked. I tapped my little ash like she did, and brought the cigarette back to my mouth give myself another puff. And another. It started to feel wonderful again, feminine and proper for a mother and daughter. We sipped our wine, and the smoke seeped past my lips to swirl briefly in my wine glass. At some point I probably giggled as I treated myself to another lovely puff. > > > Later, after dinner she offered me another cigarette, > > > “I’m going to have cigarette with a cup of tea, would you like a cup of tea with your cigarette too, Tammera?” she asked. > > > Yeah, Tammera is my real name, but almost everyone I know these days calls me Candy, so I answer to Tammera, Tammy, or Candy. But only my man, and now you kind readers, know me also as Candy cigarette. > > > I told her yes, please, when she offered tea and a Salem. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ and all good manners were important to my mother, so it was ‘yes please’ when she made her kind offer, and ‘thank you’ when I got them. > > > That was probably my fourth, maybe fifth cigarette that day, considering I usually had one every morning after she left for work and another after school before she got home. I accepted my cup of tea with its saucer quietly, and also a long white Salem that my mother had tapped partway out of her pack. I held the saucer in my lap, one hand to steady the cup, and held my other to my cigarette as my mother lit it for me. Lighting my cigarette by myself would have been fine I’m sure, but I think mother wanted to reassure me again that it was now proper that I start smoking with her. > > > We sat in the living room watching television. Tea and cigarettes. Mother and me. We each had two cups of tea and two cigarettes. I watched TV, sipped and puffed as a gentle young lady, and I do not doubt that my mother spent that time ignoring the television and mostly watching me. > > > For weeks it still felt very wrong at times, exciting, but wrong. Naughty is the word I’d have used then. Part of me said that my smoking was naughty, I wasn’t really a woman yet, despite the clothes and makeup. I’m sure I wondered at some point if nice girls smoked, but then I knew I was a nice girl, and my mother was a nice woman, so yes, nice girls do smoke. And Salem 100’s are what girls like me and women like my mother enjoy smoking. I think that’s about the time I really began to love my mother’s Salem 100’s. I wasn’t experimenting or sneaking anymore. I was thirteen years old, and sooo happy to be included in my mother’s world. > > > Mother was happy too. > > > I did not even mind the added chore of helping to clean ashtrays; to me even that was a part of being a woman now. > > > (Soundtrack: soft music in the background from a car radio. Scene: close-up shot of a smiling girl with auburn hair tied up in a ponytail; a few loose curls of hair hang down past her temples. She is riding in a car on a warm, sunny afternoon. She wears a pink skirt and jacket and a white blouse. She also wears white nylons and white high heels: her favorite clothes for shopping with her mother. She opens her purse and retrieves a pack of Salem 100’s along with her lighter. She gently taps on the pack and extracts a single, long white tube of paper and tobacco. It is lovely to her young eyes. Holding it with accomplished grace she guides the filter to her mouth and closes her lips around it. A flame touches the tobacco end while her mouth makes a steady sucking motion. She draws her cheeks in slightly, tasting the thick smoke rushing in to fill her small, covetous young mouth. She knows she looks perfect doing this; she has seen herself in a mirror many times, practicing just as she does with makeup until she knew she looked just right, so feminine, so pretty. She pulls her hand away and her lovely Salem cigarette slides from her parted lips. She holds her cigarette angled just so in her little hand, as her mother does, and she opens her lips a bit more to form a small circle, barely wider than the filter she was just pleased to grace with her soft, moist kiss. For an instant she allows a long finger of dense smoke to escape from her mouth between her shining lips, then with a deep breath she invites all of the thick blue smoke back inside her mouth, and silently to explore deeper inside of her body, pleasing her so well. The smoke deliciously fills her nearly-but-not-quite-pristine-pink lungs. She happily lets her little puff linger there, unseen by her, but felt. Her mouth still tingles from the menthol, and the sensation in her lungs gives her a feeling of completion. With a cigarette in her hand she knows she is a woman now; her mother has told her so. She feels the smoke filling her deep inside, and it’s all so gentle, like sliding her arms and body into a satin slip; it’s all so perfect for a girl like her. She releases her puff, watching how pretty her smoke is as she blows it all away. Almost all of it is blown away: a little of her smoke stays behind to be with her forever, but she does not notice this small concern. It’s so easy for her to smoke now, with her mother’s help. After a few moments she wants to enjoy it all again. The white filter shows a blush from with her pink lipstick, enticing to see, and she knows the happiness it brings so softly to her lips. She gives the tip of the filter another young girl’s kiss and she invites the smoke to come inside of her again. > Scene fades to black.) > > > * * * > > > That’s all for the moment boys and girls. I’ll try to pick this up later with the summer before 7th grade and also with the very first times I tried smoking. If I can, I’ll eventually get to where I am now with my current relationship. That may take a bit though. And honestly, this is so much to write that I can’t say that I’ll finish it all. We’ll see. > > > Candy
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