Lost Camel Filter Stories

At one time I had intended to sue Delaware County Community Corrections for loss of intellectual property.  They threw away my lighter and three quarters of a pack of cigarettes upon arresting me.  The arrest did not concern me as much as the cigarettes, and the cigarettes did not concern me as much as the thought of the cigarettes.  The lighter was of even less concern.

See, each cigarette in the pack would create a different story of my life, take it in a new direction–physically, mentally, artistically, or even existentially.  One would cause me to stop on my walk home, let’s say, to take a break and watch the squirrels chase each other around the trees as I enjoyed puff after puff of the lovely gray death.  The break would lead me to arrive at the bus station later than I would have, and there I would meet a homeless man whom I otherwise would have missed, who bummed a cigarette from me and gave me a shot of Kamchatkal vodka from a half-pint, who offered me a bite of a sandwich he pulled out of a trashcan, and I refused, not because of the origin, but because I had eaten in jail and he was surely more hungry than I–this homeless man on whom I would write my first novel.

Inevitably, I would smoke several of the cigarettes while writing the story of the homeless man at the bus station.  Maybe even run out of cigarettes since I wasn’t starting out with a full pack, get in a fight with my girlfriend about who should go get more since I was working and she was just watching television, then have to walk down to the gas station where the fluorescent lights would remind me something of the hobo that I had forgotten since meeting him, the thing that makes the story work.  Perhaps the staleness of the old cigarettes would have done this already.  Fresh cigarettes are horrible about bringing back memories.  I can’t even remember the last time I smoked a fresh cigarette without having a stale cigarette to prompt the memory of it.

But, no, that story and any other contained in that pack were lost and never written.

For that I believed I could sue for an undetermined amount of money.  Perhaps the average amount earned on all new novels written.  Considering all of the novels that are never published once written and those that are published but never make much money, and the debut best-sellers and those that are forgotten until they are made into a movie then sell a million copies, I was hopeful the amount might be enough to get a new pack of cigarettes and maybe even a lighter.

Time went on, however, and I would get too drunk and forget about it, then remember a few weeks later but have a few bucks in my pocket and get drunk again until I was sure I had passed some sort of statute of limitations for suing over lost cigarettes.  Now I would have to call a lawyer to find out if such a statute exists, but all of my money went to fifty cent soda chasers instead of to the pay phone.

Eventually I lost all hope.  A friend recommended I read Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins because of its use of Camel Filters, my brand, in the plot line.  It used the urban legends surrounding the packaging and even incorporated the pack in the cover design.  I was sure that whatever story I had lost had already been published when I was two years old.

The arrest was of little concern besides a few hours spent in jail, and I might have forgotten the whole thing had I not just thought, after lighting a butt that I fished out of my ashtray, about the girl who watched me get arrested.

Now I smoke Pall Malls, which make for more particular and economical writing.

She was an angel, though I hate to describe her like that.  It is quite a cliché to compare women to those sexless beasts of judgement, of a cruel god’s bidding, and I don’t imagine that the first thought one would have if they came across one of these supernatural miscreants would be to fuck the shit out of it.  But she really was an angel, a curly blonde waif dressed in all white, a halo atop her golden locks, and the way the sun shone down I could almost make out her wings.  I wanted to take her out for coffee, to talk for hours about existence and love, good and evil, hate, starvation, capitalism, hold her on some park bench below an elm tree by the river, and yes, to go back to her dorm room and fuck the shit out of her sexless body.

I couldn’t do any of that, though, as I was being led to a police cruiser in handcuffs.

Earlier that morning, as the sun was just rising in Muncie, Indiana, I took off to find the friend I was visiting up there.  He took off after a fight with his girlfriend.  We were both intoxicated after a night of heavy drinking out at the bars.  I still had half a fifth of whiskey so my search disintegrated into a stroll to visit my old residence hall, a whiskey induced vigil to my whiskey induced time there.  I woke up to five officers surrounding me as I sat on the bench outside the front doors with my head buried in a newspaper.  It was a cornucopia of officers–sheriffs, university police, city boys, in brown and blue and white, like a police pride flag wrapped around what must have appeared to be a dangerous vagrant, a crazed lunatic, a belligerent drunk that they would have to take down at any time–as soon as he woke up from his catnap. Luckily I had stashed the whiskey in the bushes.  Luckily I knew the difference between passing out and falling asleep and convinced them I had simply dozed off.  They were going to let me walk back to my buddy’s place until a warrant came back with my name all over it.  Some bullshit theft charge in Orange County for writing bad checks.  I hadn’t written them–my checkbook was unknowingly stolen and the checks were forged.

I could tell by the angel girl’s gaze that she had fallen in love with me in that brief time she saw me handcuffed and led away.  And I loved her as much as I could anyone back then.  Enough to fascinate myself with them and be completely committed to them while I was with them, loving them with all of my being, but being able to love another the same way when I was in their company, instead.  Nothing would come of this close encounter–I was warned not to ever go back onto campus once I was released from jail (the chances of seeing her upon returning were slim, anyway), and if I hadn’t been arrested we probably would have never met.  However it was a beautiful three minute romance–the best kind of romance, a romance without words.  The kind of romance I could write a great novel about over stale cigarettes and cheap whiskey.

I had to smile.

Officer Ulrich from the Sheriff’s Department gruffed the seriousness of the situation to me, said I shouldn’t look so elated as he searched my pockets.  I scoffed.  I would be out after a sobering steel-bench nap and a few phone calls to clear things up, the only tragedy the angel girl who got away.  He took my cigarettes from my pocket and threw them into the nearest trash can.  I stopped smiling.