Trevor’s Mom Brings Home The Bacon

Becky McPherson took a fierce drag from her Marlboro Red as she sat in the small, dimly lit bathroom facility designated for hospital staff, holding her cell phone to her ear and listening to her husband speak.  If the wrong person caught her smoking in this bathroom, there would be hell to pay, but the immediate hospital staff who worked with her was always good to look the other way, and she trusted that would be the case again today, even though she wasn’t working with her normal crew.

“I told you yesterday…..” Becky reminded Steve, her sandpaperry smoker’s voice expressing just the mildest frustration over her husband’s selective memory, “…..Sherri had to go to visit her family in Wisconsin this weekend and I volunteered to work her ER shift.”

“Ah, yes,” Steve responded, recollecting what his wife had told him before in regards to her unusual overnight weekend work that kept her from being home that spring Sunday morning.  “And you’re done at 1?”

“Right.  After work I’m gonna stop and visit mom so I’ll probably be home around 3:30.  Then I suppose I better figure out what to make for supper….” Becky thought out loud, dragging from her cigarette rather robotically while mentally lost in her unrelenting schedule as a nurse and a mother, her exhale adding to the intense air pollution in the already hazy enclosed space.

Before Steve had time to respond, 15-year-old daughter Haylee slogged into the kitchen in her pink pajamas with what he presumed was her first cigarette of the day dangling lazily from her pouty teenage lips.  When she spotted her father on the phone, Haylee asked, “Is that mom?” to which Steve nodded affirmatively.

“Happy Mother’s Day, mom!” Haylee exclaimed with as much energy as she could muster through her talking dangle, the first blast of cigarette smoke filling the McPherson family kitchen that morning before she fished out a box of cereal from the pantry.

Joy filled Becky’s face as she heard her youngest daughter’s greeting from afar.  “Awww…..tell my little sleepy head thanks and that I’ll see her in a few hours,” Becky relayed to Steve to pass on to Haylee, and then asked, “Are Courtney and Trevor home?”

“Yeah, Trevor’s in his room doing homework.  I think Courtney might be too but I know she has some graduation preparation stuff today.”

Becky took another intense drag from the three-quarters-smoked cigarette and a confused look emerged on her face.  “Hey this was the fishing opener weekend, wasn’t it?  I thought you said a while back you and Courtney were gonna go up to the cabin for that this year.”

Steve was glad this conversation was happening over the phone so Becky couldn’t see his nervous response, composing himself as quickly as possible and answering, “Oh she’s so busy with school, work, and preparing for graduation, we just decided to hold off until after Memorial Day.”

Becky mulled the answer and thought it made some sense, but nonetheless briefly recalled that she hadn’t seen Courtney and her father interact much in recent weeks, which was kind of odd for them.  “Well don’t let time slip away and miss the chance before she starts college,” she finally responded.

“Right….we’ll get on it this summer,” Steve said, hoping it would bring closure to this terribly awkward conversation without tipping off just how strained the relationship had become with Courtney since the night she attempted to initiate sexual relations with him.

“Well, hun….break’s over.  Gotta get back to work,” Becky said, taking the final drag from her Marlboro Red and then dropping it into the toilet and flushing it.  “Remember I’m heading to see mom before I come home.”

“Sounds good.  We’ll see you then.  Love you,” Steve responded.

“Love you too,” Becky said before ending the call, the final wisps of smoke escaping her mouth and nose with those last three syllables.

Through the smoky haze, Becky took a look at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, ostensibly to see if she really looked like she was old enough to have a child graduating high school in two weeks.  She had recently turned 42 and as she looked at the draw lines around her lips and deepening crow’s feet around her eyes, along with the scattershot selection of gray hairs peeking through her naturally brown hair, she decided nobody was likely to confuse her with Courtney’s sister.

An air of guilt quickly emerged on her face as she looked down to her phone for a final order of business, scrolling through her texts and stopping at a number with no saved setting.  She began texting, “Can we meet at the usual place today at 1:30?” and then waited a few moments before a response rolled in reading, “Yes.  C U there.”  Becky made a clinical affirmative nod before putting her phone in the pocket of her scrubs and exiting the smoky bathroom, ready to resume with her job for the final three hours of the shift.

Seconds later, Becky was walking down the hallway of the bustling emergency room en route to her work station, slipping out of the way as two nurses hastily wheeled a gurney down the hall.  She was startled as another nurse called her from a room down the hall.

“Becky, I have a 48-year-old female who claims to be a patient of yours in family medicine….named Donna Green.  She’s having a severe COPD attack!” exclaimed the nurse as she waved Becky into the room, at which point Becky turned around and raced into the room.

As Becky walked in, she noticed the familiar middle-aged Donna hooked up to oxygen equipment, nearly passed out but gasping for breath with her lips turning blue and her chest in obvious pain.  “I know she has a bronchidilator.  Dr. Meirose prescribed it for her last year. Do you know if she used it during the attack?” Becky asked the nurse she barely recognized with the name tag Sharon.

“Her husband said she did but it wasn’t enough to settle her down.  He drove her down here as fast as he could,” Sharon responded, pausing to turn the dial on her oxygen treatment as her hyperventilating persisted.

It was a nervous five minutes or so as Donna’s COPD attack persisted, at times settling down to the point where it looked past peak but then flaring up again to the point that Becky and Sharon thought they might lose her.  Finally, her breathing slowly began to get under control and they adjusted her oxygen downward accordingly until the attack finally relented.  Donna spent several minutes coming down from the close call as Becky and Sharon tended to her respiratory needs.

“Thank you, Becky….” the still-winded Donna offered with a smile after observing her favorite nurse.  “And you too, young lady,” she added for Sharon’s benefit, even though all three of them were in the same general age group.

“You gave us quite a scare there Donna,” Becky said while observing the patient’s comeback, pulling up her patient data on her computer and reading the specifics.  “Looks like we got you on 50 milligram corticosteroid tablets twice per day.  I think after this attack we might want to raise that to two 100 milligram tablets per day.”

Donna cringed a bit and explained herself, “They get me all wound up and agitated when I follow the prescription.”

Becky nodded and added, “I’m sure but wouldn’t you rather be high-strung for a couple of hours a day if the alternative is coming to see me again in the middle of a full-blown COPD attack?”

Donna nodded as though she couldn’t dispute the risk-reward balance heavily favored following the nurse’s orders, letting loose a fierce smoker’s cough accompanied by a stew of phlegm being discharged in the closing phase fallout of the COPD attack.

Becky then progressed to the topic she knew would be more challenging and where she wasn’t exactly a credible preacher.  “Now I can smell the cigarette smoke on your jacket here, Donna, so I know you haven’t given it up.  I hope this attack was a wake-up call that you have to quit immediately.  We’re not playing with you on this.”

Sitting slightly up in her bed, the unattractive, overweight, and clearly downscale Donna cut a crude profile as she briefly concurred with an “I know!” seconds before deflecting blame.  “Not sure if you’re the one in the best position to scold me here though, Nurse Becky,” pausing to burst into an aggressive laugh that morphed into another extended wet cough, and then adding, “From what I’ve seen, you smoke more than I did before I got sick.”

Becky politely laughed in agreement, but seemed unflappable in response to the fair points made by the patient.  “Oh I’m sure I’ll get mine too, but at least for today I’m not the one who was brought to the ER for a major COPD attack.  Donna, every cigarette you light up after a situation like this exponentially raises the risk of you being back here very soon.  I would advise cutting the cigarettes out cold turkey but if you can’t do that, no more than three or four cigarettes per day until you ween yourself off completely, okay?”

Donna nodded in a way where it was unclear to Becky whether she would comply.  Nurse and patient commiserated for a few more minutes before Becky had to move on to the next emergency.  Even though she had been seeing a litany of patients with diseased lungs for years that should have been cautionary tales, Becky always managed to detach her own lifestyle from what was impairing her patients.  For better or for worse, it didn’t phase Becky to see this woman not much older than her with a similar smoking history whose lungs were so damaged that she probably wouldn’t live more than five more years.  Becky turned at the doorway before walking out and verbally signed off to Donna Green, closing with “You know I love to see you Donna, but not this way.  Let’s make sure the next time we see each other it’s at the clinic for your regularly scheduled appointment next month okay?”

Donna and Becky exchanged smiles and farewell greetings before Becky headed off to aid the next emergency that came through the ER doors.

———————————————————————-

A few hours later, Becky’s ER shift was over and it was time to follow through with the meeting set up via text message on her morning break.  She drove her tan car down a commercial stretch in a slightly run-down neighborhood in the suburbs just west of Minneapolis.  She didn’t know why she was nervous after all of this time, but it was clear the way she was pumping on her Marlboro Red that the tension of this biweekly routine had not yet become normalized for her.  She put her turn signal on and made a left turn into a mostly abandoned alley, pulling up to a black van with slightly tinted windows waiting for her.

Becky tensed up further as she took a final deep drag from her Marlboro Red, tossing it out the window of her foggy vehicle and then exhaling to add another plume of nicotine and tar to contribute further to the yellow-ish tint on her windshield.  She then honked the horn three times and stepped outside, letting the second party know it was her.  In seconds, a tall, young black man stepped out of the van and approached her, a growing smile on his face upon seeing his best customer awaiting his services.

“Miss Becky,” the man greeted in a thick East African accent.  “I understand you’re interested in some of my wares,” he added with a smirk.

Becky’s nerves were calmed by the man’s charm offensive.  “Abdullah, I’m sure glad you don’t have any place better to be on a Sunday afternoon than hanging out with me in this dirty alley,” Becky played along as Abdullah opened the back of the van, nervously looking over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear and then extracting a large box.

Abdullah sat the box on the hood of Becky’s car and responded, “With as much money as you spread my way, I make sure to clear my schedule for you!”

Becky laughed as she cracked open the box to take a peek, seeing three cartons each of Marlboro Reds, Marlboro Light Menthol 100s, and Camel Pink No. 9’s just as she ordered almost every two weeks, on some occasions on very short notice when she or the girls were running low.  She smirked approvingly at Abdullah as she put the box inside her car and then opened up her purse.  “The usual?” Becky asked in reference to the cost of the purchase, pulling out an envelope full of $20 bills she just withdrew from the ATM machine.

“Yes….500,” he responded, taking the envelope as Becky handed it to him and rummaging through it to make sure the count was right.

“Oh what’s the matter, Abdullah.  Don’t you trust that I can count?” Becky teased, reaching back into her purse to light up another Marlboro Red.

“Just the right amount once again,” he said with an approving smile before stuffing the envelope full of cash into the pocket of his hoodie.  “Nice to do business with you as always.”

Becky nodded back with a smile before making some small talk.  “So are you gonna visit your mom for Mother’s Day or doesn’t she live in Minnesota?”

“Nah,” Abdullah responded.  “She’s in Somalia.  Haven’t seen her since I came to America eight years ago.”

“Wow, that would be hard.  I’m sure she misses you,” said Becky sympathetically.

Abdullah nodded, adding  “I’m hoping to bring her here one day but it’s quite a process.  And I don’t want to get too public with immigration officials about how I make my money if you know what I mean.”  As Becky nodded in response, Abdullah asked, “How about you?  Is your mother still with us?”

“She sure is,” Becky responded.  “I’m heading over to visit her next actually.  What do you got planned for the rest of your Sunday?”

Abdullah flashed a mischievous smile and replied, “Good afternoon for a road trip to North Dakota.”

Dragging from her cigarette, Becky let loose a quick laugh from which wisps of smoke spilled out of her mouth and nose, knowing Abdullah’s reference meant he planned to pick up another vanload of black market cigarettes in Fargo that he could sell in Minnesota.

“Well I won’t keep you, then.  You have a long drive in front of you,” Becky closed.

“Say hello to your mother for me,” Abdullah closed before exchanging final friendly greetings with Becky and climbing in their respective vehicles to part ways for the day.

As Becky began to drive off still working on the cigarette she’d lit during the conversation with Abdullah, she thought back a few years earlier when she first did business with him.  She had become infuriated after Minnesota’s Governor signed a gigantic new tax hike on cigarettes to pay for a professional sports stadium and reached her breaking point, asking some of her smoking friends if they knew where she could get a discount.  One of them told her that there was a growing smuggling industry taken on primarily by Minnesota’s Somali refugee population, trucking in cigarettes from low-tax North Dakota and selling them in high-tax Minnesota.  She thought long and hard about whether it was the worth the risk but ultimately made the connections to get in touch with a smuggler who could cut her cigarette bill by a good 40%.  And so was born a legend.

Becky did her research before making the contact, almost scared away when she read that many involved in the cigarette black market were affiliated with either mobsters or terrorist cells who used the quick cash raised from cigarette smuggling to fund-raise for terrorist operations at home and abroad.  She didn’t want any part of that, but after meeting Abdullah, it became impossible for her to reconcile this charming and well-mannered young immigrant being associated with anything that pernicious.  And while she preferred to remain in denial about where the money Abdullah made went, Becky had at this point convinced herself that it couldn’t possibly be going to anything sleazier than what Minnesota’s state government had earmarked their own cigarette blood revenue for.  Cigarettes were still around $1.50 a pack in the late 1980s when she started at age 12, and in her mind there was absolutely no justification for why they were now nearly $10 a pack, so even though she and Steve made enough money to afford paying the prices the state of Minnesota insisted she pay, it was a matter of principle for her to refuse to.  She may still get nervous every time she approached Abdullah for a black market transaction, she always drove away satisfied that she was denying the state of Minnesota more than $300 in tobacco taxes every two weeks.

Becky took a victorious final drag from her cigarette as she turned left out of the alley, tossing it out the window and onto the street.  Her Mother’s Day had already been extremely exhausting, but the most emotionally exhausting part of the day was coming next.

—————————————————–

It never stopped being haunting for Becky to walk down the long, lonely corridors of the West Branch Community Nursing Home even though she’s been visiting her mother here for the past seven years.  Becky had been a nurse for nearly two decades now and had seen all kinds of soul-crushing images of human suffering, but walking past these rooms and seeing lonely senior citizens lying in bed watching TV by themselves filled her heart with sorrow more than just about anything else.   Today was perhaps better than most as being Mother’s Day, there were occasional bursts of human interaction in a few of the rooms, with the families of the elderly residents doing their duty and paying a visit.

Proceeding past the kitchen area, a cluster of the more functional residents sat amongst each other in their wheelchairs, mostly watching television in silence.  As lonely and unfulfilled as they seemed, these were the lucky ones, Becky thought to herself, making the final march toward the room that her mother Ann stayed in and tensing up with an even greater anticipation than she felt when she was pulling up to Abdullah’s van to purchase illegal bootlegged cigarettes for herself and her daughters.  She knocked on the door to announce her presence before stepping inside the room, even though doing so didn’t really make much sense at this point.

Ann was sitting upright in her wheelchair, her face motionless upon her daughter’s entry and her lifeless eyes projected downward to the floor.  The age marks on her face were minimal as she was undoubtedly one of the youngest people in the nursing home, but despite that relative youth, it was equally clear she was nearing the sunset of her existence, the will to live drained from her after nearly a decade of frontotemporal dementia.

Becky said “Happy Mother’s Day, mom” out of tradition, fighting back a tear as she always did upon seeing her mother now in the advanced stages of a condition that had begun fully sapping the life of her for the last few years.   Becky opened her purse and removed a Mother’s Day corsage, crouching to her knees and pinning the corsage onto the lapel of her mother’s blouse, the tear she’d been fighting back up to this point now rolling down her cheek.  She reached up to Ann’s forehead and stroked her hair, partly for grooming purposes to make her look as good as possible with the corsage, but also hoping to see a glimmer of life from her.  Regretfully, there was nary a blink of the eye response from Ann so Becky pulled back, sitting on a chair in the room and sliding it up toward her mother.

Ann looked as pretty today as she was capable of looking, her once lustrous mane of brown hair now thinned down to a mostly silver-hued coiffure that glistened with the sunshine radiating in through the window behind her, and decked out in a nice blouse that Becky called in advance to arrange having Ann dressed in for Mother’s Day. Becky briefly contemplated taking a photo to capture the moment, but held back as she really had no desire to remember her mother this way after she passed.  She leaned forward to speak to Ann, fully realizing she would neither understand the words nor talk back.

“Well mom, you’ve now officially celebrated one more Mother’s Day than your mom did,” speaking in reference to the grandmother who’d also suffered from frontotemporal dementia for years and had been bed-ridden throughout most of Becky’s memories, dying at age 62.  “And you outlived your sister Karen too.  That’s something to be proud of,” Becky added, not believing her own words but hoping the tone of her voice would convey the faintest hint of empowerment to her mother for the pyrrhic victory of perseverance in the face of this horrible genetic disease that had haunted females in the Gunderson family for generations.  Becky rarely brought the kids to see grandma, knowing that some very hard questions would come from it and that her answers would be intensely morbid.  She may have been old enough to need to come to terms with it, but they still had too much life in front of them to concern themselves with the Gunderson matriarchal curse at this point.

Becky stayed with her mother for the better part of an hour, letting her know she’d see her next week, a commitment Becky tried her best to maintain even though it took all of her willpower to keep the promise.  As she made the same long walk down the hallway from which she walked in an hour earlier, Becky didn’t hesitate to open her purse and ready her pack of Marlboro Reds, both because she was seriously jonesing for a cigarette and because the last hour reinforced her long-held belief that the reward of finding pleasure from whatever gives it to you in the time you have in this life vastly exceeded the risk of deferring that pleasure in pursuit of happiness at some arbitrary time in the future that may never, and in her case probably wouldn’t, come.

Becky loved the feeling that smoking cigarettes gave her, and her daughters seemed to love it just as much, so there was no point in denying it to herself or to them.  She knew the world judged her as a terrible mother for it, but most of them didn’t know her experience and none of them had lived a day in her shoes.  In her profession, she had witnessed so much human suffering on a daily basis, but at least in her mind it was a zero-sum game.  And whatever health consequences awaited her, Courtney, and Haylee down the line from years of heavy smoking, Becky still figured it was a less devastating outcome than what she’d just spent the last hour seeing in her mother.

She picked up her pace as she approached the nursing home exit, opening her pack of Marlboro Reds and inserting one into her mouth.  She dangled it for the last 15 yards before going through the exit, sparking the cigarette to life almost instantly after stepping outdoors.  She took an intense drag from her cigarette, applying maximal suction to satisfy a nicotine craving nearly an hour in the making.  After seven seconds of inhalation, she removed the cigarette from her mouth and exhaled a monstrous plume of smoke in front of her, which was followed by a hoarse and phlegmy cough the likes of which were increasingly common for her in recent years.  Perhaps this foreshadowed her laying in the same ER gurney with a COPD attack that Donna Green did a few hours earlier and denying her the opportunity to hold her first grandchild, but with as good as that hit of nicotine felt hitting her brain, she decided as she did so many hundreds of times before that it was worth the risk.

As she progressed toward her car, dragging from her Marlboro with higher-than-average frequency, her mind gravitated to her family and what she could make them for their evening meal.  She was dead-on-her-feet exhausted, but appreciated every opportunity she had to spend time with them and care for them, as she kept getting that weekly reminder that the time to do so was probably fleeting.

——————————————————-

Becky spoke to Steve on the phone during her 20-minute commute from the nursing home to their own home, and he told her the kids were all gone but that he’d text them to be home before 5:00 for the obligatory Sunday evening McPherson family dinner.  She pulled into the driveway, her mind fully immersed in meal preparation as she dragged from her third cigarette since leaving the nursing home.  As she walked in the front door holding the box of cigarettes she’d picked up from Abdullah, she was legitimately startled to hear the collective chorus of “Happy Mother’s Day!” from Steve and all three of her children, and even more shocked at the delightful smell of food cooking which even managed to overwhelm the odor of stale tobacco smoke that typically dominated the McPherson home.

An aura of joy filled Becky’s face for the first time since she heard Haylee wish her a happy Mother’s Day over the phone that morning, only her face was beaming twice as bright now as she looked at the bustling activity in the kitchen.  Trevor was frying bacon in a skillet over the range while Haylee was doing her best to not break the yoke on the eggs she was frying and Courtney was whipping up pancakes a few feet down the counter.  That’s my girls, Becky thought to herself as she watched Courtney and Haylee both dangling cigarettes over their respective skillet and bowl as they cooked, smoke billowing from their mouths and noses and ashes lurking over the food that could at any point drop into it.  She rarely saw the girls prepare food, but it didn’t surprise her in the least that when they did, they followed her lead and smoked while they cooked.

As Becky started to walk in to help, Trevor held her back, “Nope.  Not today mom.  You just sit down on your favorite chair and let us do the cooking today.”

Becky dragged from her cigarette with a pleasant confusion.  “Who are you guys and what have you done with my teenagers?” she asked, and they laughed in response while continuing to shoo her out of the kitchen.

“Well you’re owed one day per year to be as selfish as we are the other 364,” Courtney added, the cigarette bouncing up and down as she spoke, the granny ash coming ever closer to falling into the pancake batter as she prepared to put them in the griddle.

Becky did as her children asked and scurried into the living room, walking past Steve who was setting up TV trays for everybody to eat there rather than the kitchen table, knowing Becky would relax better there.  Steve smiled at Becky and said, “You got home a few minutes earlier than expected.  They were hoping to get the timing right and have it ready right when you walked in but obviously it was better to be a little too late than too early and have it cold when you got here.”

Becky smiled back and responded through a talking exhale, “Well they got the timing just right.  I’m starving.”

“The original plan was to have breakfast ready for you first thing this morning, but that kind of got blown up when you had to work overnight.  That’s what’s up with the breakfast menu,” Steve explained.

“Works just fine for me,” Becky responded, taking a final drag from her Marlboro Red and crushing it out in the living room ashtray.  “So you put them up to it right?” she asked.

Steve nodded his head in the negative.  “Nope…this was all Trevor’s idea.  He brought it up to me a couple of weeks ago.”

“Aww, what a sweet boy he is,” Becky responded, reaching for her pack of Marlboro Reds and preparing to light another one, but then pausing for a quick epiphany.  “Hopefully this isn’t just his way of getting on my good side before he announces Lauren’s pregnant,” she added with a husky laugh that morphed into a smoker’s cough.

Steve laughed in response, but only for a moment before giving her a scolding look as if to nonverbally convey that she shouldn’t even joke about that.

“Dad, can you get in here and help with these eggs?!?” called out a distressed Haylee from the kitchen, clearly making this announcement with a cigarette in her mouth stunting her speech.

Steve smirked at Becky before turning around to go help the kids in the kitchen.  Becky watched from her chair to admire the moment, but didn’t fail to notice the awkward body language when Steve crossed paths with Courtney, avoiding each other without a word and without eye contact.  She didn’t know what was going on between those two, but she’d seen enough of these moments in the last month to recognize there was a problem.  After that moment had passed, however, Becky just relaxed and took in this rare moment where her family was waiting on her, the haze of cigarette smoke that filled up the kitchen area that was for once coming from the lungs of someone other than herself.

A few minutes later, the kids and Steve prepared the trays to bring out to the living room, and making sure Becky got the first one.  They all began entering the living room at once decked out in their casual mix of sweats, shorts, and leggings, with Trevor leading the way holding a tray with two plates teeming with bacon, eggs, and pancakes with a jug of maple syrup, a glass of milk, and a butt can ashtray.  He sat it silently on the TV table in front of his mother as she fought back the tears for the second time this afternoon, albeit this time tears of joy.

The five members of the McPherson family were soon sitting down to eat the food they prepared, with regular blasts of conventionally unsavory cigarette smoke expelled from the respiratory systems of Becky, Courtney, and Haylee as they ate, but which Steve and Trevor took fully in stride as always.  As the starving Becky consumed the meal, she decided the bacon was a little burnt, the eggs were a little runny, and the pancakes thicker and doughier than she’d prefer, but whatever the meal’s deficiencies, no meal she’d eaten this year had meant more to her.

 

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Trevor’s Birthday Girls Share a Party

Trevor McPherson was barely even trying at this point to focus on his older sister’s tax form tutorial as he sat at the kitchen table between his sisters, a haze of fresh cigarette smoke engulfing his personal space from both sides.  An unkempt Courtney, her hair in a ratty ponytail and decked out in a T-shirt and sweatpants, leaned in from one direction and Haylee leaned in from the other, with Trevor sitting in the middle supposedly getting a lesson in filing taxes but unable to get his mind off of the olfactory assault imposed upon him by his typically tone-deaf sisters.

Trevor didn’t know the details of why Courtney was suddenly trying so hard to make the peace with Haylee, but after multiple awkward weeks they had begun to communicate again recently, and he figured this morning invitation from Courtney to teach them how to file taxes had more to do with staying on Haylee’s good side than any serious good will gesture.  Still, any situation where he got to sit at the kitchen table for a prolonged period with his sisters smoking on both sides of him was perfectly fine by him.

Nudging the form toward them just a little further so they could both see what she was doing, Courtney’s Marlboro Light Menthol 100 was for a moment directly under Trevor’s nose until she placed it between her lips and picked up the pencil, explaining through a talking dangle that “Now you subtract line 8 from line 5 to get the taxable income to write on line 9.”

Trevor looked intently at Courtney, pretending to care about her math lesson but instead focusing on the cigarette bouncing up and down between her lips and the steady spray of smoke pouring out of her mouth and nose like a garden hose, again filling his airspace with a direct haze of filth as she proceeded to write the number on line 9 in the tax form with her pencil.  As Courtney finished writing, Trevor looked over his right shoulder to see Haylee looking on with glazed-over eyes, clearly having even less of a reason to pay attention than Trevor did to Courtney’s attempt at an informative gesture in tax preparation.  But like Courtney, Haylee had a cigarette of her own hanging from her lips, a half-smoked Camel Pink that was the third she’d smoked in the half hour or so that Courtney had them gather at the table, and a fitting accessory to go along with Haylee’s pale pink pajamas that she still hadn’t gotten out of after sleeping till 10 that morning.  Just as Trevor was recovering from the smoke assault he’d gotten from Courtney, a blob of smoke burst into his face from Haylee’s mouth and nose.  It was a vicious cycle ongoing for the last half hour…only for Trevor the cycle was all too virtuous.

Looking past Trevor to make eye contact with Haylee, Courtney addressed her younger sister directly, sensing her mind was elsewhere.  “Get that Hales?” Courtney asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Haylee responded half-heartedly, the pink and white cigarette bouncing to life between those lips for the first time since they sat down.

“I know you guys would rather be doing other stuff on a Saturday morning, but it’s not often we’re all here at the same time and I figure you guys should know this for when you have to file yourself.  It’s only three weeks till they’re due,” Courtney followed up, wisps of smoke still spilling from her mouth and nose with every word spoken as she did the math in her head to make sure it was three weeks until April 15th.

“Yeah, thanks for showing us,” Trevor volunteered, putting on a veneer of gratitude even though the tax paperwork had nothing to do with what he was grateful about with this encounter.  As Courtney pressed forward with further explanation, rummaging through the papers in front of her and proceeding to confuse herself more than she was teaching her younger siblings, Trevor and Haylee further trailed off, finding themselves much more interested in the dialogue ensuing on the other side of the table.

“That’s right.  She’ll be 15 already next Sunday,” their mother Becky said to a relative on the phone in her husky long-time smoker’s voice, in obvious reference to Haylee’s approaching early April birthday, then pausing briefly for the response on the other end before responding, “Right, her party’s next Sunday at 3:00 at our house.  Just cake, ice cream, and presents.  Nothing too elaborate,” Becky added with a nervous laugh that really showcased the depth of her vocal husk before taking another drag off of her Marlboro Red and adding to the haze of cigarette smoke at that table.

Haylee kept her game face, tightening her lips on her Camel Pink to camouflage her mixed emotions about this birthday party her mom was setting up.  She felt she was too old for this sort of thing, but appreciated her mother’s effort to do something special for her.  It seemed par for course, however, that the only time of the year Haylee felt special to her family came in the form of a juvenile birthday party that she’d long ago outgrown.

Becky wrapped up the conversation with whichever relative she’d been on the phone with, waited for a pause in Courtney’s relentless tax form lecture, and then directed a question to Haylee.  “Have you asked Susie to come to your party yet?  If not, I’ll call her mom.”

Haylee shrugged and responded, “I haven’t asked her.  We’re really not that close anymore,” with a hint of sadness in her eyes about yet another friend she’d drifted away from.  Becky paused for a moment listening to Haylee, realizing that Haylee’s comment about Susie was true of several of her old friends.  Only Trevor seemed to put two and two together that Haylee’s heavy smoking was a large part of what had driven her isolation.  Both Trevor and Haylee perked their ears up as Becky got on the phone to call Susie’s mom.

The conversation was brief and it was quickly evident by their mother’s body language and responses that she’d gotten an abrupt no when inquiring about Susie’s presence at Haylee’s party.  Becky looked awkwardly at Haylee, putting her on the spot and asking, “What happened with you two?  We couldn’t tear you two apart a couple of years ago.”

Haylee shrugged, dangle-dragging from her cigarette and eventually responding, “Just grew apart I guess.  It happens,” with the smoke flow spilling from her mouth inadvertently telling the real story of what drove them apart, with Susie not responding well to Haylee’s lifestyle choices.

Becky pressed forward.  “Have you talked to any of your friends about coming?  I want to know how many to expect so I know how much food to make.”

Haylee largely avoided eye contact, dangle-dragging again with her cigarette down to its stub.  Sensing the cigarette was at its end, she finally removed it from her mouth and approached the filter and the half-inch granny ash to the nearby butt bucket to crush it out, finally getting around to responding with the smoke still bursting out of her mouth and nose.  “I haven’t talked about it a lot I guess, mom.  I’m not all that close with too many people in the high school.”

Trevor and Becky both sensed this response was equal parts defiance and a cry for help, and Courtney had by now given up trying to hold their attention and was listening to Haylee as well, also concerned about the relative isolation Haylee seemed to be creating for herself at such a critical phase of her socialization.  Only Trevor seemed to connect the dots that in today’s culture, the smoker-friendly island that was the McPherson home provided Haylee the only sanctuary where she could indulge her ferocious addiction to nicotine, and that by itself was making it easier for her to shut the rest of the world out.

Finally, Becky broke the awkward silence and threw out a few more names of old friends that she thought Haylee should invite, getting continued halfhearted reaction from Haylee who nonetheless agreed to ask the suggested friends just to get her mom off of her back.

Suddenly a light went off in Trevor’s head, and before he had time to fully think through the implications of his suggestion, he went with his gut and spoke aloud to his mother, “You know Lauren’s birthday is on April 6th…only two days after Haylee’s.  I bet she’d be up for sharing a party with Haylee….” Trevor offered, then turning to Haylee almost as an afterthought and adding, “….if Haylee would be okay with it.”

Becky’s eyes lit up, liking the sound of what she heard as she dragged from her Marlboro Red.  “That’s a great idea, honey.  If we did that the Nelsons could pay half and we’d be more likely to get rid of all of this food I just ordered.”  Becky looked to Haylee and asked her, “Would you be okay with having Lauren over and have a party for two?”

All eyes were on Haylee, with Trevor getting only a split-second to contemplate the perfect smoking fetish fantasy of Lauren and Haylee together for the same teenage birthday party, but then immediately sensing from Haylee’s body language that she wasn’t having it at all.  “Yeah…whatever,” Haylee said, in a tone even more sullen than usual, reaching for her pack of Camel Pink No. 9s for yet another cigarette.  Trevor knew he had overstepped, and Courtney was immediately sensing Haylee’s escalating unhappiness as well, interrupting on Haylee’s behalf to address their mother.

“Mom, this is supposed to Haylee’s day.  I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Courtney offered, watching as Haylee lit her cigarette and sensing that she was correctly relaying Haylee’s thoughts.

But Becky seemed to have been instantly sold on the idea Trevor pitched to her, looking to Haylee as if hoping Courtney’s take was wrong, trying to talk Haylee into it by adding, “You and Lauren get along great, Haylee.  Maybe you could make some new friends meeting some of her friends.”

Trevor was kicking himself for bringing it up as it was obvious that Haylee was furious about this development, even if she couldn’t bring herself to say so and reveal how much the birthday party actually meant to her.  “It’s fine, mom.  Invite Lauren.  The more the merrier, right?!” Haylee snapped with a faint battle cry that she hoped would be obvious enough that her mom could read between the lines, puckering her lips around her dangling cigarette and expecting the hint to have been taken.

But a split second after Haylee’s subtle act of defiance, the nearby back door was opened and McPherson family patriarch Steve walked in, instantly diverting everybody’s attention, especially that of daddy’s girl Courtney.

“Hey dad”, Courtney exclaimed in the perkiest tone anybody had heard from her all day, instinctively reaching for her pack of Marlboro Light Menthol 100s in her father’s presence and extracting a cigarette.  “They got you working Saturday morning huh?”

“Hey Courtney,” Steve responded, delight in his eyes over the warm greeting from his oldest daughter, keeping his eyes locked on her as she sparked up her long cigarette and produced one of her stunningly long exhales directly off of the light-up.  “Unfortunately yeah.  The server crashed overnight and the entire IT team got woke up by the call at 5 a.m.”

Courtney and Becky continued to direct their attention entirely upon the latest entrant to the room as Steve walked up to the table and inquired about Courtney’s tax forms still sprawled all over the table in front of her.  Everybody had already forgotten about Haylee’s birthday party conflict except for Trevor, who looked to his right just in time to see Haylee get up from the table and quietly walk away with no pushback from those she was leaving behind.  Trevor couldn’t help but watch her slink away, struck by the oddball image of his sister’s adolescent appearance in the baggy pale pink pajamas and its contrast with the trail of smelly cigarette smoke that lurked in the shadow of her every footstep en route to the stairs.

Trevor sat there listening to Courtney and Becky talk with Steve, but couldn’t get Haylee’s reaction out of his mind, or the secondary epiphany that just hit him of why it would really be awkward for Haylee to have Lauren there.  He got up from the table and ascended the same stairs Haylee had just moments earlier.  He didn’t know if he could make this right but felt obligated to do something, knocking on Haylee’s door, asking if he could come in a split second before taking the initiative and opening it.

Haylee was lying in her bed and looking at her phone from a near-horizontal position, her cigarette perched in her lips as always while casually belching out spurts of smoke. She gave Trevor a gaze that was equal parts icy and indifferent.  “What do you want?” she snapped with middling-level disgust, temporarily distracting Trevor with the extra burst of smoke spilling out due to her talking exhale.

Trevor hesitated as if searching for the right tone.  “I just wanted to apologize.  I had forgotten why you might not want the Nelsons over again for your birthday, knowing that Brian will be with.”

Haylee’s head snapped Trevor’s direction, not even putting together the implications till just now but being even more concerned that Trevor apparently knew far more than she thought he did.  “What about Brian?” Haylee finally asked, her tone indicating that her brother had touched a very unexpected nerve.

Trevor realized he’d dug his hole even deeper but having gone there, he figured he might as well ride out the storm and at least get more details over his sister’s activity that had piqued his curiosity for the last three months.  “Well…..I heard you two in the closet on New Year’s,” Trevor offered, nervous about Haylee’s response but unable to look away.

Haylee was clearly caught off-guard, her face turning a deeper hue of pink that her pajamas or the camel logo on the cigarette she finally removed from her mouth in order to make a forceful rebuttal. “All we did was kiss.  I don’t know what you think you heard but unlike others in this house I can keep it in my pants!” she barked, the wisps of smoke from her talking exhale escaping her mouth and nose at a much quicker pace than usual due to how worked up she was.

Trevor began to respond, “It’s none of my business.  I just wanted–”

“You’re right!  It is none of your business!”  Haylee then reached for one of the pillows on her bed and tossed it aggressively at Trevor, exclaiming “Now get out of here!” with a fury in her eyes above and beyond anything he’d seen from her recently.

Trevor made eye contact with her one last time after the pillow hit him in the face.  “Just let me talk to mom and get the double birthday party out of her mind, okay?”

“Just forget it okay.  It might be less miserable if Lauren is here.  At least then everybody will have someone to talk to that isn’t me!  Now LEAVE!” she finished, raising her voice to its highest level yet.

Trevor turned around and walked out the door, feeling a wave of mixed emotion from the exchange.  If he had it to do over again, he probably wouldn’t have suggested to his mom to host a double birthday party with Lauren.  On the other hand, it sure would be sweet to have so many people from their mutual social circle under the same roof if he could pull it off.  He also felt a little bit of relief that his kid sister hadn’t lost her virginity to his girlfriend’s younger brother, but on the other hand, it had been kind of hot for him to imagine young Brian being seduced by Haylee in the storage closet of his house on New Year’s.  He also couldn’t get Haylee’s words out of his mind about “everybody in this house not being able to keep it in their pants” and figured she was implicating Courtney as well.  Trevor didn’t know the details but figured with as long as Courtney and Haylee had been feuding after New Year’s, something big must have gone on.  As he walked back toward the kitchen to catch up with his dad, he was pretty pleased with how productive the morning had gone, but couldn’t wait for seven days later when the two birthday girls might be together under one roof again.

—————————————————————-

Monday morning during lunch break at school, Haylee was up to her old tricks, darting her eyes nervously side to side and hoping to get lost in the mass of students as she eyed the janitor’s closet up ahead.  With bookbag in hand, Haylee leaned briefly against the wall next to the unlocked door and then slipped inside when she thought nobody was paying attention.  Once inside she maneuvered her way through the crawlspace until she was in the stealth, isolated, and dirty vent shaft area that had been her secret lunch time smoking area since September.  She opened up her bookbag and removed three items with an escalating sense of urgency.  Coming out of the bag first was a bottle of flavored water followed by a bag of potato chips, but she saved her best for last when she hastily extracted her pack of Camel Pink No. 9s and wasted no time removing a cigarette and inserting it into her mouth, dangling it for no more than a split second before applying the flame from her lighter to the end of the cigarette.  The sensation of nicotine relief after four hours of deprivation splashed across her youthful face, the cherry glowing a neon shade of red as she puckered up her lips to consume as much tobacco as she possibly could in one breath.  As she finally exhaled and began to expel all of that smoke that had been inside her body for the last several seconds, she wished for a second that she had a mirror so she could have seen the look on her face as she took in that first blast of nicotine.

She followed that first drag up with several more intense drags and had more than a third of the cigarette put away in less than a minute, at which point she finally got around to opening up that bag of potato chips almost as an afterthought.  For the next couple of moments, she sat there contentedly, taking a couple drags from her cigarette for every bite of potato chips, but her peaceable enclave suddenly became corrupted for the first time in more than six months as she heard the door open.  After the initial shock of hearing the door open, Haylee quickly removed the cigarette from her mouth and cupped her hand to contain the smoke as much as possible, knowing it was a lost cause if it was the wrong person.  Haylee could see the feet of the likely male intruder step inside and then close the door behind him.  In a hushed tone, the confused male voice called out, “Haylee…are you in here?”

Relieved that it was a familiar and nonthreatening voice, Haylee responded “Jacob?” with even more confusion about his presence.

“Where the hell are you?” Jacob inquired.

“Just crawl through the crawlspace to your right.  I’m in the vent shaft.” Haylee responded, her original terror quickly transitioning to excitement based on who it was.

Jacob Roth, Haylee’s dance partner from the Valentine’s dance, worked his way inside, the stench of cigarette smoke becoming more intense with every inch closer he got to Haylee.  He struggled to work through the small space and found it was definitely not made for two people as he wiggled right up to Haylee, whose cigarette stub was now parked in her mouth again with a subtle but flattered smirk visible despite the cylindrical tobacco obstruction between her lips.

Haylee looked him up and down, taken again by his tall, dark, and handsome look and muscular upper body just as she had at the dance.  She then pointed to the nearby vent and warned Jacob, “The girl’s bathroom is right on the other side here so we gotta be quiet”, she whispered in a setting that reminded her of New Year’s Eve night with Brian Nelson in her parent’s storage closet.

Jacob responded with a shoosh gesture, evoking the same charm that made Haylee’s heart melt at the Valentine’s dance.

“What are you doing in here anyway?” Haylee asked, finally addressing the obvious.

“You’re one hard girl to find.  We had such a great time at the dance last month that I’ve been keeping my eye out for you ever since.  I noticed a couple of weeks ago you slipped into this closet, but then I saw it again today.  I finally put together that it must be your smoking sanctuary.”

“Creeeeper!!!” Haylee responded only half-jokingly but maintaining a smile because as creepy as it would have been with just about everyone else, she loved the idea of this hot senior guy stalking her at school.  She took a final puff of her cigarette and crushed it out in the corner of the dirty space, with Jacob’s eyes following her every gesture.

“I don’t want to seem creepy but I really wanted to talk to you again.  We really had a great time and I wanted to hang out with you more,” Jacob responded.

Haylee had already extracted another cigarette from her pack and placed it between her lips, responding, “Yeah right….” pausing to flick the cigarette to life with her lighter and then resuming, “….I know all about you, Jacob Roth.  You just want to get down my pants!” teasing him by turning her ass draped in black leggings with hot pink stripes toward him.

Jacob struggled to maintain his focus and charm as he choked on the thick haze of cigarette smoke filling up the cramped space, but pressed forward through watery eyes, “I know….I know.  I’ve probably created a bit of a reputation for myself in the past, but wasn’t I a perfect gentleman toward you on the night of our dance?”

The smile on Haylee’s face widened and her eyes narrowed as she puckered her lips around the cigarette filter for another drag, indicating heightened attraction and signaling to Jacob her interest even before verbally confirming it by responding, “Yes you certainly did” through a messy talking exhale that wandered right into Jacob’s face.

“All I’m asking is to give me another chance to prove I can be like that all the time with you,” Jacob said in a tone that seemed less than fully sincere, reminding Haylee to not put her guard down and let this guy think he had her where she wanted him.

“Maybe,” Haylee responded coyly, the cigarette bouncing between her lips with each of the two syllables and smoke continuing to spill from her lips and mouth.

Jacob smiled, not wanting to press too far too quickly and instead enjoying a moment of attracted body language with this cute freshman girl who he’d been unable to get out of his mind for the past six weeks.  He finally broke the silence and extended his hand toward Haylee.  “Can I have a drag?”

Haylee laughed and then took the half-smoked cigarette out of her mouth, asking “Have you ever smoked before?”

“I’ve vaped,” responded Jacob.

“Totally different thing!” Haylee exclaimed.

Jacob extended his hand closer to her, requesting again through his charming smirk, “Just let me give it a try and I’ll let you know, huh?”

Haylee handed over the cigarette, adding “This should be good!” as the cigarette approached Jacob’s lips.  He took a quick puff and Haylee eyeballed him closely for his reaction.  She could tell he wasn’t digging the taste as he blew out the smoke without inhaling.

“Meh!” Jacob shrugged, trying to seem disinterested without seeming disgusted.

Haylee wasn’t gonna let him off the hook that easy though, responding “Dude that’s not smoking.  You gotta inhale!” reclaiming the cigarette and placing back to her lips to show him.  “Like this,” she added, showing him her full drag and follow-up exhale and then handing it back to him.

Jacob took the cigarette and this time followed Haylee’s lead, completely unprepared for his bodily response when he ingested a snootful of smoke and launched into a violent coughing fit.  Haylee let loose a laugh that was quite a bit louder than she’d hoped it would be and was becoming concerned that it might be heard through the vents in the girls’ bathroom before reminding herself and the still-recovering Jacob to lower their voices again.

The continued look of disgust was tangible on Jacob’s face as he handed Haylee back the cigarette.  Haylee showed him up by taking a final drag from the cigarette and exhaling the smoke with a cocky sense of empowerment, adding “I hate to break it to you, tough guy, but these cigarettes are designed for girls,” showing him the pack of Camel Pinks to emasculate him a little more as she crushed out the cigarette and immediately plucked out of the pack her third cigarette of the lunch break.

All Jacob could do was nod with his douchey smirk, trying to salvage whatever dignity he could following his bad miscalculation, seeing in Haylee’s eyes how much she was loving the altered power dynamic of this freshman girl who’d just made a fool of him.  As Haylee proceeded to light the next cigarette, Jacob now had an odd respect for her that was only increasing his attraction.  He broke the awkward silence and addressed the obvious by being as charming as possible, pointing to the cigarette hanging out of Haylee’s mouth and the bag of potato chips she was semiregularly dipping into and saying “I used to think my lunches were pretty unhealthy,” pausing to observe Haylee smile before adding, “Do you smoke in here every day?”

“Every day since September.  Haven’t been caught yet…until today at least!” Haylee responded.

“Impressive,” Jacob said while nodding affirmatively.  “You been smoking a long time?”

Haylee nodded, coyly responding, “For a few years.”

“Pretty heavily too it seems?” Jacob continued to inquire watching Haylee take another of her regularly timed drags.

Haylee nodded again, responding, “Oh yeah!” with a vocal flourish that was reinforced with an inadvertent smoker’s cough a second later.

“I’m assuming your parents know.  They must be pretty cool to let you smoke like that…” Jacob pressed.

Haylee’s look shifted from flirtatious to agitated as Jacob brought up her parents.  “Don’t even get me started!”

“Parent issues?” Jacob continued to press.

“You have no idea!” Haylee fired back.

“I’m a captive audience if you want to vent,” Jacob followed up, trying to show Haylee he had a sensitive side and wasn’t the kind of guy she thought he was.

After a couple more exchanges, Haylee let her guard down and started spilling about how disrespected and invisible she felt, and once she got started venting, she couldn’t stop, ultimately landing on the latest episode of contention….the birthday party.

“….so now it’s gonna be MY birthday and my parents are gonna let my brother’s girlfriend steal the show by having a party for two.  Her birthday’s a couple of days later.”

Jacob had tried to be silent and let Haylee do most of the talking, but chose the moments when he asked questions that propelled her bitching session along, inquiring “You don’t like your brother’s girlfriend?”

Haylee took another drag from her cigarette and responded through a talking exhale, “Actually I like her a lot, but that’s not the point.  My parents treat her different from me even though she’s only one year older.  They even let her drink wine on New Year’s and told me I couldn’t.  I don’t want that rubbed in my face again at what’s supposed to be my birthday party!”  She paused and then continued, “And the party was supposed to be on Sunday but in order to be on Lauren’s family’s schedule, they’re moving the party to Saturday.  My sister has to work that day so she won’t even be able to be there.  So things are already fucked up!”

As Haylee continued to vent, she was impressed by how much of an interest Jacob seemed to be taking, but always kept reminding herself that this could all be part of his act to get toward the ultimate goal of deflowering her.  Still, Haylee needed somebody in her life who she could talk to after bottling everything up so long, and Jacob had patiently filled that need for the nearly the entire lunch period.  As she crushed out her fourth cigarette since arriving, she looked at her phone and determined she had time for a fifth today, storing up on the nicotine she’d need to get through another long afternoon in classes, and bantering a little more with Jacob who reached his hand out again when he saw her looking at her phone.

Haylee saw Jacob’s extended hand and asked sarcastically, “Oh do you want to try my cigarette again?”

Jacob smirked and responded, “Definitely not!  But I’d like to see your phone.  It looks like mine.”

Haylee had an idea what he was up to and handed it to him with a faux look of exaggerated distrust.  As expected, Jacob proceeded to punch in digits onto her phone, hand it back to her and say, “You got my number now.  If you ever want to talk, I’ll be happy to listen.  If you ever want to hang out, that’d be even better.”

Haylee nodded with a smirk she couldn’t wipe off of her face even though she wanted to, not ready to green light Jacob for anything beyond the vent shaft crawlspace they shared during today’s lunch period but unable to stop herself from sending the visual signals of her continued interest through her body language.  She powered through that last cigarette as they exchanged final comments before Haylee led the way to attempt a stealth escape from the janitor’s closet.  She slipped through the door and got immediately lost in the hallway traffic herself, walking about 20 feet toward the lockers and then looking over her shoulder to let Jacob slip out.  She smiled and then let him catch up.

“We probably better not make a habit of meeting like that every day but I hope you don’t mind if I crash your lunch hour again some time.”

Haylee didn’t directly answer him, but looked his attractive profile up and down one more time and responded, “I really enjoyed your company today, Jacob.  Thanks for listening.”

As they exchanged farewells and Jacob began to walk away, Haylee got an unpleasant surprise when a familiar voice approached her from behind.  A startled Haylee was looking at older sister Courtney, who herself reeked of cigarettes that she’d probably smoked in her car during lunch period, and Courtney was giving her a deeply concerned sisterly scowl.

“Jacob Roth!” exclaimed Courtney after seeing the fellow senior bantering with the freshman Haylee.  “That guy is bad news, Haylee.  He’s already gone through the senior class and is now chasing after every underclass skirt in the high school.”

Haylee was visibly annoyed about being busted and responded defensively, “I know about his reputation, Court.  We were just talking.”

“It always starts that way Haylee.  He’s grooming you.”

“Don’t worry Courtney,” Haylee snapped back.  “I’ll make sure you get to fuck him first just like my other boyfriends!!” playing the Grant card as aggressively as possible to remind Courtney of her nonexistent moral high ground.

Courtney knew she deserved that rejoinder but was nervously looking around hoping none of her acquaintances had heard Haylee call out Courtney for what she did on New Year’s and a few times afterwards with Haylee’s ex-boyfriend.  Courtney recovered as quickly as possible though and tried to cool Haylee’s temper, calmly responding, “Haylee, we gotta get to class, but trust me that I’m looking out for you here.” Courtney put her hand on Haylee’s shoulder in a reassuringly big sister sort of way adding, “Please just stay away from him, okay?”

Haylee could tell Courtney’s concern here was sincere and responded with a nonhostile and matter-of-fact, “Okay!”

Courtney smiled, knowing she still had a long way to go to get back to the terms she was on with Haylee before the New Year’s incident but was pleased that she seemed to be breaking through at least a little on an important sisterly exchange.  They parted ways as the two girls headed for their respective early afternoon classes which were moments away from beginning, but as Haylee walked toward class the smile re-emerged on her face as she recalled her lunchtime banter with Jacob.

————————————————————

The following Saturday afternoon, the McPherson home was filled up with family and friends who came to celebrate Haylee’s birthday, along with a dozen or so perfect strangers who came for Lauren’s birthday.  Lauren was not yet here, with Trevor and her parents agreeing it would be fun to surprise Lauren by having some friends bring her over to the McPherson home without knowing it was for a birthday party in her honor.

Haylee walked around mingling with the crowd, extremely displeased with the “surprise party” angle for Lauren that would be coming at any moment.  She was decked out in pastel colors, a white blouse with tight, pale pink pants that matched the profile of a girl turning 15, in sharp contrast to the cigarette in her hand or dangling from her lips more often than not as she greeted and chatted up the relatives and family friends, many of whom gritted their teeth through fake smiles of their own seeing Haylee smoking so openly and heavily but knowing from experience with her mother that this was the culture of the McPherson home and would never change, and that this was the wrong place to protest.

For his part, Trevor’s attention was divided, looking out the front window for the arrival of his friend’s car knowing a very surprised Lauren would be riding along, and also taking in this crowd of which Trevor was far more tuned in to than Haylee in terms of reading their body language in this smoky environment.  He recognized most of his own family and friends, a couple of whom were smoking themselves, but was really attentive to the strangers in the group who he believed were connected to Lauren, most of whom seemed visibly repulsed by the tobacco stench in the home and couldn’t seem to take their eyes off of Becky and Haylee as they smoked amongst this crowd without giving it a second thought.

Of particular interest to Trevor was the mid-teen blond who he’d already met a few times sitting next to her mother.  The blond was Lauren’s cousin and BFF Carly, who was responsible for sneaking Lauren’s earliest cigarettes with her a couple of years earlier.  Trevor couldn’t help but notice that Carly was leering at the chain-smoking Haylee with obvious jealousy, and Carly’s mother was leering at Haylee for different reasons with an entirely unamused look on her face.  Neither of them had smoked in the half hour since they’d arrived and Trevor was only too eager to see how this dynamic unfolded when Lauren arrived.

Moments later, a familiar car arrived but it wasn’t the one transporting Lauren.  It was Lauren’s mother Michelle and brother Brian, walking up the street and arriving at the front door.  Trevor, Becky, and Steve all approached the front door to welcome them, and as they stepped inside, Becky motioned Haylee over and called out in her raspy voice, “Haylee, come say hi to Michelle and Brian.”

Haylee reluctantly approached, expecting it to be awkward and confirming the suspicion as she saw Brian looking to the ground as she approached, unable to make eye contact after their oddball wine-induced romantic episode from New Year’s.  Introductory greetings were nonetheless passed along with everybody but Trevor finding it odd that Haylee and Brian refused to even look at each other.

“Craig not coming today?” Steve asked in regards to Lauren’s father and his own friend.

“Oh he’s definitely gonna be over but a bit later,” Michelle answered with a flourish that intrigued everybody, especially Trevor.

But before Michelle’s response could be given any context, everybody’s attention was diverted by the sight of a familiar approaching car, to which Trevor called out, “Here she comes!” to briefly quiet and focus the crowd.

The silver Toyota pulled up into the driveway, which had been left open per Becky’s request, and Trevor stood at the doorway to see his friends Nick and Lacey in the front seat and a confused, Marlboro Light-wielding Lauren in the passenger seat.  Nick was one of Trevor’s best friends and he and Lauren had hit it off with Nick and his girlfriend Lacey at the Valentine’s dance….and they’d been hanging out with Lauren ever since.  Trevor had gotten off on the four of them driving around on weekends with Lauren being the only smoker in the group.  He was now getting off on the fact that Lauren’s smoking had already become so normalized to them that she was smoking in the backseat of Nick’s car en route to her own surprise party.

Finally, Lauren stepped out of the back seat car door, decked out in a black blouse and Trevor’s favorite pair of white pants which he hadn’t seen on her since Thanksgiving, with a look of bewilderment that was all too familiar and all too adorable to Trevor, the confusion finally broken when a crowd of people from inside, including Trevor shouted, “Happy sweet 16 Lauren!!!!”

Lauren’s confused look didn’t dissipate completely but nonetheless slowly transitioned to excitement, albeit with Lauren’s face turning a candy apple shade of red from embarrassment.  As family and friends spilled outdoors to greet her, Lauren clearly felt especially awkward holding the half-smoked Marlboro Light 100 in her hand while family members and friends who either didn’t know she smoked at all or didn’t realize how normalized it had become for her, were approaching her for personalized greetings.

Finally, Trevor walked up and said as quietly as possible, “Happy birthday baby.  We thought we’d throw a double birthday party for you and my sister.”

Lauren seemed overwhelmed and still shy, but couldn’t help but pull in and give Trevor a heartfelt smooch from her nicotine-stained lips for the gesture, to which the crowd made a collective “Wooooo!” sound that only intensified the awkwardness for the couple.

As Lauren surveyed the crowd, she spotted Haylee, who didn’t seem to be having such a great time.  Lauren offered a warm smile and a wave, saying “Happy birthday Haylee!” loud enough that Haylee could hear.  Haylee put on her fake smile again as she waved back, but Lauren could tell from the body language that Haylee was extremely unhappy.

As Lauren followed the crowd inside, still holding her cigarette in hand, she came upon cousin Carly and her mother Gina.  Lauren sat down to talk to them, but the dynamic felt as off to her as the dynamic with Haylee seconds earlier.  Even though Carly was technically the one who corrupted Lauren by talking her into trying smoking, the tables turned as soon as the girls were busted.  Gina was mortified that Carly was smoking and decided to quit smoking herself so she could deny Carly with a clear conscience.  Meanwhile, Lauren’s parents let her smoke.  But neither Gina nor Carly had realized things had gotten this out of control watching Lauren discreetly take puffs from her cigarette in a stranger’s home right in front of family and friends.

Trevor was watching, listening in, and occasionally interjecting in the conversation between cousins.  He’d seen Lauren give Carly cigarettes when they hung out in the past and had been under the impression that Carly didn’t have access to cigarettes at home, but the scenario playing out directly in front of Carly’s mom with Lauren openly smoking in front of them was more delicious than he could have ever imagined.  He paused to silently congratulate himself for coming up with the idea for a double birthday party and convincing his mom to agree to it, even though he knew he’d done no favors for himself with Haylee as he was reminded of whenever he made eye contact with her and saw how unhappy she was.

Trevor was in heaven for the half hour or so, as lunch and cake were served followed by the opening of presents.  Haylee proceeded to smoke at her usual pace throughout, with the largely appalled crowd of guests biting their tongue.  Lauren smoked once more but Trevor could tell it was weirder for her than it was for Haylee, and he loved to see the reactions of some of Lauren’s family and friends when she smoked, as well as the look of Lauren’s mother who felt judged for being the one who allowed Lauren to smoke.

The two birthday girls went back and forth opening their presents, with Lauren’s girlish happiness being largely genuine as she evaluated her gifts and then thanked those responsible for them, while Haylee’s response to her gifts was more muted.  This wasn’t a huge surprise to anybody there that knew Haylee, but both Trevor and Lauren were picking up on the subtext of Haylee’s increased agitation and displeasure.  But neither of them had any idea how much worse things would get for Haylee as they heard another car pulling into the driveway and then laying on the horn.

Everybody but Michelle was confused as they turned around to look out the window, but Lauren replicated the look of confusion that was on her face when she pulled into the surprise party, a look Trevor absolutely adored, as she surveyed the 2013 Toyota Camry in the driveway with her dad behind the wheel, motioning her and everybody else outside.  Lauren, still smoking her cigarette, led the way outside.  Her father stepped out of the car and held the keys in front of him.

“Here’s a little incentive for you to pass your driver’s test next week,” Craig announced, handing the keys to Lauren, whose look of  confusion transitioned to jubilant shock as she finally realized that this was gonna be her car once she got her driver’s license.  “Why don’t you get behind the wheel and see how it feels?” Craig added, watching his daughter sit behind the steering wheel and immediately defile the interior of her new car with the third-hand smoke from her Marlboro Light.

“I love it, dad!” Lauren exclaimed jubilantly.  “Thank you so much!”

As the crowd oohed and awed over Lauren’s new car, encircling it to check the car out and take in Lauren’s reactions, an enraged Haylee stood at the doorway realizing that her birthday party had now been completely hijacked.  She lit another cigarette and sat on the couch by herself, taking her phone out of the back pocket of her pink pants.  She paused as she saw the name Jacob Roth in her contacts list, but then followed her instinct and began texting.  “Gahhhh!  You gotta save me from this birthday party disaster!” she typed into her phone rhetorically.

Haylee was engrossed in her phone and didn’t immediately notice that someone from the crowd had re-entered the home and was approaching her.  It was Lauren’s cousin Carly, who requested in a guilty tone, “Would you mind if I had a drag from your cigarette?”

Haylee was pleased to have at least one person from the group more interested in her than Lauren, even if it was for a selfish reason, responding, “Sure I don’t mind,” handing Carly her Camel Pink No. 9.

Carly proceeded to take a drag that Haylee could tell was deeply satisfying, responding “Thank you so much.  My mom doesn’t let me smoke but I’ve had a killer craving ever since I got here and saw you and Lauren smoking.”

Haylee and Carly conversed for a few moments as Carly took a couple more drags, but right when they started to connect, a voice from outside that Carly instantly recognized as her mother Gina shouted, “Carly, get back out here and see Lauren’s car,” as if sensing that Carly was up to no good even without seeing her.

Carly nervously handed Haylee back the cigarette and abruptly thanked her again before heading back out, leaving Haylee alone again.  She continued to sit there smoking for several moments, a tear welling up in her eye over being all by herself at her own birthday party.  Suddenly a familiar guardian angel entered the room as six-year-old Jarrod Wagner came in, sitting on the couch next to Haylee and putting his arm around her just as he’d done that night in December after the unfortunate episode with Grant.  Haylee tried to hide her tears as she said “Thanks buddy” to the only person in the houseful of guests who picked up on the fact that she was hurting.

It seemed like an eternity that Haylee sat there with Jarrod, filling his airspace with endless plumes of secondhand smoke as always, but it had only been a couple of minutes, the entire crowd still outside lavishing attention on Lauren and her new car.  The silence in the room was broken when Haylee’s phone pinged.  She’d already forgotten that she sent the text to Jacob a few minutes back, but her mood perked up immediately when she saw the message was from him, reading “When and where??!  I’m at your beckon call, m’lady!” which immediately turned Haylee’s frown into a giggly smile that confused young Jarrod.

A few texts later and Haylee determined that Jacob was serious about “rescuing her” from this birthday party, and she was suddenly seriously contemplating allowing him to do it.  After a final moment to mull over the situation, she texted him back one final time, writing “Pick me up in the high school parking lot ASAP.  I’ll be waiting there for you!”

Young Jarrod was confused with as quickly as Haylee launched off the couch and darted out of there without a word, clearly no longer being in need of his comfort.  He watched as Haylee grabbed her purse and then another pack of cigarettes out of the carton in the refrigerator and then hightailed it out the back door.  He watched as she sneakily maneuvered through the backyard and through the neighbor’s yard, ending up on the parallel street where she wandered out of sight.  Jarrod was pretty sure whatever she was doing and wherever she was going would come to a shock to all the guests when the got back into the house, and he didn’t think it would end well for Haylee.

————————————————————————

Twenty minutes later, Haylee stood in the empty Saturday afternoon school parking lot on the sunny and unseasonably warm day, feeling perfectly comfortable in the short-sleeved white blouse and pale pink pants she left home in and watching for an incoming car driven by her white knight.  She dragged from her cigarette nervously hoping that Jacob would get there before anybody from her birthday party went looking for and found her here in this lot.  Haylee was taken aback when a slick-looking blue Corvette came noisily zooming up to her in the lot, unaware that Jacob had such a hot car.

Jacob aggressively braked the car a few yards in front of her and then put the passenger-side power window down, charming Haylee instantly with the smile on his face as he beckoned her inside.  Haylee’s spirits were visibly lifted in an instant as she took a final deep drag from her spent cigarette and then tossed it into the lot before climbing inside.  Jacob recoiled a bit from the stench she brought into his car but recovered rapidly and flashed that smile again, catching Haylee in mid-swoon and then catching her off-guard by laying into the accelerator and peeling out of the lot.  Haylee’s birthday had just gotten a lot more exciting.  Her phone suddenly began ringing and she quickly saw “Mom” listed as the caller.  She muted the phone and threw it in her purse, never to be looked at again until her date with Jacob was over, consequences be damned.

As Jacob took to the streets trying to impress Haylee with his car, he could see that the novelty of the Corvette was wearing off quicker than he’d hoped. Haylee was still fuming about the birthday party and was rattling off the details louder and faster than he’d ever imagined her speaking before, with even more tangible anger in her voice than when she’d been describing the party at school in the vent shaft/smoking area the week before.  He listened as she carried on, being at least a little interested in her predicament and concurring that it seemed rude and tone-deaf.

Haylee reflexively opened her purse and reached for her pack of cigarettes, not even giving a second thought as she plucked out a cigarette and placed it between her lips.  Jacob was aghast at her nerve and verbally intervened, “Wait you’re not thinking about smoking in here, are you?”

Haylee looked surprised at the question and said “Well yeah,” as the unlit Camel Pink No. 9 bounced upon and down between her lips as she talked.

“Not in my car,” Jacob said in a pleading tone, not wanting to sound too aggressive but wanting her to take the hint, unaware who he was up against.

A sullen Haylee reverted to her level of fury from the birthday party, curtly responding “Take me home then.”

“Are you serious?” Jacob responded, shocked at her level of entitlement.

“Absolutely.  If you’re not gonna let me smoke where I want to around you, we’re not gonna get along too well.”

Jacob sat silent for a moment, letting the risk-reward calculus roll through his mind until he approached a red light, breaking the silence with a smile and responding, “You’re a different one, Haylee McPherson,” extending his hand to her lighter so she’d hand it to him.

Haylee’s frown turned into a smile again as she handed Jacob the lighter and welcomed the gesture as he sparked the lighter to fire up her cigarette.  “I get the feeling that a little different is exactly what you’re looking for,” Haylee responded as the flame hit the cigarette.

Jacob nodded in agreement, trying to hide his despair as her filthy cigarette smoke began to fill the inside of his beloved Corvette.  Never would have he imagined any scenario a week ago where he’d let someone smoke in his car….and the last person he ever expected it to be was a freshman girl at his high school.  “So what do you want to do today?” Jacob asked.

Haylee shrugged as the smoke just kept spilling out of her face and filling up Jacob’s car interior.  “Doesn’t really matter as long as we can talk,” she said, hoping it was understood that she expected to be able to smoke as she talked.

“All right,” Jacob said, his mind roiling for ideas.  “Maybe we can go out to eat a little later.”

Haylee nodded, “That sounds cool,” as she noticed a deepening smirk coming from Jacob and then added playfully, “what?”

“Before we eat, why don’t we go skinny-dipping!” Jacob wryly responded.

Haylee laughed, with smoke exploding out of her face from the respiratory force of the laugh as she contemplated skinny-dipping in the icy waters of still-frozen Minnesota lakes.  “You are crazy!”

Jacob fluttered his eyebrows and said “But it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for,” recycling lyrics from an old song he hoped she hadn’t heard while drawing a parallel to the comment she made to him a few moments earlier.

And Jacob kept driving till he arrived at an obscure access point of Eagle Lake, parking his car in the small and empty lot.  They got out of the car and Haylee lit another cigarette, following Jacob as she approached the shore of the lake and confirming what both of them figured, that the lake still had a thick crust of ice, albeit with a sloppy sheen of melted slush that had come about following what had melted in the last couple of 60-degree days.  It was a common look for a Minnesota lake in late March and early April, and Haylee said out loud what was obvious to both of them.  “No skinny dipping today.”

“Nope. Probably not,” Jacob said with a smirk, knowing all along it wasn’t gonna be thawed but had simply wanted to see how Haylee responded to the offer,  adding “I’ll take a rain check on that though, okay?”

Haylee smiled as Jacob began to test his foot on the icy surface of the lake to make sure it was firm enough to support his weight.  When he determined that it probably was, he leaped onto the ice, extending his hand to invite Haylee to follow him.  With her cigarette hanging from her lips, Haylee leaped from the shore onto the icy lake and taking Jacob’s hand to make sure she stayed upright.   Jacob proceeded further onto the ice, holding Haylee’s hand as Haylee finally asked playfully, “Are you taking me anywhere in particular?”

Jacob paused for a moment to punch some things up on his phone and then responded, “Actually, I was hoping we could dance,” smirking as he pressed play on his phone and launching immediately into the Zedd, Maren Morris, Grey song “The Middle”, to which he quickly responded, “And wouldn’t you know it, they’re playing our song.”

Haylee smiled ear to ear as she exhaled a snootful of smoke, recognizing the song as the first song she and Jacob danced to at the Valentine’s dance where they met.  Jacob pushed another button from his phone and synced the recording to the speakers in his Corvette.  The song was now blasting from his car a few yards away in the parking lot, and Jacob held out his hand asking, “May I have this dance?”

Haylee was glowing with a happiness she wouldn’t have imagined possible an hour ago as she took his hand and they started dancing to the music on the iced surface of this lake. Her seduction at the hands of this smooth-operating 18-year-old was proving more than her usual aloofness could withstand, her body moving in carefree jubilation and in rhythm with Jacob’s, intermittently dragging from her cigarette and occasionally letting it dangle from her lips as she danced.

Jacob kept hitting up one song after another on his phone, most of which were songs they’d danced to at the Valentine’s dance, and they continued to have the time of their lives dancing for well over an hour, with Haylee burning through cigarette after cigarette.  Jacob was surprised at the magnitude of her smoking and noticed how her smoked-out lungs were wheezing a bit after all of this dancing.

Jacob figured it was only a matter of time till it happened to one of them, and it was Haylee who lost her footing on the ice and fell backwards and landed on her ass in the slushy and cold water on the surface of the ice.  A comical look of temperature shock splashed all over Haylee’s face as the chilly slush on the ice seeped through her pants, the shock quickly transitioning to nervous laughter as Jacob held out his hand to help her up, but as she started to climb up he let her go and she splashed back onto the slushy ice, soaking herself again and playfully shouting, “You bastard!” as she placed her cigarette into her mouth for a dangling drag.

Jacob grabbed her by both hands and pulled her up grabbing her by the waist and pressing her body into his.  Haylee reached up to her mouth to remove the cigarette, recognizing where this was likely going.  Jacob pulled in and Haylee heartily accepted his lips as they kissed.  The kiss drug on for a good 30 seconds, with Haylee quickly appreciating the contrast of Jacob’s kissing technique versus the relative rookies she’d locked lips with before, and she dug in for the full experience.  Jacob was glad he’d tried Haylee’s cigarette the week before as it at least prepared him a little for the intense cigarette flavor on Haylee’s breath as she stuck her tongue in his mouth.  He tried to take his mind off the taste of her breath in hopes of reining in his gag reflex, not an ideal situation for a romantic first kiss but one he was willing to accept for the opportunity to move forward with this extremely intriguing girl.

The couple pulled apart with blissful looks on each other’s faces, Haylee pulling the cigarette back up to her lips for another intense drag but maintaining eye contact for several more moments.    Eventually, she looked down to see how much of a mess was made of one of her favorite pairs of pants, looking down and seeing the dirty water had definitely made a stain in a very unsavory spot.

“It looks like I pissed my pants!” Haylee said with a laugh, turning her head over her shoulders to see how bad her ass was, but unable to tell how bad the stain would be until it dried.  She also didn’t make a metaphorical connection to her own loss of innocence making out with this 18-year-old guy and the defiling stain on the crotch and ass of her light pink pants.

“Looks like we’re going to the drive-thru for supper,” Jacob commented as he pointed to her messed-up pants.  Haylee laughed as Jacob grabbed her by the waist and walked her back toward his car, with Haylee following suit and hanging on to Jacob by his waist.  The drama from her birthday party only a couple of hours earlier was now the furthest thing from her mind.

———————————————————

Two hours later, it was now after dark and the vibe in the McPherson home had grown orders of magnitude darker than it had been during the birthday party.  The sound of a parked car in the driveway and footsteps approaching the front entrance sent Steve and Becky to the front door, unable to disguise their disappointment when the door opened and Courtney walked through instead of Haylee.

Courtney, coming home from her work shift and decked out in her tight leather pants, immediately sensed the tension in the room and responded, “Sorry to disappoint!” then asking “Who were you expecting?”

Becky turned toward her with fire in eyes to explain the situation.  “Your sister decided to skip out of here in the middle of her birthday and has been gone for four hours now.  She’s not answering her phone and none of the friends we talked to know where she is either.”

Courtney made eyes with Trevor in the living room and both exchanged knowing glances expressing the magnitude of deep shit Haylee was in.  “Well I’ll try to get through to her,” she offered, writing a text that she hoped would break through in a way her parents’ hadn’t.

Trevor watched as Courtney approached him on the couch, sitting next to him and lighting a cigarette as she crossed her legs in that smooth buttery leather Trevor couldn’t quit lusting for, asking him how the party went and hoping to get some clues as to what might have happened to Haylee, but one name was going through Courtney’s head as she contemplated Haylee’s presence…Jacob Roth.  And Courtney didn’t know how to play this.  She was on thin enough ice with Haylee and did not want to rat her out to her parents about Jacob, but on the other hand, if Haylee was in any kind of danger she didn’t want to be the reason her parents didn’t find out who she was with.  She started texting Haylee again, writing “Haven’t told them about Jacob….yet!  Might be able to hold them off a little longer if you let me know where you are and that you’re safe.”

Courtney and Trevor sat there watching Becky and Steve frantically pace the floor, and as Courtney saw the fury in her father’s eyes, the thought crossed her dirty mind of a possible upside to this situation.  She couldn’t fully divest herself into the twisted thought yet until she heard from Haylee and knew she was okay, but she’d already made a mental note of her father administering corporal punishment on Haylee and she knew that that bell could not be unrung now and allowed herself to envision the fantasy.

————————————————————————

Jacob and Haylee had been cruising around the streets of suburban Minneapolis in Jacob’s Corvette for well over an hour now, passing along stories about themselves and enjoying each other’s company.  They had eaten at the drive-up at Sonic and Jacob continued to be amazed and oddly impressed to see Haylee smoke her cigarettes even while in mid-meal.  And with each subsequent cigarette she lit thereafter, Jacob found himself looking forward to it, unable to detach his attraction to this girl from her incessant smoking even though she was stinking up his car in a way that he figured would take quite a while to remedy.  At the next break in the conversation, Haylee told Jacob she really should get home, dreading the nuclear fissure of righteous outrage that awaited her when she got there.

Haylee’s heart sunk as she realized she better look at her phone to see if she could get a sense of how bad things were and knew it was every bit as terrible as she feared when she saw 16 missed calls and 35 texts in the inbox she hadn’t checked since she muted her phone more than four hours earlier.  The most recent texts were from Courtney, and she looked at them first, particularly since she saw Jacob’s name in the text heading and knew Courtney had the power to get her in even deeper trouble if her parents found out about him.

Jacob looked at Haylee out of the corner of his eye, her cigarette parked in her mouth as she took dangling drags without even seeming to realize it, texting through the haze of smoke in front of her face and writing Courtney back, “Thanks for not telling them about Jacob” and then sending a separate text reading, “I’ll be home in the next 10 minutes.  Please use that time to calm them down a little.”

Haylee audibly gasped as she pulled her eyes away from the phone, turning to Jacob and saying, “I’d love to say I’ll see you again soon but I have a feeling I’m gonna be grounded till you head off to college!”

Jacob laughed and assured he that he had a great time as well and would wait as long as he had to to see her again, adding that “we’ll always have the vent shaft during lunch period.”

“True,” Haylee said, her voice tailing off as if finally coming to terms with her fast-approaching moment of reckoning.  “Could you do me a favor and drop me off a couple of blocks from my place?  Don’t want them seeing your car.” Jacob concurred as they quickly approached the drop-off point.

As he stopped at a residential intersection to let Haylee go as she requested, Jacob wanted to leave Haylee with one final memory of their night together before they parted ways, saying he “hoped he was a ray of sunshine on her dark birthday,” eliciting a final halfhearted swoon from a fast-declining Haylee who pulled in for a final good night kiss that lasted just as long as their kiss on the ice.  She got out of the car and began the long walk of shame home, the residue of a wonderful night still clear on her face.  Jacob looked in the rearview mirror and watched Haylee’s shapely body drift further away, a persistent trail of cigarette smoke rising above her.  An avalanche of naughty thoughts rolled through his mind, but he mentally checked himself with a reminder that he needed to have a different set of expectations for this very different girl.

——————————————————————-

“It’s Haylee!” Courtney announced jubilantly as the text came through.  “She’s okay and is gonna be home in 10 minutes,” she continued.

“Oh thank God!” Becky responded with impassioned relief, Steve wrapping his arms around her to console her over the good news as Becky stubbed out another Marlboro Red and immediately reached to light up another one, having been smoking this evening at a pace that was blistering even for her.

As they pressed Courtney for more details, she didn’t offer any, even though her tone was elusive enough that Steve, Becky, and Trevor all suspected she knew more than she was leading on.  Their worry about Haylee had now been replaced with unbridled fury, a rage Trevor and Courtney had not seen in them for quite some time.  Trevor had given a passing thought that his dad might whoop Haylee’s ass for this, but after finding out she was safe and almost home, it was now consuming Courtney’s every thought, her heart pounding and her body going numb at the mere thought of seeing Haylee on the receiving end of her dad’s firm hand.  It was happening with rapidly diminishing frequency in recent years at the same time as Courtney had come to realize how much her own spankings, and witnessing her siblings’ spankings, had come to define her sexual identity.  The last time she got to witness her dad administer corporal punishment on Haylee was the previous summer on their way up to the cabin.  She had feared she may never get to witness it again, but seeing how enraged her father was right now, she figured tonight might be one final opportunity.

The suspense ended for most in the room as Haylee finally walked in the door, looking as moody and aloof as ever with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.  The screaming commenced right on schedule as Haylee walked into the living room, mainly to look at Courtney and see if she could tell by her body language how much she’d told them about Jacob.

“Where in the hell have you been, Haylee?!?” Steve shouted in a tone that reached a tone that made very clear he wasn’t playing, followed by a long pause awaiting her answer as she sat silently for a while.

“Answer your father!” Becky shouted.

“I went to visit a friend,” Haylee responded, revealing as little as possible knowing there was no answer that would satisfy.

“What’s his name?” Becky fired back, knowing there had to be a boy involved for this kind of deception.

Haylee didn’t respond, leading Steve to open her purse and take out her phone, handing it to Becky who proceeded to open her messages.  Near the top of the list of recent contacts was Jacob.

“Jacob huh?” Becky replied aloud, perking up Courtney’s ears and confirming what she figured was the case.  “Why haven’t I heard that name until just now, Haylee?”

“Because it’s none of your damn business!” shouted Haylee.

“Oh it isn’t?” Steve shouted back, trying to maintain his composure as best as possible but having a hard time.  “Our 15-year-old daughter wanders out of her own birthday party without telling anyone, stays out for four hours until after dark, and then tells us it’s none of our business.  Are you for real here, Haylee?”

Courtney and Trevor sat silently on the couch, hoping they wouldn’t be told to leave the room and miss out on all of this excitement, but realizing they likely wouldn’t given that their father tried to discipline the kids publicly for the most heinous offenses to shame the offender and send a message to the witnesses.

“Where did he take you?” Becky asked, keeping the interrogation alive hoping Haylee would incriminate herself.

Haylee cooperated too quickly saying, “Just to Sonic,” realizing right away she stepped in it.

“Oh to Sonic?  That’s clear up in Plymouth.  So he has a car?” Steve busted her.

“How old is he Haylee?” Becky followed up, frightened of her forthcoming answer.

Haylee paused for a second, fibbing by two years when she responded, “Sixteen,” through the talking exhale of the final drag from her cigarette which she crushed out in the butt bucket on the coffee table in front of her that Courtney was using.

Neither parents immediately responded, buying her answer but also laying some ground rules.  “Well you’re not going out with him again until we meet him.  You know our rules,” Becky demanded.  “But that’s the least of your worries right now.  You humiliated your father and I running out of this party we planned just for you.  And then you don’t answer your phone for four hours when we call.  This ‘Jacob’ will have forgotten all about you by the time you see the outside of your bedroom again.”

“Fine,” Haylee said, getting up to walk to her room before her father gave her a reality check.

“Oh you’re not getting out of her that easily, young lady.  Get your ass back here!” Steve barked.

Haylee had been hoping she had received her last ass-whooping from her father but figured if anything would have triggered another, this would be it.  She dug her hole deeper by sassing back, “Oh do I get 15 swats for 15 years or something. Happy birthday to me, right?”

“Ah you got jokes huh?  We’ll see how much you’re laughing in the next month locked up in your room,” Steve shot back as Haylee approached him.

Courtney held her breath with anticipation, feeling as euphoric about Haylee’s pending physical discipline as Haylee felt humiliated over it.  Courtney had been playing with her phone and pretending to text the entire time since Haylee got home, but was actually just preparing for the moment when it came and secretly pressing the record button, tilting her phone upward just before her father bent Haylee over his knee and hoping nobody would be paying attention to her perverted infatuation during Haylee’s discipline.

Becky couldn’t miss the stains on the ass of Haylee’s pants as it was sprawled over her husband’s knee for the whole room to see, angrily asking “What did you do to your clothes??!?!”

“I fell and they got dirty.  It’s spring in case you hadn’t noticed, mom” Haylee answered awkwardly from her vulnerable position laid out horizontally on her father’s knee, barely getting her backtalk out of her mouth before her father laid into her, applying swift and intense force from his heavy hand to Haylee’s ass.  As had always been the case whenever one of the McPherson kids got spanked, the others watched, only this time recognizing there may not be a next time given their respective ages.

Courtney kept her phone steady recording the act of aggression by her father on her younger sister, sucking hard from her cigarette and crossing her legs a little bit tighter inside of those leather pants to disguise how sexually aroused she was witnessing this and wishing it could go on forever as the swats applied to Haylee’s ass kept coming fast and furious.  Courtney held the smoke inside her lungs for many seconds until the spanking finally stopped and she finally exhaled, the smoke spilling from her mouth and nose serving as a marginal release of the sexual tension she’d built up inside of her.

Steve then helped Haylee stand up, with everybody in the room curious to see if she was either crying or red with humiliation when she got up, but all were surprised to see a stoic, unmoved Haylee staring at her father stone-faced, listening to Becky bark out “Now get your ass to your room and stay there till your next birthday,” just before Haylee turned around heading in that direction.  “Oh and I’ll be keeping this till you’re out,” Becky said in reference to Haylee’s phone which Becky held in her hand.

Haylee quietly walked toward the stairs, picking up her purse and opening her pack of cigarettes.  Trevor smirked as Haylee lit herself up en route to her bedroom, amused that her punishment once again did not include giving up her smoking freedoms.  Courtney slowly pivoted her phone downward and stopped the recording, trying to control her excitement as she and Becky both lit new cigarettes.  The excitement was over, and both Trevor and Courtney were suddenly eager to get out of that living room with their parents, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Courtney stood up from the couch and couldn’t get to the stairs fast enough, ascending them and heading into her bedroom where she quickly closed the door behind her and headed to her bed.  She wasted no time unzipping her leather pants and sliding them down to her thighs, along with her panties underneath them, proceeding to play back the recording of her father spanking her sister and touching her fingers to her vagina as she watched it.  The sexual tension built up seeing it live was now being released, with Courtney breathing directly from her cigarette as she masturbated, the show having lived up to her expectations completely, the scarcity of the spanking shows in recent years making it all the more satisfying to see this one.  She kept replaying that video over and over, pumping cigarette smoke into her lungs with each labored breath while her fingers worked her private parts.  Eventually her fingers weren’t up to the task any longer and she reached into her purse to take out her dildo.  She laid back on the bed and wasted no time jamming it into her pussy, producing something close to the level of satisfaction that her current state of arousal demanded, suppressing her moans through the cigarette she continued to torture between her other lips.  She would have time to feel guilty about this later, but for now she just needed to rub out this raging libidinous beast that raged inside of her.

Meanwhile, across the hall Trevor quietly approached the door of Haylee’s bedroom with cell phone in hand, knocking gingerly and then cracking the door open hoping to go unnoticed by his parents downstairs.  As Trevor poked his head in and then slinked inside, Haylee angrily muttered through yet another cigarette dangling from her lips, “My God!  What do you want?!?” before Trevor used his hand to gesture for her to be quiet, showing her the cell phone in his hand.

“Somebody wants to talk to you,” Trevor responded, laying his cell phone on Haylee’s nightstand and then leaving her room.

A curious Haylee picked up Trevor’s phone, puckering up her lips around her cigarette and seeing it was Lauren on the line.  She lifted the phone to her ear and muttered, “Lauren?”

“Oh Haylee!  I’m so sorry for how things went today,” Lauren cried out in response.  “The last thing I wanted to do is ruin your birthday and then have you get in trouble for it.”

“It’s not your fault,” Haylee responded through a messy talking exhale.  “I should apologize to you for all of the drama.  It was a big day for you too,” she added.

“Don’t worry about me.  I’m good.  But I really feel like I owe you and I want to be there for you when you’re not grounded anymore,” Lauren said, making Haylee emotional with her obvious sincerity.

“That will be a LONG time,” Haylee responded after taking another drag, poo-poohing the notion of a post-grounding world.

“Well when it does happen I’d like to have a good long talk to you about some things…and maybe introduce you to a couple of friends if you’re up to it.  How does that sound?” asked Lauren.

Haylee agreed to the terms, not necessarily believing that Lauren would come through but greatly appreciating her reaching out.  They bid each other adieu and Haylee let loose a smile about Lauren’s continued good nature.  And as she took a final drag from her cigarette, Haylee thought about Jacob and allowed herself to smile even wider.  As steep and embarrassing as the consequences of her dalliance were, she was nonetheless extremely grateful she took the leap of faith and texted Jacob to pick her up.

—————————————————-

Three hours later, Kurt Collins was in a deep sleep in his apartment until the incessant buzzing of his telephone on the nightstand coupled with a repeated knocking on his front door awoke him.

“What the hell?” Kurt mumbled in his half-conscious state as he saw his phone lit up, picking it up and seeing Courtney McPherson was calling him.  He picked up the phone and answered.  “What is it Courtney?”

“Come to your front door!” Courtney exclaimed abruptly.

Kurt was wondering if this was a dream, half-annoyed at getting woke up in the middle of the night but half ecstatic that the 18-year-old sexpot who had broken up with him well over a month ago was suddenly back for what just might be yet another booty call.  He walked up to his front door and opened it, seeing Courtney standing there with Marlboro Light Menthol 100 in hand, still decked out in the leather pants she wore to work earlier, and sporting a lustful look in her eyes that was all too familiar.  He grabbed Courtney by the hand all pulled her inside.

Once the door was closed, Courtney passionately cried, “Fuck me Kurt!  Fuck me now!”

“Courtney, it’s 2 in the morning.  Weren’t the one who broke up with me?” Kurt halfheartedly protested, trying not to seem too easy.

Courtney leaned in, exposing Kurt to her heavy mentholated tobacco breath from upclose and planting one on his lips, “I really need you bad tonight Kurt.  Can you help me out?”

Kurt smiled, regaining his consciousness quickly and grabbing Courtney by the ass, her cue to leap into his arms.  He stepped backward into his bedroom as they made out, collapsing on his bed as he moved to unzip her leather pants, but she firmly placed her hand on his to stop him.

“Spank me first, okay?”  Courtney insisted.

It was a request Kurt had heard plenty of times from her in the past and he proceeded without protest, having no clue how perverted her reasoning for tonight’s request was.  It was obvious she was in the mood for some really rough sex tonight, and he was only too happy to serve it up for her.  Even the semiregular opportunity to copulate with this barely legal goddess who used to be his steady girlfriend was more than he ever would have imagined possible one short year ago.

——————————————————–

Two weeks later, Trevor was ready to go when he saw his newly licensed girlfriend Lauren pulling into his driveway in the new car she was gifted for her birthday.  Trevor was generally known to contain his emotions as best as possible but radiated a smile upon seeing the ecstatic Lauren sitting behind the wheel holding a freshly lit all-white cigarette.  Lauren’s smile beamed brighter than ever as she felt the power of sitting behind the wheel of her own car for one of the first times as a licensed driver, especially with her boyfriend coming poised to ride shotgun.  Trevor would have loved to have had the Monday evening to themselves but, as expected, Lauren’s cousin Carly had ridden with her from Maple Grove and was riding in the backseat….and Carly wasn’t gonna be the only passenger that night…

Trevor opened the passenger side door and sat down, immediately stricken by how much Lauren had stunk up her new car with tobacco only days after getting her license.  He made eye contact with her as she took a deep drag from her Marlboro Light and then greeted Carly in the backseat.  Lauren wasted no time inquiring about the evening’s main attraction to Trevor, asking “Is she coming?”

“You know Haylee operates on Haylee time,” Trevor responded, eliciting a giggle from Lauren in which smoke spilled from her mouth and nose, along with Carly laughing more nervously from the backseat.

They didn’t have to wait long though until the front door of the McPherson home opened and a newly liberated Haylee walked outside, maintaining a captive audience of admirers as she inadvertently strutted toward the car as if a supermodel on a runway.  Her light brown hair was styled for the night out, whipping slightly with the spring breeze as it hung onto her bare shoulders in the low-cut white blouse she was wearing, while her salvaged light pink pants she wore on her night out with Jacob looked as good as new below her waist, her hips working the tight fabric nicely and her high heels giving her lower body that much more visual appeal.  And as always, a cigarette hung from her lips as she approached the car.  It was a presentation that captivated the carload of passengers who could tell she was revitalized and ready for mischief after two weeks of being grounded.

The momentum was briefly broken as Steve yelled out the front door, “Remember it’s a school night.  Be back by 10.”

“Got it, dad,” Trevor said as he gave his father the thumbs-up, leaving him to a rare evening to himself at the McPherson home.

After Haylee climbed into the backseat passenger side and found herself seated next to Carly who she barely knew, Lauren broke the ice first with an energetic compliment, “You look so beautiful, Haylee.  You look like a free woman!”

Still a little bashful, Haylee responded with, “I guess so.  It’s definitely been a long two weeks.”

“I told you that your parents wouldn’t keep you holed up any longer than that though, didn’t I?” Lauren reminded her.

Haylee nodded and then briefly confirmed, “Yes you did.”

“By the way, this is my cousin Carly.  I think you met her at the birthday party, right?” Lauren introduced.

“Hi,” Carly said with a hint of bashfulness of her own, even though they had a brief but memorable interaction at the party, feeling a little overshadowed in the car with the gorgeous Haylee and Lauren, contrasting their beauty and elegant presentations with her own more plain-jane appeal, her shoulder-length blond hair cresting on a conservative T-shirt and jeans.

“Nice to see you again,” Haylee answered as they smiled at each other, with Haylee taking a drag from her cigarette and not judging Carly with the harshness that Carly had just judged herself.  As Lauren began to drive off, Haylee asked, “So what are we doing tonight?”

“No set plans,” Lauren said through a talking exhale as she drove, adding through a laugh, “a girl who just got her driver’s license doesn’t need a reason to go somewhere….she just goes.”  Pausing for a moment, she continued, “Seriously though, I’d like to introduce you to our friends Nick and Lacey.  Maybe we can go into Walmart or the mall, get a bite to eat, find a boyfriend for you and Carly,” she said, half-jokingly, making eye contact with Haylee in the rearview mirror and seeing that Haylee really wanted to talk one-on-one with Lauren as they’d mentioned earlier on the phone.

They continued to banter amongst each other for the next few minutes, with Lauren doing most of the talking and trying to initiate Haylee into a comfort level with the group, which Haylee had seemed to agree was probably for the best, even though it wasn’t in her natural comfort zone.  Within a minute of tossing her previous cigarette out the passenger side window, Haylee was opening her purse to extract another.  As Haylee noticed the cigarette-free Carly looking lustfully at her taking that drag, Haylee found another opening to break the ice, extending the pack to Carly and asking, “Would you like one of mine?”

An appreciative look beamed from Carly’s face as she responded, “Sure,” taking a cigarette from the pack and placing it between her lips.  Haylee handed Carly the lighter who lit herself up and then handed it back to Haylee.  Carly took the first drag which reminded her of when she bummed a few drags from Haylee’s cigarette at the birthday party, and then complimenting Haylee on her brand.  “These are really good cigarettes,” Carly said through a shallow talking exhale, clearly the work of a girl who’d smoked far less than the other two smokers in the car but was definitely not a rookie either.  “They certainly taste better than Lauren’s nasty Marlboro Lights!” Carly said eliciting laughter in the car.

Lauren shrugged her shoulders humbly in a laughter-infused response as she opened up the very pack of Marlboro Lights 100s in question and inserted another one in her mouth, reflexively handing Trevor the lighter to fire her up.  From there, Haylee interrogated Carly about her smoking story, with Carly and Lauren exchanging anecdotes from when they first sneaked their parents cigarettes and the details of their dissonant trajectories in the two years since.

Trevor remained mostly silent amidst this smoke-filled discussion, having heard most of these stories from each of the girls before but still welcoming any opportunity for them to talk cigarettes.  He mused that once again, cigarettes proved to be a great topic to break the ice and fast-track friendship among smokers, his heart filled with joy watching and listening to the three teenage girls, all younger than him, talk at length about their smoking habits while filling the car up with a haze of cigarette smoke.  He may have started the evening disappointed that he couldn’t just hang out alone with Lauren, but suddenly Lauren’s suggestion to help socialize Haylee into their friends’ group seemed like a pretty great idea after all!

———————————————————–

A few hours later at 7:20, Courtney walked into the front door of the McPherson home after an early evening shift at work, decked out in yet another pair of tight leather pants.  She pulled her white and green menthol cigarette to her lips and took a long drag, a faint look of confusion on her face as she expelled a long plume of smoke from her mouth, finding it odd how little light and noise were emanating from the home compared to when she usually got home.  She walked into the dark kitchen and all she could hear was the faint noise from the TV in the dimly lit living room.  Just as she was entering the room, she faintly called out, “Anybody home?”

Her father turned in his chair and muted the TV upon seeing her arrive, responding, “Hey Courtney.  Actually it’s just gonna be you and I tonight.  Your mother’s meeting up with the girls from work and Haylee and Trevor both went out.”

Courtney was in mid-drag and her face lit up with surprise at the last bit, asking again to make sure she heard what she thought she did, “Haylee went out?!?!” knowing that her sister was pretty much a homebody, particularly after her recent grounding.

Steve laughed briefly, observing Courtney’s exhaled smoke rapidly filling a room that had been unusually smoke-free for the last few hours, “Yeah, Trevor said Lauren wants to get Haylee out more and hang out together.”

Courtney nodded her head, “Couldn’t hurt.  She’ll probably be more likely to stay out of trouble if she’s hanging out with Lauren and Trevor and their friends rather than this Jacob guy,” Courtney responded, continuing to behave as though she knew less about “Jacob” than she did.

Steve nodded in steadfast agreement, “Completely agreed.”

As her father smiled at her, Courtney felt awkward.  Ever since she saw him spank Haylee two weeks ago, Courtney had felt differently in the presence of her father…differently in a way that made her feel extremely guilty and dirty.  She felt the need to cut this conversation short, putting on her daddy’s girl smile one last time and dragging from her cigarette before saying, “Well I better get going on my homework.  Big chemistry test tomorrow.”

Steve seemed disappointed but nodded, “Okay, but when you need a study break let’s catch up a little bit before everybody gets home, alright?”

Courtney’s smile beamed again as she responded, “Sure dad,” through a final messy talking exhale, turning around to head to the stairs toward her bedroom.  She made a point of wiggling her hips a little extra in those tight leather pants as she walked away for her father’s benefit.  She didn’t know for sure if he was admiring her body as she left the room, but she hoped he was.

—————————————————–

An hour later, Lauren had already dropped Carly off as they drove around the west metro after dark.  Trevor now had the backseat to himself while Lauren and Haylee were sitting up front, puffing away on their latest of many cigarettes in their four hours together in Lauren’s new car that had gone from zero to smoky at record speed.  It had been a fun night, and Trevor enjoyed seeing Haylee hit it off so well with Lauren and Carly, and to a lesser extent with his nonsmoking friends Nick and Lacey who met them all at the pizza parlor.  But Trevor had been picking up on nonverbal cues from Lauren and Haylee all night that they wanted to talk alone, and as they now sat next to each other in the front seat, it was becoming all the more obvious.

Lauren finally addressed the elephant in the room, giving Haylee a “play along” gesture that Trevor witnessed, after which Lauren addressed Trevor teasingly, “So you know how much Haylee and I like having you around Trevor, but I think I’ve chosen the wrong McPherson sibling to spend most of my time with,” unable to complete her little prank without a giggle.

Trevor feigned disbelief and responded, “Lauren, are you dumping me for Haylee?!”

Lauren giggled again as she pulled into the empty parking lot of the park nearest Trevor’s home.  She parked the car and then turned to address Trevor in the backseat, smoke spilling out of her face and towards him as she responded, “Just for tonight.  Haylee and I need to get some girl talk in, okay?”

“No problem,” Trevor responded, disappointed that the night was gonna get cut short and he wouldn’t get in on whatever gossip was ahead, but taking the hint and being willing to leave it up to his imagine as he went home.

“Thanks baby.  Do you want me to drop you off or can you walk home from here?” Lauren asked.

“I’m good with walking,” Trevor responded, bidding Lauren adieu for the night and pulling forward from the backseat to kiss her in the front seat, savoring her Marlboro Light breath as Haylee closed her eyes.

“Love you,” Lauren reminded him as he opened the door to walk home, with Trevor responding in kind and Haylee unable to contain herself from groaning out loud.  Trevor had a two-block walk home and occasionally leered over his shoulder to see Lauren and Haylee converse, dragging repeatedly from their cigarettes while talking, and dying to know what the two of them were talking about.

———————————————————

Courtney sat in her smoke-filled bedroom with her chemistry book open and a sheet of paper in front of her, plugging away at the homework examples that she hoped would prepare her for the test.  Chemistry formulas did not come easy for her but she felt like she was working up some momentum after her hour of studying since she got home.  She’d just crushed out her last cigarette in her overflowing bedroom ashtray, but the stress of schoolwork made her cravings especially strong and she lit up another one, balancing the Marlboro Light Menthol 100 in her left hand and the pencil that she worked out the equations with in the right hand.

A knock on her bedroom door startled her, and she turned to see her father standing at the doorway.  “I hate to interrupt you but do you mind if I come in?” Steve asked with a smile.

“Sure, dad,” Courtney said in a daddy’s girl-style vocal tone far beneath her 18 years, a tone that really contrasted with the sexualized leather pants still draping her lower body and the wisps of cigarette smoke spilling from her mouth and nose as she spoke.  “What’s on your mind?”

Steve walked in and sat down on the bed that was right next to the chair Courtney was sitting at in front of her desk.  “I was just thinking about the fishing opener coming up next month.  It’s been a few years since we went up to the cabin and fished together on the fishing opener weekend like we used to do.  Since you’re graduating in a couple of months, this may be our last chance to get some quality father-daughter time in before you head off to college.”

Courtney’s face lit up at the offer and she quickly agreed, briefly reminiscing on their good times fishing but finding her mind continuing to drift back to the same perverted thought, a thought she felt like tonight represented the perfect opportunity to consummate despite the extreme awkwardness required to bring it up.  She couldn’t hold back any longer as her father stood up and hovered over her to take a look at her homework, the smoke from her cigarette rising directly into his face from below.  She just had to mention it, saying, “It’s really weird to talk about but do you know what else I miss?”

“What’s that?” Steve said innocently, having no idea the creepy place this conversation was about to go.

Courtney’s face was flushed with embarrassed anticipation as she slowly found the courage to get to the point, with she and her father now both so distracted that neither of them heard the front door open as Trevor arrived and began working his way silently upstairs.

“Well,” Courtney began, shyly.  “When I saw you spank Haylee a couple of weeks ago, it made me kind of nostalgic for when you spanked me.”

“Huh?!” Steve responded with legitimate shock.

“I know it’s weird,” Courtney said, hoping her tone would blunt at least some of the creepiness of the request she was building up to, “…but there was something reassuring about when you disciplined me.  I miss it.”

Steve stammered and stuttered for a moment, finally getting around to saying, “Here all of these years I thought I was teaching you a lesson with the spankings.  The last thing I would have ever imagined was that you liked them!”

Now at the top of the stairs, Trevor heard these words from his father and he froze in his tracks, quickly putting together that he was in Courtney’s room.  He gingerly stepped toward his own bedroom and slinked inside, closing the door and keeping it open a crack where he could hear and partially see his father talking to Courtney, perking up his ears to make sure what he thought he was hearing was indeed the conversation at hand.

“Oh I did so much!!!” Courtney exclaimed in response, grimacing as she was finally about to verbalize the request she’d been building up to, taking a long drag from her cigarette for a final hit of nicotine courage.  “Would you mind spanking me one last time?”

Steve didn’t know whether to laugh at Courtney or scold her, again stammering at the indecent request, but looking at the suspense in his oldest daughter’s eyes as she eagerly awaited his response with a slow spill of cigarette smoke again exiting her beautiful face, he eventually came around to it, shaking his head as he said, “Well….this is the last thing I expected to be doing when I came in here to ask you to go fishing with me, but come on over my knee.”

Courtney got positively giddy as she launched out of her chair, mumbling “Okay!” in a tone that struck Steve, and Trevor watching from across the hall, as jubilant in a far too sexualized way, but before Steve could reconsider, his cigarette-wielding daughter laid herself out over his knee, the skin tight leather clutching her cusp-of-womanhood ass now directly in front of Steve’s face sprawled out in his lap.  Trevor at least took solace that his father seemed to be increasingly uneasy with what Courtney kept insisting he do to her.

Steve could feel his daughter’s body shaking with nervous anticipation and wanted to get this over with, delivering his hand to Courtney’s tight leather-draped ass for the first swat and then delivered one after another from there, doing so gingerly but soon directed by Courtney to be more aggressive, as she shouted, “Harder!” every few seconds.  Steve found himself spanking her with escalating force, but with Courtney continuing to demand “Harder!”, at one point approaching her cigarette to her lips and dragging from it intensely in a way that made Steve even more uncomfortable.  Steve kept swatting for more than a minute, until Courtney shouted in the most sexualized tone yet, “Oh God!  Use your belt!  Hit me with your belt!” at which point Steve couldn’t take it anymore.

“Courtney, that’s enough.  This is wrong.” Steve said, his discomfort level dialed up to at least a 9 by now while Trevor’s was at least as high watching from a few yards away.

“Don’t stop!” Courtney cried with sexual passion, at which point her father began to stand up off the bed, effectively dumping her off of his lap.

Courtney could feel him rising and was turned on now to the point that she was out of control.  The lustful look in her eye terrified Steve as he rose to his feet, with Courtney placing the cigarette between her lips and dangling it as she dropped to her knees and reached for her father’s jeans.

Trevor was breathless as his father pleaded, “Courtney, no.  This is not happening!” but she refused to listen, unbuttoning his jeans with a fire in her eyes, pumping cigarette smoke into her lungs with every breath and producing a haze of smoke right in front of Steve’s crotch.  For a couple of seconds, silence filled the room and Courtney was briefly convinced she had consent but as she began to unzip his jeans, her father formally put a stop to it, grabbing her wrists in a tight clutch, immobilizing her.

“What the hell is wrong with you Courtney!!?!?!” Steve shouted, tightening his grip on her wrists even further in a way that terrified her.  They made sustained eye contact, with Courtney’s lustful look quickly transitioning to terror as she glared into her father’s shell-shocked face.  “You are sick!” he exclaimed, trying to find the words needed to express the magnitude of disappointment and fear he felt right now.  “How sick must you be to do this to your family?!  And not just me!  How will you ever be able to look your mother, brother, and sister in the eyes again?!??!”

Steve finally released his grasp on Courtney’s wrists, letting her fall backward onto the floor but maintaining laser-focused eye contact on her as the range of emotions in the nonverbal interaction shifted from terror to agonizing sorrow.  Steve buttoned up his jeans, gave Courtney one final look of intense disappointment, and then walked out of the smoky room, with Trevor pulling quietly away from his observatory post as well, praying that nobody would ever figure out that he witnessed this moment.

Courtney sat on the floor alone, the cigarette still dangling from her lips with a long granny ash on the end.  She was only just beginning to process how much permanent damage she had done in her relationship with her family, especially her father.

——————————————————————

Two blocks away, a decidedly different vibe was unfolding with the occupants of the Toyota Camry parked in the empty lot in the neighborhood park, a haze of gray smoke filling up the interior that was visible from outside with the faint illumination of the overhead street lamp.

“Oh Haylee.  That’s sooooo sweet!” Lauren exclaimed with wisps of smoke escaping her facial orifices, her voice an octave huskier than when Trevor had left the car a half hour and three cigarettes ago.  “You definitely made the right decision to ditch me and the party to have that experience,” Lauren continued, in response to Haylee’s detailed description of her extended evening date with Jacob Roth that got her in so much trouble with her parents.

Haylee was glowing as she relayed the juicy details to the girl that had become her best friend.  It was a look Lauren had never seen from the usually reserved and aloof Haylee, who extracted a fresh cigarette from her pack of Camel Pink No. 9s and then took the stub of the mostly smoked cigarette dangling from her mouth, using the first cigarette to light the second and then stubbing the former out in the fast-rising mountain of cigarette butts sitting in the console of Lauren’s car.  As another fresh blast of smoke spilled from Haylee’s face, Haylee finally got around to responding to Lauren after letting loose a smoker’s cough from the nicotine binge.  “The only problem is I don’t know when I’ll get to see him again….outside of school anyway.”

Lauren took a drag from her mostly expired cigarette, mulling over the situation for a moment as a ball of smoke in her mouth was vacuumed inside of her respiratory system when she inhaled, and then reassured Haylee, “There’s no way I’m gonna let that happen!  You have to have another date with this guy!”  Lauren paused as she took a final drag from her latest cigarette, filling the car up with yet another expulsion of smoke as she crushed her own cigarette out in the butt bucket, which was now a surreal spectacle of Lauren’s all-white butts commingled with Haylee’s pink and white butts, mixed together almost equally after a full night of heavy smoking together.  “Was he the first guy you’ve been with since Grant?” Lauren asked, fishing yet another Marlboro Light 100 out of her pack only seconds after finishing the last and then lighting up.

Haylee’s giddy vibe briefly came down to Earth, first thinking about how things ended with Grant and then remembering that she had gotten to third base with the kid brother of the girl in the driver’s seat.  “Umm, yeah,” Haylee answered dishonestly, being nowhere near ready to share the story with Lauren of her dalliance with Brian and probably never would.  She changed the subject immediately and circled back to Lauren’s previous comment.  “So how exactly do you think I’ll be able to date Jacob again without my parents knowing?” she asked.

Lauren was deep into another drag and her face became animated as she pondered a plan that reminded her she’d been going out with the devious Trevor for too long.  Expelling smoke with every breath, Lauren responded, “We’re friends, right?  And our parents know that.  I have a driver’s license now, so I can say I was hanging out with you after school when you hang out with Jacob.”

Haylee had been hoping Lauren would volunteer an alibi for her, but this plan really gave her a lot of latitude for multiple after-school dates.  Haylee puckered up her lips for a dangling drag while she pondered the possibilities and all that could conceivably go wrong, the cigarette going limp and the smoke flowing smoothly from her mouth and nose.  “We’d have to be sure we kept our stories straight…and I’d have to be sure to make it home before too late so we don’t get caught in a lie.”

Lauren nodded, the permanent haze of smoke still hovering in front of her innocent 16-year-old face with a constant litany of reinforcement every time she exhaled.  “Right and it can’t be every night obviously….but we’ll work it,” she said with a beaming smile, on the clouds to see Haylee so happy for the first time since they’d known each other.

Haylee beamed again herself, exclaiming, “But he’s eighteeeeen, Lauren!!!” with equal parts excitement and anxiety about the implications.

Lauren shrugged.  “Age is just a number.  When he’s 30, you’ll be 27!” completely brushing off the legal consequences of an 18-year-old having a relationship with a 15-year-old.

“I know.  I know,” Haylee responded through the talking dangle of yet another cigarette approaching its end.  “I just don’t want him to get in trouble over me.  Plus I’ve been warned he’s a big-time playa.”

Lauren paused to take another big drag and then responded, “Well you’re a good judge of character.  Don’t do anything unless and until it feels right.”

Haylee nodded, inhaling a finishing drag off of her cigarette and throwing out a request disguised as a response.  “Tomorrow after school with Jacob sure feels right,” Haylee said coyly, crushing out her cigarette in the butt can while giving Lauren a look reinforcing her need for Lauren’s help to pull this off.

Lauren eked with excitement at the thought of playing a role in Haylee hanging out with Jacob after school the next day, clasping Haylee’s hands in a way that would have caused Haylee to recoil at any time in the past.  Whatever debt Lauren owed Haylee for the Valentine’s dance intervention was about to be paid back.  Lauren took a final drag from her cigarette and added yet another butt to the can in her console.  The clock in the car read 9:00, and the two of them had another hour, and multiple additional cigarettes, to commiserate before their Monday evening girl talk would end.

———————————————————-

The next afternoon, Trevor was taking a long walk after school on the first genuinely warm spring day of the season, with blue skies beaming sunshine and warmth down on him as he progressed down the sidewalk of the residential streets.  But the positive energy of the day sharply contrasted with Trevor’s visibly downcast vibe, with images of his sister’s incestuous advances on their father the night before rolling over and over in his mind.  Having processed all the troubling details from the encounter and successfully avoiding detection until his mother and Haylee got back later last night, Trevor was now internalizing it through the lens of his own perversions.  Given his long-standing lust for his sisters, Trevor had always assumed he was the black sheep of the family, but now he wondered if the entire McPherson family was a bunch of irredeemable perverts.  Was his relationship with Lauren based on anything real?  Or was it all a manifestation of the same incestuous impulse that nearly drove Courtney to have sexual relations with her father last night?

Trevor’s lengthy period of reflection and self-pity came to abrupt end with the honking of the horn from the car creeping slowly next to him on the street.  As Trevor turned toward the car, the driver laid on the horn repeatedly and braked the car on the residential street that was currently traffic-free. Trevor immediately recognized it was Lauren’s car just as she leaned over and opened the passenger door, immediately letting out a whistle, then feigning a lustful voice to catcall him, “I want to take you back to my place, bad boy!” quickly transitioning to her trademark girlish giggle.

As down in the dumps as Trevor was, his face lit up with a smile at Lauren’s surprise visit, and the smile stayed lit as he leaned forward to check out her presentation.  The recent sunshine had illuminated her long, dark blond hair to a more golden hue that flowed onto her scantily clad upper body draped in a skimpy blue tanktop, with a pair of very short denim cutoffs on her lower body that showed off her leg all the way up to her upper thigh, the well-toned thigh muscle flexed as she held down the brake pad with her right foot.  It was an image of summer that Trevor hadn’t seen from Lauren in a good eight months, and never since they’d become sexually active.  The image was perfectly complemented with the freshly lit Marlboro Light 100 resting in her left hand that she held the steering wheel with.  At least for a moment, all of his troubles from the previous night disappeared.

As Trevor finally gained his composure, he asked Lauren the obvious question.  “What are you doing here today?  I thought we were meeting tomorrow.”

Lauren flashed a flirty look as she took a drag from her cigarette before responding, “I felt kind of bad ditching you last night and thought I’d make it up today.  Want a ride back to your place?” fluttering her eyelashes to make her intentions hopelessly obvious.

“Haylee could be home any minute,” Trevor said, wondering why she wasn’t home already when he left for his walk.

“Oh I don’t think Haylee’s gonna be bothering us today,” she added, clearly indicating to Trevor that she knew something he didn’t before friskily continuing, “So are you gonna get in this car or leave a girl waiting on the street all afternoon?”

Trevor smirked and stepped inside the car, taken aback by how much more intense the tobacco odor was even since he last rode in it the previous night.  Then he looked at the butt bucket in the console and could see why, observing the pyramid of cigarette butts that had elevated a few inches higher than the emerging tower of last night.  Seeing both Marlboro Light 100 and Camel Pink No. 9 butts stacked up well over the rim, he was genuinely impressed with how many cigarettes both Lauren and Haylee had to have smoked that night while having their girl talk.  As Lauren pulled away en route to Trevor’s house, Trevor asked the obvious question, “So why do you know Haylee won’t be home?”

Lauren side-eyed him playfully and added, “I’m sworn to secrecy,” while releasing the final spurt of a considerable exhale.

Trevor didn’t like the sound of this but figured it was none of his business, his smile from Lauren’s greeting starting to fade and the troubled look slowly re-emerging on his face which Lauren immediately picked up on.

“Is everything okay?” Lauren asked with her typical elevated level of genuine emotion, sensing that her boyfriend was unhappy.

Trevor shook it off and feigned a smile, reassuring her saying, “It’s nothing,” before looking up to an approaching car crossing in front of them in the residential intersection and abruptly alerting Lauren to “Watch out!”

Lauren refocused her attention on the car in front of her and immediately applied the brakes with the overzealousness of a rookie driver.  While they easily avoided a collision, the lit cigarette dropped from Lauren’s hand and singed the driver’s side seat next to her bare leg…and the contents of the butt can in the console went airborne, with two packs worth of cigarette butts and ash spilling all over Trevor’s shirt and pants.

After the initial shock of the traffic incident subsided, Lauren had all she could do to suppress a laugh seeing Trevor covered in the contents of her and Haylee’s filthy cigarette debris.  She couldn’t suppress a brief giggle any longer looking at Trevor, apologizing through her laughter.  “I was gonna dump that at the gas station on the way here but I was so preoccupied with getting down your pants I forgot about it.”

Trevor smirked and pointed to his ash-covered jeans, half-jokingly saying “You sure you want to get down these pants now?”

Lauren giggled and said, “I’m not so sure!” seconds before finally noticing the burnhole on her seat and saying “Shit!”

“Wow…a cigarette burn in your new car after only two weeks.  That’s gotta be a new world record!” Trevor teased.

“Shut it!” Lauren fired back playfully.  “I gotta figure out a way to explain this to my dad!”  She then looked up to Trevor, finding herself strangely aroused upon looking over his clothes still covered in cigarette butts and ash as he opened the door to stand up and get the worst of it off his clothes and out of the car.  As he got back inside, he saw Lauren biting her lower lip before she added, “We gotta get you home and out of those dirty clothes, Trevor McPherson!” giggling as she continued driving, only a couple of blocks from Trevor’s place.

Moments later, Lauren led Trevor into his own front door, holding him by his hand with an elevated friskiness, unsure why Trevor didn’t seem to be as into it today as he almost always was but figuring she’d get him in the mood quickly enough.  Trevor excused himself to go into the bathroom to change clothes, and as Trevor closed the door, Lauren giggled to herself as she prepared to surprise him, removing her tanktop and then pulling down her jean shorts, leaving only her matching aqua blue bra and panties partially covering her shapely mid-teen body.

Trevor looked in the bathroom mirror as he tossed his dirty clothes into the hamper and put on a new T-shirt and shorts, his previous insecurities rushing back as he looked at his reflection.  After a few moments, he opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the hallway, where Lauren hid behind the door as it slowly opened.  As he walked toward his bedroom, Lauren crept up and engulfed him from behind with her body, raising her voice to say “Surprise!” as she pressed the front of her body into the back of his.

Trevor’s reflex and the gasp that followed went beyond the typical startled response, and as Lauren leaned over his shoulder to match his face with his PTSD-like reaction, it really hit home how unlike himself Trevor was today.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Lauren said with maximal concern in her voice, turning Trevor around to face her and noticing a tear welling up in his eye.

Trevor shook his head but was unable to downplay his low-level despair any longer, his quivering voice finally getting out, “It’s not something I really want to talk about right now.  But I’m just not in the mood today,”  pausing before reassuring her,  “Has nothing to do with you.”

The sensitive Lauren was now more emotional than Trevor,  pulling him in for an extended hug and eventually saying, “That’s okay baby.  Maybe we could just lay together for a while.”

As Trevor nodded approvingly, Lauren led him by hand two doors down to his bedroom, lying on her back in his bed and then beckoning him on top of her.  Lauren almost always liked to rest her head on Trevor’s chest after sex, but today it was gonna be Lauren providing comfort, guiding his head onto her breast to just rest there peacefully.  Trevor hadn’t been close to tears up to this point, but was fighting them back now after this loving gesture from his girlfriend, his cheek softly pressing into the fabric of her aqua blue bra and her smooth upper breast while his eyes admired her flat stomach and the gorgeous curvature of her panty line.  He put his hand on her stomach and slowly stroked it much like Lauren frequently did to his chest.  There was only one thing missing and it was rectified a split second after he thought of it, hearing the flicker of a lighter and quickly smelling the cigarette smoke spewing from Lauren as he felt her chest rise up and down with her relaxed breathing and the gentle wheezing sound of her smoked-out lungs.

They laid together for at least a half hour enjoying each other’s touch, and Trevor reassured himself that his love for this girl went far beyond any perverse sexual association with his sisters as he had spent most of the last 24 hours fearing.  There was something much deeper here.

————————————————————–

Meanwhile, Haylee and Jacob walked on the trail encircling Eagle Lake, the same lake they danced upon two weeks earlier.  While they had the obscure rear access point of the still-frozen lake to themselves that weekend, the walkway was bustling with walkers on this warm weekday afternoon, the lake now fully thawed and its blue water glistening with the sun’s reflection.  The couple walked hand in hand, exchanging flirty glances as they chatted, with Jacob admiring Haylee’s beautiful face and body, the latter of which was more openly displayed today than he’d seen her before, decked out in a hot pink tanktop and tight white shorts.

Haylee stopped in her tracks and fished around in her purse, with Jacob knowing what was coming next.  He’d taken note of multiple “no smoking” signs dotting the perimeter of the lake, including one not even 10 feet in front of them, but Haylee breezily extracted a Camel Pink No. 9 from her purse and inserted it between her lips, trying to entice Jacob to light her up but quickly deciding to do so herself.  Jacob couldn’t help but feel a little bashful as multiple sets of scornful eyes settled judgmentally on his underage girlfriend as she took her first dangling drag from her cigarette, and he was wondering if any kind of confrontation would ensue over her rule violation.

But Haylee was entirely oblivious to the smoking prohibition, tightening her grip on Jacob’s waist and welcoming his tighter grip on hers, even as he lowered his hand to where it was now touching the side of her ass.  While she enjoyed the grope, it also reminded her of the conflicted feelings she’d had about Jacob since that first dance they shared two months earlier.  She trusted him more than she did then, but not had by no means fully divested her trust in him.  Still, now seemed like the perfect time to set the ground rule she’d been pondering for days but had been fearing Jacob’s response to.

Puckering her lips around the cigarette filter yet again for another dangling drag, Haylee interrupted Jacob’s small talk to throw out a proposition that Jacob could tell was serious by her tone.  “I was thinking, Jacob,” she opened, then pausing with obvious trepidation before continuing, “Some couples have a ’90-day rule’ before they have sex.  I think I’d like to do that.”

Haylee held her breath nervously awaiting his answer, the cigarette smoke bottling up inside her lungs until Jacob responded.  “You want to wait three months?” Jacob asked, just to be sure he heard right, with a wave of disappointment crashing upon his face.

Haylee cowered a bit as the imposing Jacob, standing at least six inches taller than her, looked down upon her, but she soon found the courage to respond with, “I think so.  Please don’t hate me!”

“Wow,” Jacob muttered softly, pondering a premise he’d have never entertained for more than a second with any girl he’d been grooming before, but as he watched the trembling Haylee’s lips pucker around the filter of that pink and white cigarette filter, the cherry glowing red as her innocent body filled up with toxic carcinogens, the decision was made for him.  “You know…I think you’re worth the wait, Haylee,” he responded in a sincere way that melted Haylee’s heart.

A giddy smile emerged on Haylee’s face that Jacob agreed to this ‘test’ to help assuage her doubts, neither of them appreciating that even three months from now, their sexual courtship would still be a criminal act.

Jacob pulled in slowly for a kiss and Haylee took the hint, removing the cigarette hanging from her mouth.  He could taste the overflow smoke spilling from Haylee’s mouth and nose into his own mouth as she breathed, and it was just as intense as it had been two weeks ago.  He felt his male parts stiffen as the kiss continued, and much as he was enjoying it, he was reminded of how much of a struggle these next three months would be for him.

—————————————————————–

The next Saturday afternoon, a mixed-gender huddle of a dozen or so people, ranging in age from teen to middle-aged, was gathered around the coffee table of a suburban residence, with a few of the people wielding cigarettes.  The 40-something woman sitting in the middle of the couch and serving as a master of ceremonies pointed in the direction of the nervous new girl in the group and told the rest of the group, “And we have a new member who joined us today.  She talked to me on the phone the other day and said she needed some support.  I’d like to introduce you to Courtney and let her introduce herself to all of us….” the woman said with a warm smile directed at the conservatively dressed teen blond in the sweatshirt and jeans who was about to make her introductory statement.

Courtney was mortified and felt like a fish out of water, taking an intense drag from her Marlboro Light Menthol 100 before speaking.  “Hello, my name is Courtney.  I’m 18 years old and this is my first meeting,” Courtney opened, a blast of exhaled smoke sailing nearly two feet in front of her and producing a haze in front of the coffee table, very likely generating the worst possible response from some of the members of this particular group.  She continued, “…..I’ve had a problem with my sexuality for a few years now.  I crave risk.  I crave danger.  I crave being inappropriate and forcing my partner to be inappropriate with me. Even in situations where a guy isn’t my type or if a sexual relationship would be the absolute worst thing for me and the guy, I just can’t seem to stop myself from going for it…..”

She paused for a moment upon feeling some emotions rush in, taking another drag from her cigarette before continuing through a messy talking exhale, “….and recently it’s been causing serious damage to my most important relationships…at work and at home.  I’ve hurt my coworkers.  I’ve hurt my sister.  And I’ve hurt my father.”  Really fighting back the tears at this point, she began to wrap it up, “I made my father a promise to go fishing with him before I graduate high school.  Even though he can’t even look at me right now, I am committed to keeping that promise to my father.”

Emotions fully got the best of Courtney as she closed through her tears, “My name is Courtney…and I am a sex addict”, her hands and lips quivering as she raised the cigarette to her lips for her most deeply intense drag yet, tears rolling down her cheek amid a chorus of greetings, accolades, and kudos from the crowd about Courtney’s gutsy introduction to the group of fellow travelers.

All Other Fairgrounds Overview

I’m adding this new category to account for additional fairgrounds sightings venues beyond my original three.  It started in 2013 when I stumbled into the Brown County Fair in Aberdeen, South Dakota, when I happened to be staying overnight there on a night the fair was on and scored some memorable sightings.  As of 2015, I made my maiden voyage to the Missouri State Fair and scored one of the best sightings of my life.  It was clear a new category had to be added to account for these new venues and to make room for future sightings I score from fairgrounds outside my Big Three.  I returned to Sedalia, Missouri in August 2016 for another day at the Missouri State Fair and again in 2018.  And in 2017, I visited the Indiana State Fair for the first time.  At some point, I’ll return to Aberdeen, South Dakota, as well.  Enjoy the new material….

AOF #1. The Show Me State Welcomes Me With Daylong Chainsmoking Show By Distinctive Sexpot Trio

I had been to the 2015 Missouri State Fair for an about an hour without a single sighting under my belt thus far, but in the early afternoon I was ultimately taken aback by how dramatic of an entrance this fairgrounds was about to make when that first sighting came upon me.  Walking by the livestock barns and frustrated by the not-exactly-predicted intense heat and the lack of sightings, my day and indeed my entire summer took an abrupt turn for the better when my eyes focused on the approaching image.  If you’re a fetisher, you are lucky to get one image per summer as fantastic as this.  Twenty yards in front of me was a trio of 21-22ish summer hotties in tanktops and shorts–a visually perfect cluster of feminine youth in the summertime without a single defiling tattoo amongst the three of them–all wielding freshly lit cigarettes between their fingers.  I quickly readied my camera to capture this moment.  Aligning a perfect photo while not looking at the camera and thus telling on yourself is never easy so none of the dozen or so photos I would get of them was perfect, but I still feel that I successfully immortalized their images…..

Instantly, this sighting took me back to my best Minnesota State Fair sighting of 2014, with three sexy smoker girls that each had a distinct visual identity to differentiate them.  In my Missouri trio, there was a long-haired blond with sunglasses in a red blouse with white shorts.  She was hot as hell, but in this group passed for the plain jane.  There was a perfectly coiffed sexpot dark brunette with long, curly hair, a revealing white tanktop and denim cutoffs showing off tremendous flesh and a beautiful chiseled body that flowed into a pair of cowgirl boots.  And then there was the third girl who immediately captured my imagination best, a slender light brunette with shoulder length hair wearing a pink blouse and short jean shorts with cowgirl boots, who had the most wholesome and heartwarming face I’ve seen all season, albeit with a faint hint of hardening suggesting she’s been a heavy smoker for a while.  Nearly five hours worth of driving to Sedalia, Missouri, was already worthwhile and I hadn’t even seen them smoke yet!

After they walked past me, I turned around, watching them from behind while taking rear snapshots of their asses and the cigarettes between their fingers.  Doing so I was able to see their smoking technique, all of which were vaguely similar at least in this context of walking with their backs to a decent south breeze which scattered their cloudy exhales northward.  This vantage point behind them was also perfect for allowing me to see the reactions of others walking past them.  Virtually everybody took note of this sexy young trio, and judging from the direction their eyes went, they also took note of the cigarettes in their hands.  One woman seemed visibly annoyed and shook her head upon observing all three girls were smoking.  I also took note that my wholesome light brunette had a pack of Camel Light Menthols stuffed into her jean shorts, ready to do business for the entire day!  These girls were nothing if not cooperative on Saturday and came to a stop at a perfect vantage point where I could lean against a fence and snap more pics as they stood there smoking.  It was only when the girls stopped that I realized this steam roller had a fourth wheel….a clean-cut college age guy….but you’ll forgive me for not putting his presence together with this trio of girls for a variety of reasons, the most substantial being he was not smoking himself!  This man, folks, is the luckiest nonsmoking guy on the planet and I hope he realizes that!  I got the sense that the group, especially the guy, was wise to me but if ever there was a time for taking risks, this was it as I snapped several more pics from this sedentary location and watched these beauties continue smoking.  Just fantastic!

The blond finished her cigarette first and appeared heading for the dairy cattle barn of all places, dropping her cigarette to the pavement without crushing it out and then vanishing inside that dairy building.  The rest of the group had other destinations to visit though and pressed forward, giving me the chance to identify blondie’s smoldering cigarette as a Camel Blue.  I pressed forward to see my wholesome light brunette had just finished her cigarette as well, also dropping it to the pavement without bothering to crush it out.  I could tell by the pack in the back of her jean shorts that her brand was Camel Light Menthols, but confirmed it looking at the smoldering remains of her cancer stick.  Now it was just a matter of that sexy dark brunette, the slowest smoker of the trio.  I got to watch a few more drags from her over the next 50 yards or so before she also retired her smoldering butt to the ground.  Hers was a Marlboro Light Special Blend.  Three different distinct beauties with three distinct brands all smoking together.  The imagery and quality of the girls being what they were, this sighting would have been my best so far of the 2015 fair season if it had ended right there, but suffice it to say it was nowhere near over.

An hour or so went by after that as I stitched together a few more modest sightings on the grounds, but right around 1:00 the day’s trajectory dramatically reversed, and it was all courtesy of a girl who by herself was a pretty impressive find.  A trio of two girls and a guy in their mid-to-late 20s were walking towards a small fairgrounds bar called Chuckie Dee’s and one of the girls was a brunette with sunglasses, a white shoulderless tanktop and dark jeans who looked ready for the party, particularly with a freshly lit cigarette in hand.  She waltzed right into the bar with her cigarette and asked somebody something, which I would quickly discover to be a request for an ashtray as she was handed one before retreating to a table near a wall with her two friends.  The female friend was a light brunette in a purple tanktop and pale blue jean shorts who I found hotter than the smoker, and I was taking a bench outside ready, willing, and able to wait as I needed for her to produce cigarettes of her own, but my plans got changed when I looked one table to their right and saw who was sitting there…..

Three of the four participants in my great original Missouri State Fair sighting occupied that table, including the guy, the sexpot brunette, and the wholesome light brunette cutie.  The blond who went into the cattle barn earlier was not there.  The only problem was there was a partition obstructing my view of them from the bench where I sat.  I scrambled and searched the perimeter of this open-air bar for another more accommodating bench….and I found one!  At the front entryway of the bar was a wide open bench where I could observe the bench where this trio sat, close enough to appreciate the imagery but far enough away that I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb to them.  The second I sat down I could have sworn I saw a plume of smoke exhaled from the mouth of the dark brunette.  I figure my eyes probably didn’t deceive me and that she did in fact take the final exhale from a cigarette she crushed out outside of my sight range.  Either way, I just had a feeling that if I waited here for a while, I’d see more smoking from one or more of these girls.   An otherwise tempting sighting walked by right in front of me, a family where a 19ish skinny brunette daughter had a pack of Newports stuffed into her back jeans pocket, but especially considering that girl wasn’t smoking, I wasn’t about to vacate this bench overlooking my best find so far in the 2015 fair season.

I had to wait no more than five minutes before the wholesome light brunette inserted an all-white between her lips and fired up.  I don’t often get the visceral flourish of excitement where my heart skips a beat seeing a girl smoking a cigarette but it sure happened at that moment.  This time, I was gonna get to watch her smoke the whole cigarette!  Even though this bar was open-air, the context was exactly like an old-fashioned bar setting, complete with the ashtray, and the imagery of her smoking evoked that.  I never got much of a chance to admire her style when I saw her smoking by the livestock barns earlier but that deficiency was being amended now.  Her drags were rock-solid, lasting a good five seconds and exposing a pleasured sensation on her face followed by generous exhales that she usually tilted slightly skyward to release, which the aforementioned south wind scattered into the bar.  It would have been hard to imagine this girl could upstage the imagery of her first cigarette with her friends outdoors but my front-row seat to her bar setting cigarette pulled it off, and I savored every moment until she extinguished the cigarette’s remains in the ashtray in front of her.  Was this the time to walk away?  Perhaps for an ordinary duo of fair girls, but these two were not ordinary, and I just knew that there would be more rewards for staying where I was at.  And it wouldn’t take long for those rewards to be realized….

No more than three minutes passed before the sexy dark brunette took out another cigarette and lit up, and this motivated her wholesome light brunette friend to light up another one too.  Oh sweet….both girls smoking at once again!  But of course there was one member of this trio not smoking….and that was the guy who never did light up even while in the presence of all these heavy-smoking females.  If ever there was a case study on whether secondhand smoke kills or not, it would be this guy.  If secondhand smoke is as dangerous as they claim it is, this guy should be dead in the next few years!  And his would-be killers couldn’t have been happier about their method of execution as the two girls smoked copiously, each producing beautiful clouds of smoke that were carried further into the bar by the wind.  The wholesome light brunette was the better–and faster–smoker of the two with cloudier exhales and better pacing, but the dark brunette looked so damn badass in her sunglasses dragging from her cigarette and typically exhaling straight ahead, making no effort at all to spare the guy sitting across from her the exhaust from her dark lungs.  The wholesome girl crushed out her cigarette a couple of minutes before the slower-smoking dark brunette friend.  And in the biggest irony of the day, the piped-in music coming from the bar’s speaker was now playing Alan Jackson’s late 90s hit “Everything I Love” of which the song’s hook is “everything I love is killing me….cigarettes, Jack Daniels, and caffeine”.  Clearly these girls don’t listen too closely to the lyrics of the country bars they frequent as they were a few years from the emphysema ward at the rate they were going! Right after the dark brunette finished hers, she got up and I figured the whole group was leaving…..but it was only the dark brunette.  I don’t know where she went but now it was just the guy and the wholesome light brunette at the table by themselves.  I began to suspect they were boyfriend and girlfriend but was later dissuaded of that impression.  More on that later, but in the meantime since my favorite girl of the group was sticking around, I was gonna do the same and see how high the cigarette count would go!

This was actually a perfect situation for me because my feet were still sore from 8 1/2 hours of walking at the Iowa State Fair that ended Thursday night at midnight.  My feet would be hard-pressed to handle a full 12 hours of walking on cement again all day and night Saturday, so my extended sit on this bench overlooking my favorite girls in the bar allowed me the best of both worlds….fantastic sightings from the comfort of my easy chair.  I was a little concerned that I was missing great stuff elsewhere on the fairgrounds but I definitely made the right choice to stick around and I would formalize my stay by approaching the bar and ordering a pulled pork sandwich, giving me something to eat while being entertained by the smoker girl and a live band that was now performing and was quite good.  Again, my timing couldn’t have been better….because as I was standing there waiting on my sandwich, the wholesome light brunette smoker was standing at the bar right next to me ordering another beer.  This was the closest I was all day physically to this perfect female specimen….and frankly she kind of reeked of smoke!  I retreated to my bench while she was still in line waiting for another beer, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her perfect ass and those great legs with the cowgirl boots at the bottom, the breeze whipping around the bottom of her loose fitting pink top and showing off some midriff.  Her sex appeal was off the charts.  She walked back to her seat with the fresh beer, and I knew that with the new beer another cigarette was about to be smoked.

She made me wait about five more minutes but didn’t disappoint when her fourth cigarette of the last two hours (at least, I probably missed at least one!) was ignited.  While I had sort of appreciated the old-fashioned bar setting of this sighting up to this point, something I hadn’t experienced to this degree since Cousin Jamie’s wedding in 2002, it was after she lit this latest cigarette that it really hit home for me, and for a very specific reason.  For the first half of the cigarette, she rested her elbow on the table and held her cigarette close to her face as it smoldered.  With indoor smoking sightings having all but disappeared in my part of the country, an already visually appealing pose for a sexy smoker gal became that much more stunning because of its scarcity.  I honestly can’t even remember the last time I saw a girl smoking in this pose, and it was tearing me up inside with excitement.  The visceral thrill I mentioned that this girl gave me when she lit up before was occurring every couple of minutes at this point and I couldn’t get enough of it.  She took a good 6-8 drags with her elbow on the table before retreating to her previous position of holding her cigarette hand to her side next to her chair but I appreciated the hell out of those throwback stylings for as long as they lasted.  And sometimes this girl would flash a smile or have a certain look in her eye that just melted my heart witnessing it, reinforcing my notion that she was one of the most perfect smoker girls who ever lived, a perfect combination of heavy and unashamed smoker with a fun and charming personality.

She finished that fourth cigarette and I was determined to ride this show out as long as I could.  I know I had been spotted again by the girl and the guy with her but the presence of this live band performing behind them gave me a reason to be looking their way.  It was one of those perfect fetish days where absolutely everything was going my way. Nonetheless, the band’s arrival posed a logistical challenge when more people came to listen to them, including some who sat in my line of vision of the chainsmoking babe, at least partially obstructing me from seeing more of her.  I found myself fidgeting on my bench trying to find holes in the crowd where I could see the girl.  Thankfully, this crowd’s formation occurred in between cigarettes but I knew with this girl that period wouldn’t last long so I was hoping for some kind of break or that she would actually hold off before firing up her next one.  About 10 minutes passed when I saw an opening just large enough that I saw her nose and mouth in between two other customers…..and she was placing an unlit cigarette in her mouth, her fifth so far today that I observed.  It sure was a weird yet oddly satisfying experience watching this cigarette being inserted into a female mouth yet not being able to see the rest of her face.  And it played out this way for her first couple of drags too before a brief parting in the crowd allowed me a better vantage point where I could observe the rest of her face smoking too, never disappointing even for a second.  Was this girl an anomaly even in small-town Missouri or was she not necessarily the exception to the rule of being such a heavy smoker?  I also observed that she was very gingerly sipping her beer, which was in an ordinary plastic cup.  She was only on her second beer since I arrived here more than an hour ago.  Some more casual smoking girls say they smoke when they drink, but with this girl I think she would be more inclined to say she drinks while she smokes!

There was some unsettled activity during this fifth cigarette as the guy got up and walked off, perhaps to go to the bathroom….or else he finally reached his breaking point tolerating the girl’s incessant smoking.  Either way, I briefly abandoned my bench and retreated to a rear position behind where the girl sat.  The half-smoked cigarette was in her left hand as she continued to watch the band while sitting alone, and from this rear position I got to admire something else.  I mentioned earlier how when she was standing at the counter waiting for a beer the breeze was whipping around her blouse.  It was still doing that now as she sat with her back to the wind, but since she was sitting an inch or more of her black panties were exposed above the belt line of her shorts.  This girl just never quit finding ways to turn me on!  She took three back-to-back-to-back drags from her cigarette before crushing it out and continuing to sit there.  It was now 3:00 and I wanted to at least see what else the fair had to offer, thinking I would check in on a very regular basis to see what my wholesome light brunette was up to.

I did just that and was back in no more than 10 minutes.  Surprisingly the table was vacant, but I hustled on up to see if I could get a closer look at that ashtray provided it wasn’t cleaned out yet.  I got there and saw an ashtray with nearly a dozen butts in it, the majority being my favorite girl’s Camel Light Menthols.  But I also saw her pack of cigarettes and a half-empty beer still sitting there, signaling to me that she was planning to return.  I left the scene and returned in a few minutes.  Sure enough, all three of the original party were now back….the nonsmoking guy, my wholesome light brunette, and that impossibly sexy dark brunette, who was smoking another cigarette, her third or probably fourth cigarette of the afternoon.  My bench was still mostly open so I seized it, wanting to see more of the dark brunette’s style.  She didn’t smoke as quickly as I’d prefer but she was a great smoker with long indulgent drags and cloudy exhales.  And I love the dark brunette’s presence because every time she lights a cigarette, she inspires her heavier-smoking friend to light another.  Two-thirds way into the dark brunette’s cigarette, the light brunette fired up another of her own, her sixth so far this afternoon that I witnessed.  I stayed once again until both girls finished their cigarettes before making another attempt to take off, planning again to return and see when they smoke again.

I felt a little guilty for neglecting the rest of the grounds in favor of one girl (or group of girls), as incredible as they were, but when I returned to the grounds I realized I hadn’t been missing much.  There still wasn’t much going on out there, in particular in the midway when I finally made another trip through there.  I was heading back to Chuckie Dee’s to keep tabs on those smelly sexpot chainsmokers, but when I got halfway there, I discovered they were coming to me!  They finally left the bar and were now heading in the direction of the midway without any cigarettes.  And this time, the original blond was back.  The band was back together, with all three girls and the nonsmoking guy.  I had assumed with all the alone time that the guy spent with the wholesome light brunette that she was his girlfriend, but he was putting his arms all over the sexy dark brunette as they walked.  What gives here?  Maybe he’s fucking both of them!  Whatever the arrangement, I’d pay my life savings to spend one damn day in this guy’s shoes!  I was torn between following them into the midway and risking being called out with as familiar as my presence was at this point or returning to their table at the bar to do an official cigarette butt count in the ashtray.  Considering it might be a while before the girls lit up again, especially if they were about to ride midway rides, I decided to check out the ashtray.  I probably made a mistake as I got there to find the table still empty but the ashtray already gone.  And when I returned to the midway, I didn’t find them again.  I certainly wasn’t in a position to complain about what these girls, and the wholesome light brunette in particular, had already delivered for me.  And you never know, it’s possible we haven’t heard the last of them….

Fast forward about five hours.  It was around 8:30 p.m. and since the smoker girl trio last departed the day offered mostly only modest rewards to put it generously. I was hoping to finally find something worthwhile on the midway, which had thus far been a disappointment despite my high early hopes of evening sightings of mid-teen girls.  I got three-quarters way through the midway when a voice inside me told me to turn right at the midway exit leading to a series of fair buildings that I hadn’t explored much that day.  Occasionally my instincts lead me to something worthwhile, but never could I have imagined the reward I was less than a minute from stumbling into.  As I approached a foursome that included three girls and one guy, an air of familiarity struck me instantly but it took a couple of seconds to realize that the trio of sexpot chainsmokers who started my day at the Missouri State Fair and occupied the majority of the afternoon were back….and had changed clothes!  This led me to believe they must live right here in Sedalia as they appeared to have left the fair to change their outfits, but I suppose it’s possible they simply brought a change of clothes in their car.  Either way, imagine my luck to have been in the right place at the right time to catch up with these girls AGAIN after five hours between encounters, extending the best sighting of the 2015 fair season into an evening encore…..

The guy in the group was talking to another guy and motioning the girls to go do whatever they wanted to do, apparently under the terms that he’d catch up with them later.  What the girls wanted to do was apparently get some food as the three of them drifted towards a corn dog stand and I followed.  So what outfits did they change into?  The blond was now wearing a white top with a fringed midsection that largely covered the jean shorts she wore below the waist.  She was still sexy, but continued to come in third place in this high-end threesome.  My favorite wholesome light brunette in the Midwest who smoked the most during the day appeared to be wearing the same pink blouse along with a pair of tight jeans.  I guess I preferred her short jean shorts from earlier but she was rocking these tight blue jeans as well and seeing her in another outfit made this already wildly comprehensive sighting encounter all the more comprehensive.  But winning the outfit wars in the evening was that sexpot dark brunette, somehow managing to outdo her country girl ensemble from the daytime now decked out in a maroon tanktop with painted-on short black shorts that fit her muscular lower body like heaven.  I just may have been following the sexiest trio of early 20s gals in all of America!

The girls walked up to the corn dog stand and I had to be discreet not to get busted stalking them again, but found a bench across the street from their stand to observe and even snapped a couple of distant photos of them in their new outfits.  The pics didn’t really turn out but it was still kind of worth it for me.  They walked away with a single corn dog in the possession of my wholesome light brunette.  I had to keep my distance and ended up losing them in the crowd for less than a minute.  I’m assuming the girls collectively devoured the corn dog because it was gone by the time I caught up with them again, and they were progressing past the farm equipment on a now-vacant side street when it happened.  The cigarettes were coming out yet again.  A lighter ignited a cigarette to life in the blond’s mouth first and the fires kept popping up to ignite the tobacco cylinders in the other two girls’ mouths as well.  For the first time since noon, I was seeing all three of them smoking again.  It was only the second cigarette I had seen the blond smoke but this was the fourth cigarette of the sexy dark brunette, and the seventh cigarette of my favorite girl, the wholesome light brunette.  I had to follow from about 15 yards behind so as not to get busted but was able to see clouds of smoke exhaled from their mouths one after another during that joyous walk.  Where were they heading?  The very crowded beer gardens block of course.  I was hoping they’d hover outside the bar so I could watch them smoke the rest of their cigarettes, but what happened instead was almost as good.  The three sexpots with fresh cigarettes in their fingers weaved right through the crowd and strutted right into the bar with cigarettes in hand, where I can guarantee you that they turned most heads inside the bar because of both their beauty and their boldness.  I approached the entryway of the open-air bar and looked inside.  It was so crowded that I couldn’t see where they went…..but this story STILL hasn’t ended!

I stayed pretty close to that beer gardens block most of the rest of the night because I knew that was where most of the smoking action was gonna be, and plus I wanted to keep tabs on “the trio”.  I always weaved my way towards the entryway of that country bar the girls walked into and about 15 minutes after they arrived, there “she” was….that same wholesome light brunette, now in her pink blouse and tight jeans, standing there talking to a guy who also looked pretty wholesome sitting there on a chair across from where she was standing.  Once again, she was smoking a cigarette and he was not.  Apparently wholesome nonsmoking guys are the only kind of guys this girl fraternizes with, and as I watched her smoke her eighth cigarette of the day while sipping on a beer, it hit me that it could have been me sitting there flirting with this heavy-smoking cutie.  The price one has to pay at these fairs for obsessively tracking sightings is that you become too familiar to the smoker girls and look like hell from racing around the grounds in the hot sun becoming a pile of sweat to the point of having no chance of engaging socially.  Obviously I might not have been her type anyway, but I was really jealous of this guy who was in a position to watch her smoke from an even closer vantage point than me.  Her smoking style stayed consistent, taking nicely paced five-second drags with a pleasured look on her face followed a slightly skyward exhale right inside the bar, flashing that beautiful smile and infectious giggle regularly while socializing with this lucky guy who apparently had no problem dealing with her stench.

I even hit a sensory overload point in the middle of cutie’s eighth cigarette because, all at once, a bunch of other hotties were spilling out of the bar with cigarettes and lingering in my immediate area.   Where were all these girls around 6 p.m. when I would have been able to appreciate them more!?!??!  I was positioned nicely to look to my left and watch these girls smoking outside, and then look to my right inside the bar to see the wholesome light brunette girl of the day releasing another blast of smoke to contaminate the air in the bar.  It was a few minutes of pure bliss until the outside smokers finished their cigarettes one after another and the wholesome light brunette disappeared further inside the bar….

This beer gardens block was just off the midway which was convenient for me as it allowed me to explore the midway in a fruitless pursuit for young teen smokers yet still never be far away from that beer gardens block.  As for my favorite country bar with my favorite trio of girls inside, it had a back entrance that was also open-air and when I looked inside next I would see my wholesome light brunette line dancing to “Copperhead Road” with the guy she had just been talking to towards the front of the bar a few minutes earlier.  No cigarette in her hand while she danced but it was still a beautiful image and made me wonder how exhausted her black lungs must be at the end of that line dancing workout….

About a half hour later around 11:30, I made my final pass down the midway with one more journey on that beer gardens block which was single-handedly making my evening.  And the evening would not be complete without one more fantastic sighting of the two star players of the “trio”, who were now outside the front entryway of the country bar smoking in the company of two nonsmoking guys, one of whom being the same guy that the wholesome light brunette was talking to and line dancing with earlier.  You gotta figure the girls stepped outside to smoke to enjoy a cool breeze and escape the heat from inside with all the sweaty dancers as it seems very unlikely that it was out of any inhibition about smoking inside given their body of work for the day so far!  Either way, there they were smoking their ninth and fifth cigarettes of the day that I witnessed, standing there puffing in front of these wholesome, nonsmoking guys who were enduring their ashtray aroma with smiles on their faces.  I hovered from a respectable distance admiring what I knew would be the last cigarette I’d see smoked from that beautiful light brunette who continued to drag fiercely on her beloved Camel Light Menthol while directing her cloudy exhales skyward.  I’m guessing this girl is a very heavy smoker even on a regular day but within the context of this beer-soaked day at the fair I bet she smoked at least two full packs on August 22, 2015….

And I also felt blessed to get one more upclose look at that scorching hot dark brunette friend in that smoldering maroon tanktop and tight black shorts, the hottest outfit of the entire Missouri State Fair, as she smoked away on her own cigarette with a typically slower pace than the more wholesome friend with blobbier and straight ahead exhales from her Marlboro Light Special Blends.  The final cigarette count from this trio would be nine cigarettes from the wholesome light brunette, five cigarettes from the sexpot dark brunette, and two cigarettes from the blond who only made cameos over the course of the day.  The nine cigarettes from the light brunette rivaled last year’s Iowa State Fair teen chainsmoker, albeit over the course of an entire day rather than just a couple of hours like last year’s girl.  A sighting that started out resembling last year’s #2 fairgrounds sighting ended up being a hybrid of 2014’s #2 and #1, which is not at all a bad place to be.  Without a doubt, this “trio” who represented my Missouri State Fair baptism served me up the most comprehensive and longest-lasting sighting encounter of my life and will be immortalized forever on my blog as a result.

AOF #2. Teen Blond In Painted-On Jean Shorts Gives Comprehensive Three-Cigarette Performance

As the Cole Swindell concert was playing during the 9:00 hour at the 2018 Missouri State Fair, I ventured south to the block full of bars where I came upon a hottie with a cigar, but she frustrated me by crushing it out on her shoe before taking a single drag. All things happen for a reason though, and in this case, that short-circuited cigar sighting would lead me to something incredibly special as I progressed towards the bathroom area just to the south….

I’d traveled about 10 yards from the source of the last sighting when this tight rear package graced my eyes and I thought to myself “Damn! Now that’s a backside!” as I scanned this young female in a huddle with two guys, one of whom was smoking. A layer of thin, pale blue denim wrapped itself around the perfectly sculpted bubble butt of this blond like Press ‘N’ Seal plastic wrap, unforgivingly clutching her ass in a way that seemed incredibly uncomfortable. I’d seen a handful of teen girls over the course of the fair season wearing shorts that fit like this, and had always thought to myself how great it would be to match that image with a girl smoking a cigarette. I looped around the huddle to get a look at the girl, who looked about 17 or 18 and was the personification of everygirl Midwestern wholesomeness with undeniable IT factor, reminding me of an early 2000s Beverley Mitchell, the actress who played Lucy on “7th Heaven”. I didn’t give her a second thought as I pressed forward to the bathroom area in case any smokers were lingering there. When I saw nothing, I doubled back the direction I came from and nearly lost my footing when I watched the teen blond with the incredible ass place a cork filter cigarette in her mouth and light up. At first, I figured I would struggle to find a good position to watch it play out, but one of the guys in her group said he was gonna walk up to the nearby beer vendor and the girl followed. What??!?! There was no possible way this girl was 21, I thought to myself! I was right on that and would get confirmation later on, and partial confirmation now as she stood up there at the beer vendor waiting on this older guy to buy one, and presumably, chat up the vendor as he did. And now I was able to hover in the background and relaxedly enjoy the show…..

There was a fan running inside the beer booth as the teen smoker stood there, her long blond hair whipping with the breeze and distracting me for a moment until I realized the cigarette was parked right there in her mouth where it dangled for a good 20 seconds. By now the guy in her company had finished his cigarette, but this smelly teen was standing right up there with a fan spreading around her cigarette smoke every which way for people inside and outside to choke on. She removed the cigarette and held it to her side after that extended no-purpose dangle but for some reason continued to linger there. Maybe she knew the beer vendor and was chatting with him in the presence of this older guy. I have no idea, but it allowed me to watch her smoke about two-thirds of the cigarette before she got moving, leaving the general area.

I followed but was taken aback when she started really boogeying eastward past the block of bars, separating herself from the crowd and allowing me a little less risk as I followed since she was walking alone. It was a special treat to see her move so fast in those ridiculously tight shorts, with every movement of her ass putting at risk the structural integrity of that fragile denim. It was a challenge to keep up with her though as she maneuvered through the large crowd, continuing to drag from the cigarette she held to her side. I figured that cigarette had to have been down to the filter when she finally dropped it to the pavement, pressing forward without crushing it out. Indeed, when I got there, I couldn’t make out the brand because it had been smoked to the edge of the cork filter. There was a free stage across the street from the grandstand playing live music, and my blond teen smoker boogied right on up into the seating area and stopped when she got to a little old lady sitting in a wheelchair, talking to the old lady with her fresh cigarette breath? WTF? I’d get more context on this later…and believe me, there will be a later….

I made a quick call to my parents away from the grandstand to touch upon my travel plans for the next day but would return to the grandstand area within 10 minutes or so. A familiar face with a familiar posterior was suddenly walking in front of me with a middle-aged woman who was clearly her mother. I had assumed the most heavenly sight in the world to behold was her ass in those painted-on jean shorts but I was wrong as there was at least one thing more heavenly to behold….her ass in those painted-on jean shorts with a pack of Marlboro Reds poking out! This perfectly wholesome-looking Midwestern blond teen was now cutting into the area overlooking the stage outside the north end of the grandstand to see what was left of the Cole Swindell concert. Considering the concert was soon to get out, presumably with stacks of sightings on the immediate horizon, I was really taking a risk as I followed mom and daughter to see if I could get more, but this risk felt like the right one with the potential for a tremendous reward….

I stood to the left of the mother and daughter admiring the daughter’s outrageous ass and taking a few photos standing there, with the lighting being just sufficient to where the pics turned out decent without considerable blurring. She had pushed the pack of cigarettes down so they were no longer peek-a-booing out of her pocket, but standing there listening to Cole Swindell’s encore it continued to feel like I was in the right place for something magical to happen…..and then it did! After about two or three minutes, I noticed the mother was lighting up a cigarette. I had about two seconds to let the momentum build in my chest before the daughter started reaching into her shorts pocket to dig out a cigarette of her own.  People started walking into the area and killed my chance for a light-up photo but I certainly saw the light-up and had all I could do to contain my excitement watching this teen girl smoking with her mom as they both sung along to the music….

The concert was officially ending and mother and daughter were progressing back onto the street, shamelessly smoking their cigarettes for any and all to see with the huge crowd about to pour out of the grandstand en masse. There was a “General Store” booth near the grandstand selling a number of items, including cigarettes, and the two of them strutted right up to it. I managed to get a couple of pics of the daughter dragging, even though they turned out too blurry to fully appreciate. They waited briefly in line before it was their turn, with mother and daughter walking on up, both continuing to smoke their cigarettes and having zero inhibitions about it. It was surreal watching the daughter pull the cigarette up to her mouth and exhale slightly to her side, making just the slightest attempt to spare a vendor from her secondhand smoke…mind you, this being the second vendor she’s asphyxiated with cigarette smoke in just the last 20 minutes! I was really hoping they’d buy more cigarettes since this vendor was selling them, but all I could see that was purchased was a bottle of water for the daughter, reaffirming my suspicion she was a teenager well under drinking age.

As they walked away and weaved through the crowd en route to the seating for the free stage where they emerged from about 10 minutes earlier, it struck me that this was likely going to be my best sighting of the 2018 fair season. The daughter walked up to the back edge of the standing crowd and took a final drag from her cigarette before dropping it to the pavement, and just like last time, she didn’t bother to crush it out, leaving it to smolder where it laid. She smoked the last one to the filter so I didn’t know she was smoking Marlboro Reds until I saw the pack in her back pocket, but looking at the cherry burn there below my feet I knew which brand it was this time. The two stinky ladies sat back down at the table where they sat before amidst a huddle of other presumed family members, including that old lady in the wheelchair who was still there. Content that this sighting had played out, I now had to head off and check out that departing grandstand crowd….

And while I ticked off several more quality sightings in just a few minutes as I ventured off, I was so on the clouds thinking about that mother-teen daughter sighting that not much else was breaking through mentally. For the entire 10 minutes or so that I was away, my heart was still at that free stage seating area where I knew a sweetheart of a teen smoking blond was sitting there with her family. It was time to go back…just in case. And so I did, settling into where the family sat and being startled to see the mother and a couple others in the party already smoking more cigarettes. I looked the daughter over hoping she was smoking another too, but at least for now she wasn’t, still nursing that bottle of water she bought at the General Store. I figured if I waited long enough there was a very good chance she’d light up again, but things got complicated as her phone was lighting up and she soon stood up to talk to the old lady in the wheelchair again, who appeared to be her grandmother, presumably bidding her adieu for the evening as she was meeting up with friends. She got up and was walking in an odd circle as if looking for the friends but ended up returning to the seating area as though they didn’t show up. I continued to hover at the seating area for a few more minutes waiting for her to light up again, but I ultimately screwed up. I figured I’d make a quick pass down that block of bars but be sure to get back  in two or three minutes, so if blondie had lit another cigarette, I’d still be able to see her smoke most of it. Indeed, I was only gone for a couple of minutes, but when I returned the blond had flown the coop. I realized I screwed up royally and walked all over in the immediate area seeing if I could find her….but I didn’t. I was furious with myself for taking this pointless risk and betting against a sure thing. And I was running out of time because it was almost 11:00 now and I wanted to get out of there around 11:30….

I was stringing together some decent sightings but nothing overly memorable in light of what I had just seen so I figured I’d make one more loop through the midway and call it a night, as I wanted to get some fast food before they closed at midnight and get some sleep before a long day of driving the following day. I did just that and was mentally checked out for the night right around 11:30, heading past the block of bars one final time and hoping to check off a couple of quick, final sightings on my way to the exit. But a certain fairgoer wasn’t gonna let me leave just yet. I made it about halfway up the block of bars when I spotted the sweetheart blond in those impossible-to-miss painted-on jean shorts with a mixed-gender group of four friends who all looked 17 or 18. As she walked past me, I knew my night would have one additional act. I grimaced with regret as I checked out her ass and saw the pack of Marlboro Reds was now stuffed in her right back pocket rather than the left where it had been, suggesting I probably missed at least one cigarette in the half hour or so since I lost track of her.

I quickly picked up on the fact that she and one of her girlfriends got separated from the other girl and the two guys, and they briefly had a look of confusion on their faces until blondie looked back and finally identified her departed friends several yards behind. The purest and most innocent giggle emerged from blondie as her group reconnected, the kind of giggle that made her seem even younger than I suspected she was. The group of five pressed forward into the midway from there and I followed, hopeful but not confident, believing that I missed my chance during that period of separation. But my fears were assuaged only a few yards into the midway when that pack of Marlboro Reds was extracted from her shorts pocket. I was overcome with excitement as I watched her take out a cigarette and her lighter from the pack, but I couldn’t have possibly imagined how great her third chapter would be…

The carnival lights were briefly overshadowed by the flicker of blondie’s lighter as she brought yet another Marlboro Red to life. She crammed that pack back into her left ass pocket, and every time she put those cigarettes in and out of her shorts pocket I held my breath in fear that the slightest provocation would stretch the shorts beyond their limit, ripping them to shreds and getting her arrested for indecent exposure! As a plume of smoke flowed from her mouth after the exhale, a guardian angel emerged from the sidelines. A carnival worker saw her with the cigarette and shouted, “Are you underage?!?!?” as she walked past. She turned around with that classic look of teenage girl exasperation every bit as age-appropriate as her giggle two minutes earlier. “No!” she shouted back, her cigarette animated in her right hand, “I’m 18!” she continued as the carnival worker apologized and then said “We’re supposed to ask”, apparently indicating the carnival workers are de facto teen smoking cops at the fair. That was depressing generally, but wonderful for the added context of this incredible sighting….

With the confrontation settled, blondie pressed forward through the midway, casually dragging from her cigarette with a steady litany of timely and quality drags, the cherry glowing and her cheeks hollowing every time she pulled in smoke. As for her exhales, suffice it to say she wasn’t any gentler to her nonsmoking friends than she was to those adult men at the beer vendor booth or the General Store booth who choked on her secondhand smoke earlier. In fact, her next exhale drifted right into the face of a petite brunette friend, who proceeded to use her phone to wave the mess of smoke from her face that blondie just exhaled, a look of annoyance on her face that she failed to pass on to the smoker responsible for her discomfort. As for the guy who was walking closest to blondie, he got his even worse. She was slightly in front of him when she took another quality drag, exhaling the snootful of smoke that proceeded to flow directly into his face and absolutely plaster him. Unlike the girl before him, he didn’t respond at all. If he has a brain in his head, he loved every nanosecond of it….

The group was now at the back of the midway and looping around to the other side, with still more than half of blondie’s cigarette left. I had been nervous that she was knew I was following at various points in the night, but she and her friends now seemed oddly oblivious as I was following fairly closely and don’t think they had a clue I was taking it all in. Being so close, I couldn’t help but get some final admiring glances in at that ass so snugly contained in those shorts. They were so short that as she walked, there were several occasions where I could see “above the fold”, the bottom centimeter or so of her asscheek before it transitioned to upper thigh. You see a lot of girls tugging at their shorts from time to time, but this girl was doing it constantly. It was clearly an endless struggle for her to dislodge the repeated wedgies that her shorts were giving her just by walking or even by standing still. The sacrifice she was making to look sexy as hell was paying off in spades for me, but there was no sacrifice at all on her part in terms of the sex appeal that her smoking provided because it was clearly all pleasure for her. She was in the final throes of her cigarette as I followed her group into a more crowded part of the midway, but she was still as carefree as ever in terms of where she took a drag and where she released the exhale. She took a final drag and flippantly tossed the butt to the ground again…of course failing to crush it out. This girl laughs in the face of crushing out her polluted cigarette butts, and as I walked past the still-glowing cherry on what little was left of that cork filter Marlboro Red, my heart was as full as her lungs were….

I picked up my pace and took one last look at her ass and then one last look at her face before wandering off entirely, realizing I had seen the real-life version of the idealized sighting I’d been hoping for every time this fair season that I saw an innocent-looking teenage girl in such outrageously tight and short shorts. Here was an 18-year-old girl who over the past couple of hours had comprehensively showed me that she can and does smoke a cigarette wherever and whenever she damn well pleases, in front of family, friends, and complete strangers. We’re nearly a generation removed from a time when that kind of smoking behavior would have been considered normal, especially for a girl of such a wholesome-looking pedigree. And I couldn’t help but wonder how young she started and how long she’s been openly smoking in front of family and friends. Just try to top this sighting for the remainder of the 2018 fair season, I thought to myself, setting the bar extraordinarily high for the next week’s Minnesota State Fair. Needless to say, topping this sighting wasn’t in the cards for 2018…or perhaps any year to come!

AOF #3. Mid-Teen Smoker Cutie Tries To Ask Out 20-Something Guy With Cigarette In Hand

Not five minutes after I arrived at the Brown County Fairgrounds in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on that accidental visit in August 2013, I was heading up to the grandstand area as country singer Brantley Gilbert was putting on a concert and I wanted to see what kind of crowd was near the grandstand, but before I even made it there, I spotted a huddle of mid-teen girls that included a total cutiepie of a long-haired light brunette in a pink tanktop and dark jeans with an all-white cigarette between her fingers.  After a combined 19 hours at the Iowa State Fair in the previous seven days, I had not once seen a girl this young with a cigarette.  And not only was she young, she was cute as a button.  And this girl was as beginner as they came as evidenced by the way she held her cigarette and her very shallow and infrequent drags.  A style queen she was not, but what a face to attach to a cigarette in the year 2013, particularly since she was the cutest girl in the group yet the only one smoking. And the sighting was about to get a honey of a storyline over the course of the 5-7 minutes that it played out….

A couple of wholesome nonsmoking South Dakota boys gathered amidst this group of four girls, including the smoker, not too long after I spotted them.  The smoker girl was conversing with one of the guys and it was hard to tell whether this was a serious “request and rejection” or if the girl was just teasing, but I heard her say “Give me a reason why!” to which the guy responded lightheartedly “Me 20, you 16!”  Holy shit!  This adorable teen smoker was lusting for this older apparently nonsmoking guy and asking him out with cigarette in hand and fresh tobacco breath.  Nothing audible was said after that but the girl didn’t appear particularly devastated.  Wish I could have smacked some sense into that 20-year-old guy.  If you get a chance to hit a smoker girl like this, it’s worth going to prison!!!  Anyway, the smoker girl and one of her friends drifted to the midway.  I got to enjoy a couple more of her shallow drags before she dropped the butt to the ground and pressed on.  The cigarette butt was a Marlboro Light Menthol, one of my favorite brands aesthetically with that green and white color scheme.  If this was the only sighting I got that evening, it had have been worth it, but it definitely wasn’t, even though it was the best one.

AOF #4. Kimberly Perry Doppelganger Smokes The Day And Night Away With Multiple Packs In Her Purse

I was nearly five hours into my Saturday afternoon at the 2018 Missouri State Fair without having seen anything too earth-shattering. But finally, a little after 5:00, I’d get my first rock-star find of the day at a remote grassy area behind a food stand and some “old-time picture” stand where group photos are adorned with Old West-style framings for those willing to pay the price. Apparently two sets of mid-to-late 20s couples had done just that because they were lurking behind the booth, and I’d later discover they were waiting to get their photo. I saw that both guys were smoking which gave me hope for the sexpot blond seated on the grass against this electric outlet box fixing her shoe, decked out in a black tanktop and very nice-fitting medium-blue jean shorts advertising a long set of legs. Unfortunately she wasn’t smoking, but when she stood up, I stuck around just in case because I got a vibe from her, a vibe that grew stronger when I got a better look at her face which, even partially covered by sunglasses, I could tell had some of the typical weathering you see in a late 20s heavy smoker. It was a pretty face too, and while I couldn’t put a finger on it at the time, I thought later that she looked like Kimberly Perry, the lead singer of the country-pop crossover group The Band Perry.

Anyway, luck was upon me as she opened up a bag she had been carrying with her and I knew I hit the jackpot when I saw at least three packs of cigarettes, all Marlboros but some bearing the colors of Marlboro Red Special Blends and one bearing the colors of Marlboro Lights Special Blends. Either she brought cigarettes for her whole group of four or this girl was one helluva heavy smoker!!!! She made it official in spectacular fashion as she got a cigarette out for herself and the unattractive female friend, firing it up and then dangling it for an absurdly long period, perhaps 30 seconds…

For some context, the Missouri State Fair has booths everywhere selling $1 bottles of water and I was already on my third of the afternoon at that point. I mention this because photo-taking was a huge struggle as I had to do it with one hand while trying not to avoid dropping the water bottle with the other. I missed the dangle, but I did get a few passable photos, including one of her in mid-drag. They continued to linger in that grassy area for another minute or so before they got the photo they bought, at which point they started moving into the well-populated streets of the fairgrounds. The men had now finished their cigarettes but my sexy blond had just gotten started on hers, treating hundreds of fellow fairgoers to a visual feast of her sexy body and an olfactory feast of her secondhand smoke. Dangling drags were a common feature, resting that cigarette between her lips, puckering up and ingesting the carcinogens, and then removing the cigarette before exhaling said carcinogens. The group weaved through some buildings en route to the south side of the grounds and ended up standing in line for lemonade. My blond smoker babe held back a bit near a tree, taking her last couple of drags before dropping the butt and formally getting in line. I was able to check out her discarded butt and pick out the cork filter, ensuring it was indeed a Marlboro Red Special Blend and not a light. I had a higher degree of confidence that I’d see this girl smoking on the grounds again that day than some of my previous above-average finds…and I would definitely be proven right on that prediction!

Less than 20 minutes since my Kimberly Perry lookalike had smoked her previous cigarette, there stood her group with the addition of another mediocre gal, all smoking another round of cigarettes. They were right in the middle of the street amidst the block of bars and grills and it was very crowded so it wasn’t the easiest job in the world to watch undetected but I managed to see a few more of her drags, although this batch more conventional without the dangling drags. They started moving eastbound towards the end of the sighting and I snapped a holding pic of her that isn’t too bad, probably the closest-up photo I’d get of her, although not the most flattering as her head is looking at the ground for some reason….or else to the cigarette in her right hand. Not long after that she’d drop it to the pavement and crush it out like the last one….another Marlboro Red Special Blend butt left to decorate the state fairgrounds. And don’t worry….I’ll still be seeing quite a bit more of her!

The crowd was getting bigger heading up to 7:00 as the grandstand was starting to let people inside the gate for the opening act to the Cole Swindell concert, and suddenly my sightings numbers were rapidly ticking as the crowd outside the grandstand was proving to be decidedly different than the overwhelmingly nonsmoking demographic from the Thomas Rhett concert attending the Iowa State Fair only three nights earlier. But the main event would be going on inside the gate from some of the first arrivals to the concert, the group that included my Kimberly Perry-ish late 20s blond. The Missouri State Fair has this grandstand arrangement where smokers are allowed to smoke under the grandstand inside the fence, meaning I can hover outside the fence and pick off sightings like fish in a barrel, and it was no surprise that this group was getting an early nicotine fix, and I got there just in time for the bag to come off blondie’s shoulders and see her select from one of the multiple packs of Marlboro Red Special Blends inside of it. I thought I had seen the best dangle off of a light-up I was gonna see for the day on her first cigarette an hour and a half earlier, but little did I know that was just a warm-up act for the main event…..

She lit up her third cigarette I’d seen from her on Saturday and then let it hang from those sexy lips. And it just kept hanging there…as she played with her hair…as she knelt down to either put something into her bag or take something else out…and as she stood back up. The dangle had to have run at least 45 seconds, at one point about halfway through producing a burst of airborne smoke as she was dragging in mid-dangle. Now I had found a great spot to watch this performance, playing out inside the fence as I watched between two vendor booths, but it was not a good spot for taking photos as it wasn’t close enough and too obstructed by the way the booths were set up….so again I didn’t get any of that magical dangle on camera. I was still walking on the clouds though and watched most of her smoking performance, hoping for more dangling but having to “settle” for her more traditional drags and exhales that would follow. She would eventually finish the cigarette and drop it to the pavement where it smoldered just below the fence. The group lingered there for a couple more minutes, and I changed positions to get a final frontal pic of her. The bars on the fence obstructed her face a little but it’s not bad, showing off her beauty and her sexy, shapely body in those jean shorts. In moments, they turned around to walk into the concert and I checked out her third discarded Marlboro Red butt of the last couple of hours, fully expecting I’d see her again and that she’d be the sighting of the day. I was correct on the former…but not on the latter. Stay tuned for more on both!!

Once grandstand opening act RaeLynn ended her set at around 8:15, I made sure I was near the grandstand gate for the intermission smoke break crowd, and there was one group in particular I knew I’d see, with one girl in particular. Sure enough, I got to the north side of the grandstand and peered inside, expecting to see the Kimberly Perry-ish dangling queen back at her spot, but she and her boyfriend were actually further ahead in line for the bathroom. Now perhaps smoking is technically permitted in the line for the bathroom under this grandstand, but pretty much everybody I’ve ever seen down there chose to take their smoke break to the gate to spare innocent bystanders from the secondhand smoke. Not this girl! She was smoking while standing in line a good 20 feet away from the fence, and I’m sure there were plenty of people in the line not too pleased to be breathing in her secondhand smoke while innocently attempting a bathroom break. Unfortunately, as the line moved, the girl would end up behind a giant cement pillar out of my sight range, so I took the opportunity to walk away and check out the other side of the grandstand for their intermission crowd.

After that brief detour, I walked to the north side of the grandstand a final time and the Kimberly Perry blond who had been smoking in the line for the bathroom less than 10 minutes earlier was now back smoking AGAIN in the location I predicted she would in the first place. I was able to stay for most of her cigarette but she and the boyfriend looked my way as if I was looking a little familiar by that point in the evening, so I had to cut it short before completion, unfortunately without seeing any more world-class dangling, and I wouldn’t see her again for the rest of the night. But it was a five-cigarette sighting with her over the course of a little over three hours, and judging by the multiple packs she brought with in her bag, I’m betting she smoked far more than that during the time she was at the fair on Saturday. I was pretty certain she’d be the big story of the day at the Missouri State Fair but shockingly she ended up only being the second-best of the day. My favorite was still to come!

AOF #5. Blond Teen Outsmokes Friends And Later Hangs Out With Mom’s Friends

It was dumb luck that led me to the Brown County Fair in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in August 2013.  I was taking a three-day road trip through the area and stopped in the small isolated city to stay overnight when I tuned in the local radio station and discovered the county fair was going on and that musical entertainment that Friday evening was Nashville recording artist Brantley Gilbert.  Only two days earlier I had attended the Iowa State Fair but couldn’t let the opportunity pass to head to the fair, which thankfully had free parking and attendance.  Within about 40 minutes after my arrival, I had already scored a trio of fantastic sightings, and this was the third in succession.

I came upon a group of 17-18ish girls in the midway seated on a bench smoking cigarettes.  There was a blond and a brunette sitting there smoking, and two friends standing in front of them, one of them a hot dark brunette sharing the cigarette with the seated light brunette.  They were both sexy and attractive smokers, but the star of this show was the blond in tight blue jeans sitting down, who had a sexy combination of petite cutie and weathered badass smoker girl.  And whenever I saw her tending to the cigarette, it was clear just how hard-core she was compared to the other two girls smoking.  Her drags were merciless extended pulls of toxic smoke into her black lungs, pulls so hard you could watch the paper burn away over the course of her lengthy drags.  It was humorous that blondie managed to suck down her entire cigarette more rapidly than the two brunettes combined were able to finish theirs.  I spotted where she dropped the butt and hung back for awhile until they got up from the bench to identify her butt, which was a cork filter but smoked too close to the filter to be identifiable.

I didn’t see any of those three girls smoking again, but about two hours later at a picnic table was a middle-aged woman smoking a cigarette….and across the table from her was the blond and light brunette, the two from the bench smoking earlier.  They were both eating slices of pizza so I hung as close to the area as possible thinking there was a very good chance the teen smokers would light up after eating.  While that didn’t happen, my return to the area around the tables brought a cute moment where another middle-aged woman came to talk to the three of them, and proceeded to ask some inaudible questions directed at the blond.  She was clearly family or a friend to the mother and after their exchange ended, she hugged the blond in an affectionate way, and the only thing that crossed my mind during the hug was whether this woman had any idea that the blond she was doting on routinely rapes cigarettes with pulverizing drags.  Mom had to know because even if the daughter wasn’t smoking in front of her at that moment, it’s unthinkable the daughter could have developed a smoking habit that serious under mom’s nose.  I hung by them for a good 15 minutes hoping against hope for a mother-daughter sighting but it didn’t materialize, but still felt I got my money’s worth after seeing that daughter smoking on the midway earlier.

AOF #6. Sexy Late Teen Blond And Mom Puff Away In Front Of Nonsmoking Father And Boyfriend

My otherwise horrific day at the Indiana State Fair in 2017 produced three very strong sightings overall including one evening sighting that was genuinely captivating. I was on the west side of the grandstand area when I spotted a middle-aged couple where the mother was smoking. But lingering behind the parents were two 18ish girls, one of them mixed race and the apparent friend of the “other girl”, a knockout blond in a white bare-midriff tanktop and high-riding jean shorts that sculpted her perfect, tanned body. And best of all, she was the first stunning beauty I’d seen all day smoking a cigarette. Blondie was obviously the daughter of the smoking middle-aged lady, and for a snapshot in time I was glad I made the long drive to the Indiana State Fair and got the chance to witness this. They stood around a table, indicating somebody had just finished eating some fair food, and I was able to lurk with a clear vantage point to watch two generations of females smoke….and do so in the presence of a nonsmoking husband/father as well as a nonsmoking teen friend. The sighting remained sedentary for about a minute before the group started walking eastward….

I followed and readied my camera for a long shot pic. It was well after dark by now so it wasn’t gonna turn out great, but I did about as well as could be expected capturing a side shot of this sexpot with cigarette in hand. Unfortunately, her beautiful face was blurred out by a street light. I put my camera away and just followed to enjoy the show, confused why this smoking daughter was walking about 10 yards in front of the rest of her group. It made my job of following her more dangerous and it seemed like strange behavior generally. She ended up walking parallel to this black guy about her age and at first it just seemed like they were walking separately next to each other, which was fantastic since she was persistently dragging from her cigarette and exposing him to her secondhand smoke. But after a longer stretch of walking, it began to become clear they were together, either as a couple or as friends. I continued to follow and watch every delicious drag this platinum blond angel took, expelling her filth into the forbidden air of the Indiana State Fairgrounds without a care about potential consequences. My final priority of the sighting was IDing her butt when she finished it, but the sighting blew up on that front at the last second. The girl and the black guy turned around at the tail end of her cigarette and at first I thought they were wise to me following them since they were eyeballing me…so I just walked on past as discreetly as I could, but then realizing they were looking back to the family behind them as if wondering what the hold-up was. The blond handed the cigarette to the black guy for a final drag and the cigarette disappeared out of their hands amidst the crowd. I walked over but was unable to identify it. Nonetheless, it was a small setback to the most exciting sighting of the day.

I’d catch this family again only about 20 minutes later when walking through the midway. The blond and the mixed-race female friend were standing in line for a carnival ride. I made a couple of passes near them to get a close look at that stunning face and killer body that matched, wondering how many other girls of her pedigree in Indiana were smokers….and my conclusion was that it probably wasn’t many. The dynamic I had seen early that night of mothers pushing strollers smoking was applicable in this sighting, as the daughter’s smoking was likely enabled in some way by her mother’s smoking….and most girls as hot as this one probably don’t have mothers that smoke. I’m sure glad I ran into one who did though.

AOF #7. Long-Legged Corn Dog Stand Brunette Uses Employer’s Property As Ashtray And Foot Stool On Multiple Smoke Breaks

The numbers sure were coming slowly in the early afternoon hours on my maiden voyage to the Indiana State Fair in 2017 and I had yet to figure out why, but all would be forgiven around 1:30 when the girl who came to define an otherwise dreadful day made her first appearance with a cigarette. Stepping out of this corn dog booth with cork-filter cigarette in hand was this 19-20ish brunette working the booth and briefly leaving the young male coworker to cover the stand himself. The brunette wasn’t conventionally gorgeous, at least in her work uniform, but she had a twinkle in her eye and an innocence about her that fascinated me. She wore her long brown hair up in a bun on top of her head to keep the sweat off her face as she worked, with a red T-shirt and medium-blue jean shorts on the bottom. Her long legs were fully exposed from the upper thigh on down. Plus I was getting a kick out of the fact that she was about to smoke her cigarette directly outside the booth where she worked, which I figured would be frowned upon by just about about everybody, especially her employer.

I got lucky as she was chatting with the guy as she slow-walked her way out, allowing me to get my camera ready and snap the shot where she was lighting up. She was standing in the shadow of the fair booth so the lighting isn’t ideal, but it was as good of a shot as I was gonna get. From there, she put up a folding chair to sit on and propped her right leg up onto the stand, maximizing her relaxation on company time and using their own equipment to lean upon as she smoked. She took long, heavenly drags sitting on that chair with considerable hold times and exhales entirely from her mouth that fired downward at consistent 45-degree angles. The back of the line for the milk stand was overlapping with where I stood so I blended in nicely and I was certain that I was snapping a number of close-range pics when she was dragging in this relaxed break-time position, but I just sensed something was going wrong with the photos again (I was right…for whatever reason, none of them after the light-up pics took..and I was sick about it). Nonetheless, I got an amazing farrow-to-finish sighting of a young cutie committed to her smoking to the point of consuming it directly in front of would-be customers. She dropped the butt in the trash can next to the stand so I was denied the butt ID, but still walked away with a needed boost of adrenaline at that point in the day.

This corn dog stand was front and center in the grounds so I walked past it multiple times that day. The inconvenient layout of the grounds limited my ability to cover it as much as I’d like to, but I found myself walking past it as often as possible as the afternoon went on, figuring there was a very good chance I’d see more of her. The guy in the booth got to have his own smoke breaks at various junctures of the day, but it was the girl I was holding out for, particularly with the hope of a second chance at action photos in that adorable position she was in before. About an hour and a half later in the day, I’d get my chance, walking upon her in mid-cigarette seated at the same place she was before, although unfortunately she wasn’t propping her right leg up on the side of the stand this time. I’d only catch the last few drags of this cigarette, but was able to get that second chance I’d hoped for with the photos. The shadow from the booth again kept the lighting from being perfect, but I certainly captured her essence in this round of snapshots. That was the end for this girl’s daytime body of work, but like a nicotine vampire she would be back in the evening.

In fact, my timing with her during those evening hours was even more perfect as I came upon her smoking three separate times after dark, all within a couple hours of each other. By now, she had traded in the folding chair she sat on to smoke her daytime cigarettes for some cardboard box. I took one additional blurry nighttime pic that didn’t turn out, but mostly just stood to the side and watched, the dark sky and backlighting making her cloudy 45-degree downward angle exhales all the more visible. At one point, some nonsmoking fairgoer asked her directions to something while she was in mid-cigarette, possibly being mindful that the girl was breaking the fairgrounds smoking rule at her location. Her third cigarette of the day ended up getting stubbed out against the corn dog stand itself, and I got off on the idea of her defiling her employer’s property by using it as an ashtray….on top of the questionable frequency and location of her smoke breaks.

At around 11:00 I began a very long walk back to my shuttle bus on sore feet, and the last bit of tobacco consumption I’d see for the night was my corn dog stand girl as she smoked her fifth cigarette of the night as I walked past for the last time. She wasn’t the prettiest girl of the day, but she was the most prolific and a beacon of smoking security in a day that offered little of that. When factoring in that I likely missed quite a few daytime smoke breaks from her, it was clear she was a pretty heavy smoker, and if she works that corn dog booth in that kind of heat for more than two weeks, it must be horribly oppressive and qualify those smoke breaks as the highlight of her very long workdays.

AOF #8. Teen Blond With Bare Midriff And Suggestive Belt Smokes A Couple Cigarettes

There were many dead points in the day and early evening at the 2016 Missouri State Fair, but I finally hit my stride during the intermission of the Lady Antebellum concert in the grandstand where I stood outside the fenced-in grandstand for a few minutes at around 8 p.m. checking out some hotties taking this built-in break period to have a cigarette, but the ultimate reward I’d get would actually come when I turned my head to my right to scope out the scene outside the grandstand…..

As I turned to my right, I spotted a fresh-faced teenage blond in a white bare-midriffed top and daisy dukes I had seen earlier on the grounds and gotten a smoker vibe from.  She and a boyfriend illuminated their isolated walking spot when they both lit cigarettes.  Suddenly I was vacating the grandstand fence in a hurry to get a look at this show, and I finally got the timing and logistics right for a quality sighting.  I had figured she was 18 but she may have been younger given how sneaky she was being about smoking, lurking in the sparse southeast side of the grounds and walking between buildings with the boyfriend as she smoked.  It was now dark, especially in the poorly lit area these two were walking, so photo-taking was out of the question, but I followed at a comfortable distance and was impressed with her pacing and how the darkness illuminated the cherry every time she dragged.  She and the boyfriend migrated to a better lit area as they got towards the end of their cigarettes and I was able to see her face.  She wasn’t a classic beauty but she was a girl-next-door type with an innocent face and it was so wonderful to know she smokes, and appeared to be a pretty adept smoker at that.  She dropped the butt to the pavement and crushed it out, finishing her cigarette quite a bit sooner than the boyfriend finished his.  The butt was a Marlboro Red Special Blend.  This was the burst of adrenaline I needed for the evening hours where things did get better.

Most of the last hour of that evening was a blur as I was so obsessed with seeing this one girl smoking who I ultimately wouldn’t, and most of the rest of the new sightings I was scoring were all pretty modest in scope compared to the primary target, but I did get a nice consolation prize from another teen smoker girl.  The 17-18ish dark blond cutie who I had seen smoking with her boyfriend an hour or so earlier was now out on the better-lit street full of bars amidst a huddle of teen friends and this time she wasn’t bashful about smoking publicly rather than hiding in the shadows like before.  The lack of lighting earlier limited my vantage point of her smoking style, but as I was able to get really close to her now, that was no longer a problem and her exhales were sublime, with dense blasts of smoke rocketing out of her mouth and nose after each drag.  This girl was the real deal, and I had noticed earlier that she had this belt on her daisy dukes with some writing on it but couldn’t read the message until now.  It said “Come Get Me, Bros” that couldn’t have possibly been more suggestive.  Couple that with the impressive smoking show and the contrast between this good-girl-gone-wild presentation and her girl-next-door look made for the day’s most striking storyline.  The second sighting of this one really made it something special and thus elevated her to my favorite girl of the day.

AOF #9. Redheaded Smoker Girl Rummages Through Vendor’s Clothing With Cigarette In Hand

It had been a slow afternoon at the 2018 Missouri State Fair but I had a feeling that in advance of the evening Cole Swindell concert in the grandstand, it might start to come alive and did it ever with a chain of about two dozen sightings in an hour of fairgoers who were mostly headed to the grandstand show. But one girl in particular in this wizbang litany of sightings would throw me off balance with an eyebrow-raising gesture that lifted what would otherwise have been merely an extra-base hit into a sighting worthy of the year-end greatest hits package….

The sighting kicked off conventionally enough, with an early-to-mid 20s trio of two girls and a guy walking northward, away from the grandstand. The only smoker of the three was one of the girls, a wholesome cutie with her long strawberry red hair in a ponytail resting onto a pale green blouse with tight dark jeans on the bottom tucked into a pair of cowgirl boots. She couldn’t have possibly looked more “Missouri” and it was a hoot walking to her side watching her smoke her cigarette and interact with the nonsmoking guy and girl on both sides of her. I got the sense the guy was her boyfriend but couldn’t tell for sure. It was late enough in the evening that I wasn’t confident about the multiple pics I took not coming out blurry or dark, but I got some solid ones including a holding and dragging pic. Her style was solid but not showing off and everything about the sighting was intriguing without shaking me to my core….until the final quarter of her cigarette when she made her big move which was particularly timely for me for reasons I’ll explain below…..

Her group walked past this Harley Davidson vendor booth selling a variety of clothing with Harley branding. My redheaded smoker stopped right in front of the middle-aged couple peddling the products. With her cigarette hand, the redhead picked a jacket off the rack by the hanger, the butt end of her cigarette nearly touching the fabric of the clothes. Last winter, a video from 1982 circulated the web and the smoking fetish community, an old Charles Kuralt documentary on the rise of the shopping mall, with a suburban Kansas City mall profiled. In it, a 15-year-old girl named Pam who was a stereotypical 80s mall rat (and an adorable one at that) was constantly smoking cigarettes inside the mall, which was common at the time, but I was taken aback when she walked into a clothing store and started taking clothes off the rack with cigarette in hand, which seemed so far removed from the current cultural experience. Fast forward 36 years and I had my own redheaded early 20s version of “Pam” doing the same thing at the Missouri State Fair with seemingly nobody taking exception to it as she was chatting up the middle-aged vendors while wielding her cigarette only inches from their merchandise….

And while still holding the jacket, she proceeded to take a drag from her cigarette, exhaling it thoughtlessly and saturating the jacket with a haze of her secondhand smoke. Still conversing with the strangely oblivious vendors (maybe they were quietly shooting daggers at her for stinking up the clothes they were trying to sell), she took one final drag where the exhale wasn’t quite as scattershot before dropping the butt to the ground and crushing it out, treating the Harley vendors’ work area like her personal ashtray. The three of them talked to the vendors for another minute or so after that before pressing on, not buying anything but possibly rendering the merchandise they crossed paths with unsellable because of the stench of the redhead’s smoke seeping into the fabric. It was unbearably hot to witness and I had to wait for the vendors to be distracted by another would-be customer before I could walk past her butt and ID it as an L & M menthol. I never know what to expect from a sighting when I get my first look at it, but never in a thousand years would I have expected this!

AOF #10. Teen Cutie At Missouri Fair Shares Older Gal’s Cigarette And Later Has One Of Her Own

My maiden voyage to the Missouri State Fair in 2015 was a mixed bag.  One incredible sighting dominated the day but when that sighting was dormant, there was little else going on, especially before dark.  But right after sunset early in the 8:00 hour I scored my only other electric moment from the day.  It was the only “hunch” I followed that day that ended up bearing fruit for me.  The sighting started on the block full of bars when I saw this 19ish redhead who was too chubby to even count as a sighting smoking a cigarette in the company of this sweetheart of a 17-18ish wholesome and slender long-haired blond in a black T-shirt and dark jeans.  The duo drifted behind a barrier to a hidden area where I figured just maybe the young girl would smoke too.  Instead, the two girls met this late 30s brunette gal who was smoking and seemed to know them….possibly a relative.  The setting was so conspicuous and the blond teen was so adorable that I hovered in a very awkward spot to keep tabs on them.  A couple of minutes passed and there was no smoking to be seen by the young blond.  I drifted away figuring I wasn’t gonna get anything out of this but couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder towards the same group a minute or so later, just in case.  And my instinct finally served me well for the first time that day as I finally saw the impossibly adorable teen blond placing the half-smoked cigarette into her mouth….

I caught her at exactly the right time because seconds later the group was back on the block heading eastward, only now with the young girl holding the cigarette in her hand.  Where did this half-smoked cigarette come from?  The only place it could have come from was the late 30s brunette (possible mother) who apparently let the young blond finish her cigarette!  I followed closeby and was able to witness some very impressive smoking, with long drags and hugely cloudy exhales, one of which whacked an innocent fairgoer in the face as she walked.  This girl was no rookie and whatever inhibitions I originally suspected she may have had about smoking in public were dispelled.  I got to see four drags before she did what apparently all Missouri smoker girls do….she dropped the smoldering butt to the pavement without crushing it out and kept on walking, allowing me to easily ID the butt as a cork filter L & M.  I continued to follow and even though I knew my camera phone wouldn’t work well after sunset, I snapped a rear and side photo of this nicotine angel that, while blurry, turned out better than I expected.  The trio proceeded to the fairgrounds exit and went past the gate, leading me to believe I caught them in their final minutes at the fair that day….

And that certainly was my suspicion until I was back on the beer gardens block around 10:30 that night and suddenly spotted a group of 18-19 year olds hovering outside the “dance club” playing hip-hop music.  The chubby friend was there, along with my high school-aged blond beauty queen, and two other decently attractive girls both under 21.  There was only one problem.  It appears likely that I just missed the hot girl smoking.  The chubby friend was finishing her cigarette while the two other friends were just lighting up, both of them impressive enough to count as sightings but neither holding a candle to my blond.  As for the blond, she proudly held a pack of Marlboro Nxts in her hand…..but as I said I must have just missed her smoking.  The upside was that it was now official that this girl was a regular smoker who carried around her own cigarettes and that her generic L & M from earlier was simply one that she bummed.  The other upside was that I was standing so close to her in a very well-lit location that I was able to score a couple of photos of her that, while not entirely perfect, turned out better than any other photos I’ve ever taken outdoors at 10:30 p.m.  What a sweetheart she was…..but unfortunately she and the friends wandered into this dance club never to be seen again that night and I wouldn’t get the chance to see her smoke another cigarette.  If I had, this cutie would be much higher on my list.

AOF #11. Indiana Smoker Cutie Leads Nonsmoking Boyfriend To Wrong Spot For A Smoke Break

At one level, my first and last visit to the Indiana State Fair in mid-August 2017 was an unmitigated disaster, yielding only as many sightings during an all-day state fair event as a good evening at my local county fair would with a fraction of the attendance. On the other hand, I hit well above my weight with the three dozen or so sightings I did score and pulled off a few worthy of my hall of fame. One sighting that managed to represent the best and the worst of the environment came in the mid-afternoon and even though I didn’t realize it at the time, represented a tea leaf where I should have figured out what the problem was regarding the sightings slim pickings….

I saw from afar this adorable 22ish light brunette in a red tanktop and denim cutoffs standing at the policemen’s booth next to her boyfriend clutching a pack of Camel Light Menthols. Hers was the most wholesome face of the day and she was just walking away from the police booth as I approached, following her as she seemed to be searching for someplace specific, continuing to clutch that white and green pack in her hand. She and the boyfriend hid in the corner behind this tree…where she and only she lit up. It’s so spectacular to see a girl of this pedigree being the only smoking member of a relationship, with her boyfriend standing by while she filled her body with toxic carcinogens. As remote of a spot as they were standing, I was still able to sit down against this tree and snap some awesome pics…easily my best pics of the day. Looking at the photos again now as I write this, it’s still incredible that this girl is a smoker as she has this classically wholesome Midwestern summer girl profile. She sucked the cigarette down rather quickly with no real stylistic bells and whistles other than the general surprise that a girl this wholesome-looking was smoking in front of a nonsmoking boyfriend, snuffing the cigarette out and tossing it in a dumpster a few yards away.

Unfortunately, the context this sighting took on a little later in the day would take some of its power away for me, as I recognized hours later that she approached the police officers with cigarette pack in hand requesting directions to a designated smoking area…and I didn’t even realize there were designated smoking areas on the grounds until hours later. She took directions wrong as the place where she lit up wasn’t one…and the designated smoking areas that did exist were almost all hidden in obscure locations. Still, the fact that she followed through on the wholesome vibe I picked up on by asking police officers directions to the smoking area and then accidentally going to the wrong spot was kind of sweet, particularly when taking account the additional optics of the sightings that gave me no choice but to put this girl on the 2017 top sightings list.

AOF #12. Redheaded Smoker In Leather Jacket And Tight Jeans Gives Me Throwback 80s Style Sighting

If you’re lucky, there are a few times a day when you spot a very special girl with a cigarette that perks you up instantly.  My first girl of the day who fit that description at my encore visit to the Missouri State Fair in 2016 was this late 20s redhead with a mane of lustrous red hair going all the way down her back and a sexy face with the weathering of a long-time heavy smoker.  Making the presentation even more jaw-dropping was the stylish black leather jacket she wore along with a pair of skin-tight jeans and boots.  She looked like she came out of the late 80s in many ways and was seated on a bench with a group of family and/or friends, only one other of whom was smoking.   The bench was isolated enough that I couldn’t get close enough to take good pics so I had to attempt a few pics from afar, none close enough to get anything worthwhile.  She was a nice smoker though, with some solid drags and very cloudy exhales that her mostly nonsmoking group was forced to choke on sitting in such close proximity to her.  I got to see about seven drags before she unfortunately stood up and dropped the cigarette into one of those God forsaken “smoker’s outposts” and denied me the butt ID.

The good news was she and her group were heading my direction to go into the DNR building, the entrance of which I was sitting next to.  This was my chance to get a photo….but another crisis screwed me over here as about 15 minutes earlier I had gotten a prompt on my phone saying “keyboard stopped working”.  I was still able to work the camera on the phone but that prompt repeatedly popped up and kept me from getting a photo before she got inside.  The best I could do was walk in behind and get a couple of blurry pics in the dark building.  One of the blurry pics does capture her form in that incredible leather jacket, tight jeans, and boots combination though.  After dark, I’d see this girl again and while she wasn’t smoking, I managed to get a close look at her face and body again, and she was an absolute standout sexpot.  Even with the challenging logistics and fairly limited sighting, 2016’s fair sightings haul was mediocre enough that she still easily made the list.  She was certainly worthy of a top-tier position had I seen more.

Minnesota State Fair Overview

The Minnesota State Fair is my favorite sightings venue of the year.  It has been delivering for me consistently since I was a boy and has been the source of a long list of my best sightings of all-time.  Going back to 1993, I have scored 3,979 sightings at the Minnesota State Fair.  The list has become so long that I’ve written my own shorthand version of a top-350 sightings of all-time from the MNSF.  And even that list only represents less than 10% of total sightings over the last 20 years.  From there I’ve narrowed it down to a top-100 list…

Below I will make a list documenting the total number of sightings I scored each year at the Minnesota State Fair since I started keeping count. …

Chart 1

1993–2 sightings
1994–0
1995–1
1996–6
1997–1
1998–4
1999–6
2000–6
2001–106
2002–105
2003–106
2004–109
2005–101
2006–165
2007–184
2008–192
2009, Trip 1–206
2009, Trip 2—95
2010, Trip 1—117
2010, Trip 2—212

2011, Trip 1–194

2011, Trip 2–203

2012, Trip 1–186

2012, Trip 2–199

2013, Trip 1–180

2013, Trip 2–196

2014, Trip 1–178

2014, Trip 2–182

2015, Trip 1–183

2015, Trip 2–164

2016, Trip 1–170

2016, Trip 2–220

2017, Trip 1–156

2017, Trip 2–183

2018, Trip 1–177

2018, Trip 2–171

Now I’ll do a brief year-to-year synopsis to accompany the charts….

1993–The year I finally broke through with my first memorable sighting after eight years of attending the Minnesota State Fair with a bourgeoning but still undefined smoking fetish.  I had just turned 16 a couple days before my first consequential MNSF sighting transpired, and I couldn’t have asked for a better “sweet 16” gift.  Grade:  B+

1994–Sightings of smokers were not on my mind and I spent much of my day at free country music concerts in the bandshell.  This was the only year of the last 18 where I didn’t score a single memorable sighting. Grade: Incomplete

1995– Pretty much a carbon copy of the year before except for one significant development…..a vintage sighting of a hot blonde near the sandcastles.  I had just turned 18 and on my continued slow road to having a defined smoking fetish.  This sighting was one more stepping stone on that road.  Grade:  B

1996–Two days before I left for college, I had no idea that I was about to have an even more consequential day in the trajectory of my life, but on August 28, 1996, exactly that happened.  I was attending a bandshell concert with my mom and stumbled into the epic foursome that would become immortalized as “The State Fair Girls”.  There are few days in the history of my fetish as momentous as this one.  Grade:  A

1997– All those years in the 90s I wasted with trucking through commercial exhibit buildings with my parents, attending bandshell concerts during the day, and leaving in the mid-to-late afternoon after only 7-8 hours at the fair….all during the era where teen smoking rates were at their highest since the late 70s.  What a waste.  This was the final year in which I didn’t have smoker sightings in mind as I journeyed through the fairgrounds, but even without paying attention I managed to score one passing sighting of a babe smoking in a cluster of hotties.  Grade:  D+

1998–I had worked at the post office this summer and although I hadn’t fully come to terms with my smoking fetish by the time the MNSF came around at summer’s end, it was the first state fair where I was consciously looking for pretty girls with cigarettes.  So I had that part down…but I still hadn’t changed my ways, following in the folks’ shadows through the buildings and sitting at outdoor concerts during the day.  I did pull off a handful of mediocre sightings, but chalk this up to another wasted year at the exact time when teen girl smoking rates hit their peak.  Grade:  C-

1999–On May 11, 1999, I discovered the smoking fetish websites online and spent the rest of the summer intensely searching for sightings in a way I never had before.  This would be my first Minnesota State Fair with a confirmed smoking fetish.  Yet once again, for a final year, I was in my parents’ shadow for most of the day.  By mid-afternoon without any good sightings, I was feeling very disappointed…and straitjacketed.  There had to be a ton of smoking going on the grounds but I just wasn’t in a position to see it, I kept telling myself.  But I finally came up with the solution I should have came up with years earlier.  At age 22, I finally told the folks I was gonna wander the grounds for the final hour by myself.  In doing so, I saw a number of quality sightings, including a girl who remains in my top-75
MNSF sightings of all-time today. Needless to say, a monster was born…and the Minnesota State Fair would never be the same again.   Grade:  B-

2000–This was a year of transition for me in quite a few ways.  It was a gloomy and cool day and I had to leave the fair early to go to a job interview.  Not necessarily a recipe for a great day at the fair, but I nonetheless scored two of my top-15 MNSF sightings of all-time, including my #2 sighting ever, the best young girl sighting of my life.  It was transitional because I still spent about 40% of my day with the parents either in the buildings or at outdoor bandshell concerts.  No complaints this year as being with my parents facilitated both of my epic sightings of the day in their own way.  Still, it was the end of an era for both the daytime bandshell concerts and me spending any time at all with my parents.  The new millennium was gonna have an entirely new set of rules for the Minnesota State Fair.  Grade: A-

2001–The transition put into place two years prior reached its completion in 2001, the first MNSF that would resemble my current state fair safaris.  I separated from the folks early in the morning and navigated the grounds on my own terms.  I also counted sightings that I accrued on the grounds for the first time and was actually surprised when the number exceeded 100.  I had to wait until the dinner hour, but I managed to score two epic sightings that year.  Also new to 2001 was the shift of the bandshell concerts from the daytime to the evening. Starting at 8:30 p.m. Ronnie Milsap took the stage.  This was important because prior to 2001, my family had left the fairgrounds before dark every year.  Being able to stick around after dark would bring about a new MNSF experience and a boatload of new sightings.  And after all this, I would get home around midnight, log onto the computer, and find my one-month-old love interest Dana waiting for me online to hear all about my day at the fair and lamenting how she wished could have tagged along.  Needless to say, another great day.  Grade: A-

2002–I backslid a little this year from the previous year in a couple of ways.  My mom had to work a few hours early in the morning so we took off late and didn’t even get to the fairgrounds until after 11, a good two hours later than normal.  And there were no evening concerts and thus no grounds to stick around after dark, meaning we left at 7 p.m. once again.  Nonetheless, I navigated the grounds on my own again the entire day and dedicated the eight hours I did have that day exclusively to sightings.  How did they hold up?  Mixed bag.  I only had a couple Hall of Fame sightings that year and nothing in epic terrain.  Numberswise, however, I still pulled off more than 100 sightings in those eight hours, which is a pretty good timeframe for that number of sightings, even though plenty of them were third-tier sightings of moderately attractive single mothers and the like.  Not a bad day at the fair, but disappointing by MNSF standards.  Grade:  B-

2003–It was another year of an evening bandshell concert which of course facilitated a longer day at the fair that lasted until well after 10 p.m. Again, I flew solo all day and dedicated the entire day to sightings. The numbers were strikingly consistent with the previous two years with just over 100 sightings, but this year I scored three sightings in the near-epic category that remain in my top-40 today and bested anything scored at the 2002 MNSF.  I also scored my first blockbuster MNSF sighting during the evening hours, which set the stage for much more aggressive evening fetishing in the years to come.  My best years were still ahead of me, but this was indeed a good one.  Grade:  B+

2004–A year very similar to the previous year in that I flew solo all day and stuck around late for another evening concert.  Numberswise, I broke a previous record with 109 total sightings, but that was just a few more than I had scored the three previous years. There was only one big difference between 2004 and previous years.  The quality was astounding.  Right away in the morning, I was scoring epic and blockbuster sightings, the best of which was my Swisher Sweet girl still in my top-10 today.  The quality of the sightings held up over the course of the day and I managed five sightings that remain in my top-75 MNSF sightings. It was my most consistently satisfying sightings day at the MNSF thus far.  Grade:  A

2005–This was my 20th consecutive year at the Minnesota State Fair.   I was unemployed and had nothing to do.  And I had just had an epic local county fair with three of my best sightings of all-time.  All this meant I was rarin’ to go and was more excited about the emerging Minnesota State Fair than I had ever been before, so much so that I made the first incarnation of my top-25 MNSF sightings list of all time in the days before the fair.  So did it live up to the hype that year?  Not really.  It was my weakest Minnesota State Fair of the decade.  I barely crossed the 100-sighting threshold and there were no truly blockbuster sightings, as evidenced by how few entries 2005 has in my Hall of Fame.  It was still a more productive day than any of my 1990s safaris where I hung out with my parents all day and left by 5 p.m., but definitely the weakest from the 2000s, especially considering I was out on my own all day and stayed until 10:30 p.m.  Grade:  C+

2006–This was the year where things blew wide open.  With one change to my formula, my number of total daily sightings nearly doubled.  In recent years, there were evening bandshell concerts which sidelined me from about 8 p.m. to 10:30.  For whatever reason, the quality of the concerts diminished badly starting this year, which meant my sightings numbers went off the hook.  But even within the traditional timeframe of years prior, my past records were shattered and my old record of 109 sightings for the day was exceeded before 7 p.m.  But the sightings just kept coming into the evening hours and I ultimately scored 165 sightings, which at the time seemed insurmountable.  And beyond the quantity there was incredible quality to go along with it, with two sightings that remain in my top-15 of all-time and four additional entries in my Hall of Fame.  I thought this stroke of good fortune was a fluke at the time, but in reality it was more a combination of staying longer hours and becoming more efficient in my navigation.  The result was the first of a stretch of three sightings days at the Minnesota State Fair that were my all-time best.  Grade:  A+

2007–I was a little distracted heading into this MNSF safari on my 30th birthday.  Any red-blooded male would be the day after a smoky date with my biggest high school crush Krissy.  Nonetheless, I found my groove after a slow start and settled into a pattern almost identical to the previous year’s with blistering numbers of sightings and some top-shelf quality to boot.  By my 7 p.m. meeting time with the folks, I had scored THREE epic sightings (all still among my top-20 MNSF sightings of all-time) and was already at 124 sightings on the day.  Even though the evening hours didn’t deliver the way they had the previous year, I still bested the seemingly impassable 165 sightings I scored in 2006 by pulling in 184 in 2007.  I might give a narrow edge to 2006 as the better of the two years because it was so unprecedented up to that point to be scoring the volume of quality sightings I was that day in 2006 while 2007 was an extension of that.  Nonetheless, I raked in eight of my Hall of Fame MNSF sightings in 2007.  Not a bad way to celebrate my 30th birthday. Grade: A+

2008–Without a shadow of doubt, my best day ever of fetishing not only at the Minnesota State Fair, but of all-time.  I have described in the past the trajectory of this day as a snowball that built momentum as it rolled downhill until it became a full-on avalanche.  The first hour of the day was infuriatingly slow but things got rolling pretty well with a spattering of great sightings in the late morning and early afternoon.  Things got better and better into the late afternoon and early evening, both in terms of quality and quantity.  And by evening things were off the hook, so off the hook that the only reason I didn’t cross the 200-sighting threshold is because I was seeing so many sightings of incredible quality in those last two hours that I stuck around to inspect them in detail.  Even at 10 p.m., after 13 hours of walking, I was operating on pure adrenaline and didn’t even really notice my intense foot pain as I usually do.  I scored 192 total sightings including two epics that rank among my top-10 of all-time, along with a total of nine entries in my Hall of Fame.  It’s hard to imagine a scenario where I could have a better day of fetishing than this, but the Minnesota State Fair has delivered for me so strongly in the past that I’m not ruling anything out.  Grade:  A+

2009, Trip 1–I got a surprise second trip to the Minnesota State Fair in 2009.  It was a good thing too because my first all-day trip was disappointing.  It was a cool day to begin with, but by mid-afternoon the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and things became downright unpleasant for a late August day.  Beyond that, there were lengthy stretches in the morning and afternoon where sightings were simply nonexistent and where my mood was at times melancholy and bored in a way that’s very rare for MNSF trips.  As the temps cooled in the late afternoon and the evening, sightings numbers did pick up.  I was able to top the previous year’s record for sightings numbers and crossed the double-century threshold for the first time with 206 sightings, but had to sit for a good portion of the last two hours because of foot pain that came with arriving on the grounds an hour earlier than usual and stopping less frequently to admire epic sightings, which were fewer than years previous.  I left with four sightings in my Hall of Fame and expected my 2009 MNSF experience to be a bit of dud, until I scored a very unexpected half-day encore visit the following week.  Grade:  B-

2009, Trip 2–It was like being Superman, flying around the Earth to reverse time and recreate a day that had passed when my parents asked if I’d be interested in going to the Minnesota State Fair again on Labor Day weekend last year, if only for a half-day (my mom had to work the next morning so staying till after 10 wasn’t an option).  It was a warm and sunny day and right off the bat I could tell that it was gonna be a much better day than the week before.  Sightings came at a regular clip throughout the day and at no point was I bored or distracted the way I was the previous week.  Several blockbusters occurred in this time frame, and the day ended with my only MNSF epic sighting of 2009.  All in all, I scored 95 sightings during the half day, including an impressive six that made their way to my Hall of Fame.  Grade:  A

2010, Trip 1—Despite being sick with a lingering head cold and getting by on less than two hours sleep the night before, I was ready to go at my first excursion to the Minnesota State Fair on a sticky 90-degree day that would be cut short at 7 p.m. since I would be attending my first evening bandshell concert in five years.  The day was generally mediocre with a spattering of worthwhile sightings in the day’s early stages, but the final hour or so of fetishing made the trip worthwhile as I scored a bounty of blockbusters, and one monster epic that ended things on a high point leading into the concert.  I was especially pleased knowing that only five days later I would be returning, this time for a full day of sightings bliss.  Grade:  B+

2010, Trip 2—My full day at the Minnesota State Fair started slowly in a number of ways.  I was still a little bit sick.  I was smarting from a would-be love interest telling me the night before she just wanted to be friends.  The morning temperatures had dipped into the 40s and female fairgoers were decked out in jackets and jeans rather than tanktops and shorts.  But the day would warm up to a comfortable mid-60s high that brought about a crowd of historic proportion to the fair that day, an all-time one-day record attendance that was almost too much in the afternoon hours.  Sightings were hard to spot in these crowds and the ones I was seeing were generally marginal.  The day was considerably below average.  But then something crazy happened when nightfall came and the final three hours of the day would churn out one blockbuster/epic sighting after another, producing one of the best sightings nights of my life.  The daytime crowds that proved too stifling would eventually produce the evening crowds that were just right in churning out the right demographics of smokers, and I was in the right place at the right time to see many of them.  I ended up salvaging an otherwise modest day of fetishing about as impressively as possible.  Grade: A-

2011, Trip 1–It isn’t often that a day at the Minnesota State Fair starts producing an endless litany of outstanding sightings before 2 p.m., but that’s exactly what I was experienced that day, particularly during the noon hour when I enjoyed one after another rock star sighting and was convinced I was on the cusp of one of my best days ever at the Minnesota State Fair.  Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in at mid-afternoon and while it stayed dry, the clouds were a perfect metaphor for the wet blanket that was thrown on the day, as sightings became a lot more irregular and a lot less memorable in the second half of the afternoon.  This dragged on into the evening, but in the final hour or so, I did go on a mini-roll and racked up a handful of quality sightings.  Any time you get even a period of a day that delivers the way the early hours this day is a gift, but the slowdown in the second half of the day did keep the day from ranking up there with my best ever days of fetishing.  Grade:  B+

2011, Trip 2–The inverse of my first visit to the Minnesota State Fair in 2011, I sat in the passenger seat in horror on the drive up to the fairgrounds with rain coming down in buckets and no assurances that it was going to clear up for the rest of the day.  After a late morning clearing when we got there, the rain came again around noon and I was starting to get very nervous.  But by mid-afternoon the clouds broke and the sightings came fast and furious.  While there were no genuine epics for the day, there was a steady stream of above-average material that lasted from about 3 p.m. through the evening hours till the time I left around 10:30, and you can’t ask for much more than that during a day of fetishing.  Grade: A-

2012, Trip 1–My first trip to the Minnesota State Fair in 2012 happened to be on my 35th birthday, but it was hard to get too thrilled as the forecast was predicting rain by early afternoon and I was actually anticipating it would be an abbreviated day, and that I would return the next day for a complete day of fetishing.  The rain did come around the noon hour, but it wasn’t as bad as expected and was actually a catalyst for a couple great sightings while taking shelter from the downpour.  The downside of the rest of the day is that while the worst of the rain ended after about an hour, I was still planning on leaving early because the fairgrounds were a sloppy mess but by mid-afternoon decided to stick around.  The uncertainty was a buzzkill on the day, and it didn’t help that the evening hours I wanted to stick around for ended up being below-average.  With all that said, I had an above-average sightings haul with an ebb and flow pattern but which peaked in the late afternoon.  It wasn’t one of my best sightings days by any stretch, but all things considered I stitched together a pretty good day of memorable encounters.  Grade:  B+

2012, Trip 2–My second day at the state fair this year was about perfectly on par with the first day in terms of substance, with a healthy haul of impressive sightings but no single sighting that burned up my world.  But I’ll rate the second day a tick higher for a couple of reasons.  First, the weather was perfect, and when you arrive at the fairgrounds on a sunny day when you know you won’t run into any weather issues, your morale is always higher and that’s very important.  Secondly, I had a better evening haul on my second trip, and good evening sightings help wrap up a great day at the fair with a ribbon.  Always nice to exit the grounds for the evening with a beaming smile on your face.  Grade:  B+

2013, Trip 1–I was understandably nervous going into the 2013 Minnesota State Fair because of the unsettling news that smoking would be restricted to “designated smoking areas”, threatening to blow up the best venue for smoker girl sightings the world has ever known.  But I was relieved to see that there would be a generous 18 designated smoking areas on the grounds rather than the three or four I suspected, and most of them were located in areas that had been frequented by smokers on smoke breaks in the past.  Couple that with a fair amount of noncompliant smokers puffing away wherever they chose and August 24, 2013, wasn’t noticeably different from sightings days past at the MNSF.  The biggest annoyance ended up being the heat and humidity.  It was a steady day for sightings with decent quality at every stage of the day, and the designated smoking areas occasionally working as nifty holding pens that helped me rather than hurt me in scoring sightings.  The evening hours really sparkled, however, with more civil disobedience of the smoking areas and a “sensory overload” spurt where I was scoring quality sightings so steadily I could barely process it.  For as dark as I let my thoughts drift in the months preceding on what this day was likely to be, it was a huge sigh of relief that for all my worries it ended up being an above-average sightings day.  Grade:  A-

2013, Day 2–My second trip to the 2013 MNSF on Labor Day weekend was far less hot and humid than the week before and seemed poised to be a fantastic day.  It got off to a much slower start than the week before, and even though the daytime hours produced my best MNSF sighting in three years, things didn’t get consistently good until after dark.  And ironically, things got really good only after the weather went to hell, with storm clouds moving in and a steady rain coming down around 8:30 and lasting a good hour.  The rain was the source of a good half dozen outstanding sightings, in large part because it delayed the concert by pop sensation Macklemore who was performing in the grandstand that night and brought my favorite demographic of fairgoers in impressive numbers.  So basically the day featured beautiful weather and a ho-hum array of sightings, while the evening featured miserable rain that emptied out half the crowd at the fairgrounds, but some of the hottest smokers in the state were the ones who stuck around.  Gotta love the Minnesota State Fair!  Grade: A-

2014, Day 1–It’s regrettably getting increasingly rare to head up for a day at the Minnesota State Fair with an all-clear weather forecast.  It makes such a difference for morale to head up there knowing you’re gonna have a nice day with no chance of rain, but no such luck on my first Saturday there this year with a decent chance of rain in the forecast, and even though it never materialized outside of a few sprinkles, it dampened my enthusiasm.  The relatively modest haul of sightings was also pretty dampening, with a particularly glum start to the day, and an overall Day 1 that was generally pretty average. There were enough extra base hits and blockbusters thrown in the mix to keep the day from becoming a bust though, and I salvaged a mediocre evening with the best sighting of the day.  I was pretty consistent numbers-wise with Day 1 from the previous year which I considered a success giving the shrinking rate of smoking in Minnesota.  Grade:  B

2014, Day 2–An improvement over Day 1 but still not a Hall of Fame day by any stretch.  Nice weather and gigantic crowds (an all-time one-day record) were both a blessing and a curse as I most likely lost some great sightings in the suffocating crowds.  On balance though, I had a steadier drumbeat of extra base hit sightings and a bit of a crescendo as the day proceeded, particularly in the evening where I really had some great finds, and one in particular who ran away with the 2014 Minnesota State Fair.  The biggest disappointment was in the overall sightings numbers, which on prior Labor Day weekends hovered just above or below the 200 threshold.  I fell far short of that with only 182 this year, a worrisome sign of potentially diminishing returns in the years ahead.  Grade:  B+

2015, Day 1–I got lucky with the weather on both days of the 2015 Minnesota State Fair but Day 1 was the more perfect of the two, and making it even more perfect was the string of sightings I scored between the mid-afternoon and the early evening, one of the best stretches of extra base hits I’ve scored in recent years.  The evening hours actually seemed like a disappointment at the time, but looking back, those evening hours weren’t bad at all either….they just didn’t live up to those outstanding afternoon hours that produced six Hall of Fame sightings.  Carrie Underwood was the grandstand act and seemed to draw the right demographic, resulting in 183 sightings over the course the day, slightly better than my first day at the MNSF in the previous two years.  Considering how rotten the smoking climate has gotten in Minnesota since the massive tax hike, that’s not a bad result.  Grade:  A

2015, Day 2–The temperature digits went up and the sightings went down on the second day of this year’s MNSF.  It was still a pretty good day with a steady drumbeat of extra base hits, and the hot 90-degree temperatures produced a lot of bare midriffs that complemented some of the day’s best sightings.  Still, with the very impressive crowd for the day, it was disappointing to find myself behind my sightings baseline at every stage of the day.  The evening in particular offered only modest rewards and I ended up with only 164 sightings, my weakest performance for a full day at the Minnesota State Fair ever since I started staying at the MNSF the entire day and evening, indicating that the point of diminishing returns for sightings even at my best venue may have arrived.  Even so, there was enough great sightings over the course of 15 hours to walk away mostly satisfied with the day.  Grade:  B

2016, Day 1–For the first time in years, I didn’t go to the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday this year because of a cool, rainy forecast, choosing to go on Sunday instead.  The move paid off as I had a much nicer day and managed the only genuinely impressive day of fairgrounds fetishing I would get in 2016, scoring 170 sightings with a particularly nice penchant for second acts, where the best girls of the day resurfaced later in the day with another cigarette and additional context to sex up the sighting.  Most of my great finds occurred in the late afternoon and early evening hours, while the hours before and after were hit or miss, but I still did well for myself on a year where I generally struggled at the fairgrounds.  Grade: A-

2016, Day 2–A very strange day with two conflicting storylines.  The very heavily populated fairgrounds on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend produced my biggest one-day sightings haul of all-time at the Minnesota State Fair, with 220 sightings.  I was well ahead of my baseline all day and the sightings kept coming at a pace that would have seemed blistering even 10 years earlier when far more attractive young females were smoking.  Unfortunately, of those 220 sightings, not very many were particularly great.  Never have I encountered so much smoking with so few unforgettable moments.  I had one electric moment in the final couple of hours but by and large the rewards were modest and it was a wet blanket on a day that should have had my adrenaline at all-time highs based on the numbers alone.  Grade:  B-

2017, Day 1–In what is becoming an undesirable pattern, my planned Saturday visit for Day 1 of the MNSF was washed out.  Imagine it being your 40th birthday and having to spend the day at your folks’ place looking out the window at heavy rain rather at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds scoring sightings of smoker girls.  Not a pretty picture.  The good news was the delayed visit worked to my favor as Sunday was an excellent day of sightings, with numerous mother-daughter pairings and other excellent sightings with multiple acts that kept firing as the day proceeded.  There was a cloudburst that killed some of my momentum at a key hour of the late afternoon but even with that the day was a major victory and took some of the edge off of turning 40. Another pattern developing is that the late afternoon and early evening at the Minnesota State Fair is shaping up to be far and away the primetime hours while the later evening hours aren’t quite the gold mines they used to be.  Grade:  A

2017, Day 2–My Labor Day weekend at the MNSF featured wonderful weather and another shockingly great day of sightings for the times we live in.  The drumbeat of extra-base hit sightings perhaps wasn’t quite as steady as the week before but it wasn’t far off and the evening hours were better, producing a few of the biggest gems of my 2017 fair season.  If I ever again have two days at the Minnesota State Fair as good as either of the two I had in 2017, I’ll consider myself a lucky man given the national trendline.  Grade:  A-

2018, Day 1–I had a nice weather day for my first day at the 2018 Minnesota State Fair and an okay but not great fetish day.  It was just a tick below average though and considering the fast-diminishing landscape out there for smoker sightings, I had a fairly comprehensive and impressive litany of sightings and will likely look back at a day like this as the good old day in the not-too-distant future.  Grade:  B-

2018, Day 2–Another day that was just okay, despite an all-time record one-day crowd on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.  This day peaked in the early afternoon hours when I scored a handful of impressive sightings, but the sighting frequency definitely diminished after dark, the very hours that used to be the most prolific for sightings.  Trends are all pointing in the wrong direction but aggressive fetishing at a fairgrounds setting as rewarding as the Minnesota State Fair is still usually capable of being well worth the while.  Grade:  B-

The consistency and history of the Minnesota State Fair as a sightings venue clearly rates it as my favorite place to fetish.   I feel like I dodged a major bullet when the designated smoking areas didn’t ruin that for me.  The fair board seems to be trying to remain as welcoming to smokers as possible, unlike most venues, but their hand was forced when a little girl got burned in the eye by a cigarette.  I have no illusions that the designated smoking areas will hold the antismoking crybabies at bay forever, but I think I at least bought myself an additional few years of a Minnesota State Fair that is as close to a wide-open fetishing paradise as exists in America today.

MNSF #1. The 1996 State Fair Girls Who Escalated My Fetish

My smoking fetish was officially born on the sunny mid-afternoon hours on August 28, 1996, only three days after my 19th birthday, and three days before I left for my freshman year of college. And given the intensity my fetish has taken on in the years since, it was one of the single most defining moments of my life as it made me finally come to terms with just how sexy I find it to be when girls smoke. It’s the “granddaddy of all sightings” that I dramatized in my 90% reality-based  “State Fair Girls” story on Smoke Signals a few years later, and I honestly don’t think it’s possible for this sighting to ever be dethroned from its berth at the top given its long-term impact…..

There I sat, with my mom, at a concert for has-been country singer  Billy Jo Royale who I didn’t even really want to see, but agreed to since my mom liked him and since we had a couple of hours to kill back in the time when I had grown pretty bored with the Minnesota State Fair.  After sitting in the bleachers awaiting the free concert to begin, up came these adorable beauties, all around 18, dressed in as sexy and classy of summer attire as any guy could ever dream of (tanktops, very upscale looking jean shorts with flashy and glamorous belts), and sat in the bench directly in front of us. The thought briefly crossed my mind, as I admired their perfect figures and beautiful faces of this assortment of three blonds and one brunette, that these girls would make some amazingly hot smokers, even though that thought generally didn’t consume my every encounter with attractive females as it does today.

In no more than 30 seconds, my wish would become a reality as these beauties, one by one, opened their purses and retrieved their respective packs of Marlboro Lights, sparking up their all-whites within less than a minute of each other and proceeding to smoke cigarette after cigarette after cigarette for the entire two hours we sat there, completely oblivious to the dismay of others sitting next to them, several of whom left in disgust as the girls snickered.  Even my mom gave me a “What in the world could those girls be thinking smoking like that?” look, but thankfully we didn’t move. I just shrugged while trying to hide the fact that my jeans were elevating before my eyes.

It’s hard to single out which girl was my favorite, and I found myself declaring a new favorite every time I studied a different girl.  One dark blond who sat on the right was attractive but not in the league of the other three, but immediately to her left was a bodacious platinum blond in a pink top, white shorts, and a glamorous belt.  To the left of her was a long-haired brunette in badass sunglasses, a blue top, and jean shorts who looked the most comfortable and natural smoking a cigarette.  And on the far left was another incredible blond in white shorts who was mind-blowingly hot.  Again, every time I laid eyes on one of these three girls, she became my new favorite.  They were all just that amazing.

The concert was as big of a blur to me as the air quality a few feet in front of me as these extraordinarily sexy 18-ish superbabes ingested unending volumes of tobacco into their perfectly proportioned young bodies. At one point, as explained in my “State Fair Girls” story, they even turned around and teased me with their smoking show, smiling at me while exhaling plumes of smoke very near me, which really drove me over the edge.  This was the first time I ever got an erection from watching chicks smoke, but it definitely wasn’t the last.  The girls just kept on smoking like lifetime professionals–as if they were getting paid to do so–and left a mountain of butts in their aftermath.  These images were burned into my mind for months (and in fact years) to come and I would never view the Minnesota State Fair the same way again.

In so many ways, this sighting set the stage for who I am today. Would I have the fetish as bad as I do today had it not been for this erotic experience? I can’t really say for sure. All I know is that from that day forward (and as I said I started college only three days after this sighting) I never missed the chance to watch a girl smoke again.

MNSF #2. The Best Early Teen Smoker Girl of All-Time Puffing Away With Grandpa

As stated previously, I couldn’t stay very long at the fair on the dreary Friday in 2000 due to a commitment that evening and really didn’t want to stay very long given the weather, but in the final half hour of a day that had already proven quite productive, I scored the most epic young smoker sighting of my life.

To give a little background, I had been sitting at an early afternoon concert by now country music superstar Keith Urban back when he had only two hits under his belt, looking around for smokers as always, and repeatedly saw plumes of smoke going airborne from the direction of this young blond girl, sitting with what appeared to be her grandparents.  I never saw the girl with a cigarette and didn’t expect to as she was way too young and way too Barbie-doll cute.  The smoke, I told myself, had to be coming from one of her  grandparents. But that smoke just kept coming from where she was seated, beckoning my attention repeatedly from the awkward spot where I was seated. I never did see anything, but got plenty of chances to admire the cuteness of this little blond sweetheart even from my considerable distance away.

About three hours later, I was navigating the fairgrounds near the bungee jumping stations and saw a freshly lit all-white protruding from VERY young female fingers.  Instantly, I recognized these hands as belonging to the same girl I saw at the Keith Urban concert, again in the presence of the older couple who I assumed to be her grandparents.  I studied her closely, stunned as I determined there was no way she was older than 13, and may possibly have been even younger. I positioned myself a few yards away from them and watched in absolute awe as this most adorable girl casually smoked in the presence of her grandparents. Decked out in a cute red T-shirt and utilitarian white shorts, with long platinum blond hair flowing all the way down her back, the last thing one would have expected to see was a Marlboro Light approach her young lips, yet that was exactly what I was seeing.

As hot as mother-daughter smoker sightings are, I was witnessing a grandfather-granddaughter sighting (granny didn’t appear to smoke), and in the most public place in the state of Minnesota.  As she watched the bungee jumpers overhead, she jubilantly talked it over with her grandparents the way you would expect a 13-year-old girl would do, with the cigarette becoming animated in her hand amidst her excited responses at the brave bungee jumpers.  And she was no amateur.  Her inhales were deep and her exhales were tight plumes of straight-ahead smoke that sailed many inches in front of her face.  I could feel the blood rush to my crotch watching this, having to sit down to avoid the bulge in my jeans from showing. When she took her final drag, she crushed the cigarette out under her shoe, and for whatever reason it was at that moment it hit me how special what I had just seen really was.

Many of us with the smoking fetish can trace the origins of our fetish back to when we were little boys. The best way I can sell the magnitude of this sighting’s epicness is to call upon readers to recall your jubilation in those late elementary years when you discovered or heard rumors that one or two of your sixth-grade female classmates had started smoking….and then imagine the cutest blonde princess in your grade being the smoker, and smoking publicly in the company of her family!  It was like a perfect middle school fantasy come to life for a smoking fetisher and I experienced it, albeit 10 years later.

MNSF #3. Brunette Babe With An Insatiable Cigar Addiction

I had just taken my early evening rest at the 2008 Minnesota State Fair, my greatest day of MNSF fetishing of all time, and after about 20 minutes of resting my aching body, decided it was time to begin my nightcap….with some of the best timing in world history. Only a couple minutes later while walking through the grounds, I spotted a cluster of four early 20’s hotties on the edge of the sidewalk after about a block of walking. An attractive long-haired dark blond extracted a cigarette from her purse and fired up, leading me to walk their direction for some further observation. As soon as I was standing in close proximity, I noticed an equally attractive long-haired brunette muttering something indecipherable to the blonde as she looked at the freshly lit cigarette, and then started fishing into her own purse as if to get one of her own. I knew the next sighting was at my doorstep, but imagine my delight when the item removed from her purse was not a cigarette, but a small tipped cigar.

It wasn’t the size of your typical Black and Mild. It was much shorter, only the length of a cigarette, but considerably bigger around. The contrast was striking as the brunette fired up her cigar. She was very feminine with her flowing mane of dark brown hair running all the way down her back, wearing a modest pink T-shirt for a top and skin-tight painted-on light blue jeans to advertise her unbelievable ass.

There were four girls in the cluster, each above-average on the attractiveness scale but somewhat hard to discern age-wise. I would guess they were 22, with somewhat of a weathered party girl look on their faces that could indicate they may have been as old as 25, but definitely no older than that. At the time, it was just the two smokers, but all my attention was on the cigar girl as my subfetish for novelty cigar sightings is even more intense than my cigarette fetish.

Watching her smoke the cigar completely lived up to expectations, as she would tilt her head into the sky after taking a drag, giving me a perfect vantage point as the ball of thick smoke disappeared down into her throat, followed by cloudy and dirty exhalations only a few seconds later. There was no ideal location to watch this incredible hotness unfold, and I found myself awkwardly watching from the side, attempting to act like I was waiting to meet someone yet still be close enough to breathe in some secondhand cigar fumes. Things would not get easier as the girls had a strange habit of stopping at a certain destination,  staying a few minutes, then meandering a half block or so and then stalling out again, meaning my presence would not escape notice. Nonetheless, when the cluster first took off, I delightfully followed right behind cigar girl, and was lucky enough to get splashed in the face with a couple lungfuls of filthy cigar smoke that lingered in the air several seconds after she released them from her black lungs.  The girls, only two of whom were smoking, stopped dead in their tracks again closer to the grandstand area, making my job extra difficult. But the best part of the sighting was soon to come…..

The girls were standing right in front of an anti-meth booth, complete with a display of photos of meth users. The two smokers approached the booth and dragged from their tobacco cylinders of choice, seconds before a teenage girl working the booth approached them with some literature. I noticed that the girl’s eyes lowered as she spoke to the young ladies, clearly taking note of the cigarette in the blond’s hand and the smelly cigar in the brunette’s hand. It’s rare that I see something so hot at the fair that my boy parts get uncontainably excited, but as I watched that brunette exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke right in front of the anti-meth booth, my “excitement” could be contained no longer. Soon after, the bizarre stop-and-go routine continued until they stopped at a corner near the DNR building. By this point, I really had to linger at a distance to avoid being spotted. A couple of the girls seemed to look my direction now and then, but never made direct eye contact, so I’m not certain whether I was spotted or not. I had spent a good 15 minutes observing this crew before the brunette finally finished her cigar, tossing it onto the curb with nothing but the plastic tip remaining.  I had seen all I needed to see, but just in case you think this sighting is completed, I should warn you I wasn’t through with these girls yet. Or is it that they weren’t through with me?!?!?!.

About an hour later near the grandstand, now after dark, I found myself staring down the barrel of a repeat sighting that I had never even imagined would resurface. It was the cluster of party girls from an hour earlier….including an encore performance from cigar girl!!! Amazingly enough, she was in the middle of another cigar. Two of her three female friends were smoking cigarettes, including the cute redhead who wasn’t smoking before and the sexy blonde who was. It was a perfect opportunity to briefly follow them again and ingest some more stinky secondhand cigar smoke, but I didn’t want to risk being spotted given how much time I had already spent watching these girls.   Still, the location was better for spying this time as I sat on a bench near the grandstand about 20 yards away and watched the show. Again I was struck by the contrast between this brunette cutie’s pink shirt, tight blue jeans, and stinky plastic-tipped cigar, which she continued to inhale every puff from. I couldn’t imagine anything sexier, and was overjoyed as the cluster walked away and the brunette deposited her second plastic-tipped cigar butt on the fairgrounds pavement, and I was intrigued watching the large cherry splatter dramatically as it hit the street.

Another hour after that, it was almost 9:30 and I was continually amazed at what I was stumbling into, and nothing more amazing that what I would see next. Walking past the haunted mansion on the busiest street on the grounds, there they were AGAIN! The party girls including the pink-shirted brunette stogie girl. None appeared to be smoking this time so I kept walking around the perimeter of the nearby horticulture building. Ten minutes or so had passed before I made another pass by the haunted mansion to see if my favorite girls of the day were still there. And boy were they. I could see freshly lit cigarettes in the hands of the blond and redhead and seconds after making that observation, what did I see but my brunette sweetheart firing up her THIRD cigar in the last two hours. I made one final pass closely behind her and timed it perfectly to ingest one more exhalation of cigar smoke.

There were so many high points to that 2008 MNSF sightings day, but this was tops, and it was also my greatest cigar sighting of all-time. I’d give my first-born child to see something even remotely like it again.

MNSF #4. Teen Smoking Krista Clone Corrupts Unattractive Friend And Smokes While She Eats

My 2006 visit to the Minnesota State Fair reached an uncharted level of hotness compared to prior years, both in terms of quality and quantity. I had hit the “sightings century mark” at an astounding 6:30 p.m., at least three hours ahead of schedule from previous years, but the cute 20-something blonde that represented my 100th sighting near the food building commons area was a memory in the mere seconds it took to raise my head and find Sighting #101, a beautiful 16-ish chickie with a mane of long and curly light brown hair running all the way down her back, and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.

Immediately sensing something special about this girl, I began to follow her and a redheaded friend who was considerably less attractive. The brunette wore a lovely bare-midriff blouse that exposed her well-toned belly to the tens of thousands of lucky male fairgoers, as well as a tight pair of denim Capris that fashionably showed off her glowing teenage booty and lovely lower legs.

It took about 30 seconds for her to fish her lighter out of her purse, but when she did, she sparked up that cigarette. She took a couple of drags before handing the cigarette to her friend and then wasted no time firing up another cigarette of her own. I got particular guilty pleasure about the fact that this adorable teen beauty was the bad influence on her less attractive friend. From there, the girls decided they wanted something to eat, and stood in line at this stand that appeared to sell little cups of frozen custard or something of the like.

Luckily, the stand was two-sided, so I was able to go to the other side and see through the glass, finally getting a good look at her. She was more beautiful than I previously suspected. Not only because of her astounding mane of light brown hair, but also her flawlessly beautiful face, she reminded me of Krista, the daughter of a woman my mom works with who is now college age. Krista is a nonsmoker, and homecoming queen hot…and this nicotine girl at the Minnesota State Fair possessed facial features cut from identical cloth. It was like a fantasy come to life as I recalled all the times I thought about how hot Krista would look as a smoker.

It only got better as the girl stood up to place her order, unapologetically holding her cigarette above the counter and proudly displaying her youthful nicotine addiction to the world. After receiving their orders, the girls carried their desserts and their cigarettes to the sidewalk, where they quietly sat and consumed a toxic brew of transfat from the custard and deadly carcinogens from their cigarettes. And consume they did!  I sat on the sidewalk across the street and got to see a surprising amount considering the foot traffic between us. The pretty girl went back and forth from eating a spoonful of her frozen dessert to taking a drag from her cigarette, dragging furiously and frequently, sucking the tobacco out of that cigarette faster than I would have expected and producing a cesspool of air pollution surrounding her beautiful face.  She would soon crush the cigarette out in front of her on the sidewalk at the exact moment that her friend did.

No more than 60 seconds had passed before the pretty girl turned around and started fishing through her purse. Could this 15-16 year-old stunner possibly be so addicted to cigarettes that she needed an exciting encore less than a minute after polishing off her last? DING! DING! DING! Every part of my fatigued anatomy stopped for a second as the pack of Camels in her purse was extracted for the third time in less than 10 minutes, and the girl lit herself up again. It was very clear that her frozen custard had quickly become an afterthought, taking a backseat to her obviously insatiable nicotine dependency. She only got a few drags off of the second cigarette before the two of them got up to leave. I couldn’t help but following a little further, even though I’m pretty sure they spotted me by this point and soon realized that I needed to abort or risk being called out for stalking her. As I studied this beauty’s amazing face one last time before parting ways, I would’ve given anything to turn back the clock and be 16 again if only for that evening.