On the Proper Pleasure of a Rolled Cigarette

Choosing to smoke a rolled cigarette is not just a matter of accounting and suggesting that you can get more out of your money when you're no longer paying for--as many--fancy chemicals and someone else to roll your cigarette for you. A rolled cigarette provides a level or participation and ritual that adds a sense of craft and ownership to this flight of fancy. Now, those who know me may be about to decry me as a quasi charlatan because I have used a rolling machine to aid in hand rolling a cigarette. 

Speaking for myself, no more! I have in the past couple months not merely rekindled my ability in my own acuity at hand rolling, but I've tempered it to a level that I did not think that even I could know. Part of that comes from a realization that lead me to ask the following:

What is the proper pleasure of a cigarette?

Is it in its consummation or can this quality be lessened or heightened?

The difference between true hand rolling and machine hand rolling comes down to a matter of upping the paper to tobacco ratio per pack, the former with the former and the latter with the latter. With a machine, you can stuff enough tobacco into that crevice 'til it becomes something as rich and long lasting as an unfiltered cigarette from a major brand, like a Lucky or a Tan Natural American Spirit. 

On the other hand, a slighter, totally hand rolled cigarette lasts not nearly as long, which may be better if time constraints arise--and I despise nothing more than a cigarette snuffed out as opposed to being clipped¹, but it still is a cigarette that is being had. And, in this case, we get to a conversation on the proper pleasure of the cigarette that is a bit less tangible. It shouldn't be, but it seems so to me. 

Now, we've come to the place where one says that a cigarette is a cigarette is a cigarette, and the proper pleasure is merely the getting of the fix in any form. But, in this situation, I wouldn't suggest that the fix is in based on getting any does of nicotine, because that would still be something quantitative and fit in the ideology of the previously described mechanic where we have a higher upper bound for the amount of tobacco that we can get per cigarette, and, thus, modify the time spent "enjoying"² a cigarette. Rather, in this other place, I suspect that it is the ritual of having a cigarette that leads to its pleasure: 

I suspect I desire a cigarette; I am going to have a cigarette; I roll a cigarette/ I get my pack/ I get my cigarette case, and I get my lighter; (I go out for a cigarette; I'm outside)/(I find my ashtray in my room); I procure my lighter; I light up and drag and drag and drag 'til done; I throw out the refuse where it belongs; I've had a cigarette.

In that whole situation, we saw how small that one moment was that provided me with my problem about the quality of the drags. When all we are trying to do is have a cigarette, we seem to be only fulfilling either a psychological need or a social desire--because who doesn't suddenly discover that they too should have a cigarette with another person every so often?--based on a deeply internalized presumption about our desire, while at the same time ignoring to probe this experience which is so essential to so many. Furthermore, more in this situation, we are working with a person who likely would very well exchange rolled cigarettes for filtered packs if the price was right. Also, I've excluded from the discussion so far the rolling of a filter into a cigarette, something that I don't do since, like a light beer, you are losing something in the filtration process and there different ways to make compromises than simply weakening something. Therefore, we are giving into the pretense that we will be consuming--and that is the proper word--at a greater quantity rather than reducing the quantity consumed for the sake of what may be a superior pleasure

I, for one, do not wish to aspire to the meager having, consuming of a cigarette. I want to ask serious questions about the aspects of a cigarette's pleasure. I want to ask questions about which tobaccos might deserve to become a real Gunslinger's bomber and which tobaccos, either for potency, time constraints, or quality--in the ironic sense, serve best under pico rolling measures. I wish to understand what pleasures you about tobacco, and, along the way, I may find a better understanding of my own sense of the matter. 

And I want you to participate in this journey with me, as opposed to us just having a cigarette. So, come unto me--my pretties, let us discuss.

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1. Expect a piece in the future on the prevalence in media of characters lighting up only to quickly snuff out their cigarette.

2. I offer this derision not because I necessarily want to give ground to people against smoking, though their points are valid but we are making sacrifices for pleasure--just as we do with any drug, but because I want to take ground   from smokers. I have reason to believe that a number of smokers in this world may not actually give a shit about flavor and all similar metrics, are totally unwilling to try to smoke something beyond their brand, and they smoke not because it makes them happy but because they are trying to mollify some fear, and mollifying a fear is not necessarily the same thing as striving towards happiness. I call into order an elite, a vanguard of smokers in much the same way that any other realm that may have aesthetics can have such a group, even if they are full of shit!