Places to take a drag in the Florida heat Winter in Tampa Bay was made for smoking. You disengage yourself from a conversation-huddle at the party, slip through the slider out onto the patio, and light up, cupping your hands against the bracing breeze. The nicotine glides into your lungs on a galvanizing rush of chilled air, like vodka in a swallow of icy tonic. You get high like you did when you first started puffing around the corner from the school, lean back, and watch the clouds scud across a bone-china moon. Your editor materializes at your shoulder like Lucifer himself, flushed and grinning, and bums the first of many of your coffin nails. Before long, the patio is alive with laughter, lies, and that particularly warm, inoffensive tobacco tang that only wafts off the end of a cigarette when it's cold outside.
Those who have never experienced it couldn't possibly understand. Those who have, and no longer do, are more pitiable; they know what they're missing. Why do you think so many of them are such sanctimonious pricks on the subject?
Yes, winter's the time to be a smoker around here.
Summer, on the other hand, is most assuredly not. The Hillsborough and Pinellas dog days have been unfavorably compared to Hell a time or three by the most health-minded of residents. No one really knows summertime torment like the cigarette addict, however — especially now that we've been prohibited from fixing in every establishment that deigns to offer so much as a cheeseburger. Now, I can accept ostracism, even quasi-exile, as fitting punishment for continuing to indulge such a disgusting, stupid, dangerous habit.
But to send us out there …
Pulling on a cigarette outside on a crisp December night can make you feel as one with the universe. Smoking one outside at about 2 p.m. on a sweltering August afternoon is a bit like sucking on a sun-dried cat turd that's been rolled in damp toilet paper and set to smolder.
Not even the coldest beer or most refreshing frozen drink can completely disguise the fact that a summer-day stogie isn't for savoring. A summer-day stogie is just getting by.
Still, it's not like we're going to not have one.
So we seek as comfortable a smoking environment as we can find under the circumstances.
Forget shade. People naturally head for the nearest shade anyway, and in some states it's even a good idea. Not in Florida, though. The air might be a degree cooler under that tree, but it's also wet enough to wring. Wet and hot. Ever been confused by the term "dry heat?" Go stand under a roof overhang on the inland side of the Pass-A-Grille peninsula. Then, go stand under a giant magnifying glass in Phoenix.
Now, non-smokers, try this: Hold a washcloth under the Hot tap of your sink. Let it drain a little, and poke a hole about the diameter of a pencil in it. Put a cigarette in your mouth. Then lie down on your back, work the washcloth down over the cigarette onto your face, and light the cigarette.
Yeah, it sucks.
What we need, then, is a breeze. So we head out onto the shore-side sugar sand for a puff. That's no good, either — the wind blows ash back on you and everything around you, and robs your tokes of their richness, their substantiality. You've gotta smoke two of 'em just to keep your lung-tar quotient even.
Plus, and I know this is gross and horrid and inexcusable, the beach's resemblance to the surface of an unbelievably huge and virgin outdoor ashtray makes it almost impossible not to just slide one's butts down into the sand and be on one's way.
Pools are out of the question, as well. It's just too much of a bother to keep getting out and going to the bar for the drinks that make the cigarettes palatable. And soaking oneself into a sunburned raisin while treading water, never venturing more than arm's length from a giant cooler and deck of smokes, well, that's just kind of sad.
All right, we're not licked yet. We can go inside. But we're out at land's end. Where the hell can we smoke inside? Why, at a beach bar, of course. They're all over the damn place — all we have to do is find one that doesn't serve enough food to fall under the non-smoking law.
There aren't any. A beach bar dark enough, dank enough, air-conditioned enough, and foodless enough to accommodate you isn't a beach bar, it's a dive bar near the beach. Not even I am pathetic enough to not feel guilty about sitting in the gloom of a semi-deserted liquor-grotto at 3 p.m., 20 feet from a bikini-volleyball tournament. That's even worse than the pool-cooler-potato thing.
So you end up leaning against an open-air bar, fan blades lazily turning in a torturous slo-mo parody of actually moving air. Or worse, sitting at a table half-covered by a mildewed umbrella. Both of which are exactly the same as just being in the shade, with the added torment of knowing that were it 11 p.m. on a February night, you'd be in heaven.
What's the solution, then, barring staying at home or spending a gorgeous day at The Hub?
Get the cheapest room you can at one of any number of more modest beachside motels. Crank the AC to maximum, leave the door open, and unscrew all the lightbulbs. Fill the tub/shower/bathroom sink with ice and bevvies. Turn on the tube, pack a fresh deck of Marlboros, and enjoy. When you start to feel a little stiff, get up and take a walk — that's why you put the cocktails in the bathroom. When you start to feel a little guilty about missing out on a beautiful day, turn your head to the right — that's why you left the door open.
Or I guess you could not smoke until the sun is gone, and night has cooled the air a little.
Or hey, just quit altogether.
I could do that.
Sure I could.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2004.
