Sunny, Part 1

"Sunny" - Part 1
an02@anon.lelnet.com

What follows is a true story. It would make a fine piece of fiction, but the
fact that it actually happened makes it even better.

I take public transit to work every day. You see a tremendous variety of
people there; businesspeople, students, blue-collar workers, and impoverished
people who have no way of getting to their destination any other way. The
mix, while sometimes overloaded with trailer-trash types, still makes for an
interesting ride if you're a people-watcher like me.

It also makes fertile ground for sightings. Women waiting for their ride
often smoke to pass the time, and I like watching certain types of women
smoke in a certain way. The trailer-trash types are a huge turn-off, and if
life only offered those kind of sightings I'm sure my fetish for smoking
women would quickly disappear. Thankfully, there are many others to be seen.
And then, occasionally, you get one like Sunny.

That's my name for her anyway. It seems to fit. I have no idea what her
actual name is. She is an occasional rider on my route and if the stars are
aligned in a certain way that morning I am treated to seeing her and letting
her kick-start my imagination.

Sunny is a young lady. Emphasis should be on the word "young". Now, at my age
I generally have little more than mild admiration for someone her age.  And
even in Sunny's case, that still holds true. I am likely 3 times her age and
have no interest in her as anything other than a case study. As one gets
older you begin to understand that there indeed is such a thing as "too
young". And yet, I simply cannot get her off my mind.

Sunny reminds me visually of the girls I knew back when I was her age. Back
in the early 70's, a lot of young girls wore tie-dyed t-shirts, headbands and
bell-bottomed jeans. Sunny still does. She looks like she just stepped out of
1970. All she needs is a CSN&Y tape in a portable 8-track player. I guess
it's a fashion statement, and she really does pull it off.  Combined with the
long, straight blonde hair, the pale skin, her thin, almost waiflike body,
and she seems like any number of 14-year olds I knew back then. Her skin, her
hair, and her clothes just make me think of her as a child of the sun. Hence,
Sunny.

I'm guessing 14 is her age. Certainly not much more. She looks like she's
still growing, and her body isn't at all well-developed. Her face has that
not-quite-there-yet look of girls in their early teens -- lots of potential
for beauty, yet still very fresh, innocent, and almost childlike.
Fresh-faced describes Sunny to perfection. The youth in her face comes
through first and foremost, then the innocence and simplicity, and then you
see that in a few years she will be a knockout. But she's not quite there
yet, and her minimal makeup lets you see that she is still very young.

So why spend time describing some kid, no matter how charming she may be?
Because, despite her fresh good looks and obvious youth, Sunny has a fairly
unique quality for someone her age. Sunny is a smoker. So what, you may ask?
Lots of 14-year-old smoke. Heck, lots of 10-year-olds smoke for that matter.

No, there's a difference with Sunny. She doesn't just smoke. She is a smoker.
Big difference. The news hit me squarely between the eyes the first time I
encountered her. It was 8:30 in the morning. She boarded and made her way
down the aisle looking for a seat. I noticed the 70's fashion sense she
adopted first, then saw her pretty young- girl face. And then, as she moved
slowly down the aisle, I noticed something in her hand.

Being summer, Sunny had on only a t-shirt and jeans. No jacket, and no purse
of any kind. So anything that didn't fit in the pockets of her hip-hugging
jeans had to be carried in hand. She had one hand occupied with the grab
handles on the seats as she moved down the aisle to prevent her from falling
down with the movement of the bus. She didn't look particularly experienced
in walking around with the blocky high heels she had on. Slightly extended,
her right arm and hand acted as a kind of balancer. And grasped in that hand,
wrist turned up to show it off to the world like an ID badge, was a pack of
cigarettes.

My gaze, previously one of mild curiosity, suddenly became much more intense.
That's the way this affliction of our works; once you make the ID of a female
as a smoker, you immediately try to soak in as many details as possible to
determine if she qualifies as an icon according to your own personal set of
criteria. My observations confirmed her as quite young, perhaps the youngest
girl I have ever seen publicly flashing around a cigarette pack, and then I
noticed the brand.

Most girls I see of Sunny's age or even those a decade older tend to smoke
one of a handful of pedestrian brands here in Canada. As a place for
fetishers, Canada comes up short on several counts. We have some absurdly
restrictive laws on advertising and package design, and have recently adopted
laws that force manufacturers to display ridiculous, disgustingly huge and
graphic warnings on cigarette packages. Fortunately, all of this seems to
have had virtually no effect on the popularity of smoking among Canadian
women. Unfortunately, most Canadian women smoke short, stubby, decidedly
non-elegant brands. Frankly, it seems most Canadian women who smoke have no
clue what a potentially powerful weapon they could have at their disposal.
And, it seems, the younger they are, the more likely it is they will choose
one of these off-putting brands.

It's only later on, when they develop a better sense of what smoking can do
for them and the elegance associated with smoking a long, all-white 100mm
cigarette, will some of them embrace these more appealing brands. If you see
a woman smoking an all-white 100 in Canada, chances are she's over 30 and
more likely over 40. Some of those women look fabulous puffing away on their
long, white cigarettes. In fact, in certain cases the length of time some of
these older women have been smoking, their inability to do anything about
their addiction, their ongoing surrender to the power of the habit they took
up so many years ago, and the likelihood of them having to keep smoking
despite the years continuing to add up and the habit taking it's toll, is a
strange sort of turn-on. But still, it would be even better if some younger
women chose one of these brands.

There are only a few all-white 100s offered in Canada. Virtually all are
smoked by women -- I know no male of my acquaintance who smokes 100s here.
There are a couple of ultra-light brands that are somehow less powerful from
a fetish point of view and have the extra detriment of literally smelling
quite bad. But then there are others. B&H offers a family of 3 choices, all
of which can be quite fetish-feeding. But for me at least, the all-timer is a
brand that is chosen by far too few Canadian women: DuMaurier Special Mild
100s.

DuM Special 100s, despite the word "mild" in their name, are a fairly
powerful cigarette. Not quite full-flavored, they nevertheless are not very
far removed from that level. They burn slow, generate a fairly dense smoke ,
and deliver a relatively powerful kick to the smoker inhaling them. Special
100s women were always my favorites. The pack was an elegant textured silver
and black, and the cigarette itself had a distinctive stripe pattern where
the filter joined the tobacco that just looked good between the fingertips of
a pretty woman. A woman who smoked Special 100s had to have made a conscious
decision to switch to them. Nobody I knew started on that brand.  It was
something a woman discovered after she had smoked for years and was looking
for something more elegant. They were strong enough to deliver sufficient
levels of nicotine, and thus, satisfaction, to the long-time devoted smokers
who would switch to them. Ladies didn't switch to Special 100s because they
were trying to quit. In short, a woman who smoked Special 100s didn't just
smoke; she had made the decision to adopt this elegant brand as her own for a
variety of reasons that meant that she clearly thought of herself as a
smoker.

The pack Sunny was flashing around as she stumbled down the aisle was the
distinctively classy DuMaurier Special 100s pack. I did a double-take. No
girl that young could possibly smoke those. But there they were, and not
hidden in her purse -- she didn't have one -- but instead, she displayed them
like a badge of honor. Then the mind started working in overdrive. This
young, almost waiflike girl with the fresh, innocent face, well-groomed, and
with a certain air of intelligence about her... no trailer-trash was she. My
mind pictured one of those long, white cigarettes in her hand, being brought
to those lips, that lovely young face distorting slightly as she drew smoke
through the filter, and then her opening that tiny mouth and inhaling the
rich smoke down into those young lungs. It was almost too much. But I looked
again, and there was no doubt. It certainly was that pack, and looking at her
again, she certainly was truly that young. I work with a couple of
20-year-old interns, and Sunny looked nothing at all like them. She appeared
closer to 10 than 20. My estimate of 14 had to be close to the mark.

Fortunately, Sunny got off at the same terminal that I did. I dawdled on the
sidewalk, hoping to catch a glimpse of her doing what I had imagined. I did
not have to wait long. I watched as she made her way to a bank of pay phones,
and she reached into her jeans pocket. Out came a handful of change and a
disposable lighter. She placed a quarter on the ledge of the pay phone, and
then she opened her pack and extracted one of her long cigarettes.
Confidently, she slipped it between her lips and expertly lit it one-handed.
Puffing out smoke from the corners of her mouth as she replaced the contents
of her hand back into her pocket, her cheeks began to cave in slightly as she
began to puff on the cigarette. With her hand now free, she brought her
fingertips back to the cigarette and completed what was about a 4-second
puff. She removed the cigarette from her lips and I was treated to a very
practiced inhale. After holding it inside her for several seconds she slowly
exhaled a stream of smoke from between those lips. No quick puff and sudden
burst of an exhale like most young smokers evidence. Sunny was no novice at
this.

I feigned some interest in a notice board nearby that would let me watch her
undetected. With the cigarette between her fingertips of one hand, and the
pack and the telephone handset now firmly clutched in the other, she used the
hand holding her cigarette to drop the quarter into the pay phone and dial
the number. Then she immediately took another puff before the recipient of
her call could answer, as many practiced smokers tend to do. She began to
speak to the person she called, and periodically would take puffs of 4 to 5
seconds in duration as the conversation allowed it. She would sometimes speak
out her exhale, but usually would blow a stream out to one side of the
handset and just let the rest escape from her lungs through her mouth and
nostrils with her normal breathing and speaking. It was simply amazing. She
looked like she had been smoking for years.

I watched her as long as I could. She finished her call and began to walk
away, still smoking. I had to get to my office. I wondered if I would ever
see her again, and fortunately, from time to time I do. Sometimes she is even
smoking early in the morning as the bus approaches her stop to pick her up,
and I get to see her take one last long drag before she abandons her
cigarette and attempts to exhale all of the smoke from deep within her lungs
before she gets on board. She still amazes me with her youth and her obvious
devotion to smoking. Odds are, I will never find out how this all came to be.
But it makes a wonderful inspiration for a story....

(Part 2 may come later if there is enough interest in a fictional account of
how Sunny came to this point... feedback?)

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