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 Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Part 10

   "Well, the years with my mom aren't something I want to think of too
often." Moira said.  "She wasn't a very good mother.  I don't know whether
she ever noticed I snatched ciggies from her.  She was a real chain-smoker.
In my memories, I can't picture her without a cigarette.  She had open
packs all over the place, so it was quite easy to steal cigarettes whenever
I wanted.  I had learned to smoke and inhale just by watching her.  A lot
of smokers tell you tales about how difficult it had been to learn to
inhale, how they grew sick on their first cigarette or how the choked on
their first drag or coughed their lungs out.

   Well, I don't know about that, but none of that happened to me.  I knew
from the very first drag how to do it and when I smoked a full cigarette
for the first time, it was like I had arrived home.  Actually, I had
started to nick drags from my mom's cigarettes much earlier, probably since
I was three or four years old.  She had a way of sometimes letting half a
cigarette smolder in the ashtray while she answered the phone in another
room or when she went to the john or when there was someone at the door. 
So the moment she left the room, I would snatch the cigarette and take a
drag.  I have often wondered how come I was never sick even at that age. 
Maybe I was born with nicotine already in my veins.  I mean it sounds
crazy, but I'm pretty sure my mom never bothered to kick the evil weed
while she was pregnant.  I know for a fact she breast fed me while smoking
up to an hundred Marlboros each day.  Guess that tells it all.  Spooky,
isn't it?"

   "But why didn't you tell me before?  I always thought you're the
squarest girl I've ever known." I asked back.

   Somehow, this story did freak me out a bit.  It was almost beyond
imagining and my boner had imploded, leaving just a shriveled lump of flesh
behind.

   "Oh Honey, how could I?  Besides, I've worked hard to be the square girl
you have met.  I might have been deceiving myself, but if it was an act, I
wasn't aware of it.  But don't fear, apart from smoking, I haven't hidden
anything from you.  I was THE fat girl all my teenage years.  No boy worth
mentioning ever had an eye for me.  Hadn't a classmate of mine split with
his girlfriend and chosen me as a partner for prom night, I would have
probably still been a virgin when you met me."

   I had certainly noticed how inexperienced she was when I met her and now
things made more sense.  I had always seen her as the sexiest girl alive,
but obviously she hadn't been so sexy when it had mattered most, during her
teenage years.  Though for different reasons, my own teenage years hadn't
really been happier.  I could almost understand why, upon my absence, she
had thought out sexual adventures.

   "Anyway," she went on.  "at the age of nine I would sneak out on the
landing and smoke a cigarette whenever my mom humped one of her so called
boyfriends, which was nearly every day.  I knew I had at least time for two
cigarettes until they would finish.  We lived on the top floor of a run
down tenement, but still in one of the better parts of Harlem.  My mom had
some money so we could afford to live in a building were things were
working most of the time.  We had electricity, cold and hot water and
central heating.  One of my mom's friends even installed an air condition,
though it would often blow the fuse, but at least we had some amount of
comfort.  Things could have been worse.  So, as I said, I had my place to
smoke where nobody saw me.  It was a bit odd, because I could only sneak
out ever so often.  Sometimes the so-called boyfriend would move in for
weeks, but there were times when mom would sit and brood over coffee and
cigarettes for hours.  Then she would keep an eye on me and never allow me
to leave the apartment.  I had to wait till she fell asleep to sneak out in
the middle of the night."

   She took another break to light up, but it was wasted on me.  With my
inner eye I saw the lonely little girl, too big and fat for her age,
sitting on the landing and seeking solace in smoking.  It was almost as if
my fetish had been overloaded and burned out.

   "By the way, have you ever seen the movie Leon The Professional?" she
asked suddenly, taking me by surprise.

   "Um, yes I did." And then I added, suddenly making the connection "that
was you?"

   "Oh not me, silly, the girl in the movie was a whitey.  I'm talking
about the story.  It's based on facts, on my life, or a few weeks of my
life.  Well they did change a lot in the movie, but that little girl,
sitting on the landing and smoking, that was I.  The Frenchy who played the
killer actually looked a bit like the real guy Leo, though Leo was as
American as the next man.  And my mother actually got shot by a bad cop."

   Wait, wait!" I injected, "You mean you actually lived with a
professional killer?"

   "Oh no, silly, that was pure fantasy.  Actually, Leo, the guy looking
like Jean Reno, was the one who wrote the original script.  He sort of
glorified his miserable existence of a, I dunno, trickster or
street-dealer. The producer changed a lot too afterwards, but Leo never got
much money out of it and he never had much fun with it either.  Truth is, I
still send him Christmas cards and they do get collected from his PO box,
I've checked that.  He's hiding from the cops even now and he doesn't write
back, except to give me a new PO box address every now and then.  But let
me first tell you what happened to the real Mathilda, who changed her name
into Moira later on.  Don't look so surprised, my grandma insisted.  She
hated Mathilda, so she rebaptized me to the name of Moira.  "

   She cleared her throat, took a drag and a sip of water and continued her
story.

   "When Leo moved in, I got lucky.  He was old, ancient to me, and he
befriended my mother, but he was just a friend, no more.  I don't know
whether he was interested or not, but he looked so much like a slob, my mom
would've rather cut of her arm than getting involved with him.  Guess you
can say she was a sort of hooker, she only took in paying guests.  `I don't
know whether she enjoyed fucking all those men or did it just for money.  I
guess it was a bit of both.  Back than I was way too young and innocent to
tell the difference.  I mean I knew what sex was almost before I could tie
my shoelaces, but I only knew the hardware involved, not the software
behind it.

   Back to Leo.  He knew I was secretly smoking, but he never blew the
whistle on me.  On the contrary, he helped me.  He talked my mother into
letting him help me with my homework at his apartment.  The idea was that I
could study better at his place and he did have a lot of books, except I
went there because he not only allowed me to smoke, but he also bought
cigarettes for me.  That's when I took a liking to menthols, though I
didn't smoke them often afterwards.  He sometimes bought me what he called
extras, a pack of this or that along with the usual carton of Marlboro
Reds, the brand my mother smoked.  I was soon smoking a pack a day grace to
his help.  You know, only these days, when I saw what my smoking does to
you, I think I finally understand why Leo did what he did."

   "For Gods sake, don't tell me... You were how old?  Ten, eleven?" I
shouted out, horrified by what I thought had happened.

   "Oh no, nothing happened between us, don't worry.  He was and still is
the gentlest person in the world.  I mean, he always wanted me to sit on
his lap and he fondled me quite often, but he never went past that and he
did nothing what a father wouldn't do to his little girl, I mean legally
so. In fact, it was more the other way round.  I think I fell in love with
him somehow, so I really enjoyed his perfectly innocent attentions.

   He might have moved on and I would've grown up in Harlem, possibly to
take the same road my mother had taken, getting pregnant early and
prostituting for a living, not to mention drugs and all the other shit. 
But then my mother got involved with drug dealer.  He was quite a nice guy
actually, but he was a dealer and that was the end of him and mom.  They
changed that a bit for drama in the movie.  In real life, the junkie-cop
just shot mom and the dealer, took the guy's supply and left.  He never
turned up again and never cared about me.  I had been at Leo's when I heard
the gunshots and Leo told me to stay put till he heard the crooked cop
leave.  He had a look at my mom's apartment and then he told me we'd have
to leave pronto.  I packed the few pieces of clothes I had, and we left at
night.  Leo brought as to a hotel, just like in the movie, checking me in
as his daughter Moira.  That's when I first used that name.  We stayed
there a few days.  It was the happiest time of my life.  Leo bought me all
the smokes I wanted and we would watch TV all day long, me either on his
lap or cuddled into him.  It never occurred to me why he used to lock
himself into the bathroom several times a day.  Now I know.

   But he never tried anything unseemly, not really I mean.  I know that no
judge would agree, but I never felt harassed.  When the police found us, he
could escape over the fire escape stairs.  He's been on the run since.  I
guess, hence the PO boxes.  But I swear to you, he never did anything bad
to me.  The only thing some people might see as a molestation, was that he
stroked me between my legs, tickling my little clit though my panties, but
he never undressed me or worse.  I was too innocent to understand the
significance and though I did like it a lot, I never got anywhere near
something like an orgasm.  In fact most of the time it was I who kissed and
hugged him, sometimes even on his lips and that was when I learned to
please a man, I mean the right kind of man, by blowing smoke at him.  It
all came back when I discovered how you got turned on by my smoking and I
remembered and understood for the first time.  I guess I'll write to him
about that.  He'll be happy to hear I've found someone with the same taste
for smoking women.  Although, he's probably more into little girls.  He
never showed the slightest interest in my mom, though she was very good
looking and she was the kind of smoker you would have adored, I think."

   Now that sent my mind reeling.  Apart from all else, I felt so relieved
that her almost compulsive smoking had only little to do with revealing my
fetish to her.

   "Anyway, I was lucky, because the police didn't put me into one of those
houses, like in the movie.  They sent after my grandpa who took me with him
to the farm were Grandma and he lived.  It was a long drive to Virginia and
we had lots of time to talk and know each other.  Grandpa was a wonderful
person, kind, gentle and surprisingly educated.  He was Hispanic, mostly at
least, not very tall and quite stocky.  He was actually smaller than my
Grandma, but wider then her.  Granny was tall and strong but not fat, not
those days anyway.  "

   She paused to rise and asked if we could return home.  I didn't object
and soon we were back home.  Moira went on with her life's story during the
ride and didn't stop except briefly to light up.  All through her story,
she chain-smoked one Newport after the other, the first pack already empty
and the second one opened.

   "While Grandpa drove me back I started to get some serious cravings.  I
hadn't had a cigarette since the day before and it was getting harder by
the minute.  To make it worse, Grandpa smoked his pipe all the time.  It
smelt deliciously and I was more than tempted to snatch it from his mouth
and take drag myself.  Grandpa noticed I was uncomfortable and started to
question me.  He stopped at a service area, thinking I had cramps, maybe
women's problem as he called them, but I denied.  I was a bit behind other
girls in that respect.  Though already an accomplished smoker, I wasn't a
woman yet.

   In the end it got so bad, I begged grandpa to forgive me and told him
the truth.  To my utter surprise that sent him reeling with laughter.  He
said I was a stupid little girl not to tell him what I wanted right away.
He jumped out of the car and was back within seconds with a carton of my
Reds.  Except he had bought the Super Long ones instead of the King Sized
my momma always smoked.  From then on Grandpa would always buy me
cigarettes.  It was our little secret.  Though Grandma chain-smoked hand
rolled cigarettes, she always tried to hammer into me I should never even
think of smoking.  She only found out shortly before I had decided to quit
once and for all.  Though, I didn't quit because of her, but that's a
different story."

   She stubbed out the last of an endless string of cigarettes with a
wrinkle of disgust and got out of the car to enter the house.

   "Now I really overdid it.  These beasts are really strong.  I don't
blame you for buying them because I really like strong cigarettes.  I have
even smoked unfiltered ones like my Granny when I was a teenager, just
because they were so strong and harsh, but I never got quite used to the
sting and the flecks on my tongue.  But now my chest really hurts.  Do you
think you can still be, err, nice to me even if I don't smoke for a while?
I mean I'm not talking about days, I don't think I'll last even till
tonight, but I'd relay like it if you could hold me and maybe a bit more.
Hope I can turn you on without my smoking."

   For an answer I took her in my arms and kissed her.  Her taste was
terrific so who needed any smoke to get hot?  We ended up in the bedroom
for a change and I outdid myself this time.  She cried with passion from
her repeated orgasms.  It seemed to last hours.  I found it much easier to
control myself and my lovemaking now that she wasn't smoking right in front
of me.  In the end, I more than made up for the rather poor experiment of
smoky sex earlier this morning.

   "Oh My God.  OH MY GOD." Moira exclaimed after she had lit her first
post cigarette.  "That was so good.  See, I don't have to smoke so we can
make love."

   Well, I wasn't to one tell her that she still smelled and taste so
strongly of smoke and mint that I got a huge kick out of it even if she
didn't smoke, not if she had just put out a cigarette minutes before.  And
then I had one of my flashes.  Maybe I could still increase her hunger for
cigarettes.