a
future free of pool hall smells and the glandular malfunctioning of his
predator owner. They say the stem of a pipe pressed against one's
tongue for extended periods of time will cause aggravation, perhaps
"malignant growths," worse yet, cancer. To Clarence, however, it was he
who was sickened by the onrush of brown saliva and halitosis as his
compulsive partner pressed his bones to an opened jaw. He felt like
Cain and wished he could kill this man with the jawbone of his own ass.
At the very least Clarence wanted to be something more than an after
dinner pipe. He wished a certain notoriety, a dance on pigeon feathers,
to be a pipe of Nordic proportions--a yard's length of smoke. If he was
to be engrossed in smoke, he at least wished it to arrive in exotic
blends, from textures rich with the warmth of their climes. Turkish
root, jabiru, all were curiously better than the stuffy domestics he
had come to know.

But alas, Clarence for all his fuming saw nothing ahead but more of the
depressing humidor. His lot was to be a rack in a provincial smokehouse
kept aglow by a poor man's fervour for post-natal security. The
additive was relaxation and his world was to be as commonplace as the
hearth. Home was a blackened stem yellowing with age against a
bewhiskered face. There was no knowing when a pang of nicotine might
hit, so he spent his off hours in a coat pocket or a sleeve's rear end
eyeing the world from a very shaky distance. Life was indeed strange
when one was rudely hauled out of near hibernation into the brunt of
day, stuffed into an asphyxiating batch of tacky powder, then pressed
into open flame. Afterwards, further indignities were exacted as one's
head was slammed against the pavement or struck on the heal of a
manured boot. Existing was not sweet (barring Prince Albert) but likely
to be hellishly warm or worse, infuriatingly commonplace. Still, he
comforted himself on the knowledge Alex the cigarette could sense his
end more dreadfully as a butt in some pool-side urinal. At least, his
demise would be a trifling more dignified--or so he assumed.

Now it came to pass that Clarence's owner was passing through a
metamorphosis of sorts where he believed a meerschaum pipe would ease
the tobacco habit. At once, Clarence faced the twin prospect of being
not only redundant but phased out as an aging health risk. This was
clearly the siren call to action.

Clarence thought of suicidal urges. He would lodge himself i