• the217
• Life
• The Last Cigarettes

Related Media

(clockwise from left) Gene Basden, Jenna MacKenzie, James Williams and Lisa Swanson hang out at the Blind Pig in Champaign, Monday night, January 29, 2006. In regards to the smoking ban, they remarked, 'Actually we all work at Crane Alley and it will be

• See Slideshow (2 images)

There are bars and taverns in Champaign that serve more than drinks. In these places, every surface is a stained, dull yellow. Thick water rings dot wood grain so smoothed by elbows, palms and coins, you could shape it with your own drunken hands. There are tin roofs, hushed Motown records and regulars. Twelve-sided glass ashtrays dot every table and every other seat at the bar. These places are dank. Beer this good doesn't smell sour when spilled over rims, and smoke this thick is accepted like the humidity of August. These are places where a look-alike Bogart will recall, and not experience, meeting a wannabe-Katharine Hepburn. These places are full of fading last chances.

Kayla stands with her thumbs dug into her hips. Her hands fan out on the small of her back. The tips of her index and middle fingers disappear under a terry cloth rag hanging from the right back pocket of her jeans. Her elbows are pointed towards the red-neon light streaming through the bottles of bourbon, gin, vodka and scotch on the bar.

There's a couple in need of a refill. Kayla moves with a slow sway in her haunches towards the woman who is cramped up in a fetal position on the bar chair. The woman's left arm disappears between her knees while her right wrist drapes across her lower left thigh. Her cigarette's cherry is running from un-flicked ash. The arm wrapped around her back is large. The man has salt-and-pepper hair. He is holding his cigarette between his thumb and index finger. They are sharing a box of Marlboro Lights.

Kayla pours two pales and notes the charge on a tab slip below a small chalkboard that reads: "10$/Yard/Of Cask Ale!" Inside a yard-glass there is a small origami project gone strange. The head of the creature has three jutting teeth and two triangle ears. It was formerly a Winston box.

Is it a chupacabra?

"It's a dog," Kayla proves, extending her forearm tattooed with a palm-sized treble clef. Her eyes move from the dog to a face standing under a row of snifters and goblets dangling over the taps soaked in blue-hued smoke.

"Heyyyy, what's up, girlll?" Kayla says. She half-jumps to the middle of the bar. Small holes around the corners of her jean pockets flash peach flesh. The maroons, oranges and yellows of her plaid button-down look like late October.

"So maybe we'll hang for an hour," her friend says.

"Whatever's clever."

Kayla returns to her bar duties and acknowledges a handsome brunet for a buck tip. Her voice has a texture like unpolished amber.

"After the whiskey and cigs I have this raspy thing going on," she says. She likes smoking alone, in quiet. She'll drink "a neat Jameson" at the far end of the bar when the last ramblers shuffle out. She'll blaze a Camel Light and hold her shoulder where she has a fist-size bass clef tattooed.

Brenton, a scruff-faced, sand-haired regular is bothered by the draft let in by the happy hour. He keeps on his puffy navy jacket. He's talking tattoos with Kayla. It's an excuse to take his eyes for a walk.

"What other clefs you got?" he says.

Kayla strips to her black tank. Her fingers graze a pair of f-holes on her shoulder blades. They remind Brenton of screechy elementary string ensembles. "I'm going to get an alto clef," she says, "I played the fucking alto and I never got an alto clef."

She pulls back on her flannel and kicks a Camel out of the box sitting on the register. The speckled butt hangs from the corner of her mouth. When she whips a match across the yellow strike surface it sounds like a wire brush rubbing a snare drum.

A couple is whooping and laughing at a corner table. They both look barely 21. They've amassed a couple of brown glass bottles and are smoking rhythmically; every round requires three Camels. Dave, like Allison, is a plucky and a wiseass who needs only a minute to recall his favorite cigarette: his first.

"I was at my step-uncle's when I was 13 years old. We had just finished beef stroganoff, which was disgusting, and I noticed my brother was gone. So I went outside and saw him smoking and I said, 'Hey Nate, give me a cigarette.' 'No, it's bad for you,' he said back to me, and I said, 'Give me one!' I pushed him and he gave me one. Right after I smoked it I went inside, walked down the hallway and puked all over," Dave says.

Dave starts laughing and reaches for a

cigarette. The story has Allison grabbing her hip. She's nodding in agreement.

"I remember I was at my house and my mother slept two floors up and we were exhaling into the closet space. She came down and said, 'Allison, why's it smell like smoke down here?' We were all sitting there and said, 'What are you talking about, Mom?' I guess you can say we're closet-space smokers," she says.

Allison reaches for her pint glass. The horizontal rainbow stripes on her sweater cut color into an otherwise naturally toned space. She reaches for Dave's lighter and tips her head back. Her corn-yellow hair falls back as she lights a new cigarette.

Behind the doglegged end of the bar stands Jason. He maintains a boyish mug despite his own best efforts. Through his thick tortoiseshell glasses and bushy auburn beard, stares a quizzical child with a fruit punch-stained lip. He has on a chestnut T-shirt with a matted and cracked skull and swords screening. His all-white skateboarding shoes look new. Every shade of brown crisscrosses plaid on his skull. His newsboy cap is cocked towards his left temple.

Jason half-sits on a four-legged bar stool. The cooper colored pleather seat is ripped open. Wisps of white foam padding are frayed and yellowed. He can see every belly-up at the bar.

There's a lull after the Friday cocktail crowd is served. Jason is staring towards the doors with the last bit of orange daylight is evaporating.

"Hey buudd, you got some heat?" A cobalt dress shirt and khaki pant-wearing man says at Jason. Jason registers the man's gulf-coast drawl slowly. It is like a warm hum, each vowel hangs. He rises from the stool behind the bar.

"Um," Jason delays - he's searching for one of three pint glasses brimming with books of QUALITY MATCHES - "Yup."

The Mississippian nods in appreciation. He takes the cigarette he concealed in his right hand and rests it in his lips. There's a phosphorous flash and his face lights up. His eyes are wide.

"Yeah, my name is Tad," he explains in between drags, "It's got two syllables but it should only have one." He's an archeologist but prefers to talk about home-brewed beer. He's got a rig in his basement that does it all in five-gallon batches. He could fix his equipment to distill corn whiskey if he wanted to.

Tad exhales through pursed lips; his smoke looks like steam from a tea kettle. He's a drinkin' smoker. He can't figure out what brand he just bummed: What did I just smoke? I don't know. I can't figure it out. It sure did quit real quick though. It ain't as good as a Camel non-filter I can tell you that much.

Tad doesn't really care what he just smoked.

"I don't even think about them until I've had two beers," Tad says. "This year I've given up cigarettes and I'm smoking those little miniature cigars ... I just got to puff on them. It's a placebo and a pacifier." Every cigarette Tad smokes is relished. Each cigarette is new and the last one is always the best one. "Haha, yeah," Tad says, "because it's probably going to be the last one I ever have."