C’est Une Pipe
by Patricia Q. Bidar
e was a man who smoked a pipe. You don't see that today; similarly, few are togged out in checked blazers and turtleneck sweaters. In a karate-themed advertisement of the 1970s, an average guy pats cologne to his jaw, and then is besieged by crazed females. “Be careful how you use it,” the voiceover warned.
In San Pedro, there was a particular pipe-smoking man whose tobacco was flavored with apple. His voice was layered like moist leaves. His theme was fall, you might say. This man worked graveyard shift at the harbor, guiding containers from lands far away. I’d been given his number by a schoolmate who said he liked to talk to sexy girls. I was a plain girl with pretty sisters, thirsty for notice.
It was all very thrilling over the telephone, but this man wouldn ’t meet me. He confided he was three for oh in terms of women in pursuit of him. I mean, not counting me. And who knew what he actually wore—the one time I made a breathless midnight trip by bike to the security gate, he’d called ahead to have me turned away. But he was a pipe smoking man.
I can summon, still, my parents’ dark kitchen. The hard receiver in my 12 year-old hand. The sound of his mouth lipping the pipe’s bit, coaxing the ember to heat.
H
Author's Note
My friends and I always moaned about how tired we were of the suburbs, but in fact, we grew up in a gritty and working-class section of Los Angeles, the Port district. Maybe that doesn’t matter. I don’t know what it’s like to be of a time and place where girls are safe. No one does.
In the 1970’s when I was growing up, predation was normalized and constantly joked about. Girls were openly sexualized. There were awful terrible, misogynist comments that we repeated, too. It was the air we breathed. And this was during and after the second wave of feminism and ERA Now.
“Fifteen’ll get you twenty.”
“I could get arrested for what I’m thinking.”
“Jailbait!”
Arms across each other’s shoulders, girls belted, “Hey, Big Spender,” at our elementary school’s talent show.
All that being said, I had no interest in erasing female desire … or a yearning to be seen that a 12-year-old interprets as desire. In the end, C’est Une Pipe is a snapshot of a time and place.
Patricia Q. Bidar is a western writer and Port of Los Angeles native. She holds a BA in filmmaking from San Francisco State University and an MA in English from the University of California, Davis. Her novelette Wild Plums (ELJ Editions) was published in 2024 and collection of flash fiction, Pardon Me for Moonwalking (Unsolicited Press), in 2025. Patricia’s work has appeared in Waxwing, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Pinch, and Another Chicago Magazine, in the Wigleaf Top 50, and in many anthologies including Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Visit patriciaqbidar.com.
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Published July 2026 - Fiction