Our second competition was on writing a short passage on the first time we smoked a hookah. Here are the entries:
Pineappledaddy (winner)
Never smoked a thing in my life, I was extremely straight edged. The only thing I did was drink and I did that well! With a group of friends and a really cute girl I had been eyeballing, at one of their boyfriends house, and a little hookah someone brought. Actually it was a medium sized Egyptian but I digress on their set up. We sat in a circle and on the second bowl they propositioned me to participate. I refused multiple times until the cute girl told me to So having her call me out I had to man up. I was apprehensive fearing I was going to cough and look like a pussy in front of her. Slowly I start to draw and not feeling a burn I self-consciously felt that I wasn’t doing it right. I started to speak and smoke came out. I was hooked.
Kalutika
I had some friends that smoked hookah on a regular basis but were using it for nefarious purposes so I would never partake. One day, after a very thorough cleaning, my friend offered to set it up the right way so that I could try without anything else in the pipe. He packed up Romman apple, we turned on Planet Earth on the 72″ HD flatscreen, turned off the lights and smoked away. It was relaxing, flavorful and a great experience. The colors from the ocean episode filling the room and illuminating the swirling smoke brought us into the beautiful imagery. We all sat in silence and just enjoyed the experience.
Smokerings07
One day, a group of my friends were talking and someone brought up this thing called hookah. It piqued my interest and I inquired further. They stated it was legal and a way to smoke sweet tobacco. Later on, I started chatting online with an old crush from college, and she smoked hookah! I watched her blow smoke rings on web-camera, so I wanted to experience hookah and learn to do that. I visited a lounge an hour away and sat by myself smoking hookah for the first time for 3 hours, practicing my rings. When our relationship became more than just friends, I decided to fly out to Colorado to visit. We smoked hookah a little, but in the end I found out she had ongoing relationships with a couple other guys. So I slept in the Denver airport for 2 days over Thanksgiving, waiting for my plane home.
Nima
Even though I’m sure I had smoked hookahs before then, this is definitely my first strong memory of smoking hookahs. I was 16; we had just moved to Isfahan, one of the most beautiful, cultured, and historic cities in Iran; we went to a small tea shop right under one of the arches of the 400+ years old “Si-o-Se Pol” bridge over a rather wide river. My dad ordered one hookah and a large tea pot. We had a fantastic time, smoked the hookah, and drank the tea. I was holding a sugar cube on the tip of my lips as sweetener and sipping hot tea in short thin-waist glasses imitating the elders.