Every smoker has a dream. Either keep smoking until the day that they die and somehow manage to be stricken down by some illness not caused by their most vile habit, or eventually quit. I am now of the latter. 
Moving to Los Angeles changed a lot of things about me. It changed the way I view people, the world, social norms, everything. And somewhere in this process I fell victim to the diabolical bliss that is the cigarette. Ah ciggies... you gotta love ‘em.
The feeling of your first liberated inhale after getting out of work, sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night and lighting up while looking up at the night sky or huddling over a lighter with a few of your friends (or complete strangers) trying to get one lit in the dark night in front of some noisy, crowded bar. Just writing this is giving me a phantom feeling in my hand that is still so incomplete.
I was never the chain smoker type. But there was something about cigarettes that kept me coming back for more... Maybe it was the nicotine, maybe it was the comradery of finding that fellow smoker at a party and even though you didn’t know each other, somehow you had something in common. You’d sneak off and start a conversation while letting the smoke fill your lungs, and end up giving each other the “cheers” as soon as the paper had finished burning. That was all.
Maybe it’s silly but I went out the other night and saw some fun-looking kids out front all puffing away on their cigs and wishing I could join in, simply by asking for a light. When you’re dealing with an addiction, it seems natural that the first thing you might say to someone is asking for assistance.
“Gotta Light?”
And most people are glad to help. Sometimes you’ll have two or three people fumble about in their purses and pockets until one finally triumphs and produces a lighter. Someone would usually crack a smile and the ice would have been broken. Conversation is light and easy, since you’ve got your poisonous crutch to fall back on and you can watch the cigarettes dwindle, knowing its okay to excuse yourself back inside once the last ashes have fallen.
Come to think of it now, m
any of my good friends have been made through the simple act of puffing on that little tube of tobacco. I can remember bonding with new friends on the smoking patio in college, using our fifteen minutes of freedom to drag away and discuss our totally bizarre professors... we’d laugh and smoke, knowing that we were all completely different and came from all corners of the world, but were united in our terrible, but socially-accepted (at least in fashion school) addiction.
I’d even sit down and have a smoke with some of my favorite professors and discuss the lesson in more depth as I realized they were just as flawed with their vice as I. Mind you, these were the very same professors that revealed their three year acid trips to me and inserted single frames of animal sex into the class slide shows to make sure that you were indeed paying attention, but somehow that ciggie in their hand made me feel like we could relate.
I remember moving into an apartment building downtown after I had just briefly quit smoking and found myself starting up again so that I could wile away my hours in the stairwell a few floors up with some totally cool designer girls upstairs. They’d come down to my apartment, pound on my door until I slunk away from my school work and we’d race up the emergency stairwell, which no one used, wheezing a little until we landed on their floor where the walls were covered in our graffiti and the floor covered in our ashes. We’d even made
a point to tear the no smoking sign from the wall in case our motives were ever questioned. (Which they were on several occasions by the prestigious community servicemen) We’d sit on the concrete stairs with our sketch books and paints, smoking away and tossing our cigarette butts into old bottles or coffee cups.
We were an odd group to say the least, but it made sense at the time. We were all looking for our little escape, our afternoon moments where we’d joke and laugh and smoke and nothing else really seemed to matter except our little concrete stairwell.
Forget looking cool or that other shit you’ve heard about smoking... what I miss most about cigarettes are my little chance encounters. The people you meet curbside who are more than willing to offer a light and jabber away for those 3-5 minutes. The easy transition from total stranger to comrade. It might sound ridiculous, but that’s how it was for me as a smoker. Sure, smoking probably was a social crutch for me, but I liked it. So don’t blame me if you chance to see me light one up again outside a crowded bar or with a group of strangers, I haven’t fallen off the wagon or gone back to my pack-a-day habit or anything like that, I’m just visiting an old friend.
Moving to Los Angeles changed a lot of things about me. It changed the way I view people, the world, social norms, everything. And somewhere in this process I fell victim to the diabolical bliss that is the cigarette. Ah ciggies... you gotta love ‘em.
The feeling of your first liberated inhale after getting out of work, sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night and lighting up while looking up at the night sky or huddling over a lighter with a few of your friends (or complete strangers) trying to get one lit in the dark night in front of some noisy, crowded bar. Just writing this is giving me a phantom feeling in my hand that is still so incomplete.
I was never the chain smoker type. But there was something about cigarettes that kept me coming back for more... Maybe it was the nicotine, maybe it was the comradery of finding that fellow smoker at a party and even though you didn’t know each other, somehow you had something in common. You’d sneak off and start a conversation while letting the smoke fill your lungs, and end up giving each other the “cheers” as soon as the paper had finished burning. That was all.
Maybe it’s silly but I went out the other night and saw some fun-looking kids out front all puffing away on their cigs and wishing I could join in, simply by asking for a light. When you’re dealing with an addiction, it seems natural that the first thing you might say to someone is asking for assistance.
“Gotta Light?”
And most people are glad to help. Sometimes you’ll have two or three people fumble about in their purses and pockets until one finally triumphs and produces a lighter. Someone would usually crack a smile and the ice would have been broken. Conversation is light and easy, since you’ve got your poisonous crutch to fall back on and you can watch the cigarettes dwindle, knowing its okay to excuse yourself back inside once the last ashes have fallen.
Come to think of it now, m
any of my good friends have been made through the simple act of puffing on that little tube of tobacco. I can remember bonding with new friends on the smoking patio in college, using our fifteen minutes of freedom to drag away and discuss our totally bizarre professors... we’d laugh and smoke, knowing that we were all completely different and came from all corners of the world, but were united in our terrible, but socially-accepted (at least in fashion school) addiction.I’d even sit down and have a smoke with some of my favorite professors and discuss the lesson in more depth as I realized they were just as flawed with their vice as I. Mind you, these were the very same professors that revealed their three year acid trips to me and inserted single frames of animal sex into the class slide shows to make sure that you were indeed paying attention, but somehow that ciggie in their hand made me feel like we could relate.
I remember moving into an apartment building downtown after I had just briefly quit smoking and found myself starting up again so that I could wile away my hours in the stairwell a few floors up with some totally cool designer girls upstairs. They’d come down to my apartment, pound on my door until I slunk away from my school work and we’d race up the emergency stairwell, which no one used, wheezing a little until we landed on their floor where the walls were covered in our graffiti and the floor covered in our ashes. We’d even made
a point to tear the no smoking sign from the wall in case our motives were ever questioned. (Which they were on several occasions by the prestigious community servicemen) We’d sit on the concrete stairs with our sketch books and paints, smoking away and tossing our cigarette butts into old bottles or coffee cups.We were an odd group to say the least, but it made sense at the time. We were all looking for our little escape, our afternoon moments where we’d joke and laugh and smoke and nothing else really seemed to matter except our little concrete stairwell.
Forget looking cool or that other shit you’ve heard about smoking... what I miss most about cigarettes are my little chance encounters. The people you meet curbside who are more than willing to offer a light and jabber away for those 3-5 minutes. The easy transition from total stranger to comrade. It might sound ridiculous, but that’s how it was for me as a smoker. Sure, smoking probably was a social crutch for me, but I liked it. So don’t blame me if you chance to see me light one up again outside a crowded bar or with a group of strangers, I haven’t fallen off the wagon or gone back to my pack-a-day habit or anything like that, I’m just visiting an old friend.
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