Writer's Block: Smoked Out
Nov. 20th, 2008 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kleenexwoman[Error: unknown template qotd]
I smoke. Not very much or every day, and I'm planning on stopping altogether after graduation, but I do smoke. I have a good lighter with a whimsical fairy on it, and I have a preferred brand (Camel Crush, which are great if you are an advanced twitchy person), and I carry my pack and lighter around just in case.
Smoking is one of the last truly communal activities. The brotherhood of smokers is ubiquitous and anonymous. Smokers will lend you cigarettes without knowing your name, because they know that someone, somewhere, will do the same for them. They will exchange lighters. They will huddle in groups outside doors and near ashtrays and talk of great matters for the three minutes it takes to smoke a coffin nail to the filter. They acknowledge inevitable death cheerfully. They will brave the elements for their fix.
Banning smoking inside is a boon to nonsmokers and light smokers, whose bodies and sensibilities may be irritated immensely by the pall of smoke that will hang in the air; there's no doubt about that. It's an inconvenience to addicts. But the exclusion has fostered this sub-subculture, as exclusions will. There are places on campus that I know will always be full of smokers: the alcove outside the library, the courtyard outside the U.C., the doors of Anspach. Chilly havens where the wind whips away the smoke as soon as it leaves the lips, where a lighter will always be welcome.
I smoke. Not very much or every day, and I'm planning on stopping altogether after graduation, but I do smoke. I have a good lighter with a whimsical fairy on it, and I have a preferred brand (Camel Crush, which are great if you are an advanced twitchy person), and I carry my pack and lighter around just in case.
Smoking is one of the last truly communal activities. The brotherhood of smokers is ubiquitous and anonymous. Smokers will lend you cigarettes without knowing your name, because they know that someone, somewhere, will do the same for them. They will exchange lighters. They will huddle in groups outside doors and near ashtrays and talk of great matters for the three minutes it takes to smoke a coffin nail to the filter. They acknowledge inevitable death cheerfully. They will brave the elements for their fix.
Banning smoking inside is a boon to nonsmokers and light smokers, whose bodies and sensibilities may be irritated immensely by the pall of smoke that will hang in the air; there's no doubt about that. It's an inconvenience to addicts. But the exclusion has fostered this sub-subculture, as exclusions will. There are places on campus that I know will always be full of smokers: the alcove outside the library, the courtyard outside the U.C., the doors of Anspach. Chilly havens where the wind whips away the smoke as soon as it leaves the lips, where a lighter will always be welcome.
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This...
Date: 2008-11-20 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-21 02:01 pm (UTC)If I do buy cigarettes, my brands are regular Camels (I like the design of the box better than any of their variations) and Pall Malls (because they're cheap). Lucky Strikes actually are best if I can find 'em filtered, but they're hard to come by.
I've told you my theory of how tobacco won the Second World War, right? It's not anything to do with the GI grunts smoking up a storm, although that's part of the equation. The Big Three -- that'd be FDR, Churchill, and Stalin -- were all chain smokers, each with his preferred method of delivery, while Hitler was, well, an anti-smoking Nazi. The fuckwad.