Smoking is Cool, Goddamnit

Most people who smoke really wish they could quit, have tried to quit a hundred times, hate that they can't, etc etc etc. They probably have what you call a love-hate relationship with the ciggies. I do not understand this, becuase aside from the social stigma that has developed in recent years, I can't think of a single thing about smoking that I don't love desperately.

(Okay, one thing, and that's smelly hair. Yay! I came up with one, thank the lord, I'm going to need to cling to that.)

I started smoking at 14 because I wanted to be cool. Fat kids do whatever they can, y'all. I had already embraced the classic maneuver, "Be Funny and They'll Hate You Less" made popular by youthful porkers since the cavedays ("Ooga, ooga, pull my finger!" "Ooogahahah! You funny, Me hate you less now, fatty."), but I figured I needed a little something extra.

So, smoking.

When I was 15 I took it up a notch, switching to Marlboro Reds to add that extra layer of bad-assedness to it, which actually worked, sort of. I remember vividly being at a party and bumming a cig to one of the cooooooolest guys (emphasis for irony, I think this guy is like, a cashier now) in school and having him actually comment on how most girls are wimpy and smoke crap-ass light cigs, but I--ME!--was cool for smoking my hideously awful bad-ass manly cigs. Score!

Of course, then he went and felt up some other chick, but hey, we smoked a cigarette together and he called me cool to my face. So at first I think I was just hooked on the coolness. Then I grew up, stopped giving a poo what others thought of me, yet continued for whatever reason to smoke.

Must have been becuase SMOKING IS AWESOME.

Truth be told, folks, I love everything about smoking:

Getting a new pack. The firm feeling of an unopened pack in my hands. Packing said pack against my palm. Peeling off all of the staticky film the packs come wrapped in, a trick I picked up in college to differentiate MY pack of Marlboro Lights from everyone else's, since most people only take off that top bit of film.

The way they smell. I know most people would say they smell gross. And maybe the smoke itself does, but I love the smell of an unsmoked pack of cigarettes, particularly that first waft of tobacco scent that drifts up when you pull off the foil from the top.

The cracklely noise they make when you first light them.

Smoking outside in the cold, when you can already see your breath, and adding the smoke to it and it's like you're exhaling this huge plume of smoke, like a dragon.

The way, if you haven't smoked in a while, that you get the hardest buzz ever when you smoke one.

Smoking and talking. Hate to say this, but I've bonded so much over smoking. I made some of my closest friends in college through it. I spent some of my favorite hours with some of my best friends in high school, college and after college just sitting and smoking and drinking (coffee, beers, glasses of wine).

Smoking and drinking alone. I know, I know. But last summer I spent plenty of nights smoking and guzzling down wine by myself. I gotta admit, this may be pathetic, but it's kind of like going to the movies alone. You're ashamed to admit you do it, but when you're doing it you're wondering why you don't do it more often.

Okay so why all the brouhaha?

Becuase it's been 9 actual days since my last cigarette, and I'm sort of hoping to make it stick. It hasn't really been that hard, considering by the time I decided to give them up for good I was really only smoking when I drank.

Then again, I didn't go out this past weekend due to being a huge giant ball of phlegm shaped like a girl. (It's like my lungs were all "WTF, mate? Where's the smoke, eh? Well, take THIS! *cough cough cough cough cough*" I'm going to consider it a cleansing detoxification.) So it's kind of easy to not smoke when you're not out drinking.

When I go out this weekend, it's possible I'm going to die from needing to smoke so badly. Just so you know, just in case I don't come back and you get all "Hey, what happened to that chick, she wrote the best blogs EVER!"

God, they're so good.

(Sniff!)