The other day I saw this lady smoking outside the Michael’s craft store and it got me to thinking, again, that smoking might be the right hobby for me.
What’s so appealing about it is that people will leave you alone. This woman was leaning against the wall at Michael’s craft store, wearing a Michael’s craft store polo, and I would still be terrified to approach her. Because she obviously doesn’t have a minute for me. She’s smoking. She’s actively burning away the minutes of her life. So what are the odds that she’s going to waste some of that diminished time on me?
That’s what I’m really looking for. Some kind of something that tells people to leave me the fuck alone here and there. Time was, there was lots of this shit. Time is, there isn’t. Examples?
Tattoos and Piercings:
1980: Bikers, sailors, people who did not know they were harboring hepatitis.
2013: Every person who had $150 once.
Motorcycles:
1980: Bad guys in movies, junkies, murderers.
2013: Every person who has $350 once a month.
Booze:
1880: Whiskey, moonshine, chemicals that were used in attempts to make Indians white.
2013: 99 Bananas, 248 Grapes, 3943289 Pomegranates.
So what, pray tell, is left for the man who would like to be left alone? What is the anti-social thing one can do?
Friends, fuckers, I’m thinking that smoking might be it.
The problem, the problem is that I don’t know how, as a 30 year-old man, you START smoking.
You’re supposed to start when you’re 15 because you’re dumb. Then you can’t quit. Then you’re set. It’s the perfect excuse, really. It’s like me and jacking off. Started when I was 15, and been filling a pack a day with semen since. But with smoking it’s way too late for me.
When you start, how do you pick your brand? They all look the fucking same. Once I bought cigarettes, doing the old point at a box and mumble method, and I ended up with these weird little short cigarettes, like pinky fingers. Tiny perfect little baby penises. I didn’t vividly remember saying I wanted the baby penis size, but there I was.
When you have a whole pack, as a non-smoker, it seems like about 400 cigarettes are in there. They just keep coming. And because you start figuring out, based on the size and the fact that you feel like you’re catching a slight whiff of grape off the smoke, that you got shitty weird cigarettes, you can’t let other people bum any cigarettes off you. It’s just you versus that pack.
Every time I do sneak away for a smoke, I swear to god, there’s always a Sam Eliot kind of guy waiting outside, already smoking. It doesn’t matter where you are, at the hardware store where you figure he’d be or at the goddamn Chuck E. Cheese, there’s a guy out there who is much better than me at smoking. I can picture it, me trying to light up, not really sure how to do it and burning away the first third of this stubby cigarette, coughing away into the night. Him thinking, Wow. Looks like you’re really enjoying it.
What I really need is to go on a Rocky training thing. Up to a mountain cabin farm place in the arctic. What was that fucking place? A snow farm? Why was there a barn in the middle of a mountain?
Anyway, I need to go up there but instead of workout stuff I could do stuff to improve my smoking. You know, instead of rolling a truck tire around I could sit on the truck tire and smoke. Instead of doing bench press in the barn I could sit on the bench and smoke. Instead of running up the mountain and shouting into the air I could stand just outside the doorway and stamp my feet and say Fuck, it’s so cold and continue smoking.
Then, after that, I come back ready to kick ass as far as smoking goes. All practiced up.