Smoke

Hurry, inhale.

You have six minutes. Five if you're stressed. Less if it's windy.

 

This kind of ticking clock exists everywhere; your job, your television program. Your life. There aren't many time limits as rewarding and enjoyable as this, though, so you just sit back. You deserve this. A few minutes in the middle of the day where you don't have to think and you don't have to feel and you can just be out here, doing your little anti-social bit.

 

Now that they've kicked you out of restaurants and bars and criminalize you for making your own decisions, you're more or less stuck to the outdoors with your, ah, problem. All walking the streets together are the addicted, the smokers, signaling to each other, making that little smokers backwards peace-sign and competing to see who has the most unique butane lighter.

 

The one I keep in my bedside table drawer, for instance, is in the form of a gun. You pull the trigger and a flame pops out the barrel. I keep it in my bedroom so I can feel all sexy and James Bond-ish but I don't tell anyone this. It's too awkward shaped to carry so I usually just keep a metal flippy one in my pocket or sometimes the cheap colorful plastic ones sold at gas stations around the world because they're marginally lighter, weight wise.

 

Few things can bond people quicker than two smokers stuck outside in the cold where one has forgotten his lighter but the other comes to the rescue, but he's happy about it because it gives him more of a chance to show off his new favorite lighter. It's a complete sort of religion almost, except without the worshiping and singing, but it's one of those s****y new-fab religions where it's pay to pray. And getting more expensive all the time.

 

At the church of nicotine, our communion is buying a new pack. Slamming it into your open palm to pack it tighter before tearing off the wrapper is our bread and butter. It also inspires groupthink so that we have our own little community with higher-ups and lowly peasants. And by peasants I mean the idiots who smoke their cigarettes like they're smoking weed.

 

In my experience, Player's Lights' pack best this way, but since I no longer live in Canada they're pretty much impossible to get and expensive when you do so I stick with Regals. I've heard Park Drive's pack nicely as well but the taste is so bad and so strong you might as well accelerate the process and kill yourself now. The advantage to packing your precious darlings is also the drawback seeing as they last longer this way.

 

Most jobs give their workers about a six minute break. Smoking eliminates the need to wear a watch. Just don't think the cigarette is constantly telling you, 'I'm halfway gone. That means, back to work in three minutes!' That's not even counting the time it takes to get from wherever you are at break time to an area where you can smoke, which for me means making a mad dash out to the back courtyard away from the gardens and children's area and horses. Then there's the walk back. So if you only have four and a half minutes to smoke, you've still got a few minutes of good tobacco left.

 

You could be like this gross guy I worked with once at the US Embassy where I had a stint for a summer and all I had to do was stand in the lobby and I got to have a gun, and this guy would gently crush the tip on a brick wall or his shoe or whatever and twist it and put it in his pocket and save it for later. If you ever asked to borrow change he would hold his hand out with the coins in it and ash and butts all crusted in his hands and it was pretty disgusting, that combined with the fact that relit cigarettes are one of the most foul things I have ever tasted, make him my least favorite coworker ever. I still feel bad for whoever did his laundry.

 

S**t, inhale.
Break's over.

Reviews

[LynLee]

my grandmother smokes and this kinda reminds me of her. i like this.

[la Abeja]

Great write. I'm not a smoker, but I do have coworkers that fit these descriptions.

I wasn't sure, though, if you were being sarcastic, and pointing out the irony of being a smoker, or if it was simply an account of a typical day.

Whichever the case, it was well written.