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Smoking is Good For You...
By Ninja R, 5-3-2004

People get really bent outta shape about cigarettes.

"WAAAAH," they whine. "I DON'T LIKE HOW IT SMELLS!" Bitch bitch bitch complain. Cigarettes are probably the greatest invention to come along since democracy. Or somethin'.

See...I have this particular attachment to smokes. They're great. Personally, I smoke Marlboro Lights and have since 1994. See, I used to smoke just about any tobacco I could get my hands on, but that's when I was young, stupid and didn't really have the money to buy smokes.

There's honestly just nothing like a smoke sometimes...I first discovered that when I was 16 years old. See, I used to hang out with a group of skaters. Everyone knows how those guys are. I lived in a really small town and our attempts at doing cool stuff were frowned upon by just about everyone over the age of seven.

But one thing over all bonded us. Friendship? Nah. Most of us were good friends before we started skating. Common goals? Uh uh. We all ended up doing different stuff than we'd imagined.

It was the smoking that did it.

My friend Mark used to have this room made of cinder blocks just outside of his house. It was the place we went to get away from his parents. I brought my Slayer and Megadeth tapes; we listened to this stuff over and over while puffing away on smokes. That was the life. Lazy, carefree summer days, drenched in hot Texas sun and pockmarked by infinite attempts at some skate trick we didn't know how to do.

Nights were made of the same stuff -- a little cooler -- and with more bugs. We went a couple cans of suffocating bug spray keeping those bloodsuckers off us, but the sheer amount of smoke in the small, crowded room actually kept away everything but the moths, which flitted around the naked glass bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling.

Mark asked me one day if I wanted one of his smokes. I wanted one, but I didn't want to cough. I'd grown up around smokers and seen them cough a lot. Mark taught me how to inhale. As I took the smoke, I wondered who taught him to inhale...pulled...inhaled...

...

And this peculiar buzzing started in my head. I couldn't stop laughing at how it felt. Great. Smoky. Like Coltrane on long, lonely nights. This was what it was about. It tasted like a nightclub on TV. The smoke drifted up, up, up and out. I exhaled. Wow.

We spent the day and night smoking and talking, heavy metal tapes belting out angst underneath our 16-year-old chatter. The next day, I bought a pack of Camel Nonfilters from a pool hall machine just down the road. I figured hell, I should smoke the strongest stuff, right? Why go for the weak shit? Of course, I couldn't keep them. I didn't want my dad finding out...he was already questioning me every time I came home. The typical interrogation: "Why do you smell like smoke?" "Why are you letting them smoke around you?" "You know they're going to die if they keep smoking!"

Well hell, Dad, they're gonna die just like everyone else. Even you.

I was 16 years old. Those days and nights floated away like so much smoke like prayers up to Heaven.

As time went along, I smoked pretty much every type and brand of cigarette I could get my hands on. So did Mark. Benson and Hedges, Marlboro, Doral, it didn't matter. Fuck it...it was just tobacco. I wasn't worried about taste...they all tasted like smoke. We smoked whenever we could with very little regard as to how much money this was actually costing. It really wasn't about addiction. We could go through classes at school without a smoke, no problem. After that, life was skating, girls and smoking...which is pretty much how life for a 16 or 17 year old guy should be.

By the time I considered myself a professional smoker, I was in San Diego, California, fresh out of Marine Corps recruit training. I walked into the exchange. "Pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter, please." She asked if I'd just graduated. I nodded and smiled, proud of my addiction. She shrugged, handed me the goods and I was on my way again.

But it really wasn't an addiction to the nicotine-laden cancer sticks. It was more of an addiction to something I hadn't had for three months. A life. Friends. Cruising down the road, elbow out the driver's window, butt in the teeth, Sepultura's "Arise" on volume 40.

After I coughed up a lung -- or so it felt -- I hit the road to the airport, destined for Texas. I picked up a pack of Marlboro Mediums in Texas and never smoked anything stronger again.

And see...this is why smoking is so great. I'm sitting here behind a monitor, thinking that I want to go skate. Looking at the pile of butts in the black, oblong ashtray on my desk and thinking I want a smoke. Flicking open that Zippo...smelling the fluid...lighting...watching that first puff of smoke drift up and disperse into the ceiling.

I know that anywhere I go in the world, there'll be a smoking section somewhere, waiting for me to walk over, sit down, and light up. And sometimes, there's someone there before you. No matter what, smokers can always talk to each other. It's why the smoking circles at work are so great...not because you get your fix, but because of the camaraderie between the people.

And I remember all the places I've smoked all over the world -- on ships, Japan, California, East Coast, West Coast, any coast -- and I remember the men and women with whom I shared those smokes.

So the next time you hear people (or if you start) bitching and complaining about how much their smoke is disturbing their FRAGILE little environment, trying to safen the rest of us down, just remember some of us do it for a reason. Some of us do it for the addiction. Some of it is tied to a past moving farther away with each tick of a watch's third hand. Some of us do it for social acceptance.

But mostly, we do it because we want to.

-- Ninja R