I'm not exactly in the market for a new expensive habit, and certainly not one that turns my teeth brown, makes my whole life smell, or, you know, causes lung cancer. But there's still something slightly intriguing about the thought of being a smoker.
Smoking in the media seems to fall into 2 categories: smoking out of stress and smoking just to be cool. So often in movies and TV we see someone with a high-power job, or with some insane amount of interpersonal drama, smoking a cigarette at some key moment where it legitimately makes me think, "Wait, that's all I need to do to calm down? When work or whatever is stressful I can just...go smoke a cigarette?" As a non-smoker, I don't have this option. When things blow up at work the only tool I have at my disposal is going into a coworker's office and gesticulating wildly like a crazy person. Only venting to coworkers doesn't calm me down, it just fuels the fire. The crazy, wildly-gesticulating fire. But what if I could smoke a cigarette and then come back all relaxed? Is that a thing? It sounds tempting.
As far as the coolness thing goes, I can't help but think of my sophomore year of college. One of my friends would buy these fancy Nat Sherman cigarettes, with a black body and gold filter, and she would call me over to sit outside her dorm and smoke them. We called it "stoopin' it." One time when we were stoopin' it she said, "You know it sounds stupid, but I really feel like I look cooler when I smoke." And I had to agree - somehow we're sort of trained to think that people who smoke are more badass. I guess the marketing department at Philip Morris can pat themselves on the back for that one. But apparently I don't care that much about looking cool, because aside from a few cloves sprinkled throughout college (what girl didn't go through a clove phase in college? Come on now), I definitely haven't had a cigarette since those stoopin' it times when I was 19.
(Was that 10 years ago? Barf)
Another thing about cigarettes is that there's this very romanticized ideal of being a writer and sitting at a desk, typing - and puffing - away. The specific image that comes to mind is Carrie Bradshaw, in her pajamas, hair in a sloppy bun, smoking a cigarette and narrating to us her latest piece of relationship wisdom. Despite the fact that I always hated the character of Carrie Bradshaw and it's not by any means something I want to aspire to, there's something about that image that makes me almost think that I would feel like an actual "real" writer, and not just a girl with a not-widely-read blog, if I had a cigarette here. After all, I'm already all over the pajamas and sloppy bun thing, and I can even add some glasses to look even more writerly!
Why yes, since you ask, it is totally normal to stay in on probably one of the last nice days for awhile so you can write a blog post and watch TV and generally not make yourself look presentable during the daylight hours.
All of this being said, I think I will continue to not smoke cigarettes because of the whole not-getting-lung-cancer thing. But what if I tried just having a candy cigarette in my mouth? One of the ones that even produces a teeny bit of fake smoke. They might not relieve stress or make me feel like a fancy writer (note: candy in general is probably not a good way to make yourself feel like a grown-up), but I think they would make me look super cool. Because those things are awesome. The end.
1 comment:
I smoked for a long time and I still kind of miss it. It's how I met most of my friends and I had to learn whole new ways of coping with stress instead of storming outside for a smoke break. It's not even that the cigarette really calmed me down, it's just that leaving and going outside and smoking it was a nice break from whatever was stressing me out, I think. It is gross though.
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