I love smoking!

The first cigarette I ever fully consumed by myself was so ridiculously cliche I am embarassed to lay it out in print, but here goes. I was in eleventh grade, and my friends and I had adopted a local coffee shop downtown in which to spend our time. There was a Chinese restaurant right next door, and a record shop and thrift store down the street, so a good day would involve some shopping, inevitably for a new polyester shirt or greasy sweater (as most vintage sweaters sold in thrift stores tend to be) and the latest Smashing Pumpkins release. We'd head over to the Chinese place and get a pint of pork fried rice for the six or so of us in the group, head over to the coffee shop for silver tea (water, steamed milk, and vanilla... as close to mama's breast as a nearly-adult person could get), and station ourselves up in the balcony.

It was in this setting, surrounded by good friends and the bottomless container of fried rice, wearing a pair of men's size 36 green pants that clung to my 130-pound frame with a wide leather belt, that I smoked a clove cigarette for the first time.

If you've never tried a clove cigarette before, I suggest you do. They're wonderful, really. Tasty. Very clove-y. I heard somewhere that they're twice the potency of regular cigarettes, but I'm not sure if that's a fact. I never owned my own pack of cloves, nor did I smoke them often; mostly, they were reserved for special occasions, like when we were trying to outcool each other.

Four years later, I am working on a regular cigarette (Marb Red, I believe) on the balcony of my college apartment. It's from a pack I bought, but I'm not addicted, I'm just pissed off at a boy. When I finish, I hesitate to throw it down into the parking lot. I have visions of tossing it down still lit, and it landing smack dab in the middle of a gas leak, which would snake its way to a car, which would explode, which would then cause the building to catch on fire and burn to the ground, which would result in me having to go on the lam, but I'd eventually get caught and go to jail because I wasn't smart enough to stay out of the local papers after saving a kitten caught in a tree. Instead, I bring the butt into the apartment, run it under the sink, and toss it in the garbage can. My throat hurts and from somewhere under my seething rage I understand that I am way too obsessive-compulsive to deal with where to put cigarette butts and the overriding guilt about smoking in the first place to make it a habit. I think I eventually threw the rest of the pack away, but only after I determined that they were "too old" to smoke, anyway.

So last night the folks and I were talking about the total smoking ban bills that are floating around in the Minnesota and Wisconsin state assemblies, and I've surprised myself in how truly indifferent I feel about it. MPR has spent time on the subject. Secondhand smoke seems to be the problem, and the Minnesota senator in charge of authoring the bill lapses into cliche when she says that no one, not even the people working in the establishments, should be forced to be exposed to secondhand smoke. The guy who's in charge of the bar league of Minnesota says that, of course, the bars will lose all their business if smoking is banned, and it's not really about secondhand smoke, anyway; it's about stopping people from smoking, period. When I try to take a stance on the issue, though, I can't. I see everyone's points.

There was a time in my life when I secretly thought that it would be fun to be a bartender, but I knew it wasn't going to happen because I didn't want to be in all the smoke. I wasn't heartbroken about it, though. It's a choice, and choice is good. On the other hand, I'm going to a bar tonight for a birthday party, and it would be great if I didn't have to choose an outfit that'll have to immediately be washed afterwards.

I wonder if this is another issue that is like the gay marriage one... people can try to stop it, but it's inevitable that smoking will, indeed, end up being banned. Either way, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over it. I'll just remember the good times... my clove cigarette an' me.