This isn’t about sucking your thumb.  It’s about smoking.

When I moved to Kansas City from Los Angeles, I was amazed how prevalent smoking was to the culture.  Weed smoking was the norm in L.A.  Many weed smokers in L.A. hate cigarette smokers because they think that cigarette smoke is somehow worse for you.  I used to laugh my ass off when that argument flew out of the skunky mouths of my pothead acquaintances.  However, I usually didn’t have to deal with their particular residue in public.

I played in a rock band for five years and the asthma that I was hospitalized for when I was four years old reared its phlegmy head three decades later because of scream-singing for four hours a night in smoky clubs.  I knew what I was getting into.  I knew that the fan base for the kind of hard rock that we did were smokers.  I had to accept it.  What I have never been able to except is the rhetoric smokers use to justify their habit.

Very smart people who smoke have told me that there is no proof that smoking has a negative impact on their health, even though they know and believe in the value of the statistics.  I don’t even smoke, but the impact on my health from other people’s pollution is easily quantifiable in the cost of the inhalers I have had to buy for my new asthma friend. 

I have found ways to mitigate the situation, mainly from spiritual healing techniques (you can laugh…I probably would, too), but every time I spend more than an hour in a smoky bar, I come home and puff on my plastic pipe for two times ten seconds and try to get to sleep after two shots of steroids jacks my awareness up to eleven.  Am I just making this up for attention?  Do I really love spending fifty bucks on inhalers for fun?

I had a dream about a cigarette once.  I woke up severely sexually excited by it.  I tried to analyze why, since I had the g-damn things with a passion, but had a hard time coming up with anything concrete.  The phallic thing didn’t ring true.  The oral thing didn’t ring true. 

The only thing I can think of is that I got a rush of what it is like to be a smoker who enjoys the way it feels to smoke; like years of that high were compacted into one dream moment.  Sounds like a hard lady to kick out of bed, but in the morning, she’s going to look like a wrinkly old whore, I swear it.

Even with that little bit of insight, I am still not able to understand why people do something so dirty and disgusting and think it won’t hurt them or people around them. 

I know kids who smell like smoke from ten feet away because their parents smoke at home and in the car.  How are they supposed to escape?  They have no choice in the matter and hack along with their parents in the morning before school.   

I know these are old arguments, but the question remains:  Is it THAT important, important enough to pollute the air around yourself, to smoke?

Smoke outlines a person’s breath.  It says, “I am dominating the air you take in with my habit and you have to take it if you come into my space.”  You know what?  That sucks.  That also says, “Hey, I am a dominant pig, and here’s my passive-aggressive way of making you know it. Suck on this stank-ass air.” 

Even “nice” smokers are having this effect on people when they do it.  You see that redhead coughing in the corner?  That’s me, and I am suffering because of your actions. 

Maybe you care, maybe you don’t, but I care enough to try to figure out why you do it, so think of me for a just a split second as you light up.  (Unless you hate redheads, then by all means, puff away.)