Smoke

Karl didn't want to quit. 18 years ago, the year Windows 95 was released he idly observed, was when he took his first experimental drag. It was nothing special at the time.This was just one of a great list of things his 12 year old self had tried out. Pouring paint thinners on a small pile of rubbish in the back yard at a friend's house. Lighting it. Whilst standing too close. The smell of burnt hair wafted back to him across the years much stronger than the smell of that first grubby, bent, shared cigarette.

Karl didn't want to quit. Blindly fumbling about under the quilt where he vaguely remembered leaving a pack. Extracting with one hand in the practiced yet absent minded fashion you don't see people who've only smoked once or twice handling cigarettes, he smoked at the morning sunshine. If he quit, he would face two immediate problems. A day needs routine. Whilst he was the first to admit that there are better routines going round, Karl nevertheless thought any routine was better than none. Another thing. Offering, or asking for, a smoke was a nice way to get to know people. Sure, it was the same as offering, or asking someone to give him, cancer but still the gesture mattered. It was worse to make no gesture to strangers. That could lead to loneliness.

Karl didn't want to quit. He dabbed the ash tray, carefully so as not to knock it off the windowsill where it didn't really fit. Besides, a voice in his head declared, there is worse smoke! Why is everyone so down on smokers when if you drive a car you smoke out of its exhaust pipe? What about smoking out of the powerplant smokestacks when you turn on the lights? Boil the kettle? Ride the escalator? Doing both simultaneously driving under streetlights at night? Are we really to take health experts seriously if they ignore the exhaust smoke cloud we never escape? That babies inhale from their first gasp, the elderly exhale in their last breath?

Karl didn't want to quit. What hypocrisy. What an honour, a display of valliance, to smoke from the first thing every day to show the world with what narrow minded conformists it is filled. Karl dragged with determination, with spirit. He sucked like it was an inspiration. It was.