So I smoke cigarettes. Hey, where are you going?
Oh, well, for those who didn’t run screaming, I smoke. But not in the apartment, for a few salient reasons. One, it kind of makes everything smell after a while. Two, it tends to cover everything you own in a thin film of ick. And third, my apartment manager would nail my scrotum to a chair and then evict me and then nail some innocent passersby’s scrotum to a chair just to work all the way through her anger.
So I smoke outside, which isn’t too raw. I have a little covered stairway that I can smoke in, with a little window. I can enjoy the view out of my little window, and watch the lawyers working out of their home opposite my place. I will not be hiring these lawyers any time soon, as I cannot help but notice that they leave their computer monitors on all the fucking time. When they split, turn out the lights and slink into their gleaming fuck-you cars, there are their monitors, burning away. Oh, no screen savers either. Just angry, livid monitors, left helplessly on, feeling their pixels burn out one by one, for no reason at all. It seems to me kind of like tying your maid up every night and pointing a halogen lamp into her face. Jesus, you dumb fucks! Turn off your monitors! At least get a screen saver! Is that privileged information you’ve got blasting out photonically into the night? Perhaps I’ll buy some binoculars find out why you’re suing your HMO, gentle reader (they’re not buying the “erotomania” argument, dude).
Another little perk I get from smoking outside–this is a recent development–giant, ghastly houseflies. Our apartment was evidently built on an Ancient Native American Septic Tank or something, because these lovelies really put the “super!” in “supernatural.” For one thing, they are clearly intelligent. They know exactly when I am opening the door. I imagine them huddled outside, chattering: “T minus five seconds until the big pink thing opens the portal. Then we zip inside and look for dead stuff and crap on it. If we don’t find any, just crap anywhere. Christ, I love this job.” The other creepy thing is, they are utterly untroubled by spider webs. I know this because I don’t mind spiders, and I let a few set up camp in my little smoking window area precisely so they could catch flying beasties. Not these putzes. In the Spider World, these guys are France. The flies are so huge that they fly into the webs, kick a bit, and they’re gone. Then the spiders run out, see their ruined, flapping webs, see what amounts to the week’s groceries gracefully flying off, and then run back inside to watch pretentious, porny art flicks and complain about the mushroom harvest.
So smoking clearly has its trade-offs. On the one hand, I have to deal with Brobdingagian super-insects, and even worse, I occasionally have to see lawyers. But on the other hand, I do get to smoke. It all works out.