Nicotine: The New Vitamin C

( Written 3 January, 2005 )

For those of you who aren't aware, I was born and grew up in the Deep South. That's right. The Deep Cajun South. The country talkin', trailer livin', gator wrasslin', coon eatin', government corruptin', moonshine drinkin', cousin screwin', mullet wearin' upstanding Deep South. Recently, I was speaking to a friend who recently moved to Boston, MA, and we were making plans for me to visit. (This was before I moved back to good old Baton Rouge.)

So, I'm used to different way of living, obviously. I knew there would be cultural differences. But it wasn't until my friend and I were indulging in one of our conversations that I realized how deep the cultural rift really ran. The conversation is as follows:

Jen: Oh Thayn, you're the sexiest boi alive.
Me: I know. Feel my impressive muscular physique, angel. This is all custom, you can't buy that in stores.
Jen: You remind me of Michelangelo's David... except without a penis and you have the tongue of a goddess. Tell me again how you single-handedly dispatched that group of Iraqi insurgents with only two MRE heaters, some tabasco sauce, and a pocket knife..?
Me: Later angel... I'm tired... I can't wait to get the hell out of this pit of infestation they call San Antonio and move somewhere with some cultural enlightenment.
Jen: I know, it'll be great.
Me: Do they have Waffle House up there?
Jen: No.
Me: What about IHOP?
Jen: Um.. no.
Me: Denny's?
Jen: No.
Me: Well then where the hell do you go to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes at two o'clock in the morning?
Jen: [lengthy pause] There is only one twenty-four hour place in Boston... and there is no smoking in public places in Mass.
Me: What?
Jen: Yeah, can't smoke anywhere anymore. Nowhere. It sucks.
Me: What?
Jen: Thayn...? Thayn, are you there? Hello? Hello!

That was the point I dropped the phone, felt every muscle in my body constrict, and fell to the floor seizuring, nearly asphyxiating on my own vomit. True story.

Since when did it become acceptable to place sanctions on a cultural minority? I remember the good old days when it was perfectly acceptable to smoke anywhere and everywhere. I mean, my dad had a good ol' Marlboro hanging out of his mouth when he snipped my umbilical chord in the delivery room. Some of my fondest memories are of me and my infant brothers sitting in the back seat, watching my dad pump gas while he puffed away on a cigarette. Then when I got old enough, I started smoking myself while I baked cookies in my Easy Bake Oven.

Now, in some states, you can't smoke in restaurants, places of business, airports, cafes, intensive care wards in hospitals, nurseries, or even bars or clubs! What is our world coming to?

I swear to all things holy, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And it's all thanks to these politically correct, liberal, socialist hippies. It's perfectly acceptable for you to choke me with your overpowering cheap cologne, but if I light up a cigarette, it's the end of your world as we know it.

I'm tired of people looking at me like I just broke a kitten's neck with my teeth every time I light up a cigarette. If people can drink themselves retarded at a bar, I should be able to smoke a cigarette while I laugh at their drunken stupidity. To me, it makes more sense to smoke. Look at the advantages: After an all night smoking fest, I have never woken up next to an eight hundred pound hooker with no teeth, I've never spent the next morning puking my guts out, I never died of 'nicotine poisoning,' and I never woke up with a beer bottle stuck up my ass. Keep drinkin', I'll keep smoking.

I've got a message for all you hippie liberal bastards: leave me alone. Go back to your SUV's, your three snot nosed kids, your Whole Foods Market, and let me be the smoking asshole I am. I won't roll my eyes at you when you kiss your trophy wife or husband in public, I won't sigh heavily whenever your baby starts screaming incessently at the top of his baby lungs while I'm trying to eat dinner. All I want is equal rights. You have a non-smoking section, let me have a smoking section. I want to smoke in one room at work, don't go in there, and I won't bother you.

I was standing on the corner waiting for a cab not that long ago, and as is usual, I had a cigarette dangling out of my mouth. And this woman is standing not that far off, probably waiting for her husband to drive around (because she's too fat and lazy to walk across the parking lot carrying her two bags full of pork rinds and Mountain Dew and twinkies to the car). She looks at me and has the nerve to say, "Your cigarette smoke is bothering me."

Well, it's KILLING ME, you stupid cow! If I want to inhale harmful carcinogens on a frequent basis, that is my right. If it's bothering you, we are OUTSIDE. I know it is a challenge for you to lumber five feet away to avoid my smoke, you fat cow, but I promise there is enough clean oxygen for all of us. Even if you are wasting it.

There's another thing that really fries my latkes, and it is this phrase: "You know... smoking is bad for you."

Oh god! Thank you! You saved my life. Let me hurry up and put this out. Phew, I can't believe I've been smoking for nine years and no one bothered to tell me that. Geez... I could have been killed. They should put a warning on the box or something. Oh wait, they do. God, how did I miss that!?

You know what, I know smoking is bad for you. So is paying twenty dollars to Korean hooker to shove jelly beans in your rectum and eat a twinkie off your ass, but people still do it. They've come out with all these new studies about how pretty much everything kills you. Cell phones cause brain cancer, apple juice causes obesity in preschoolers, UV radiation, global warning, polar ice caps melting, serial killers, buses, small pox, herpes, postal workers... so you might as well smoke, because you're going to die anyway.

So the next time someone rolls their eyes at me when I light up, I'm going to put my cigarette out in their eye.

Who is behind this social coup, you might ask. Well I'll tell you. It's the same people that started the war of Northern Agression. (That's the "Civil War" for all you who attended school in states above the Mason-Dixon line.) All the states completely banning smoking in public areas are up North. (With the exception of Florida, which isn't really a state because it looks like a penis dangling into the Atlantic Ocean.)

In the good ol' South, it's practically compulsary to have a Winston or Camel hanging out of the corner of your mouth when you're eating or walking down the street. The cops will bust you for not smoking. No lie. We don't believe in this "new age way of living." How many health food markets will you find in the south? Not many. Because we still believe that if you hit a oppossum when it crosses the road, you just got a free meal. We like our red meat and our cigarettes. The greasier the better. I've learned that "healthy" is synonymous with "bland" and "tasteless." I'm sorry, but we as a human race did not claw our way to the top of the food chain to eat tofu and lettuce.

You know why we all smoke down South? Because we know we're probably not going to make it to retirement age anyway. Chances are, we're going to be eaten by an alligator, drowned by a hurricane or flood, die of cancer from the refinement plants, get West Nile from the mosquitos, the trailer is gonna fall on us while we try and stabilize the cinderblock foundation, get shot by a family member over the last slice of pizza (or for screwin your cousin's sheep), get hit by a jacked up truck because they couldn't see you over the hood, or attacked by a rabid racoon. So smoking is irrelevent anyway.

When I visit up North, I know one day I'll be walking down the street, smoking, and I'll see this thirty-something woman hurrying to her car from two grueling hours at the gym so she can go home and starve herself on a lunch of salad and carb free bread (i.e. cardboard) and a gas guzzling, ozone deteriorating SUV is going to speed by and splatter her all over the street. And I'll reach for my cell phone and dial 911, and realize I need to light another cigarette because my last one has burnt out.

So stop being a liberal, simpering vagina and leave us smokers alone.