Swagger

Fact: When there is an acquaintance sitting in front of me, smoking, I can’t help but want to stare. I'll try not to, I'll try to find somewhere else to look, but it's kind of hard. Especially when that acquaintance is talking to me. Every time I look them in the face to address them, my eyes are automatically riveted to the cigarette. Fail.

I want to stare because I am genuinely curious. Growing up, I was never in direct contact with smokers, just the few relatives on my dad’s side. None of my friends smoked (well, none that I knew of anyway). My dad used too, but that was a long time ago, and the only memory I have that can affirm this belief is one of my sister and I stealing his pack of cigarettes in order to hide it. In college, only a couple of people I knew smoked, and they were guys, never girls.

It’s only since I started doing my internship that I’ve continuously been in close proximity with smokers, and I have to say, I am almost embarrassingly intrigued, more so by women smokers(jakun, I believe, is the accurate and term). When they take out their pack of Dunhill menthol lights and plonk it on the table, or surreptitiously pull out a single stick from their bag, I have to resist the urge to stare unabashedly. I like watching the whole process, from the pre-smoking rituals, like hitting the box against the palm of their hand (why do they do that? So that the cigarettes won’t stick together?),to pulling or tapping one out, to searching for a lighter, holding their palm over the flame as they light the cigarette. Then, that first long drag, and that first exhalation of smoke. Wah.

I’m not for smoking, I’m quite heartily against it. But I do appreciate the aesthetic quality of the whole thing. I think it makes the person doing it look cool.

Wait, I take that back, I've seen some people smoke who don't look cool. Let me rephrase: It can make a person look cool, if done properly.

Well, can't it? The way the cigarette is dangled between the second and third finger, the leisurely manner in which it is done, the way some people gesticulate with the cigarette while talking.

Technically my last day of work tomorrow. I'm smiling. On the inside.