If Only I Smoked

Around the country the tobacco enthusiast is reeling with each and every new tax placed on their most beloved accouterments. What was once an enjoyable fashion statement is now a financial black hole. But unlike the private auto enthusiast things don’t seem to be looking up.

Even though gas prices are skyrocketing and no matter what the politicians say, will probably never drop below $3/gallon nationwide again, at least the car owner still has the extremely sleek and produced television ads with the latest in mograph technology to make even a Kia Sophia seem sexy. Not to mention this weekend is the Martin Luther King Jr. sales event—finally—and interests rates are being slashed slashed slashed to make room for the ’08’s. Because as we all know, Dr. King loved his cars.

Meanwhile the poor smoker is left to sift through specialized magazines to see a boring matte finish ad with nothing but a listing of ways they’re going to die. Yet on the walk to get said magazine four cars demolished into each other at a crossing and ambulances were screaming in warning. And even then the poor smoker can do nothing but focus on how sexy the destroyed cars still are so that they can try and ignore the endless legislation that will make yet another place illegal to enjoy a casual puff. All the while car owners are being drastically catered to more and more with huge garages where they can park for free for an hour and asphalt lots as far as the eye can see. Meters on every ounce of space available no matter how it will completely halt the flow of traffic.

And what’s more, the poor smoker, even if they did get a car, a place where they could finally be sexy enough to maybe off set the demonization of there kind, they’ll just come to find that cars no longer have ash trays or lighters, which means banning smoking in cars is just around the corner. The only place it seems one can smoke is at a bus stop and the endless assortment of butts are proof such smokers still exist.

Tonight one such revolutionary asked me for a light at my stop, which I sadly could not give. And as I said, I’m sorry I had no light, I felt her heart break. She had just a couple minutes before the bus showed up to get that sweet relief in and I couldn’t help. I could see the sadness in her eyes—the unfairness of it all. The unfairness of thousands upon millions of speeding tons of sleek steel weaving and honking and barely avoiding if avoiding at all swarming around the bus and us. The mass of it all killing tens of thousands each year and she standing helplessly without a light to kill but herself.

Thirty minutes later we slowly rode by a silver Infiniti G35 coupe and a Honda Accord intertwining glass and bumper and thought, damn those are some pretty cool cars.