the problem with smokers

is that they’re PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE!!!!!

They SMOKE instead of talking. (The funniest one was this guy I dated briefly who, when I cornered him about the, “Are we serious about this or not?” question, actually had TWO lit cigarettes going at once, one in each hand, and I swear he would have lit a third if he could. This was a guy who'd claimed, not long before: “I don’t smoke.” These people are maddening, infuriating - because they have NO IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING most of the time. They’ve taken dissociation to such an extreme degree that it’s almost as if they’re two separate people in the same body. Almost like a socially-approved version of schizophrenia. Like, as long as they can actually function in the things society cares about, who gives a shit if those ‘nearest and dearest’ to them (or possibly just unfortunate enough to be related) are tormented by their cluelessness (not to mention choking to death on the f*cking fumes.) So I’ve learned to use it as a clue: He’s smoking because he doesn't want to feel something; the feeling freaks him out; he goes to have a cig; the cig gives him a burst of all those ‘feel-good’ chemicals supposedly associated with a heroin hit; he comes back, all calmed and soothed, until the next time some unwanted FEELING (oh my god!) presents itself on the horizon, at which our hero busts out yet another cancer stick/pacifier and goes to curl up with his blanky.

I’m not contemptuous of the need for the blanky, per se: It’s the bullshit game of pretend that surrounds it, that boasts (?):

a) He doesn’t have feelings

b) He doesn’t need help

c) He’s therefore totally self-sufficient, and OOH, such a MANLY man, and, the kicker:

d) YOU, then, who don’t/can’t/won’t succumb to his heinous habit, and are so uncool as to want to actually talk about and/or dealwith your feelings - are a lame-oid, pathetic, ‘needy’ loser.

Whereupon this paragon, this model of self-control and social non-obtrusiveness, proceeds to calmy, obliviously, with the nonchalance of your average two-year-old who’s just completely made a shambles of your dining room table, gaze at you with this wide grin and a look of complete innonence - and a total and utter lack of awareness of the devastation he has just wreaked. His grin (just like the two-year-old's) says: Aren’t I great? Big smile. Aren’t I perfect? Fabulous? Never mind that you're gagging on the stench of the horrible cancer sticks, and smelling/seeing the fricking BUTTS everywhere… and please also to ignore the fact that this ‘man’ acts like the world is his TRASH CAN and... argh argh argh.

Them endorphins and shit, they’re somethin’, aint’ they? Gotta go git me some. They eradicate all manner of self-immolating feeling: Guilt, shame, humiliation – any kind of social-behavior-mediating kinds of stuff.