"When There's Smoke, There's I"

"Like the hypnotic sight of molten lava, it breathes at every intake
its smoke billows freely, carelessly
its gray ashes remnants of comfort

When everyone has left your side, when not a single soul is there for you,
For a few moments, I feel cared for.  I am not alone."


More and more I feel displaced, discriminated in this oh-so politically correct society of non-smokers.  Gone are the days when one can get a full meal in a restaurant and immediately, in the comfort of your chair, grab a stick of cigarette and puff your heart out.  Aah...that completes the meal!  Perfect.  And with coffee in hand, that is just sublime!

Nowadays, you eat at a restaurant and when you're done, before you pick the remnants stuck between your teeth, before you can even think of how good that meal was, you stand up, weave through diners, go out of the restaurant, find a nice corner in the street in front, make sure there are no passersby who will twitch their noses at the smell of cigarette smoke and carefully light a stick beside a convenient trash can so as not to scatter your forbidden ashes in this oh-so clean environment.

If you look at this image from afar, it's no different than that little fragile bird seeking warmth under a shade on a cold, rainy day.  Oh, poosh!  Kawawz!

Worse if you're in a country like Singapore.  You find your corner but you're not really sure if it's the right one so instead of enjoying every single puff allowed for you, you end up looking over your shoulders, puff as discreetly as possible hoping you don't get fined for it.

I'd rather be a negro because I'll be called African-American.  I'd rather have AIDS because then I'll be called a victim.  I'd rather be gay because then my movies will make money.  But to be a smoker, you're a sinner.  You are a leper in the sea of Pharisees.  If you're not careful, it could even mean jail time.

I was lucky enough in 1995 or 1996 to have flown in International flights with a smoking section.  Not that it's a wonderful experience though.  Being stuck for 12 or 15 hours of smoke smelling, smoke filled economy section with drunken seamen ordering everything that's for free on the bar menu is not my idea of enjoying smoking privileges.  But then again, looking back, we were accorded proper recognition just like people in wheelchairs with their own set of ramps anywhere that there's a street corner.  Back then we were still, well, sort of "accepted".

And then, "Oprah" happened.  Then social responsibility was coined.  Then came organic food and all that eat-like-a-goat syndrome, eat-healthy-meaning-bland-green things.  25 years later and look at where we are now?  Crowding the sidewalks of buildings, sometimes herded by obnoxious security guards to make sure we stay in our invisible space that won't ruin the ambience of its building, standing around sharing a single trash can puffing away as fast as we could so that we could go back to our jobs 21 floors up.

I wish I was born in Japan or Italy where smokers are not aliens.  Every restaurant has a smoking section.  Ash trays complete the ambience of the table together with fresh flowers in a vase.  I feel so welcomed.  I feel like I am part of society.

Smokers are people too.  We vote just like every healthy constituent there is.  We pay taxes just like everyone else.  Certainly, we are much better customers in restaurants than the ones who order their steaks well-done.  There are far worse people that should be discriminated around us.

Why us, then?  Because we're easy targets.  Because a mile away, people can see us from the smoke coming out of our mouths.  If they see a dismembered finger beside a tiger, everyone is going to point at the tiger as this dumb carnivore responsible for that finger even if he was asleep all day long.  People don't have the guts to fight against the more difficult battles.  We have become a convenient slogan and sound byte to those politically correct, hypocritical "health buffs" and "environment junkies".  They've barred us but no one has yet barred all those smoke belching toxic factories all over the world.

Someone once said, "Rules are made by the weak to limit the strong."  That's the one line that I keep telling myself as a consolation to the isolation given us, smokers.

Give us our space.  We won't live long enough anyway to pester you forever.

Long live, Smokers!