Date A Girl Who Smokes
Date a girl who smokes. Date a girl who spends her money on the quiet peace that spans the pauses between puffs, yet has no problem sharing the air she breathes with you. Date a girl who has a list of brands she wants to smoke, who has been smoking since she was legal.
Find a girl who smokes. You’ll know that she does because she will always have some well packed tobacco in her bag. She’s the one wistfully blowing smoke rings over her coffee, the one who exudes a silent pout when she finds she has a lone stick left in her box. You see that nonchalant chick with the full, pursed lips exhaling slowly between lingering laidback puffs? That’s the smoker. They can never resist the fresh earthy smell of good baccy, especially when “It’s Toasted”. She’s the girl smoking while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, you’ll see the steam rising slowly, curling playfully and mingling freely with her soft, easy breaths. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who smoke are not easily intimidated. Ask her if she has a light.
Offer her a second stick.
Let her know what you really think of Marlboro. See if she got through her first puff without choking. Understand that if she says she dislikes menthol she’s just saying that to sound less feminine. Ask her if she loves Luckies and if she would like to get Lucky. Tonight.
It’s easy to date a girl who smokes. Give her cigars for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of company, in moments pensive or reflective, quiet or chatty, in pauses between life, spent sharing a fag. Give her the gift of life, in small measured breaths, passed between fingers. Give her the recognition that you share the same air. Understand that she knows the difference between death and not-living and by God, she’s going to live her life to the fullest, not holding on too tightly and not letting fear hold her back. Understand that the art of exhaling has taught her how to let go. It will never be your fault if she does.
Leave her for awhile. If she understands the transience of life, she will understand the need to move on, to not be fixated on the present, to not grasp too tightly. Life like smoking is about space: the spaces between drags, the spaces between wafts of formless smoke, the physical spaces between people, the temporal spaces between meetings, the necessary spaces between reunions.
Fight her. Because a girl who smokes knows that friction brings the spark, and the spark brings the light of flames. Because a girl who smokes knows that you need fuel to ignite a fire, that everything that burns truly hot and bright eventually burns out, but that you can always rekindle the flames. That when you get too close to the fire sometimes you get burnt.
Why be frightened of everything that could hurt you? Girls who smoke understand that pain, like death, is inevitable. And they never run from it.
If you find a girl who smokes, keep her close. When you find yourself up at 2 AM, wake her up and share a smoke with her. You may lose her to her individuality every once in awhile but she will always come back to you.
You will propose alone on a beach during sunset. Or in the middle of a crowded dance floor. Or huddled close under an umbrella. Sharing a stick in the rain.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled and then you will joke about lung cancer. You will burn through your life till it is nothing but a stub, but you’ll know that it was never wasted. You may not have children, but you probably won’t care. You will play with fire and she’ll be the spark that ignites your life. And just like she leaves her lipstick on her cigarette, she will kiss an indelible mark onto your soul. You will walk the winters of your old age staving off the cold with the warmth of each other’s hands by the flaring glow of your cigarettes.
Date a girl who smokes because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most exciting life imaginable. If you can only give each other monotony, and stale hours and half-baked excuses for not living your lives to the fullest, then you’re better off alone. If you want life and the fire to live it, date a girl who smokes.