Date A Guy Who Smokes

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Date a guy who smokes, you’ll find him standing under the trees in a garden, or stepping out of a club into the fresh air to have a puff, you’ll see him taking a walk as smoke trails from his nose, or lost in thought appreciating the simple beauty that nature offers every day. Talks to him, smokers are the friendliest people you will ever meet. Ask him for a cigarette and watch him reach into his packet or pocket and hand you one even if it’s the last one. If he can’t find one bask in the selflessness of him offering you the half that he is holding in his hands.

Date a guy who smokes because he can make friends in a minute, he will stop and talk to people from all walks of life. Paupers, popes, poets, and posers will stand around with him for at least the length of a cigarette. Here is a man who knows how to share the world with everyone that the earth has thrown out of its belly, here is a man who has come to understand that there is something of worth in a shared word.

Date a guy who smokes because nobody can live in the moment more than him. Watch him take a puff as he stands still and let the world pass him by. Watch him not need the chatter of conversation in order to feel comfortable in the world, watch as he looks at the world with wonder and amazement as happy to be in the Hilton as he is to be in a dingy leaky bar because as long as he has his cigarette everything is ok with the world.

Date a guy who smokes because he realises the world isn’t ending soon. He is a man who has met with triumph and disaster and managed to treat those two imposters just the same, welcoming them into his life with a cigarette in his mouth and a fire in his hands. Date him because he understands fire. Because he knows that passion held too long can scorch you but that passion not properly nurtured will leave you cold and needing to try again. A guy who smokes knows that a gust of wind is all the world needs to throw at you in order to put off your dreams for a season, so he holds his dreams close; he cups them in his hands because he wants to protect them from the world.

Date a guy who smokes because, even though he may not have a solution to every crisis he knows that time changes everything. Look at him when something horrible happens, maybe his face will crumple a little, maybe his shoulders will sag, there may be fear and panic in his eyes. This will pass too in no time at all watch as he stands up right as a rod, fumbles in his pocket for a fire and lights the cigarette that you didn’t even see him put in his mouth. Watch as every puff he takes in restores some of his balance. Look closely enough and you will see his mind churning or his soul making peace with the world.

Watch him smoke at night with the lights off. See the flame from the cigarette light him up for just a moment before this illumination turns to smoke. Realise that he has had many moments like these. He understands the value of illusion better than most, it gives a warm glow but in no time at all it turns to smoke and ash. Maybe this is why he doesn’t lie so much, he knows that all lies flit away in the night air disappearing and leaving nothing but a bad smell in the room.

Date him because he stands his ground every day. Date him because he more than anyone else hears about the hazards of smoking. He has heard arguments against it and he has read reports about it but he did the thing that men do, he stood his own. Even if the whole world was arrayed against him he would stand there between that and what he cares about.

Date him because he finds pleasure every day in one small way. Date him because he can find joy in every waking moment. The joy of anticipation as he waits for his first cigarette, the child-like wonder and awe that is writ on his face when he finds a cigarette after giving up on ever doing so. Let these emotions into your life there are shabbier companions than joy and wonder.

Most of all date him because he understands love. He understands that sometimes love is wrong for you but love is worth being wrong. He knows that love hurts and he knows intimately that love kills but that doesn’t stop him from love. He is a man who has found something that he loves and is willing to let it kill him. He is a man with a capacity for great love, for depthless, for selfless love. He shows it every time he smokes.

So find a man who smokes and share a cigarette with him.

featured image – Flickr / Dirigentens