Cult of smokers

I was working outside with a contractor on Monday.  We have to escort contractors any time they are on property.  When they took a break, they asked if it was alright if they smoked in the area we were in.  I said it would be fine and they took their break.  After a few minutes one of them asked, “I thought you smoked.”  I told them I wasn’t feeling very well so I wasn’t going to.  After this went round and round for a few minutes it turns out that none of them could believe that I wasn’t going to smoke today.  Any time I’ll be working outside for a while, I enjoy smelling my cigars and they had seen me smoke with them the last few times they were out here.  But this week I’ve been feeling under the weather and chose not to aggravate my body any further.  In fact, I haven’t smoked anything since New Years Eve.  These guys just could not believe that.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago in Chicago.  When I was on the road I used to smoke clove cigarettes because they smelled good and they were much quicker than a cigar.  I’d take the contractors outside at 3am in the freezing cold and they had their cigarette breaks.  In those conditions, you don’t want a nice 30 minute cigar, a quick cigarette does the trick.  One time I was out of the cloves so I didn’t light up.  One guy offered me one of his regular cigarettes and was confused when I turned him down.  Almost to the point of being offended that I wouldn’t accept his offer.

Another guy I worked with in Miami was surprised to notice that I didn’t smoke on my travel days.  Teresa hates the smell so I wouldn’t smoke for two days before I went home.  I wasn’t hiding anything from her, she knew (but did NOT approve) of my little road habit I picked up.  This guy refused to believe that I didn’t smoke all weekend when I was home.  ”Yeah, but you sneak one out in the backyard or the garage right?”  No.  I just don’t smoke.  He then went on to make fun of me for the rest of the time we worked together.

These people are giving me shit for NOT smoking…  What the hell?  Guys, the bad decision is in lighting up at all.  I know it every time I flick that lighter…  When one of you gets the right idea and decides not to, you should be congratulating him, not dragging him back down into your stinky ashtrays.  I smoke like I drink; I’ll indulge, have fun and then I’ll ignore it for months at a time before going back at it.  For Teresa’s party in September we bought two cases of beer.  Everyone drank the margaritas and we still had one and a half cases of beer left over.  It’s been over four months and I still have one full case.  Half of what’s gone was offered up to guests, two were used in cooking shrimp and brats and Teresa drank one…

Maybe I just don’t have an addictive nature but seriously, I was beginning to smoke pretty regularly while I lived in Chicago.  I had a room on the smoking floor of the hotel, the window was open and I just sat there writing and smoking every day and all weekend long.  Every two weeks I’d crush out my last one on Wednesday night.  Friday morning I’d fly home and I wouldn’t smoke again until Monday afternoon after getting back to O’Hare and I’d pretty much smoke continuously until it was time to fly home again.  When I finally came off the road, the brand of cigarettes I was smoking were banned so I just quit.  It was just that easy for me.  Hell, I didn’t pick up a cigar for over a year and a half after that.  It’s just not addictive to me.  I know it is to most other people but why am I catching hell for this strange “superpower”?

I don’t get it.  It’s like they are afraid one of us is going to get away.  As if lung cancer is lurking out there like a zombie in a room full of people.  Like they think they can hide from it in a large crowd but as the crowd thins, their chances of getting hit go up?  I have no idea what these people are thinking but I have run into enough people that think like this that I’m starting to think it’s some kind of strange cult where they won’t let you quit the gang or something…

Just when I think I’ve got things back under control, they go askew again.

Control is an illusion, I’ll never have things truly “under control” but I can usually at least gain a sense of “normal”.  I’ve been ill since Thursday.  I feel fine but I’ve got a horrible hacking cough and there is a complete drain of energy.  Along with that has come a complete lack of coherency in my brain.  I have done absolutely NO writing this weekend.  Saturday and Sunday mornings are usually my best times to write but I just couldn’t get my fingers moving.  I opened a page and I’d slam out three or four sentences and they sucked.

I couldn’t even pull off a cogent blog post.  Yesterday was my mother’s birthday and I’ve had this fog of an idea of writing something about mothers in my head.  What better time to post it than on Mom’s birthday right?  I sat there for an hour and couldn’t get three words to make sense together.  So I said, “screw it” and went back to bed.

I tried playing video games, I went to the store, I sat around the house…  Nothing made any sense to me.  I began to fear that something in my head slipped loose.  Today I’m still feeling loopy and I make no promises that what I write will make any sense but I’m posting anyway because it’s been several days since my last…

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Saturday we had to go out to what is left of Regency Square Mall.  I’ve let my conceal-carry permit expire (government job, unable to carry on property) so I was staying alert to everything around me.  It wasn’t as bad as I expected.  We were there about a year ago and I actually felt in danger but Saturday was pretty calm.  As we walked through the food court, I watched everyone.  After a few minutes I started to relax.  I calmed down on my hyper-alert for any immediate danger but I also relaxed some of my regular up-tightness.  I observed two examples of my own bias and bigotry.  Things that I try to capture, examine and minimize.  So I expose them here for you to ridicule me…

Most of you know that I have a pretty bad hang-up about everyone running out to get tattoos and piercings.  It was the cool-hip thing for a while and I despised it.  Most of you know I have dear friends, loved ones and others that have tattoos, some are fully sleeved, and I even have tattoos myself.  Most of you know I spent several years hanging out in a tattoo/piercing shop.  How do I live with this contradiction?  I just do.  I don’t try to explain it, I just accept my double-standard and move on with my life.

But when I saw all these twenty-year-olds with exposed tats and fully gauged ears, I didn’t give my “old man scowl” like I usually do.  This time I smiled.  I’ve been paying attention to all these “occupy” protests and how the numbers are stacking up about how difficult it is to find a job even with a college degree.  I looked over at my daughter, the one with normal looking ears, no tattoos on her exposed flesh and I smiled.  I know it’s my own bias but given two applicants, identical in skill but one has face-tats, I’m hiring the other one.  You can holler at me all you want about how the managers are getting younger and more accepting of “alternative people” but I still say that if you’re looking for a corporate job, or scientific grant or anything other than unskilled labor, the exposed tats are not helping.  Undoubtedly this is changing but in the immediate future, in the age that she’ll be looking for a job, she’ll probably be better off looking “traditional”.

This girl just had a conversation with me the other day about how she went to a party with ten friends.  Nine of them had dyed hair, multiple piercings, gauged ears…  She told me, “I wanted to be different and unusual but after looking at how they were ALL the same, I was the already the unusual one.”  That’s right kid, that’s right.  At 15, she’s already figured out what it took me until my late 20′s to learn.

If you haven’t seen the movie “SLC Punk” and you’re about my age, you should go check it out.  It’s a great slice of 80′s life but there is a scene in it where a girl asks the stereotypical punk-rocker why he’s dressed that way.  (Mohawk, suspenders, Doc Martens)  He says it’s a statement of rebellion, a way to stand out.  She tells him that he looks like everyone else, that he’s wearing a uniform.  Hit me like a thunderbolt.  The day I saw that movie was the day I stopped giving a shit about style and fashion.  And that was late in life, only about 15 years ago.  So all I can hope for is that she remembers just how much “normal” can shift in a few short years.

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So that was a cute story that didn’t make me look too bad.  A little bias against tattoos, a HUGE double-standard exposed.  but I still come off as a decent guy.  I hesitate to expose my next encounter because it exposes something in me that I hate to acknowledge.

We walked into one of the stores and the PA was playing some music.  The last song had ended and the next one was the opening bass riff from the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”.  We walked past some of the store patrons and one guy was bouncing to the beat and mimicking the bass line.  The reason I noticed and the reason I’m confused WHY I noticed was because he was black.

This wasn’t the first black guy I’ve seen that was into the Talking Heads.  But it is a bit unusual.  It just made me notice.  But then I thought, “Well, maybe some rapper sampled the Psycho Killer bass line and that’s where he knows it from.”  That’s the thought that made me cringe.  Somewhere in my head there is still a line between “black” and “white” music.  This line exists in a brain that listens to Ice-T, Run DMC, Public Enemy…  What would this guy think if I was singing along with “Straight Outta Compton”?  Truth is, I’d get my ass kicked.

There is still a line between white/black music and it’s mostly balanced on the infamous word “Nigga”.  Spell it any way you like, when I come to a stop light and I’m singing along with Easy-E, I stop singing.  So it’s just fine to have this man bopping along with Psycho Killer and I still listen to some of the early raps.  But I think either side is within their rights to notice…

Ahhh, and we’re back.  I’ve been working odd shifts again and sleep is elusive.  It’s normally during these little hell-weeks that I’m off-line and away from the keyboard.  I enjoy these little respites from the internet.  Especially during election season.  Oh my are you people insane.  Some of you attach all your hopes and dreams on one man and close your eyes.  You’ll follow him into Hell if that’s where he leads you.  No one is perfect, neither is the system.

There, that’s the extent of my political opinions I’m willing to express in public for now.  If you’re wondering where all my opinions on the current or upcoming politicians are, they’re not here.  Or on FaceBook, or anywhere you’ll read them.  I’m not a political commentator.  I don’t fall in line with either of the major parties.  Little of column A, little of column B, mostly just my own thoughts.  Many of which are not politically viable…  How awesome would it be to run for President on a platform of, “You won’t re-elect me but I’ll do my best in the time I have”?

Maybe that’s just the sleep-dep talking.  It’s a strange thing having worked half the week but coming in for the first “real time” on a Wednesday.  Like the week has only begun but it’s a half week.  Midnight shifts somehow don’t count.

Sometimes I wish for a job where I work in an office, M-F 9-5 and no call-outs.  Weekends off the cell-phone leash, able to visit people/places without wondering if I’ll have to leave early.  Able to make plans without the caveat of “If I don’t have to work”.  This weekend I had rather special plans at 4pm.  At 2pm I got called out… to Albany, GA four hours away!  Luckily the problem resolved itself without a dispatch but this is the kind of constant stress I live in…

Baby steps man, it wasn’t long ago that you just wanted a job, ANY job, that got you off the road.  Take it slow.  It’s sad, office drones fantasize about being important, I fantasize about being an office drone.

Adventure, excitement, a fat-man craves not these things…

I figured something out.  Soon after, I discovered I was wrong.

I’m not dwelling on it, I know some of you don’t want to see me leave Florida.  I will sincerely miss many of you when I go.  But after more than two decades in this heated shit-hole, in spite of my love for you all, I am counting the days (roughly 880 but yeah, I’m not dwelling on it or anything…) until we finally get to plan our escape.  I’m shooting for the Arctic Circle, Teresa wants something just a bit further south.  Anyway, it’s still an open count because if Becca decides on an in-state college, we’ll probably stick around for another few years.

BUT after years of living here, today I finally found the one thing (other than people) that I will miss when I leave Florida.  The smell of fresh-cut grass on the cold winter air.  Oh it was amazing!  I had to leave the dungeon today and when I came topside I found that they had just mowed the grass.  The air was cold and the smell just lit me up from the inside.  It was incredible!  I thought to myself, THIS is something I could miss.  You don’t cut the lawn with three feet of snow.  In all the years I’ve lived in this state I’ve never found one thing (other than people) I will miss when I leave it all behind.  Then this scent, this feeling crept into me and suddenly I can count ONE thing…

After about three seconds of intoxicating bliss, I came crashing back down to reality.  Hey dumbass, that’s the ordinary smell of cutting the lawn in September/October or April/May in the latitudes you long for.  The reason you feel so exhilarated is because it’s a fond memory of childhood, not because it’s a newly discovered yearning.  It’s not a reason to stay in Florida, it’s just one more reason to leave!

Ohh I wish I could have bottled that feeling though.  I’ve burned the Yankee Candle’s “Fresh-Cut Grass” and it was nice but when you put it on that frigid air…  Seriously, it was like getting high…  I’m going home and mow the lawn tonight…