The habit of smoking after sex has never made sense to me.
Personally, I’ve always viewed smoking as more foreplay than finale.
Yes, yes. Shake your head at the arsenic-soaked loser that I am.
I admit, quite regretfully, that I’m a perpetual quitter when it comes to
tobacco. I know what it’s done to my skin, teeth, and circulation. But I hadn’t
really thought about its effect on my love life until recently.
Researching ways to quit, I stumbled upon a report about the role
of smoking in relationships. “Lighting up gave clues to each partner that it
was time to talk, time to give space, or even time to defend yourself because a
world-class argument was about to begin,” the article stated, adding that couples
need to “recognize cigarettes as an abusive third member of their
relationship.”
How could this be? This tool I’d so long used as an excuse for
introduction and flirtation had become my abusive lover? Great. Now I’m a
smoker and a battered woman.
The report led me to do a painful little inventory that revealed
that more than 75 percent of my relationships have started or progressed
through smoking — the bumming of a cigarette, the borrowing of a lighter, the
numbers found scribbled on matchbooks, the endless conversation that
accompanies chain smoking in a relationship’s infancy.
Most of us have clear-cut policies on smokers — we either date
them, or we don’t. My lines are a bit blurrier. I don’t want to date a
cigarette-with-my-coffee-in-the-morning kind of smoker. And I made this very
clear in a recent relationship when my girlfriend’s smoking was becoming
excessive. “I don’t want to date a smoker,” I said, exempting
myself. She soon called to reveal that she had found a replacement vice —
chocolate. “I don’t want to date a fat girl, either,” I admitted, realizing
that a butt here and there might not be so bad.
For me, the behavior has always come coupled with revelations
about a person: does she prefer Marlboro or Nat Sherman? Is he attentive enough
to light you up first? What will her lips look like as she exhales?
But, as smoking culture has died off as we near the fifth
anniversary of this state’s ban on public smoking, so too have those
opportunities to use it as a foray into flirtation. My once guilty barroom
pleasure has now reduced me to a shivering mess begging for a light on the
corner like a crack whore. More noticeably, my smoking behavior has tended to
follow that same fateful arc as so many of my relationships — from fun to
damaging.
In the beginning, my girlfriend and I used to sneak away from the
dance floor for a quick puff. But toward the end, we were gorging on tobacco
diets fueled by anxiety, frustration, and an impending sense of doom. We’d sit
for hours in an idling car, flicking butts out opposite windows and speaking
only to snag the last drag. It became my preferred tool of passive aggression,
as I’d flagrantly light up after nagging her all day to quit. And if I woke to
find a cup of stumped-out butts, I knew a fight had gone down the night before.
On top of all this, my “abusive third party” is also reportedly
responsible for damaging my orgasmic potential, shriveling my eggs, and leading
to early menopause. Hot!
So here I am again, single and vowing to kick the habit. If this
go-around fails, there’s always smokingpassions.com, a dating site for
unapologetic smokers, who lure women with musings like: “All I know from the
first time I bought a pack of Marlboro reds at age 14 for $1.75 I know I was
onto something.” Shootmyselfintheface.com is looking a lot more appealing right
now.
Jeannie Greeley is a freelance writer
who hopes her friend Petunia has kicked the habit. She can be reached at
jeannieg@comcast.net.
