A few weeks ago in Tribeca, in a Margritte-like twilight, I saw a woman in a lighted window on a high floor of a loft apartment building. She was standing on a chair and lowering the window's upper sash. She tossed her hair and did something complicated with her arms which I recognized as the lighting of a cigarette. Then she leaned on her elbow and her chin on the sash and blew smoke into the humid air outside. I fell in love at first sight as she stood there, both inside and outside, inhaling contradiction and breathing out ambivalence.
- Jonathan Frazen. Sifting the Ashes

Alongside my attraction to women with deep seeded emotional problems, smoking remains the most illogical of all of my vices. I've given up attempting to understand the former, but this occasional bad habit of mine of purposely inhaling smoke into my lungs, which has unfortunately recently returned, is a curious one. Even firefighters wear oxygen masks and, while I'd be the first to admit that my track record in relationships, if it continues on the same course, will drive me to my grave much faster, I have decided I would rather die bitter and alone than bitter, alone, and filled with cancer.

The first girl I "loved," she smoked. She smoked a lot. Her mouth tasted like an ashtray and I guess that explains why I picked up the habit in the first place. When she wasn't by my side I could light up a cigarette and it would bring me back to the previous night in my parent's basement with her laboured aromatic breath on my neck. Perhaps it's because the first female to see me naked since I started bathing myself smoked, but whatever the reason, ever since I seem to have an innate attraction to those with tendencies towards self destruction.

It could be just the recent rash of Film Noir I've been watching, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything sexier than nicotine addicts of the fairer sex. But why? Do I see their future onset of lung cancer as a potential "out" when the intimate relationship inevitably fizzles? Or do I still believe that only those who would allow toxic chemicals into their bodies would allow me into their bodies?

It's no doubt something I'll be struggling with even while I'm hitting on bar whores using my voice prosthesis after my laryngectomy.

Either way, I'm sure this new bout with Benson & Hedges will end once the pack's empty. Here's hoping that in the meantime my half cancer eaten rectum doesn't slide out during a bloody bowel movement or my lungs aren't hacked up and spat out as a black gelatinous mass. At the very least I pray for a heavy dose of memory loss.