polite smokers

When the weather is nice, which isn’t all that often here in Texas, I sometimes open my big sliding glass door that separates me from the rest of the shoppers that frequent the mall I call home. Nice days are hard to come by in Austin for any number of reasons, either it is a hundred and fucking 3 degrees, or it’s 96.4% humidity, or there is a freaky thunderstorm dumping buckets of rain and hail from an acute angle, or the Cedar pollen count is in the five figure range. Sometimes it is all four simultaneously together, in a strangely biblical way.

But when I do open the barrier between me and retail hell, and I decide to let some of the outside in, the absolute last thing I want to do is smell a disgusting cigarette.

Occasionally I find a smoker who can do multiple things at the same time: walk, talk, and smoke for instance. But it is oh so rare. You’ve heard about these mythical one handed mechanics, the guys who can rebuild a 1970 Jaguar E-type V-12 with their left hand, (while their right hand, the one holding the fag, never lets an errant ash stray).

What I’m talking about here is a mutation on the ordinary smoker. These mall smokers are a unique subset of the normal world.

Mostly when I think of people taking a smoke break, I think of 5 or 6 slightly heavy, a bit older, office workers walking out together for their morning ritual at 10:00. They all huddle together under an awning near the entrance to their office building so they don’t get rained on. It’s the kind of picture you seen on the evening news when they are reporting on a story about another town banning indoor smoking.

These smokers, the ones at the mall, are different. They are a bit too skinny. The have Stewart Weitzman shoes, and Louis Vuitton bags. They are wearing the latest fashions like they just picked them up off their lover’s floor (where they had been tossed the night before). The are the smokers from magazine ads in real life, 30 feet directly below me.

I’m pretty sure they all use their little Blackberrys, or Sidekicks, to text each other from the different retail stores they work in, so they can gather all together, and partake this ritual together en masse.

They need power in numbers to annoy me properly. For a lone smoker, or pair, doesn’t have enough oomph to reach my second story window. So they gather as a little mini mob, and puff away. They can’t text, or check their messages, or talk on the phone, because this would require two hands, or talking, and Lord knows that takes too much coordination. And the cloud slowly rises to invade my living room.

It doesn’t matter that there are little signs posted that read “This is a smoke-free property”. The fat security guards just walk on by. And the shoppers look on in amazement thinking “this is how they stay so skinny”.

Finally, when they are done, the don’t just toss their butts on the ground and stomp them out with their pointy toed shoes. Instead, the daintily bend over, and quickly rub out the cherry on the side of the curb, tossing the now extinguished cancer stick into the designer trash can on their way back to their respective stores.

I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.