The Few, the Proud (03/02/2006)
(In response to an article by Peggy Noonan here)

I am a smoker. I quit for quite some time but recently have taken it back up, this time with small cigars instead of cigarettes. My sole other vice is that I am a writer. Writing, as you know, is a sedentary and lonely life. You sit inside looking out at the world, wondering if it really is as nice, or as miserable, as it looks outside.

But now that I'm smoking, I don't have to wonder. From time to time I bundle myself up and head outside to see the world. I sweat in the summer and freeze in the winter. I huddle from the miserable autumnal rains and breath in the strange and wild scent that is left by them. I gaze up at skies kissed by the early morning sun or painted in broad strokes by coming cold fronts or tropical depressions (much the same upper level cloud patterns I've noticed).

Then there is the special camaraderie of smokers. "The few, the proud, the lepers." It's a strange and powerful feeling to know that you are the unclean of unclean. And there is a special humility to it as well. Very few companies have "upper-management leper areas." Huddled in what little shelter might be afforded you can find mail clerks spotting vice presidents a smoke. You can find $1,000-an-hour consultants smoking Cuban cigars and talking about sports with janitors. You'll see the last vestige of chivalry as a young man from the bowels of the building graciously lights the cigarette of a pretty and upscale secretary.

All of these benefits in my life! The sights, the sounds, yes, even the smell of pipe and cigar smoke (OK, even I think that cigarette smoke is rank) simply for the price of poisoning my lungs and (potentially, I always keep Churchill in mind) shortening my life.

What is a life without a soul?

Well, so be it. If that is the price I have to pay for the sights and smells and sounds of real life, I'll by all that is holy pay it!

The few, the proud, the strong: The smokers!

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