I first experienced cigarettes in sixth grade. I sneaked out my parents’ house in the middle of the night to go TP’ing with a friend. Some older neighborhood kids were sitting under a streetlight blowing giant plumes of smoke into the still night air. They had long greasy hair, baggy jeans, and absurdly long belts hanging past their knees. If one of them pulled out a switchblade and told us to take a hit, it would’ve been exactly as I imagined from all the PSA’s. But they didn’t. My friend came over and asked for one. They handed him a Marlboro Red 100 – the kind you only see in bowling alley bars and Keno lounges. He held the thing with all five fingers and smoked it like a fine Cuban cigar – then he threw up on the curb and never smoked again. I wasn’t so lucky.
Everything and the The Bathroom Sink