A couple weeks ago, Subarna and I have dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, and it’s time for the debauchery to begin. I’ve already had a glass of wine, but then I decide to have an amaretto too. That stuff is intense. The fumes alone are enough to send one reeling. Suitably buzzing, we walk to the gas station and buy a pack of Marlboro Lights—the Rebel Prince readership gasps to learn that its author does enjoy a smoke now and then—and wander along Woodmont Avenue. Lots of people out and about. Subarna and I are smoking, sitting on the bench at the street corner like a couple of hoodlums.
A woman—an attractive one, at that—comes up and asks for a cigarette, and even gives me a quarter for one. (Subarna was to remark later that I’m like, a dealer now.) The woman says, “Yeah, I’m trying to quit.”
I say, “I hear ya,” in a disaffected, world-weary voice, as if I’ve been down that road and back again, yes, ma’am. When in fact, just one cigarette is usually enough to render me stupefied. I keep a straight face, but on the inside I’m laughing at my put-upon insouciance.
“It’s like my boyfriend won’t even kiss me anymore,” she says.
In hindsight I figure there are only two appropriate responses to this, depending on one’s, shall we say, outlook: “Honey, I’ll kiss you” or “Can I get his number, then?” Neither comes to me at the moment. I give a sympathetic “aww.”
With the transaction complete and pleasantries exchanged, the woman walks about five paces away, towards the crosswalk. But she does a one-eighty and comes back to us. We’d all suddenly realized she needs a light, which I am glad to provide. The gas station didn’t have lighters, just matchbooks. I feel very old-school, as I strike a match and hold the flame to her, careful to shield it from the breeze.
“Got it?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Mm hm,” I say, basking in some kind of perversely altruistic afterglow, but knowing all I’ve done is keep alive a stranger’s vice. I shrug it off and take a drag, momentarily wondering about the non-kissing boyfriend. The woman crosses the street and turns the corner and is gone.
I was just complaining to a friend about how I wish I was as witty in real life as I am online (well, sometimes… I guess). Such marvelously brill comments as ours, Jeff, seem to come just two seconds too late when in the flow of conversation. It’s torturesome, isn’t it? *sigh*
Now, if you were going for hardcore hipster points, you would’ve lit hers with the end of yours. (Cigarettes, I’m talking about cigarettes!)
Anyway, I still love that story.