Posted 1/22/2006 03:15:00 PM by Douglas

Smoking; Sure it causes cancer, halitosis, emphysema, stinky clothes and recently become ridiculously expensive. But what a great way to meet chicks.

Sure, we'll all live longer, but how will this affect the future of flirting?

Cigarette etiquette is ancient stuff, stowed in the cultural marrow back when men wore real hats and glam movie stars with impossible cheekbones gave come-hither looks through unfiltered haze. What relics of chivalry still surround this tiny lethal object, the cigarette! What other than a cigarette could a person request of a total stranger? What but splendid pretense prompts a fellow to flick a lighter for a girl who already has a match?

Cigarettiquette anyone? Did I just make that up? [Quick googling. Nope, someone beat me to it. But I still like it.]

Pinup Betty Grable in a turban, circa 1935, her eyebrows thin as starving commas: She rests a cigarette on her lips, cradled between two dark fingernails. The man beside her stares at the lit match he's holding out, while she looks intently into his eyes. That look was part of the ritual, you figure; even if she didn't mean it, that was the polite thing to do. He made her feel like a lady and she made him feel like a man. It seems a whole lot of silliness now, but everyone knew their parts.

These days, Americans flirt feebly, liquor-soaked and anxious.

As others have noted before, smoking a cigarette allows you instant admission to what used to be a nationwide brotherhood of polite strangers. Except menthol smokers: why don't you just go eat a tube of toothpaste? But anyhoo, I can't think of an easier way to approach a total stranger and instantly strike up a conversation. Although if you're paying $7 a pack, I can imagine that the "bumming a smoke" might be received less than warmly.

But I particularly enjoyed what's not sexy about smoking:

Not sexy: those people outside office buildings. One hand clutches an unbuttoned coat collar. The other holds a cigarette. There's no draped wrist on a bar, no whiskey and low lighting. Delivery trucks rumble past and there's gray gum by the ash-and-trash and it's cooold , and you wonder what kind of demon could drag them out here. When they return to their cubicles, they drag a stale, grubby smell behind them.

Not sexy: smokers at a party, relegated to the back yard, where the backdrop to their conversation is a girl vomiting by the garage.

I think I've been to that party. Several of them. And what will happen when smoking is banned everywhere?

Will people be reduced to approaching one another under the guise of borrowing something as dreary as a pen?

Why bother?