Smoking
I am an occasional second hand smoker. I never have to admit this to doctors, since it’s not on the forms. The habit started young.
In Spain during the 90s and early 2000s, the government attempted to curtail the health issue at hand. Testy Spaniards smoked deliberately under the ‘no fuma’ signs. I would manically run around the plaza where my tio Alberto’s bar lives well past my American bedtime, hearing his gravelly voice cackle above the crowd at whatever asinine thing I was doing. In his version of mornings, which started no earlier than 11am, I would sit in his apartment, watching him light cigarette after cigarette, holding whatever demonic cat he owned lovingly, reveling in his eternal bachelor life.
I don’t seek it out, and I’ve never smoked beyond a drunken drag here and there, mostly because of how long the smell lingers in my hair. I am guilty of perhaps purposefully walking by that designated area where smokers hang out and breathing in. I’m sure it’s terrible for me, but at least I don’t regularly patronize smoking bars anymore. There were six in Santa Cruz when I lived there; the Downstairs Red, the Catalyst, the Asti, the Jury Room, the Rush, and the One Double Oh Seven Club. All were grandfathered in, but a few of those grandfathers died, so now only three remain. The bars aren’t quite the same.
Smoking is (slowly) falling out of fashion back in Spain. Some friends still hold on, and my tio will never quit, even if his life depends on it. I won’t pine for the days when housemates smoked in the apartment, Ester tapping her ashes and putting out butts into our unattended water cups (vile), tobacco wafting into my room even with my door shut and window open (unfortunate).
I will miss, however, watching my Barcelona university peers on the train ride to school, meticulously dolling out tobacco onto tiny scraps of paper, religiously lining up the crutches, rolling and sealing the cigarettes shut with their saliva right as the train doors opened, lighters flickering in sync with their first step out. If they forgot a light, they would ask you if you ‘tens foc?’ which always pulled a wry twitch out of my lips.
I usually had a light. And I would trail behind, taking in that second hand release.