Not even done yet

Smoking is a double edged sword when it comes to interacting with strangers. Certain people will avoid me like the bubonic plague when I'm smoking outside, which to be quite honest is usually perfectly okay with me. For the most part I don't want to talk to people I don't know when trying to enjoy a cigarette, hell I can barely keep up with the people I do know these days. However, smoking in public somehow opens the invisible door to my personal space to other smokers who feel they can ask me for a cigarette or a light.

The lighter thing I don't mind, it's the cigarette thing that usually gets to me. Cigarettes are expensive and they aren't getting cheaper any time soon (when I first started smoking I could get 2 packs with a $5 bill - and get change, now in Chicago I can get one pack with a $10 and get barely enough change to wash a load of clothes and forget about drying...) Usually I lie and give the "It's my only one" line when I am confronted by strangers requesting my property...it's a weird feeling, I feel guilty and accused at the same time, I feel I have to come up with an excuse when in reality it's my fucking stuff, I wouldn't give away anything else if randomly asked for it by a stranger. When is the last time you heard "Hey, that's a great shirt can I have it?" or " Can I get some of those fries?" between strangers on the street?

Anyway, my guilt and weirdness aside, I had a most unusual experience this morning. I get off the train a block before my work so that I can smoke one last time with the coffee I have bought at the beginning of my trip and now is cooled off enough to drink. While doing this daily ritual this morning I was approached by a man who asked not if he could get a light (okay), or a smoke (sorry, only one left) but if he could get my short. For you non-smokers they may be reading this, a "short" is when you stub out a cigarette part way through so that you can finish it later, it is the tail end and, though this is of no concern to this post, they reek of something awfully foul (I imagine it smells to me like smoke smells to non-smokers).

This guy, who I do not know and do not wish to know (especially at 7:45 in the morning when I am barely awake as it is) was basically asking me for the cigarette I was currently smoking. This was a new one for me and I was astounded by it - it takes a lot of balls (or something) to ask somebody for something they are in the process of using regardless of its content. I told him no, that I was planning on finishing my own cigarette and walked off.

I heard him ask another women I passed the same thing (I believe she gave some version of the "It's my only one" spiel) and then he sort of followed me - waiting for me to toss it or just stalking me I don't know. I stopped a little bit before the corner and he stopped right next to me, commenting that I could continue to tease him and about how he didn't even know me....All too much for me, I started walking again towards my work with him constantly in my periphery. I walked up to the McD's next door where they have an ashtray and stubbed out what was left (which was not enough to smoke anyway) and snuck in my door. It was not a pleasant way to start the day.