Smokin'

10:37am Tuesday, May 16th.
Here I am sitting at my desk with the drizzle coming down outside. I have my headphones on and I am trying not to feel frustrated as I attempt to recover a 50 page document I have been working on for the past few months which seems to have been lost when I took my clunky old laptop into the shop to get fixed. Incidentally, the laptop is far from fixed. It appears that they cleaned it of viruses and other than that only exacerbated the problems I have been having, including turning a 50 page document into one blank page of nothing...

I hear voices talking outside. Someone is hanging out on the small balcony behind the office. It seems like it would be more fun to be there than here, so I go out into the cool rainy day. Patrick and Mickey are smoking and brainstorming. I join them, feeling slightly jacked up on coffee.

"Can I have a cigarette?" I ask. They both look at me strangely.

"Uh, sure," says Mickey. "They're in my bag."

As I go to get them, I hear the boys talking, sounding slightly stunned. "What's she doing?"

I can't remember the last time I actually smoked a whole cigarette. I don't know why I'm interested now. I light up and stand outside with the boys. We laugh and talk, make plans, boot ideas around, watch the rain fall and the smoke drift away. I pull smoke into my lungs and feel the hit immediately. Half way through, I'm completely dizzy. Memories of trying to be a bad-ass in high school...

I stub out what's left and go back inside. I need to sit down. Back in front of my computer Pearl Jam is playing on the internet radio, my head is buzzing, I can hardly sit still, my fingers are flying across the keyboard and let's be frank: I stink.

But I've always wanted to have a smoke break. I think this was just my first.
Don't worry, it was also my last. I vaguely feel like throwing up now.