Kissing a Smoker is like Licking an Ashtray

Colossus (my ex who lives in Arkansas,who in my last post eons ago, I had just left) is a big guy. Really big--6 ft 8.

He is also a good guy. A good enough guy that I was totally prepared to marry him and may well have had circumstances been different. He has an ex-wife and a (truly adorable) young son, so he is pretty much tied to Little Rock. After a while of living there, I realized I would simply never be happy if I too were tied there. So, I left. It was the single hardest thing I've ever done and sometimes I wonder about what might have happened. This was truly the relationship that taught me that, contrary to what the Beatles may claim, love is not all you need.

This is a little story about an incident in which he irritated the hell out of me. It's certainly not a candidate for "why my ex should rot in hell" status, but annoying nonetheless.

I am a pack a day smoker. (Sidenote: this is something RGB's Fred and I bonded over--this and Billy Joel. (Additional sidenote: the first time I typed "bonded," I accidentally wrote "boned." Not a Freudian slip, I promise RGB.)) I know, I know--gross, you're killing yourself, trashy, etc. I've heard them all and I'll quit when I finally decide for myself that I want to. I've tried to quit for other people in the past and now realize that its just too hard to do unless you want to quit for yourself.

Well, Colossus HATED that I smoke. Really, truly despised it. I'm sure he could write his own loser-ex post about my smoking. He would harp on me all the time about my smoking--and, in my defense, I did try very hard several times to quit, but just couldn't do it. He said it was nasty (true), unhealthy (true), and made me smell bad (true). It got to the point that in the last few months of our relationship, he refused to kiss me not matter how many times I brushed my teeth, used mouthwash, and showered. Now, I know I'm a smoker, so I'm mostly immune to the smell and rarely ever smell it on me (though I know its there), but can you really still smell it after all that? This is an honest question. I'm not going to be offended if you say yes. Colossus said that it came through my pores even if I showered, etc. (My God, that's really gross, now that its typed out.)

But the fact remained, I am a smoker. So, Colossus decided to switch to more devious tactics.

I always left my cigarettes in the car and never smoked at home if he was there (and never in the house, obviously), because I knew how much it upset him. After a big fight about my smoking, during which I agreed to try to quit again (I lied and made no attempt to quit, just to hide it better), he began stealing my packs of cigarettes out of my car. Because I was supposed to be trying to quit, I did not want to confront him about it and tell him to stop. So, in response, I started hiding them in different places inside the car. Under the seat, inside the piles of ever-present crap in my car, even in the compartment in the trunk for my car jack. But he always found them. I kept buying more and refusing to say anything about it, even though I knew that he obviously knew that I wasn't quitting. I have a massive stubborn streak (I am also stubborn in the fact that I insist upon thinking that my stubbornness is endearing), so confronting him would entail me acknowledging that I was lying--and I wasn't about to do that.

This went on for about two weeks. I was spending an absurd amount of money on cigarettes, since I rarely got more than about five from a pack. But apparently the way to my heart--or in this case, away from it--is through my checking account. After he found a pack hidden under my spare tire, properly screwed to the floor of my trunk and all, my cheapness overtook my stubbornness and I exploded at him. I was definitely overly confrontational about it--but, hey, I had to minimize the fact that I had been lying and try to shift as much blame as possible. He stopped stealing them, but in retrospect, he totally won. I was forced to admit that I wasn't quitting and hadn't even really tried. Of course, we both already knew that, but he made me say it out loud.

As I said before, Colossus is a good man, so most of my bad stories about him have a decent amount of bad behavior on my part. Sure, he was stealing (and being so insanely thorough in his stealing), but I was lying. Feel free to judge me. I've already come to terms with it.