Cigarettes are like women, illustrative

"If I'm not tall enough, how tall do you want me to be? Do you want me to tower over you or something? How in the world are you going to be able to walk with me? How are we going to kiss? That's a bunch of bullshit."

All this time Melon was staring at me rant while stirring her coffee with a spoon. She was wearing an oversized asphalt, grey sweatshirt with the word "Illustrative" running across her chest. Not sure what it meant, but it was pretty stylish. Her sweatshirt was tucked under her denim jeans.

"I think so too," she said. "But it's all a matter of tastes. Girls generally like tall guys. No doubt about it. Not like you could do anything about it."

I took a sip of my orange juice and let the taste roll around my tongue.


"To me, cigarettes are like women," my other friend said while smoking. I met him in front of the library after seeing Melon. He cut smoking by a huge number, starting from about a pack a day to two or three times a month. "You get pleasure for a limited time, and then they leave you, or you leave them. But you can never get enough of that pleasure."

"That seems more like a prostitute," I said.

He nodded. "But I think cigarettes are stupid," he said, as if he finally came to realize that it damaged your health. "Why should I be smoking this thing? Why can't I stop."

"Why can't you," I said.

"Because I'm stressed. Whenever I'm stressed I need it still. But I'm slowly getting there. Slowly. It's like diminishing marginal utility. Smoking a second time isn't always the best as the first."