by Luke Boyd

The distinctions between the things you did or didn’t do, they don’t really matter. For sure, everyone has done something.

Everyone has a secret.

I’ve got mine, sitting on the toilet, behind the curtains, wondering who might be out there, watching me look out at them while they look in at me, watching me watch them watch me. Everyone is made up solely of glances from watchers. Glances captured from the leveling eyes of people on the street, or their own as they pass a mirror, or look through rainy glass.

Just in case you’re wondering, this isn’t really “headed somewhere” yet. So if you’re thinking that way, just stop.

I light up a cigarette here while I’m waiting. Too much fiber in your diet and you will always be waiting. I light it with one of the matchbooks on the sinktop. There’s about twenty of them. Because you never know.

I don’t smoke, but smoking is something you can pick up instantly and it’s like you’re suddenly part of a family. You can get a pack of cigarettes anywhere and nobody is going to say, “Hey, I’ve never seen you buying here before! I bet you don’t even smoke!” Instead, if someone else is in there getting cigarettes too, you can kind of nod at them as you pass on your way out. It doesn’t even matter what brand you’re buying.

Then, too, if you’re out somewhere, at a bar or a diner, you don’t feel like an idiot. You can sit in the non-smoking section if you want, because you’re not really a smoker. Or you can sit in the smoking section, lay your pack out on the table, maybe light one up or maybe not. You never look like you’re lonely when you’re sitting there with a beer or a coffee and a cigarette in the ashtray, just smoking itself away. Maybe a magazine or a newspaper, too.

And of course, there’s the fact that people will never quite have you pegged. They see you walk out of that gas station with a pack and a lighter and they think they’ve got you down. You’re not truly happy with yourself. You don’t care about your long-term health. They never even stop to think that you may not smoke them. Or that you may be buying them for your fading bedridden grandmother. Or your twelve-year-old nephew.

Or if people see you sitting, say you’re at a Dunkin Donuts or some diner or something. And you’re alone. You’re not smoking and you don’t have your cigarettes out. You’re just sitting. Again, maybe a magazine or newspaper, maybe not. They stand in line or they sit a few booths away and they watch you and they take you apart. That guy looks like a real nutjob. He’s probably going through a divorce, or maybe his mother has recently passed. I bet he’s a Democrat. Whatever. Then you reach into your jacket pocket, pull out your smokes and strike one. Through that first thin curl of smoke up around your eyes you watch the whole game change. Or you can just fish the cigarettes out of your pocket, making it real obvious, get up and walk out. Light one up as you go out the door keeping your eyes real shifty, whispering in low muddled Spanish to the people you pass. Oh my God, that guy’s possessed or something.

These are the kind of games you have lots of time to play if you’re a kidnapper, drug addict, wife beater, if you’re in a wheelchair. I mean, on the average we’ve got over sixty years to fill up. Are you making the most of yours?

As I’m sitting here, not really peeking out through the curtains anymore, but letting my burning cigarette balance on the edge of the faux-porcelain sinktop, I’m thinking. I’ve been smoking, or not smoking as you may see it, on and off for thirty-one years. I’m counting the time from when I was born to age fifteen when I smoked my first cigarette as my first “off” period. It works. So how many cigarettes have I smoked or not smoked in that time? And how many cigarettes do you need to smoke before you can say, “Yeah, I’m a smoker”? I know you only need to kill one person in the alley behind the bar to be a murderer. And you only need to swipe one person’s car left idling in a Wawa parking lot to be a thief. So in that light, am I a smoker yet or not?

If so, I guess telling one lie should make you a liar. So why stop now? You’ve got the label, and there are a lot of stories to be spun. You can start by telling people you have some sort of terminal skin disease, that the scratching is manageable but the explosive diarrhea is really hell. Tell your next door neighbor that you saw her husband coming out of the Marriot last Friday at lunch. You waved to him but you weren’t sure if he saw you. He seemed like he was in a rush.

While you’re at it, go into one of those mid-priced family style restaurant chain places. Get a table in the no smoking section. Then ask for an ashtray. The waitress will say something like, “Excuse me sir but this is the no smoking section. I can get you a table in the smoking section if you want?” Just say, “No, this is fine.” Then light up a cigarette, or maybe two or three. As many as you can handle. Chances are the waitress (or if you’re really making a scene the manager) will come over and request you stop smoking in the no smoking section. With the burning cigarette or cigarettes balanced delicately between your fingers you say, “Thanks, but I don’t really smoke. This is just for decoration.” So now you’re a liar and a sociopath. Oh yeah, and possibly a smoker. A true rarity, the complete triple threat.

These are the kind of things that will really get you some looks. And that’s what we’re all after, isn’t it? That’s the only way to really identify ourselves, by how people see us. Take my neighbor Bill for example. He lives a couple of waiting-to-be-condemned houses up the street from me. I’m not sure how old he is. I mean, I’ve been smoking on and off for thirty-one years and I know he’s older than that, so let’s just say he’s old. He’s World War II old, he’s starched button down shirts and dress slacks seven days a week old. Bill’s wife is already dead, somewhere back around the turn of the century I’m sure, so he’s pretty well adjusted to living on his own. I see him every morning as I’m leaving for work, either when I’m leaving my house or when I’m pulling out into the street. Any time he sees me like this he flags me down with his blue-white flapping chicken arms. Then he sidles on up to my car, like we’re talking at a bar over a pint or something.