Loose Laces

March 27th will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day I quit smoking cigarettes. As a college lad of a mere thirty-eight undisciplined years, it was traumatic. I'd tried several times before, but I always had the pluck and enough will power to go back to the evil weed. But then, something even more traumatic caused me to quit for good.

It was sex. In 1983, I gave up having sex due to medications. Not my medicines, but Carolyn's. She developed hypertension, and her pills caused her to lose her sexual appetite; at least that's what she told me.

Smoking and sex are inextricably linked; why have sex if you can't have a post-coital smoke? Why smoke if you don't have sex as a reason for smoking?

I was desperate for sexual intercourse and nicotine. After due thought, I decided I should don the habit and enter a convent. I could make myself pretty enough to pass as a woman; everyone always said I favored my mom anyway. I already had long hair, and a good razor with plenty of blades would take care of leg and facial hair. In the convent are women, and where there are women, there are horny women; celibacy only counts when someone is looking.

After making preliminary plans to enter a convent near Pittsburgh, PA, a problem arose; they don't allow smoking. You can sneak and screw, but you cannot sneak a smoke. Mother Superiors and their lackeys have keen noses, I was told.

Why enter a convent anyway? There is sex to be had about anywhere, especially for someone as suave and charming as was I. The reason was availability of the resource; I liked to consume as much of the ladies favors as I possibly could. I was too old to enter a girls-only school, and a convent was the next best place.

Disappointed, I gave up smoking, and I haven't had the pleasure of a female body under me in all those years. Even though Carolyn finally changed to pills that didn't steal her desire, it was too late for me. I refused to take up cigarettes again, and I can't bear the thought of having sex without a follow-up smoke.

Now you know the reason I write and make photographs; neither one requires me to stick any part of my body into anything else and neither takes much effort and isn't messy. I don't need to smoke.