Posted by Phillip Morris
on 6/9/2008, 4:57 pm
74.10.77.162
I'm a 40-ish bloke who travels for business around Europe. I live in London, where the nanny state has seen fit to provide a smoke free experience at the airport, as well as all pubs. Even the pubs in Heathrow are verboten. Even Virgin Air's Upper Class Lounge has bowed to Doloras Umbridge and her greasy, sneaky minnions. Of course, this leads to maximum time outside near the car park, double-barrowing enough tar and nicotine for an 8 hour flight. Once inside the terminal, only drink washing down legal drugs can enable me to carry on. Every person much choose their own poison, by I swear by two tumblers of Glenlivit to wash down the Ambien. Such sweet dreams.
Morning on the overnight flight means a full-blown, code red nicotine fit. However, with 25 minutes to landing, and a full business day ahead,the plan calls for a zen-like quazi meditative state. This existential gambit can only be attempted when one knows there is an aromatic Marlboro Red to be fired up just beyond the immigration line. Then it's "where have you been, do you have any agricultural material with you..." And you hear the joyuos sond of the stamp thumping your passport. Only a minute left until freedom and firing up.
The exit lounge is usually like a medieval fair, with fat old ladies dressed in black dragging cardboard boxes of promised electronic goodies. This is Milan, the heart of industrial Italy, yet it could be the frontier between San Remo and France, or even the customs kiosk in Tunis.
In the chaos, me, the closet smoker without peer, takes in the noise, the smells, thanks God for southern Europe, and lights up like it's my job. No one cares, and no one expects anything else.
Freedom for a closet smoker is a foreign land where nobody cares. Once, at a dinner party in Paris, the guests were having a great time blowing smoke all over me and my non-smoking date. In a rare example of courage, I pulled my own pack and smoked heavily and bravely thoughout the night. My status rose. My girlfriend, an ex-pat American, asked mke to take her home. That was it, but for a happy ending, I started dating Sylvie, the cut blonde Mrlboro Lights smoker at the other end of the table.
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