I Just Can't Quit You

by Nicholas Allen — July 24, 2007

I started smoking way back when I was in high school (and it was the "cool" thing to do), and quitting was just about the hardest thing I've ever done. Smoking was what got me through writing articles, nights of drinking, attempts to find something distracting to do with my hands while asking a girl for her phone number without betraying any anxiety--in short, I often felt, upon lighting my first cigarette of the day, that holding a cigarette was my hand's reason for existing. I remember when I was going through the process of quitting, and a friend asked, "So have you lost the craving for nicotine yet?" I responded by saying, "No, but I have lost the will to live." That was more or less the literal truth, which should give you some idea as to how difficult it was--and how reluctant I am to potentially fall back into bad habits by dating smokers now.

I met a girl at a party a few weeks ago and, what with one thing and another, it took us a while to get around to formally setting a time and place for a first date. We spent quite a bit of time kissing on the night we met, and I vaguely remembered her as tasting like vodka cranberry and peppermint gum. My tobacco detectors are pretty keen, as a former smoker, so I feel quite certain that I would have remembered if she'd been smoking that night.

Which is why I was more than a little surprised to learn last night that she is, in fact, a voracious smoker, a veritable chimney of a woman. It's not that I find the smell of cigarette smoke on a woman's hair, clothes, or breath repugnant. If anything, I find it far too tempting. Like most smokers, one of my favorite times to smoke was immediately after sex, so the smell and/or taste of a woman I'm attracted to combined with cigarette smoke can only serve to drive my lust-levels for both of them to almost unbearable heights.

Nevertheless, I'm a man who prides myself on being able to exercise a certain amount of self-control. I managed to make it through last night without either committing any unpardonable offenses against my date's person or lighting up. I don't know how much more of it I can take, though. I like this woman, I really do. She's smart and beautiful and absolutely the best kisser I've encountered in what may very well be years. But quitting smoking was hard enough the first time around; I don't relish the idea of being one of those people who begins sentences with: "I remember the first time I quit smoking..."

I don't think I can date her if she's a smoker. But I also don't think I even want to consider not dating her. And I can't help feeling that it would be somewhat out of line for me to request, after only one date, that she quit. We have a second date planned for tonight...maybe asking her to quit is more of a second-date kind of a thing.

Nicholas Allen is a writer and columnist based in Manhattan. To read all of his blogs, click here.