No, you CAN'T have a cigarette!

The BBQ Pit
1

So I’m standing outside on my lunch break, enjoying one of my three daily cigarettes, when a guy comes up to me and asks if he can bum one. I usually say no to these kinds of requests, but I’m feeling charitable for the first time this decade so I decide to give him one. Suddenly, I feel someone behind me, shadowing me like a boogyman. It’s another fucking dude.

“Actually, can I have one of those, too?”

Well, I put my foot down. “Sorry, last one.” And he knew I was lying because he saw me open my pack for Dude #1 and I could see a what-a-bitch look forming on his face as I walked away.

What I wanted to say was: “Do I LOOK like a fucking cigarette machine to you?! Do you think cigarettes grow on TREES?! No, they don’t!!! They grow on plants, and I pay MY money to someone so they can grind up those plants and mix them with various tars and contaminants and put them in a little tube, which I can then enjoy! And you’re not getting one!!! Get a job!!! Oh, wait, you work here with me, you do have a job. So go buy some goddamn cigarettes!!!”

Seriously, what is the major malfunction of these people? Even when I’m really dying for a cigarette (which I never am, because I’m not addicted) I wouldn’t ask a complete stranger for one, any more than I would ask them for money for the bus. No, wait, people ask for that, too.

And I get someone asking me for a cigarette almost every day. Whether I’m on break at work, or walking home, or waiting outside a building, I’ll get asked for a smoke, if I happen to be smoking at the time. Hell, one time some dude (and it is always a dude, women have never asked me for cigarettes) cornered me while I was coming out of the convenience store with a brand new pack. If I gave out cigarettes to every person who requested one, I’d be flying through two packs a week. Not cool, anonymous strangers!

That’s it, from now on I’m going to take one cigarette to work in a plastic baggie so when some loser with no concept of trading money for goods and services asks me for one I can truthfully say that it was my last one. I’m all for the occasional charitable giving of carcinogenic substances, but this has pushed me too far.

And the next shadowy dude who asks for one is getting a butt in the eye, I swear to God.

2

This is my favorite:

“Can I bum a smoke? I’m trying to quit.”
“Quit smoking, or quit buying?”

3

So, can I have one? Please, I’m seriously jonesin’ here.

4

I’ve never expected or accepted money for a cigarette. Of course, unlike you, I’ve bummed enough in my time that I feel obligated to hand one out when asked. Matter of fact, I usually say, “Take two.”

We’ll see what the responses are like here; I hope there are more smokers like me than there are like you.

5

As a non-smoker (well, not since twenty-odd years ago in high school, and not much then), I’ve always been fascinated by the “practical communism” of cigarette-bumming among smokers. Sometimes a total stranger will just walk up to me and ask me for a cigarette, or a total stranger lighting one up will offer me one. Polite “no” in both cases, but I always wondered, “Gee, smokers seem to just casually exchange cigarettes between total strangers, upon a random request. How does that work?”

Apparently, it doesn’t always. Oh well.

6

I was more like you. Hell, the camraderie of smokerdom is one of the things I miss. I got into a lot of conversations I never would have otherwise. I gave cigarettes to anybody who asked for them and never found myself wanting in hard times. Funny how that works.

7

I quit a few years back, but it works via cigarette karma. The amount of smoke that you give out will eventually be balanced out by the number of smokes that you bum from people.

8

no opinion other than “bleh, scummy cigarettes…”

9

Cigarette socialism: mostly works fine. If you give 'em out, you get 'em back when you’re short - I always give 'em out when asked, even to the scroungers, because I’ve smoked enough OP’s in my time: if I totted them all up, I’d probably still come out ahead. Now that there’s no smoking in bars here, there’s also the camaraderie of the pariahs who’ve been cast out into the outer darkness of chilly doorways: great way to meet chicks, incidentally.

10

I’m not defending the guy. Hell, I used to go out witha guy and have to walk next to him while he systmatically hit up every passing smoker for a cigarette. He also once got in a homeless shelter food line because he couldn’'t be arsed to buy lunch. I don’t think I need to say anything else.

But what I’m thinking is he say you give one to someone else but wouldn’t give one to me…probably walked off thinking “but’s what’s wrong with meeeeee???” “I must be a bad persoooonnn!!!”

Just saying maybe he’s not a moocher so much as a neurotic.

11

Really, I have to agree with everyone here. I came to understand that freely (snerk) giving out cigs was a part of smokers’ etiquette. Unless, of course, you were down to one, and then no one with any sense would expect you to give that one to them.

Oh, and as a woman, I have no problem bumming smokes from men.

12

When I smoked I definitely gave out alot more cigarettes than I bummed, but I was happy to do it, because when you bum a cigarette you usually are in a serious nicotine fit, so I thought of it a worthwhile prepayment for future crises of my own. I considered people who turned down such a trivial request total dicks, frankly and was only turned down once myself - by someone who, in retrospect, seemed a little unbalanced, and I probably shouldn’t have asked her in the first place. I rarely turned down requests and only when I was running low and always apologetically.

13

I don’t mind giving a cig to someone, it’s when they act like they’re entitled to it that I get pissed.

14

I think there are. I’ve bummed and been bummed from across the world. It’s a truly global phenomenon. One doesn’t even have to be able to speak the language to bum a smoke. Every smoker understands the body language. The only time it’s ever an issue is if it’s your last one, and even then I’ll offer if someone asks for one. The result is always a look of horror and a backing away. No one will willingly bum a person’s last one.

As a side note for non-smokers wishing to observe the strange rituals of the hidden society of smokers, stop into the smoking lounge/area of an airport sometime. Because of lighters being banned after security checkpoints, it’s like a strange tribalistic thing where people are exchanging lit cigarettes for the flame, and none is willing to let it go out. Very odd. I’ve been thinking about putting together a site that encourages people to drop off their lighters on ashtrays at the airport before they go in. If we could get enough people doing this, no one would ever need to buy a lighter at their destination again. Drop yours off when you depart, pick one up off the ashtray when you arrive…

15

How about when they stick it over their ear, “for later”?

16

I always give out smokes when asked, lest I be caught by bad karma. Although a lot of times at work, I just take the one cigarette down with me (not to prevent bumming, just too lazy to carry the whole case).

On the other hand, it took me only one cigarette to learn that you do NOT light up on the street in Haight-Ashbury (back when you could actually smoke inside California). Piranhas come to mind. Friendly, chillin’, hippie piranhas, but still.

17

davenportavenger, I said similar to what you wanted to, just the other day. I was in a bar and was a trifle drunk and cranky, but more importantly it was cigarette begging request #5 or 6 of that very day, which which is why I said it.

Girl: “Do you have a cigarette?”
Me: “Yes.”
Girl: “Can I have one?”
Me: “OK.” I give her a cigarette. “Do you have any money?”
Girl: “Yes.”
Me: [Patronisingly] “Well do what I usually do in these circumstances is I get my money and I spend it on cigarettes so I don’t have to beg.”
Girl: [Outraged] “Well if you’re going to be like that, you can have it back.”
Me: “OK then.” I took the cigarette back and put it in my packet.

She then turned to my wife and asked her, who gave her a cigarette from the same packet. In fact, I think it was the same cigarette I’d given her before.

Anyway, immediately afterwards I felt like a heel, so when she went to the bathroom I got a friend to be “the fag fairy”, and put a couple of extra ones on her table.

I’m not normally that rude, and usually I hand out two or three if I’m flush, but that day this poor girl was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

18

of course it’s always a second one they want, for later. That or they just finished one and they’re already bumming more. I tend to give a cig to about anyone that wants one (my one hard and fast rule is never giving one to someone that looks to be underage), but at least realize that it’s my property you’re asking for…NOT something you should just expect to get.

Russell

19

Context people, context.

20

Don’t forget, it was fags he was bumming.