Smoking, a Guide for the Blind
I’m blind. I don’t mention it in the blog because it usually isn’t germain to railing against god or drug laws or the fact that HBO canceled luck or whatever I usually talk about, but this time its important for the post.
Blind people have forums, which I never go on. But I was bored and so I was looking through the topics, found one about what blind people think they miss out on. Some kid said he didn’t know how to smoke cigarettes. I hate that I smoke cigarettes.
You can’t post to the forum unless you have an account, and I’d made one four years ago to ask a question about something which I hadn’t used since it got answered. But I went back and found my username just so I could write this little essay on how to smoke if you can’t see. So to old men going blind, curious people with vision and my fellow members of the army of darkness, enjoy.
So I have my own thing I think I missed out on, but first let me respond to the smoking thing.
My initial advice is don’t
fucking smoke. I smoke, I’ve been smoking for five years, I’d love to quit, I can’t.
That said, if you want to smoke, here’s what you do.
Get a bick lighter. You’ll know its a bick because its oval. The bottom of the bick is flat, the top is raised with a wheel. On one side of the wheel there is a hole. This is where the flame comes out. On the other side of the wheel there is a small… trigger. Its not like the trigger on a gun, it feels more like the spray button on cleaning fluid, its flat and doesn’t push down very far.
Hold the lighter in your dominant hand. The trigger part faces towards you, the hole faces away from you. You know your doing this right because your hand makes a fist around the lighter and your thumb is free, kind of hovering over the thing. Now take your thumb, and rub it quickly down the wheel. You want to push, not mad hard, you’ll figure it out when the wheel turns. As the wheel turns, your thumb should almost automaticly slide down to the trigger. Once it hits the trigger, push the trigger and keep your hand there. If all has gone well you should now have a flame lit. You’ll know because you’ll hear it fwish and feel the heat.
The flame is now going to be in existence above your fist. lol, is this description totally retarded?
Anyway, practice that a few times so that you feel reasonabley sure you know what your doing.
It should be one quick little motion, not all fumbling, kinda like snapping your fingers.
Now, get your pack of cigarettes. If your cigarettes have filters, when you open the pack of cigarettes the filters will be facing you, that is, filters = top of pack, end of cigarette you burn equals bottom. Cigarettes have a weird rapper like a pull tab, but just tear the plastic rap to skip past more crap you don’t want to deal with for now.
Put a cigarette in your mouth. If your cigarette has a filter, you will know because if you hold the thing in between your teeth, not between your lips its gunna have some give to it like rubber and when you poke at it with your tongue it will be flat. If you have tabaco on your tongue after doing this you either have a cigarette without a filter or your about to screw up.
If you light the filter, something I wanta point out for whoever’s keeping score I have literally only ever done once in five years, you will know because your going to smell burning plastic. If the cigarette has no filter you will know because you will feel the roughness of tabacco at both ends.
Moving on.
Put the cigarette in your mouth. Now hold the lighter just in front of the tip of the cigarette, like you may have done as a kid when you were playing with magnets, almost touching but not, The flame comes straight up out of the lighter and widens, so if you hold the tip of the cigarette fucked up your going to light it crooked or in the upper third, rather than the tip. If you were to draw a line from the tip of your lighter to the tip of your cigarette the angle would be something like fifteen or twenty degrees.
Oh my god I just used geometry for the first time since high school. Now light your bick and when the flame is working puff on the cigarette, do this two or three times. If its lit your going to know.
Now when you smoke, hold your cigarette between pointer and middle fingers, almost but not quite at the tip. When you aren’t actually dragging on the cigarette you should lower your hand, you don’t leave your hand up in front of your face. Hold the cigarette either by the filter if it has one or at the butt end if it doesn’t have a filter, don’t hold your hand up towards the flame or you’ll look retarded. To flick ashes off your cigarette, flick the corner of the butt end with your thumb. When your done with your cigarette, you can’t see, so jesus, grind it out
, don’t just drop it. I never do this and I guess god must love me. I’ve rarely seen cigarettes light other things on fire, but it can happen.
But really, you shouldn’t smoke.
P.S. The two things I missed are colors, I like to write and am always struggling to use subtle color descriptions, a novel wouldn’t work with no colors at all, but its hard, are cars usually blue,
maybe red, but dark or bright red or rusty brown… Its all about setting a mood I can’t see and only has to be there rarely, because people need it. I know there not pink, that kind of stuff.
P.P.S. The other thing is dancing. When I’m at clubs or parties I’m sure
beyond a shadow of a doubt I look more retarded than whiteness can excuse.
P.P.P.S Everyone worried about eye contact, just wear a pair of dark shades.
It might make you look like you think your a douchey asshole, but I’ve gone out shades on and shades off and the “is he a fucking retard” quotient is way lower with shades on. Dark Shades inside tip people off, especially with a dog.
Pages & Rages 
Hi; I just saw the play Butterflies Are Free, initially a Broadway play and then a movie, and the main character was blind since birth. Yet, he smokes cigarettes, and it’s an important part of the story, since when his neighbor visits, she doesn’t know he’s blind, and teases him about flipping his ashes on the coffee table, which he doesn’t realize, because she had picked up the ashtray to use it herself. But got me wondering what would make someone blind from birth even take up smoking. He obviously wouldn’t be influenced by watching characters from movies or television or seeing photos of them doing so in magazines, nor from watching others smoke. I know the story is loosely based on an an advocate for blind and disabled, the attorney Harold Krents, who died in 1987. (He wrote his autobiography in book called Darkness at Noon. Here is what he says in a published article: Blind from birth, I have never had the opportunity to see myself and have been completely dependent on the image I create in the eye of the observer. To date it has not been narcissistic.
As someone who’s been smoking since her mid teens in the 1950s, I certainly was influenced by watching people smoke, including my parents. The only article I could find on this topic on the internet is from a 1884 Times newspaper, 130 years old! Since I’m not a subscriber I was only allowed to read the headline and the first paragraph, but it was about someone who ran an institute for the blind saying it was nonsense that the participants did not enjoy doing so. I know I’ve heard the speculation that it’s not as enjoyable for them since they can’t watch the smoke, which as you realize is only part of the so-called pleasure or satisfaction. I only know two people blind since birth, and met them both when they were children. Neither smoke. The girl was raised by her father, and he may be a smoker, but I’m not sure, since he plays sax and may want to take care of his lungs. I know he smokes pot. The boy raised by his non-smoking parents. I can understand someone who hangs out with smokers wanting to try it, since they are aware of the activity and curious, but not someone, as in the case of the character in the play, who led a very sheltered life.
Have you always been blind? What got you started on cigarettes?