Joe

Joe smokes.

Joe smokes a lot.

He won't do it in his apartment, although when he can't find his lighter, he'll turn on the gas to the stove and tilt his lips-holding-cigarette gently into the flame.

Gently and he walks down the stairs, ferociously sucking in and puffing out, jerkily inserting and uninserting. Something coital about the way he puffs, jerks, exhales, tilts his head into the flame. His legs are long and so watching him from below, one can see how his knees have to bend slightly too much, slightly too extravagantly, grotesquely, and something French about it.

And so he sits on the stoop outside his house, and watches the college kids as they neatly file down the street to the bar on the corner, and unneatly wobble back up the street toward home two hours later. And he smokes.

Sometimes he'll put his arm around me, although I don't think it is a conscious effort. It is usually removed quickly, like he just wanted to make sure I was there for a second. Once that is found out, he continues smoking, tongue curled around cattail whisps of ghostlike ectoplasm, guiding it into circular patterns of soot in sky. Soot in lungs remains unseen.

And you can taste the tobacco in his kisses. His gentle kisses, playful kisses, his nose nuzzled gently into your cheek. He has soft lips and he smells good. There is much to be said about a man with soft lips, who smells good, who tastes of tobacco and tilts his head into an open flame.