Day II

Up on the roof

      "Gimme da thing!" Joe yelled, as he grabbed it. "Now lite me up!" he added. Jimmy lit the match, as Joe put the butt in his mouth. He leaned into the fire, looked at us, smiled, and inhaled deeply. Suddenly:

      "Haaaaacck, hack hack...cough, cough!" tears flowed out of his eyes as we laughed at him.

     "Aha ha, ha  ha, ha ha ha!"

     "Who be da pussy na, uh!" Jimmy smiled.

      "Oh yea, ya stupido...hack, hack...why donya twies it! he coughed.

     He passed it back to Jimmy, who took a drag, and hacked his lungs out too. It was Joe's turn to laugh at him. Not wanting to wimp out, I gave it a shot, and I thought I was going to freaking die, as my lungs burst into anuncontrollable hack. They took their silly turn laughing at me, and after a while I joined in too as we all laughed at ourselves. At that moment we became smokers...adults.

     Afterwards we used to go up there regularly, and smoke all the time. We sat in the middle of the roof, on old decaying milk crates. Up on the roof we were all grown up, and we knew everything. We weren't little kids anymore, as we puffed away...yea I remember now...on mentholated Kools, and we thought we were so damned cool. How stupid was that, uh?

     One day Jimmy came up with a ciger.

     "It's a cubano, man!" he proudly exclaimed.

     What the hell did he know from Cuban or the five cent stoggy at the corner bodega. He'd gone to a baptism with his family, and they were handing out cigars.