It was not to my college years did anything of the smoking nature happen that is worth mentioning. All through junior and senior high school I only dated a few girls, all non-smoking. I think only 2 of the 7 or so girls that I went out with had even tried smoking. Being the "goodie 2 shoe" that I was, I certainly had not even considered trying smoking. I was in the "gifted and talented" classes and I considered myself "above" most of my classmates. I graduated high school 6th in a class of over 500. So off to college I go with a "I came, I saw, I conquered" ego. I attended a large state university with about 20,000 students from all over the world. Approximately 10 of my graduating class from high school also enrolled in the same university in the fall of 1984, including 2 attractive girls. I knew both girls fairly well and one was also in the gifted and talented program. Neither were smokers to my knowledge. One of the girls and I had been friends since 7th grade where we sat beside each other in homeroom. I'll call her Jill. About a month or so after our freshmen semester had begun, I attended a party on "Frat Row" on a Saturday night. This was my second visit to a fraternity party so I knew what it would be like: loud music, a lot of drinking, girls dressed hot, and...smoking. I remember thinking to myself that if a girl smokes she will certainly do it at the party...allowing me to witness it and therefore "delete" her from my "potential" dating list. Talk about clever...I thought I had the "masterplan" to avoid those "bad" girls that smoked and would even lie to conseal it. Anyway, I had not been at the party for more than 30 minutes when I see Jill and two other girls that I didn't recognize walk in. I was standing by a wall with drink in hand about 15 feet from the front door, so as I could see all who entered as well as the "dance floor" that was adjacent to the main room. Within a minute or so, Jill saw me and waved. I waved back. A few minutes went by in which one of the girls that entered with Jill had left and had now returned. Standing no more than 8 feet from me, I saw this girl extend her hand and give Jill 2 all-white cigarettes, brand unknown. Jill glanced out of the side of her eye at me and quickly put the cigarettes in her left front pocket of her jeans. I was stunned to say the least. Jill smoked? No way! She was a "good" girl...she would never do that! My heart actually started beating faster. I felt disappointment...a good girl was turning into a "bad" girl. But I had hope...maybe she was just holding on to the cigarettes for her friend that had no pockets on her dress. I was reaching and I knew it. Another few minutes passed and Jill and her two friends were starting to move to the large dance area. I was somewhat depressed about seeing Jill take the 2 cigarettes. It put a damper on me and I decided to go back to my dorm room early. I walked over to Jill and told her "bye" and that I was calling it quits for the night. She said bye to me and I left. I hadn't walked 50 feet out of the frat before it hit me. How was I to know for sure if Jill had "turned" into a "bad" girl? As it was, she just had 2 cigarettes in her possesion. Maybe they were for her or maybe they were for her friend. I had to know. I quickly decided that I could not just walk up to her and ask her about the cigarettes. That just didn't seem like the right thing to do. The idea came to me that I should somehow lay low and watch. Sooner or later if they were for her, she would smoke. So instead of going back into the frat, I went around the side to the back yard. There was a low deck only about 4 feet off of the ground connected to the back side of the frat house. I maneuvered around to where I was on the deck and I could look through a window into the large dance area. There must have been at least 100 people at this party and about 50 or more were on the dance floor. However only about a dozen were dancing, as the rest were just standing there, drinking and talking. It took a little while, but Jill findly came into view. I could see one of her friends also. This friend was talking and waving her beer-clutched hand around as she did so. Then she stopped talking, smiled and took a drag off of a cigarette. She did this as Jill was now taking her turn talking. Minute after minute passed. I actually felt joy as I was observing Jill being true to good girl form and resisting this evil called smoking. Finally after a good 10 minutes, in which this girl that was a friend of Jill's had finished her cigarette, Jill and her two friends came out onto the deck. I quickly slid/jumped off the deck and went abound the side of the house. Jill and company took up position at the corner of the deck away from the house but on the side closest to me. I peeked around the corner. There I saw Jill put a cigarette up to her mouth and one of her friends lit it with a lighter. My heart sank. As Jill blew her smoke out, my respect for her dwindled. She was now one of them...a bad girl. I stood there and watched as she took another drag. Then it happened. A rush came over me. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before. For some reason, seeing Jill smoke was having an effect on me in a major way. Not a sexual turn-on, but an arousing feeling of some sorts. Although I did not know if this was Jill's first cigarette, I was aroused by the thought of actually seeing a "good" girl turn into a "bad" girl. I watched her take a few more drags before she dropped her cigarette off the deck and onto the ground. Each drag was alluring to me in a strange way. Now knowing that she was a smoker, I went home. I replayed in my mind the sight of Jill lighting up and smoking over and over again. Within a couple of days, I had started paying attention to the girls I saw in class and walking across campus. I began wondering which of them were smokers. It didn't matter to me if they were "full-time" smokers or occasional smokers. Either you smoked or you didn't. That was how I saw it. This smoking thing started to creep into my mind a lot. Much more than ever before. As well as I knew Jill and her background, if she could turn into a smoker, that meant almost any girl could. Now as much as I did not like to think that so many girls could be led astray, I was quickly developing an interest in knowing which girls smoked and which ones didn't, and I found it couriously arousing. I guess you could say that I wanted to know who the real "good" girls were. As my facsination with girls smoking grew, so did something else: respect. That's right, respect. For some reason, I simply respected a girl for smoking, for going against the common "knowledge" that smoking was bad for you. I was fairly sure that everyone in my generation had been taught or at least was aware of that smoking was supposed to be "bad" for you. And they were doing it anyway. "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" was the attitude that I perceived that they were projecting. This kinda annoyed me. Being the lofty one with an ego, I was always the one that followed the rules, played by the rules, and "won" by the rules. These girls (and guys too, but I am not interested in guys) were disregarding the "rules" and forging a path that went "uphill" and against the grain of the good common sense that society was bestowing upon its youth. And that was something that I respected. In fact, I had to admit, it was the display of more "courage" to not just accept what others were saying about something, but actually doing it and having the experience itself to draw upon. I actually felt "left-out" and realized that I had no real ground upon which to make a judgement of good or bad when it came to smoking. Since I had never experienced smoking, I had to rely on what others had to say about it. And this was mostly negative, especially from my folks who had raised me in an anti-smoking environment. What before was nothing more than a molehill in my life, had now grown into a mountain. It would not be long before I would have to ascend this "smoking" mountain myself, to fulfill one of my favorite sayings: I came, I saw, I conquered. To be continued....
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