So I’m still smoking (blaa blaa WHATEVER). What can I say? I’m a man who indulges in his passions. Unfortunately, a line has been drawn in the sand, and I have lost major ground in a war I’ve been winning for years.

(Alright boys, this is it. Over the hill!)

2 days ago there came a gentle rapping, rapping at my chamber door. It was a neighbor, telling me that the cigarette smoke from my balcony was curling, curling through her upper porch door.

Quoth the neighbor, “Nevermore.”

In a shrinking life of comforts, where slowly my age and circumstances have started to infringe on my personal “liberties,” losing my smoking lounge is a huge, huge blow. Sure, I could have told the neighbor off, stating my obvious seniority over the patio area and the building in general. I’ve lived there for 9 years, but she uttered the magic word. It’s a word that hit me in the right place, attaching itself firmly to my Central Guilt System. She has a “baby,” and the smoke I emit curls directly into the nursery. I was as powerless as a Prius.

(This is what it looks like you’re driving.)

By uttering the word, “baby,” she tapped into my naturally “good guy” nature, a nature that I hate about myself. My “good guy” nature has kept me from doing some very risky and potentially exciting things in my life. It’s also kept me out of prison, so maybe I should call it a wash.

Anyway, now I’m not just corrupting the lungs of adults in the building (adults who chose to live in smog infested Los Angeles), I’m effecting a little nipper. That little guy or girl has already been forced to start their life in Los Angeles, a bum deal by anyone’s count. Now they have to deal with my poisons, and without the benefit of a recessed charcoal filter? That hits me in right in the “good guy” nature. Man, I hate that “good guy” nature.

(I would much rather have a “chaotic good guy” nature.)

So now I have lost my last stronghold. Now I have to put on shoes, possibly a hat, and trek down to the street like some sort of Nelwyn going to the river for a bucket of water. It’s bullshit.

The porch was my Fortress of Solitude. The Redhead wouldn’t go out there because of the smoking, and most of the other neighbors I see are other smokers, uniting in our common front, nodding to each other to say, “This is Hollywood, baby. Let those losers in Santa Monica worry about air pollution tickets on their own damn property.” Now I’ve lost it. I have no idea if the neighbor’s reign of terror reached out to my nicotine compatriots, but I know that she’s already gotten me. Remember in Godfather how Sollazzo knew he had to take out Luca Brasi before going after Vito? This is like that, I think. I don’t know, maybe I’m the Godfather, and… whatever. She’s beaten the patio’s mightiest champion.

So once again I look at quitting, without really wanting to do it. One of these days I’ll get to make a decision based on my own thoughts and not from the force of circumstances.

Yeah, right.