Oscar Wilde once said, “The only thing worse than a straight person vaping, is a gay person vaping.” No, he actually didn’t. I did. Vaping is essentially a novel new attempt at making tobacco’s addictive stimulant, nicotine, socially acceptable, allegedly without the unhealthy side effects of smoking. It involves a tubular electric device that turns nicotine-infused liquid, e-juice, into an inhalable vapor. Of course, it retains all the obnoxious ritual of traditional tobacco consumption.
Like elegant snuffboxes of yore or their contemporary poor country cousins, those flat cylindrical tins that create a charming bull’s eye outline on the back seat pocket of an apple-bottomed redneck’s blue jeans, vaping requires requisite accessoires. And, like smoking an unfiltered cigarette once allowed that masculine gesture of spitting out an errant fragment of tobacco or, for the elegant, delicately picking it off one’s lip, vaping indulges the smoker’s prerogative of calling attention to him- or herself through studied behaviors.
The vaping contraption itself recalls the elongated cigarette holder (think Audrey Hepburn). When smoking evolved from a man’s man pleasure to that of the fey femmes fatales, cigarette holders allowed a ladylike filtering of the harshness of tobacco smoke. They also provided props to accentuate conversation or, if of ivory or precious metal, defined one’s social status. In a moment of competitive pique, one could scorch a rival’s chiffon gown with seemingly innocent inadvertence. Gay blades could wave them like magic wands or hold them just so as a signal to others of like ilk. No doubt many an intimate tête-à-tête began with a stranger lighting another’s Lucky mounted in an 8-inch holder. But alas, integrated cigarette filters spelled the end of that discrete extravagance. Until now…
Today, the ravages of nicotine having culled many an old-time smoker, and smoking bans infuriating the rest, needy survivors have turned to vaping. Its aficionados have also revived the cigarette holder’s once retired affectations. I still suffer a recurring and annoying vision of a gay acquaintance (well, several actually), in oblivious wont, reaching into a pocket, and, without losing eye-contact, withdrawing a kit containing the vaporizer, flavored e-juice cartridges (usually something pedestrian like root beer or mixed berry…although there are thousands of flavors including Almond Milk, apparently for the lactose intolerant, and Bobby Two Fingers, described as the taste of “rich creamy nut”—which, granted, sounds much better than what it otherwise could be). They assemble those sundry pieces, much like a blindfolded Marine assembling his M16 rifle, and, raising the contrivance to their pouting lips, take that anticipated first long drag.
Then, with head cocked slightly upward, they forcefully exhale a billowing cloud of white vapor, aimed, in feigned consideration, off to the side of my head with all the satisfaction of knowing their entire act of performance art, from that first distraction to the exaggerated great orgasmic puff, all whilst pontificating about their gay Republican raison d’être or something equally witless, has not gone unnoticed, thus empowering themselves as smokers not to be denied or deterred. And, if you dare critique their insufferable habit, they’ll condemn your ignorance with an indignantly sneered “It’s only water.”
