Surreptitious Pleasures

**Editors' Note: Today's guest post comes in from Terry Tucker. And um, gross.**

Friend of mine met this great guy….…..smart, good looking, fun - and thoughtful! When they were walking down the street, he would stop to pick up litter, even discarded cigarette butts.

On subsequent dates, everything good…..although she did notice him sneaking surreptitiously outside for a cigarette. Trying to quit, he said, when asked about it. Later, when she noticed him picking up and pocketing a cigarette butt off the street, something clicked. You don’t smoke those, do you, she asked.

He hesitated, then admitted he did. At first, he did it out of desperate addiction, he said. Better than buying cigarettes or bumming them. Then serendipity, he discovered smoking butts was more satisfying than regular cigarettes. Nicotine tends to accumulate on the paper at the lower end, resulting in a more concentrated delivery of nicotine when you inhale a pre-smoked butt. When you inhale, a tremendous rush. It’s wonderful, he enthused. And you get better and better at spotting the good ones.

What about germs, she wanted to know. Oh, I wipe the cigarettes off first, he assured her. Hasn’t been a problem for me. They say that kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray. This was worse than that.