From my Tumblr page
[A few weeks ago, I had run into my friends Mike and Cynthia in a Kroger supermarket near my house. I hadn't seen either of them since we graduated, so we made a dinner date. After our meal, we hung out a little bit, and ended up walking in front of a Buddhist temple near their home.]
[Near their house is also a convenience store. Seeing the cigarette ads, we got up the courage to go and buy some.] While walking towards the store, Mike came up with the idea to buy e-cigarettes, [which are small vaporizers that release an aerosol that contains nicotine.] You exhale [what] looks like smoke, although it is just water vapor.
[After a little debating], [W]e ended up going to a Walmart around 11.30 to buy them. [We got in line for a counter and once it was our turn, we got the cashier to help us over at the tobacco counter.] When we got to the counter, we saw a few brands, and we went for the box that advertised "2 cigarettes and three [flavor] cartridges".
Before we bought them, we asked the lady what she preferred. She told us that she preferred real cigarettes because the e-cigarettes had a "harsh" flavor. After choosing the electronic kind, I pulled out a filter I had bought days before on Amazon. I gave the woman one because: A) they didn't fit the e-cigs, and B) since she smoked real cigarettes, it would reduce the amount of nicotine and chemicals she would intake. She thanked me and we made our way back to Mike's car.
Cynthia opened the package, and handed off the first vaporizer and cartridge off to Mike. She gave me the second vaporizer and cartridge. I took off the protective rubber cap the cartridge had and screwed onto the back of the vaporizer. Once assembled, away I went!
I inhaled, and out of me came this precocious white cloud.
I'm not a smoker, but it had a much smoother effect than an actual cigarette.
The cigarette Cynthia had given to Mike had been a dud, so they replaced it with the third cartridge and then they followed suit.
Coming back from Walmart, we passed by Mr. Ward's house, which was dark, albeit for a light coming out through the kitchen window. Someone was in the living room...
In addition, we also drove past a reservoir that acts as a cooling lake for an electric plant near Dallas. While driving past a park on the lake, I had to go do the "do", so we stopped at a public convenience in a park nearby. It was clean and stocked, but cold as hell. As I came out and started my trek towards the car, I blew on my e-cigarette, and as the smoke bellowed out of me, I exclaimed to Mike, "I'm so cool!"
I had just seen Midnight Cowboy, and he did the same thing.
[But one caveat of the e-cigarette:] Damn thing can only go two days on a charge. Who the hell designed that battery, the Chinese?
Damn them. Damn them and they’re monopoly over deposits of rare-earth minerals.
