Dating Deal-Breaker

Smoking. It's one of the few habits that I consider completely undesirable. Megan Fox could be a chronic nail biter or maybe even addicted to piercings or tattoos and I'd be able to stifle my vomit long enough to play the skin flute with her, but I draw the definitive line at smoking butts.

It was December 31st, and we headed to a rooftop apartment that a friend of a friend had rented. To say it was cold was an understatement. We climbed countless stairs in the decrepit Chelsea building en route to a New Year's celebration. We had sent texts back and forth to ensure that she was bringing her friends. We hadn't really seen each other until she moved to UES and I happened upon her on First Avenue walking her dog. A year and a half removed from college and the lines on their faces had become a little clearer, as the harshness of reality set in. We hugged and I kissed her cheek with a pleasant holiday greeting, but my eyes gravitated directly to her friend.

I hadn't seen her since we were freshmen at that school in Boston. She was weird. Maybe weird isn't the right word, but as a freshman she was convinced Boston wasn't for her. It wasn't New York. She was destined for New York. She had this demeanor that could only be described as indifference. Other guys found her to be intolerable, and disgustingly pretentious. Maybe that was the curse of a hyphenated last name or maybe it was attributed to her boyfriend from Europe, who she visited nearly every weekend. She was in my communications class and I was smitten. She had transferred to a school in the the Big Apple and I drowned the memory of her in pools of light beer in my mind. So you can imagine my delight when I saw her wearing her red dress and matching heels. She had just returned from the Dominican Republic and her tan was responsible and even. The six years that had passed were kind to her features, and had replaced an eighteen year old's figure with a mature appearance to match her aura. Her red lipstick and nail polish complimented her dress and shoes, and made me rethink my stance on this particular shade as an indication of a woman of loose morals. She was always kind enough to initiate small talk and would often digress from the weather into grander topics. You can imagine my fall, when she politely excused herself and shouldered her wool coat to take a few drags of a Parliament cigarette outside.

She was the type that would drive thirteen year old boys to smoke, despite years of D.A.R.E. training. She was effortlessly cool, sophisticated and had a mature sex appeal. She wasn't the Marlboro Man. She was intelligent, and when she delicately held the cigarette in between her long index and middle fingers it made me want to reconsider my dating deal-breaker. So instead of biting the bullet and licking the ash-tray, I opted to stare at my brother and gang full of solitary guys.