I’m pretty obnoxious and annoying sometimes. I can be far too loud in some situations, and far too quiet in others. Sometimes I sit nervously in a corner checking my phone because I’m too shy to introduce myself. At other times, I drink a couple of pints in rapid succession to calm my nerves and end up saying things I wouldn’t say if I was sober. Both of these traits, along with many others, have caused me to miss out on opportunities to get laid. But none more so than one thing: smoking.

I smoke. And I kind of want to add ‘too much’ to that, but realistically smoking at all is usually too much when seen through the eyes of a non-smoker. When I was dating, the sheer number of people who’d write ‘I can’t stand smokers’ on their dating profiles, or tick the boxes that say ‘smoking is a dealbreaker’ means my pool of potential shag buddies was severely limited.

But smoking has also helped me get laid. Not because men see me across a crowded beer garden and go ‘oh look, her who’s too pissed to light the right end: she’s the one for me’, but because for the best part of my formative years, smoking was considered cool.

Which means that I have a really fucked up relationship with smoking and sex.

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