Addiction by Lisa Kawall
"Still Life With Smoker" by Michael Harwood (michaelharwoodphoto.com)
Christian McArthur didn’t mean to take up smoking – he had heard all the warnings: it causes cancer, it smells, it’s expensive – but his problem had always been Addiction.
He sat now in the new Club Addiction, under the lights and between two speakers, drinking something that might have been water for all the effect it had on him.
He missed Katrina. He missed saying her name and touching her skin. He missed waking up next to her with only hazy memories from the night before. He missed her laugh and the way her purple eye shadow would always be uneven. He missed the taste of her lips and the taste of her cunt. He missed her nipples showing through a lace bra. Hell, he even missed her ideas that came with a hangover; the cheap ring burned his finger since the day he skipped the bar exam to get married in Vegas.
Katrina. He hadn’t heard from her since their three-hour honeymoon.
“Another…” Christian frowned at the glass in his hand. “Another … rye and ginger?”
The bartender laughed. “Last call was ten minutes ago, tiger,” he said, looking more amused than he had any right to.
“You still have all the bottles back there,” Christian pointed out. Barely. “Come on. There’s a twenty in it for you if you make it a double.”
The bartender laughed again and reached under the bar. “Tell you what,” he said, waving a pack of smokes, “I’ll make it up to you.”
They were outside the club before it occurred to Christian to say anything.
“I don’t smoke,” he said, and the bartender merely laughed.
With a resigned shrug, Christian put the white stick between his lips and leaned forward to the waiting flame. He took a breath and coughed. The aftertaste wasn’t pleasant.
“You weren’t kidding,” the bartender commented. He took a long drag, watching Christian behind the smoke.
Christian shrugged and glanced around for a cab.
“I’m Jake,” said the bartender.
“Christian,” he replied, taking another drag. He might as well finish it.
Jake stared at Christian the whole time. Not with a devastating intensity one might expect from someone smoking under a dying streetlight, but with a mocking curiosity that bothered Christian.
“You got a way home?” Jake asked, when the last of the smoke had slid out from behind his teeth.
Christian nodded. “Cab,” he said.
“Lucky for you, then,” said Jake.
Christian was too curious to not ask.
“If not I would have had you walking crooked for a week,” Jake said, and threw the butt to the ground.
Christian said nothing, and Jake walked away with a wink and a grin.
X X X
It was less than a week before Christian found himself in a small store that dealt in everything that could be lit on fire and inhaled. He bought mint cigarettes and strawberry flavoured cigarettes, and cigarettes that advertised tastes of citrus, honey, and chocolate.
He smoked one of each, and acquired a greater dissatisfaction with every cigarette. He was looking for just the right taste.
He went back to the shop, and bought the rest of the flavours he had missed on his first run, and still there was no salvation.
X X X
The doors of Addiction were luminous in their chrome glory, behind the dirty streets and rain. Christian barely noticed as he passed through them, and made his way over to the bar.
Jake didn’t even look surprised.
“Are you missing the last calls on purpose?”
Christian leaned over the bar to speak.
“Can I bum a fag?” he asked.
Jake raised an eyebrow. “I suppose,” he said, and followed Christian outside.
Christian signaled the first cab he saw. “My place,” he said, and Jake smiled.
They didn’t make it to Christian’s before his tongue was in Jake’s mouth and Christian was growling: “I want to taste you.”
Jake pushed Christian into the seat and straddled him, much to the driver’s annoyance. Christian had one hand in Jake’s hair and the other one on his ass.
The cab dropped them off in front of the building, and they wasted no time getting from fumbling for the keys and laughing to lying naked on Christian’s bed.
“Nice place you got here, tiger,” Jake said, breathless, when Christian pulled back for air.
Christian said nothing, choosing instead to lick a trail down Jake’s chest, stopping at his cock.
“Well?” asked Jake.
“I collect up front,” Christian said, smiling, as he leaned back down.
Jake laughed, too, but went silent as Christian’s mouth closed over the head of his cock. All conversation stopped, save encouragements and whispered curses.
Jake came in the amount of time it took to smoke a cigarette.
It was exactly right.
He looked up at Christian with glittering eyes in the dim light and – slowly, suggestively – rolled over. Christian moved forward, prepared Jake’s ass, and pushed in. It was a whole new kind of high.
After another pack was finished off, Christian rolled over and took out a cigarette. As he rummaged for his lighter, his phone vibrated and he glanced at the flashing name: Katrina.
He turned off the phone and flicked the lighter into life. It illuminated the sweat that still clung to Jake’s stomach. Christian inhaled deeply again and again and didn’t notice the aftertaste.
Jake grinned and propped himself up on a pillow. “I thought you didn’t smoke,” he said.
Christian took another drag before answering.”Honey,” he said eventually, through clouds of smoke and the certainty of another blissful high, “I don’t know how I ever did without.”
XXX
Lisa Kawall has a degree in English that is being put to good use by collecting dust while she goes out to bartend. She happily mixes her experience in the bar scene with her love for writing, and serves on ice. Though Lisa sees little of the daylight hours, and nature in general, she has a deep interest in environmental issues and wishes people would just cut back on the oil consumption already. “Addiction” was inspired by a pretty night-walker she once saw smoking under a streetlight. Lisa does not smoke herself, but she always thought she’d do well at it.
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More of photographer Michael Harwood‘s work can be found online at michaelharwoodphoto.com.
