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I have secretly always longed to be a smoker.

This is not an acceptable thing to say out loud, I know. Due to the fact that cigarettes can kill a person all while making their nails yellow and skin sallow and lips wrinkled and breath horrific, I will never actually start smoking. Nor will I ever recommend that anyone else start smoking. Smoking is very, very bad.

But... shhh. Don't tell anyone, but I've always thought smoking looks so cool. Like, SO cool. Few things read as chic to me as an elegant woman, perhaps an archetypal magazine editor or a stock trader, long red nails atop fingers lazily holding a lit cig, smoke rings wafting over her jewel-toned shoulder pads into the secrets of her spiral perm.

This is probably because I grew up in the 1980s, a particular heyday for cigarette marketing. I did not long for Marlboros or Camels, even though the latter brand blatantly appealed to children via cartoon animals in sunglasses. Rather, I have clear and visceral memories of gazing upon Virginia Slims advertisements. All 65 pounds of me in a Little Mermaid T-shirt and cloth shorts thought that if I ever started smoking one day, I would smoke those. The women in those ads were at once hot and cool. They were full of power. They had big careers and bigger hair. Their perfect white teeth (arguably not smokers' teeth) gleamed against the co-opted second-wave feminist slogan: "You've come a long way, baby." In hindsight, the campaign was all very insidious. But it worked on one child!

I was too neurotically well-behaved to actually get into smoking; the few times I tried, I choked like a drowning bird. But I did like to be near it. On my senior skip day, I went to Clearwater Beach with my friend who did secretly smoke cigarettes. She gave me one, and I sat on the sand and held it, letting it burn. Cool! I was cool!

Nowadays, I guess the seniors skipping school are vaping. Vaping is also bad for you. Don't vape. Not to mention, vaping does not look anywhere near as cool as smoking a cigarette. Vaping is a clunky, desperate endeavor, in my estimation. People suck on their vapes hidden inside their palms or hung on cords around their necks, huffing green apple flavoring in a way they think no one can see (we can see). It's not the same!

I still look for excuses to pretend I am a Virginia Slims model, for example, cradling a ChapStick between my fingers while I drive. What else am I doing on the highway? Like I've said before, adults need to use their imaginations. When I dressed up as Bridget Jones for a book-themed birthday party last year, I bought cigs and put one behind my ear. A woman at the dinner said, "Does she have a cigarette... behind her ear?" as if I was going to punch her out. I loved it. Then I promptly explained that it was for the costume and that I don't smoke, because I am truly a ^$%@* interminable Pollyanna.

Recently, I attended a Lady Gaga concert in Texas. It was my Christmas gift, and it was sublime. When preparing for the show, I reviewed the catalog of Gaga looks to channel for the concert. I found myself drawn to her getup from the music video for "Telephone." In it, she is hauled off to prison by female bodybuilders. She wears sunglasses with burning cigarettes on the lenses. Cool! Cool! Cool!

One Sunday afternoon in the lead-up to the show, I ran into a Wawa between a gym session and book club. In full athletic clothes, I bought a bottle of red wine for the ladies and a pack of cigarettes for my costume, plus a clamshell of grapes (healthy snack!). I felt myself on the verge of explaining the purchases to the cashier, and then I remembered I am a whole adult and legally allowed to buy these things. Also, there's no way young Kyle at Wawa cared.

At home, I glued the ciggies to giant cataract surgery sunglasses a friend gave me. I left the rest of the pack unfurled next to my laptop where I fiddled with them for days. I wrote whole columns with an unlit cigarette dangling from my fingers, 12 degrees more cutting than I would have otherwise been. I have not smoked a single one.

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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