duck-shaped pain

12 June 2001
Fork It Over, Smoker Boy

The last time the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, I made ten dollars.

Not from betting on the game or making any sort of other friendly wager, but from selling cigarettes.

It was 1996. I was unemployed. [1] My schedule those days pretty much went like this:

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Get up.

2 p.m. Go get coffee.

2 p.m. - 10 p.m. Drink coffee. Hang out with the other un- or under-employed people.

10 p.m. - 2 a.m. Go home. Listen to records.

2 a.m. Go to bed.

It was a good life, except for the not really having any money part. [2] But I got fed for free a lot, thanks to the coffee shop people, so I wasn't complaining much.

So, there I was, sitting outside the coffee shop, drawing and drinking coffee. I had forgotten that the victory parade was that day -- in retrospect, I'm not sure how I forgot, since I was downtown when they won and people started streaming into the streets, honking and shouting and setting fires and turning over cars [3] -- aside from the lack of decent parking and the mysterious closing-off of several streets, there weren't any real obvious signs that something big was about to start.

I was 14th and Market. The parade started east of there, at 17th and Market. All the good parking was west of me, which means that once people started showing up for the parade, they all walked by where I was sitting.

I was sort of oblivious, because I was working on Art. I was seriously into fonts at the time, [4] and I was working on some sketches for some new ones I thought I might try to design. [5]

So I concentrated hard on my serifs and descenders, not noticing the streams of t-shirt clad folk passing by. Some of them had pom-poms. Most of them were wearing hats. I paid no attention to them, or them to me, until one guy stopped right in front of my table and looked at me.

"Hey, can I buy a cigarette off of you?" he asked.

I had my pack right out there on the table. Since I was concentrating on something else, someone could have easily swiped it without my noticing. I was also accustomed to people just asking me if they could have one -- a request I usually fulfilled, unless I was feeling mean or was incredibly broke. But no one had ever offered to buy one off of me before.

"Sure," I replied, thinking he would give me a quarter or maybe 50 cents.

"Okay. I'll give you two dollars for one."

I surprised. A pack of cigarettes went for about $1.75 at a time. But this guy seemed very desperate, and there wasn't really any other place to buy cigarettes in the area, unless you wanted to pay through the nose for some at a bar.

I gave him his cigarette, and pocketed the $2. Easily enough for a really cheap meal for dinner.

Several minutes later, some other guy walked by and he also wanted a cigarette. "Two dollars," I told him, and he paid up without a word. He had the jones, bad.

Now I had four dollars.

I went back to my drawing. I still had a lot of smokes left, and the people just kept coming. I heard crowd noise in the distance, but by looking at the crowds still heading for the parade route, I could tell it hadn't started yet.

A guy in a suit and his woman stopped in front of my table. "Hey, do you know where I can buy a pack of cigarettes around here?" he asked me.

The closest decent place was the convenience store about four blocks away, I told him, or he could take his chances at the bar across the street. They had cigarettes, but they usually only had really lame brands, like Parliament Ultra Lights [6] and things like that.

He looked sort of nervous. He was obviously in a hurry, and it looked like his woman was in a hurry to go get a decent spot from which to watch the parade.

"Look," he said. "Can I just buy your pack off of you? We have to go and I don't have the time to hike four blocks to get some. She (gesturing at the girlfriend) doesn't even like me to smoke, so I don't think she would go for it, either. I'll give you a good price. How about five dollars?

I stared at him. I didn't want to walk the four blocks to buy more, either.

"Okay, six."

I smiled. I gave him my half-empty pack, and he scurried away.

Not a bad profit for sitting on my ass for two hours. Nothing like preying on people's weaknesses to make money.


[1] My usual state of affairs from about 1995-1998. Had jobs here and there, but I also spent a lot of time devising ways to quit jobs and then thinking up reasons not to get another one.

[2] Any money I managed to scrounge up went to buying records. The rest went to microwaveable burritos.

[3] This is something that's happened all four times that a Denver team has won a major sports championship in the last six years. I'm not sure why -- Coloradans as a whole tend to be pretty mellow, probably because there's not a whole lot of oxygen in the air -- but when they get set off by something sports-related, watch out for your car.

[4] Still am, but I finally decided to be a passive admirer instead of trying to make my own.

[5] Good example of sidewalk art that doesn't excite passerby -- serious-looking girl scowling over several impeccably drawn letter "A"s.

[6] Like smoking air.

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