Hurts So Good

I smoke too much. On average, I run through 2/3 of a pack per day. If I'm drinking, make that 2 or 3 packs in an evening.

Yet I'm loath to quit. Why? Because smoking has never hurt me. Quite the opposite, actually -- a couple of Dunhills every morning and I'm set to conquer the world. I hear dudes my age who smoke hacking and coughing like they've inhaled sarin gas, but, as far as I can tell, my lungs are pretty clean. Word to Ricky Davis and Bonzi Wells, I may indeed have malignant tumors growing inside my third-favorite non-sexual organ, but I don't think so. And my personality is such that, unless I have actual, physical evidence that something is detrimental to my health, I'm going to keep on keeping on*.

So, for the foreseeable future, cigarettes are still on the menu. Cheetos, however...

If someone tells you his biggest complaint about the snack food equivalent of cocaine** is that eating it turns his fingers orange (insert dick-masturbation joke here), you know that person is a casual user. But if he complains about mouth sores that last a week or longer, it may be time to stage an intervention.

Such is my dilemma. I feel as though I've been chewing razor blades. I don't know when my Cheetos addiction started, but it's recently gotten out of hand. The right side of my mouth is scratched and scraped, my gums as sore as Kmart after a Mario Kart whupping. The ostensibly easy solution to this problem, naturally, is to stop eating Cheetos; but if you think I'm just going to lie down and die over a snack food-related injury, you don't know me very well.

Never say die: my incredulity at being scorned -- again -- by your favorite cheese snack's favorite cheese snack will manifest itself as obstinate denial. Like calluses on a manual laborer's hands, my wounds will harden and heal, and I will master my high. The real reason my mouth gets fucked up after eating Cheetos is because, living in Korea, I don't eat them as much as I would were I back home***. (Word to ballerina feet.)

I plan to rectify that discrepancy, not now but right now.

Stand by me, Cheetos. If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be Lorenzen Wright.



* You should have seen me grin like a 12-year-old getting a blowjob when the doctor told me my liver is perfectly healthy the other week. I celebrated that diagnosis with half a bottle of Danzca vodka -- and shaving cream -- last Saturday.

** Puffs = regular coke, Crunchy = crack, Twists = the 8-ball that killed John Belushi

*** Having spent nearly a third of my life on the peninsula, "back home" is pretty much a misnomer.