There’s a certain tranquility about a cold winter’s night outside some place or another- you’re shivering in your skimpy clubbing gear and your mate’s going up to randoms saying ‘anyone got a lighter?! anyone got a lighter?!’ which gives you some time to reflect on the night you’ve had in a drunken stupor and you gaze up at the sky: ‘Look at the stars’
When in reality it’s just the headlights of some guy’s car.
But the beauty is there- even if slightly mixed with whatever high concentration alcohol you’ve just been throwing back for the past few hours. It started in someone’s kitchen, or maybe it started in someone’s living room, and now you, inexplicably, find yourself here, amongst the stone, gravel and smoke from someone’s vape.
Why are these areas so highly frequented? (aside from for a smoke of course) Why do piles and piles gather round each other shivering- without so much as a cigarette in there hands? Why is it here where so many conversations are started, ended? Why is this the place where you’re most likely to see girls crying in the arms of other girls, random strangers saying their names- in the club you’re more likely for a winch, but here is where the information’s exchanged, the numbers given and faces remembered without the filter of intense blue/red lighting.
The alcohol levels may be dipping, and all of a sudden the place feels too hot, and the people bumping into you just cursed you out, or the guy who’s been asking for your number just won’t give up. What better remedy, what better excuse than, ‘I just need a smoke’- correction= I am in dire need of some cold air, a tired conversation and an escape!? The smoking area, like the average hospital, seems like a place of rest and recovery.
Of course, there’s the social aspect too. Smoking areas are like the male AND female equivalent of the girl’s toilet. Never so much before have I had random strangers offer me advice, (“See man, what you do in this situation is ye-“), never before have so many deep conversations been slurred out between me and my friends. The smoking area is, like the average library, a place of infinite wisdom. Never so much has it been proven that ‘in wine, there is truth’ (or in this case, ‘In Buzzballs, there is wisdom.’) Questions that have worried me will sober have been passed through the place like smoke, aired out only to fade away to the sound of ‘you’ll figure it out.’
Never before have so many friendships been repaired, never before have so many friendships been ruined, than in the smoking area. Relationships have been started over guy’s coats being placed on shivering girl’s shoulders. Blood has been spilled (occasionally) by the hedges as two drunken ‘neds’ engage in a fist fight. Everything that has been brewing up inside the club, comes spilling right out here. Alcohol is a very emotionally intensive drug, and it wrecks havoc in places like these when the hundred or so shots at the bar finally catch up to you.
In another way, smoking areas can also be a great way to buzz yourself back up for another round. What a difference one fifteen minute break can make to the limbs. You were dying of tiredness a second ago- now you’re ready to go again, and they’re playing Pitbull, so it’s even better!
..
[Correction, they PLAYED Pitbull, but you missed it cause you were outside- now they’re playing crappy house music- what a bummer] – (the only disadvantage of the smoking area)