Here’s a confession: The Faker lost her first and only movie role because she didn’t know how to fake smoke. Cast in a student film, her only job was to sulk (while smoking) on camera. The sulking part was easy — honed to bored, angry perfection in adolescence. An adolescence that, oddly perhaps, never included a single drag on a cigarette. (No, not that kind of cigarette, either. Weird, right?) Utter, obvious inexperience led to stony-eyed rejection by student filmmakers. And thus ended the flirtation with fake smoking.
Until The Faker noticed a select few of her comrades in cubicles sauntering out for a couple of minutes of freedom every hour or two. Smoking, so reviled and loathed these days that it has been quarantined, has created a need for people to leave their desks and go outside. And so a fake was born: The Faker resolved to learn the ways of the rebel fraternity of smokers in the name of more frequent work breaks. (Bonus: It’s also an excuse to leave a bar/restaurant/party at any moment in the name of nicotine addiction.) Here’s how you can do it, too, thanks to extensive field work and insider advice from those too-cool-for-school workplace smokers:
How to pull it off
Buy one (only one) pack.
Make it a hard pack, so that you’ll be able to keep it around longer without it falling apart in your handbag/pocket. And don’t forget a lighter, because you don’t want anyone to offer to light your little death stick for you, because the plan is not to light it at all.
Smoke alone.
Part of the fun of the smoke break might be socializing with other smokers. But avoid this if you can — you’ll likely be outed before long, and that secondhand smoke will kill you. Instead, wryly mention that, since you’re killing yourself with cigarettes, you feel obligated to walk a little, just for the exercise. Or grab your cell phone and pretend you’ve got a call to make.
Try to quit.
Should you be called out for standing around with an unlit cigarette in your hand, just say you’re trying to quit but can’t quite give up the habit. Then change the subject, because smokers really don’t want to talk quitting anyway.
Don’t talk the talk.
Avoid being drawn into a discussion of smoking or the evils thereof. Master a chagrined, “Yeah, I should really quit.” If anyone persists, you’ve tried acupuncture and hypnosis to no avail.
Finishing touch.
Pop a stick of gum when you come back from your oh-so-refreshing smoke break, just like lots of real smokers do. No one will wonder why you never smell of smoke.
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