Lizette Roman-Johnston
TW (multiple fucking ones): God, goddamn, goddamn jackass (lol), sucking on, Marlboros, wanna, Mary Jo, Buck
You’ve seen the anti-vaping PSAs. God knows I have, considering they’re always interrupting my cop shows on USA. I can’t seem to get away from these goddamn kids talking about how vaping has made them ‘so anxious’ when they’ve ‘never been an anxious person before’…as if any Gen Z kid wasn’t born with a Xanax dependency.
Anxiety’s not even the problem with vaping. None of that shit from the PSAs is the problem. Sure, they say vaping puts metal in your lungs, but my granddad spent half his days in the coal mines and he lived a long life of fifty years.
What’s wrong with vaping is that you look like a goddamn jackass when you do it. Like you’re sucking on a goddamn flash drive. And for what? To keep you off the real thing? To keep you from inhaling a pack of Marlboros every day behind the dumpsters at school?
Well I’ll tell you, smoking cigarettes in high school was the best move I could’ve made. Sure, I reeked so badly of smoke that my dog didn’t wanna hang out with me anymore, but I had friends, and I got chicks.
Now I’m a family man, married to my queen Mary Jo and raising our son Buck, who doesn’t like me much, but he vapes, so it’s not like I really respect or love him all that much either.
Photo by Dylan Fout on Unsplash
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lizette Roman-Johnston is a bicoastal bisexual currently living in Oakland, California. A 2021 graduate of the Saint Mary’s College MFA program, Lizette writes satire and creative nonfiction (Harry Styles often appears in both). Lizette’s writing has been published in The Daily Drunk, The Sad Girl Review, Rejection Letters, and others. She is also a synth-loving bedroom pop musician under the name rizbot.
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