It's beginning to smell a lot like winter

I love the smoking ban. I LOVE the smoking ban. I remember my first morning after the New York smoking ban. I woke with a hangover complete with headache, nausea and fuzzy teeth. But my hair smelled like my shampoo. My coat, well my coat had a whisper of a smoky smell from earlier pre-smoking ban nights but it didn't need a febreeze fogging in order to wear it to lunch.

How quickly we adjusted. Even my smoker friends. Until it was as if we had always stood in bars with out smoke, as if we never had to do that dance to dodge the ends of strangers cigarettes being waved around too close to the backs of our heads, as if smokers always snuggled outside of bars puffing quickly whilst missing their drinks sitting back at the bar.

Than I moved to Chicago. And I knew smokers. I was spending time with writers. Not just writers. Writing students. There's something about an MFA that ignites cigarettes. I re-adjusted to smoke in bars. To frebreezing my coat after a night out. To burning eyes, the smell, the thickness of air in bars.

And then it happened in Chicago. THE SMOKING BAN. And it was a beautiful thing. But there's something I've been noticing lately. The smoke covered things. Horrible things. Disgusting things.

People fart. A lot. Walk through a crowded a bar and breathe deep, the pungent smells will assault you. The greater the crowd, the greater the risk of crop dusting. In the summer it's not as noticeable, maybe because we spend the summer drinking on patios or near open windows. But now that winter is here and windows are shut tight and doors kept close, there is no escaping it. People fart.

If only we could have a farting ban.