Coming to understand one's kinks and fetishes can be an arduous ordeal, but if one thinks about how much these predilections can shape one's life, one might see it as beneficial and even necessary.



This is where I find myself. I am a single, professional man in his thirties who, until a few years ago, was involved in a long-term monogamous relationship. Since that relationship ended, however, for reasons having nothing to do with the subsequent discussion, I have indulged myself in and sought out a specific fetish that I am far from comfortable admitting to: women who smoke. And ladies, just so you know, if you don't already, I am not the only man who feels this way.



Before I go any further, let me say that I know smoking to be a terribly unhealthy habit, and if I do fall in love someday with a woman who smokes, I would encourage her to quit for her health's sake. Any sane, rational man would do the same. And I would never want a woman, for my sake, to take up this habit.



The single most erotic thing to me, however, is a smoking woman, and that is why the cognitive dissonance nags at me.



In the short time I have been single, I have sought out and bedded only women who smoke and have not pursued women who do not. These women have ranged in age from 20 to 43 and have shared no other common characteristic.



Why?



Growing up, I remember the demure women in my neighborhood, lounging on porches or sunbathing on decks, smoking before it became such a taboo. Perhaps it was then that the act of a woman smoking became entwined with a young boy's sense of the erotic.



Was it the cigarette ads that filled the pages of my mother's magazines where images of femininity and smoking were purposefully crossed in shrewd marketing ploys directed at women? Is that all it is? Was I simply caught in the crossfire of sexualized marketing that I didn't understand well enough to know that it was not even directed at me?



In college, I remember seeing a girl to whom I had been previously attracted light up outside after a class. She was intelligent, and her body was in its full blush of youthful beauty; however, all I could think was that she didn't look like she should be smoking or doing anything impractical or self-destructive. I remember that this feeling of shock and confusion quickly gave way to arousal. I could not get her image out of my mind, and I masturbated to it that night.



Maybe it's simple. Maybe the media has conditioned me to believe that smoking is some sort of cue that women give off to let the world know that they're "bad girls," and we're all attracted to things or people who give off a sense of danger, right? Perhaps unconsciously, I assume that if they're willing to engage in one form of self-destructive behavior, they might be willing to engage in casual sex as well.



I think it is more complex than that, however. Women who smoke, at least as I perceive them, have an air of mystery and independence about them. They know it is taboo and choose to engage in this behavior anyway, this private/public ritual of self-indulgence. They possess a certain flair, "skills" they have acquired over time; each has a unique, individual style of lighting a cigarette as well as their own methods of exhalation. They are different, independent, unconcerned with judgment, seemingly concerned only with self-gratification. That is decadent, and to me, unbelievably attractive.



Simply put, women who smoke are more complicated.



As I said before, this fetish, though rare, is not all that uncommon. There is porn that tries to cater to it, in fact, usually with disappointing results. And as with every fetish, there are surely variations among individuals. For example, some men want their women to smoke during sex, while others are simply turned on by watching women smoke in public places. I find that having sex with a woman while she smokes (this has "accidentally" happened on occasion) is almost too arousing, too intense for me to be a good partner



I have never told a woman with whom I was in a relationship about this fetish, and I'd bet that many men have not. To most women, smoking is a neutral, albeit distasteful, habit. We are the ones who have sexualized it



So if you're a woman who smokes, please quit. Until you do, however, you might be unknowingly wielding a power over men that you didn't even know you possessed. But I'd bet that you knew that already.