Interview with a resistance fighter

I walked down the snow covered ally looking for the dock bay my mysterious phone caller had directed me to. Stepping over frozen garbage and sidestepping a mangy cat, I arrived at the slightly slanted incline that led to a half raised sliding door. Glancing down at my notes and confirming this was the place I call out, "Mr. X?"

"Shhh, man, keep it low. There are people out there who would love to take me out." I could barely make out an image inside the gloomy interior of an abandoned warehouse.

"Oh, sorry. My bad. Can I come inside?"

"Sure, come on in. You will have to slide under the door. You might want to watch your clothes though, this floor ain't the cleanest." I pull myself up onto the dock bay and roll under the door. Standing up I glance around at a warehouse full of pallets, boxes filled with scrap parts from ancient pieces of long dead machinery. Mr. X glances around with me and then smiles, "It ain't much, but it is home to the Freedom Allows Guys to Smoke resistance movement. We meet here several times a day to light one up, plan our strategy for defeating the smoking ban and Sally Klingerman. That woman and her hoarde of second hand smoke alarmists are Satan's own creation. They can't die from lung cancer quick enough as far as the Freedom movement is concerned."

I am scribbling down this information furiously when I pause to look up at Mr. X. "You realize your acronym spells FAGS, right?"

"Yeah, I came up with that one myself. Kinda catchy, ain't it? FAGS are cigarettes in London so it is a play on words. When people see us walking down the street with a cigarette burning brightly as we inhale that glorious nicotine enriched smoke, they are going to point at us and say, 'Hey, there goes a bunch of FAGS!' Wait, that doesn't sound quite right."

"This is Texas you know, and FAGS doesn't quite mean the same here."

Mr. X had a puzzled look on his face as he shook out a Marlboro from a hard pack, scrounged around in the front pocket of his jeans, produced a lighter and lit his cigarette. "I think we might be changing the name for our resistance movement."

As he pulled on his cigarette, I took a mental inventory of Mr. X. His wrinkled face seemed to be permanently drawn into a thoughtful pose as his nicotine stained fingers held the cigarette against his lips. He was slight in build almost to the point of being scrawny. The greasy hair that graced his head was slowly fading from a jet black to a salt and pepper phase and the thick glasses resting on his nose seem to scream for a good cleaning.

"So tell me Alan, what is the overall strategy of the smoking ban resistance movement? Do you have a plan? How organized are you guys?"

"Well, hey wait a minute, how did you know my name?"

"You forgot to take off your Wal-Mart nametag... and you also have it monogrammed onto your Wal-Mart vest. So are you guys organized or are you just meeting here to smoke in a semi-public way to make a statement against a city wide smoking ban?"

He snatched the name tag off of his vest and took a moment to reverse the vest so that all I could see was "nalA" which was to throw me off of the track. I was beginning to question his intelligence.

"We are organized! We meet here four times a day, before work starts, during lunch, during our afternoon breaks, and after work. We talk and plan on how we can take out the evil smoking ban woman, Sally Klingerman. We have a few ideas we are working on."

"So basically you guys are taking smoking breaks and sitting around in this abandoned warehouse, out of sight, out of the public eye, smoking cigarettes and shooting the bull. Is that about right?"

"No, it is much more than that! Why we have even taken action against the city and Klingerman. Last Friday night we drove by her house and threw empty cigarette packs onto her lawn and stuck a sign into the ground that said, 'Americans are free to get cancer if they want to!'"

"Well that is a catchy phrase, I guess. How many FAGS are there?"

"Our numbers are increasing daily. We started off with four of us and we have grown over the past two weeks to six. We are just the beginning and invision a day when we will have the largest group of FAGS in the state."

"Six guys. Hmm, so basically you litter, post signs, and smoke in private with five other guys. Help me out here Alan, I don't see much of a resistance movement."

"It's Mr. X and if you can't see the upswelling of discontent between these walls then you must have already been blinded by the propaganda of the second hand smoke machine. Get out of here, you make me sick."

"Okay, I'll leave but I have to tell you I really don't have much of a story here. Call me back when you have 20 guys and you've changed your name. Somehow I don't think my editor will buy a headline that reads 'A Bunch of FAGS Caught Smoking in Abandoned Warehouse.'"

"You make us sound so dirty! Get out!"

So I did. I slipped back under the door, made my way out of the ally and stepped out into the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Breathing deeply, I embraced the fresh air of carbon monoxide infused molecules produced from petro-chemical driven vehicles and smiled knowing that the second hand smoke of cigarettes wouldn't be touching me today.