He Held On To That Cigarette

One of my first stories about Steve has to be the "cigarette incident." When I moved in, Steve told me he only smoked about three or four cigarettes a day and he probably should have amended that to three or four packs a day.

It was getting close to the winter time so Steve started going out back on the balcony to smoke. We had been roommates for about three months and by this time I had started shutting myself in my bedroom to get away from him and his stories. I was in my room about 7:30 one night and I heard something fall on the balcony and it shook the house. I came out of my room to see what it was. I see Steve through the back door laying on the balcony. I was afraid he had a heart attack or something. I tried opening the back door but from where he was laying he was blocking the door and I could not get it open.

I yelled through the door, "Steve! Are you OK?"

"I think I hurt my hip."

After several attempts to get out the back door and he wouldn't budge, I said, "Forget it. He'll get up when he gets up," and went back to my room.

I came to check on him about 15 minutes later and I finally managed to get out the door. He had fell in a pile of dry leaves with a lit cigarette and Steve AKA Boozo the Clown AKA Drunkenstein kept smoking the damn thing. That drunk dumbass could have burned the house down but he kept laying there smoking that cigarette until he had smoked all of it. He was proud of the fact that he had smoked the whole thing while he was laying there and thought it was quite the athletic feat worthy of ESPN's Sportscenter or the Drunk Hall of Fame.

I asked him what happened and his version was that a bench sitting on the balcony had flipped over on him when he sat down on it. The closer to the truth version is that his drunk ass went to sit down on it, missed the bench, and fell on his ass. The important thing to remember is that he held on to that cigarette and smoked all of it.