High School courtyard longing

When I got to high school, there was a whole new opportunity for what was fast becoming a kind of voyeurism for me. It had been mostly limited to photographs or movies or the occasional adult that I would encounter when I was younger. But when I got to high school, suddenly I was surrounded by people who were up to 4 years older than I was. And of course, high school was a time when a lot of people, or girls, as the case may be, would start smoking.

I should quickly interject a side note here, that I have never been a smoker. And I am not sure if I could become one even if I set my mind to it. I have done it occasionally, rarely, but only in the context of the fetish. And I never developed the tolerance for it that it seems others develop reasonably quickly. So, the voyeurism that I will describe is also a bit more awkward because of the fact that I was always an observer, and never a participant.

In addition to the fact that I was not a member of the smoking crowd, I was actually, if anything, a member of the opposite crowd -- the track team. So there was really nobody that I would hang around with who was a smoker. So I really needed to step out of the bounds of my normal activities to observe.

And the place that I had quite an opportunity was in the cafeteria of our high school, after school or before school. Because there was a courtyard just outside the cafeteria, and in the 1980s there was not yet any sort of strict enforcement of smoking policies at high schools. So the kids would freely hang outside and do whatever they wanted. And I would hang inside, occasionally, and watch. And it was definitely awkward, because there was really no good reason for me to be hanging out there. But it was a chance for me to see it in person, rather than in my imagination, or in print. I don't really recall how frequently I did this, but I do remember doing it. There was one girl who was a senior when I was a freshman. Not only was she beautiful, but she was also a very experienced-looking smoker, especially for her age. And there was something about her style that was so incredibly attractive. She never met me, though I did occasionally see her years later at a pizza place where I worked, because she would come in to pick up an order. But I didn't exist in her world. It's weird the notion of someone being such an obsession in my mind, and I don't even exist in their world. And the fetish did that to me a bit. I don't even remember her name, but I think it was a name that starts with a P, and has a nickname that starts with a T. That leaves very few guesses.

She was the best of the bunch. But she wasn't the only one.

Yet still. By the time I was 15, I had probably still never actually had a girlfriend, other than the childhood girlfriends. And I had never had the opportunity to spend much time close to a girl who was a smoker. So I had to catch these glimpses wherever I could. At the mall. On the street. After school. On the movie theater screen. It was a little later that I started to have encounters.