Toilet Windows

Smoking out of the toilet windows in school seems like an apt place to start a blog on a rainy day. I am an honorary smoker in school, not because I smoke, but because I accompany smokers, rain or shine, to the little area where they puff.

Some regard me as a bit crazy, to risk being caught and put in detention, even though I don’t smoke. Call me feckless, but it’s my last few months. I dislike smoking as a habit, but I won’t sit alone in the canteen. Maybe when I was 14 I wouldn’t have gone near the smelly people who smoked, but call me open-minded… I don’t mind it now.

Wednesday was National Non Smoking Day. I am sorry to say that on the day following that event, the number of smokers hanging out the toilet windows (it was raining, and wet hair is a giveaway, apparently) was not diminished.

I can’t really understand smoking to be honest. With so many warnings it seems silly to start. But then I was never one for peer pressure. I like to be in control of my own decisions.

As I looked at my peers through the smoky haze, I realised how many of them are lesbian, bisexual or at least curious to my knowledge. I realised that’s why I accompany them to smoke, because we have a mutual understanding that we are all at least bi – even if we don’t say it out loud.

Research in America has shown that teenage lesbians have the worst rates of smoking – 40% of lesbian or bisexual girls smoked at least once a week, compared to 4% of heterosexual. But as the lead researcher, S. Bryn Austin says:

“Antigay stigma and harassment, rejection from family and friends, and sometimes even physical violence can create a hostile environment for many young people coming to terms with their sexual orientation. This, combined with the tobacco industry’s targeted marketing to lesbian and gay communities, is putting lesbian and bisexual girls in harms way.”

And, I guess he has a point.