Katie Kapow Dot Com

It’s been a good week.  I had two photo shoots, both which were portrait sessions and a massive amount of fresh photos to edit!

These things lead to (drum roll please) OVER 100 photos now available for viewing in the gallery!

It’s a milestone, a great day indeed!

Enjoy!

- Katie

I love to smoke.

Smoking at night while at work sometimes scares me though.  We have to walk so far away from the building now, thanks to the Oregon State Legislature’s ban on smoking within 10 feet of a public entrance.

My little smoking spot reminds me of when I was younger.  There was this park where my friends and I used to hang out, called Croxton. Croxton Park had these old-town style street lamps that I loved standing under at night, because I loved to watch the smoke twist and curl in on itself in the little bubble of illumination the lamp provided.  Back then, the smoke wasn’t always tobacco, but anymore it always was.

My smoking spot made me think of Croxton and better days, or worse days maybe.  I’m not sure. It made me think of the Croxton days nonetheless.

When I leave the bank to have a smoke I always stand under the old-town style lamp post. There’s one right along the side of the parking lot of the store where my bank rents its space.  At night, it keeps me feeling safe.
I stood under my lamp post last night, all wrapped up in my striped blue scarf and black wool jacket.  To be honest, I felt rather blank but content.  I noticed this older black fellow kind of pacing around.  He looked like wanted to talk to me but was unsure about doing so.
I lit my smoke.

And the man spoke. “So is this ten feet from the door?”

I looked over my shoulder and there he was, right next to me.  He was tall, probably 6′ 3”. He had short hair that was slightly receding and was dressed in jeans, black work boots and a camo-style flight jacket.

I exhaled and shrugged. “Guess so.”

“Kinda a long way to walk if you work here.”

“Yeah,” my brow furrowed, ”Wait, how do you know I work here?”

He pointed at my feet, “Your shoes.  If you wear those shoes and you worked somewhere else, you would be in your car right now driving home.  Are you on your way home?”

“No.”

“Then you work here, right?”

“Sort of,” I told him. “I work in one of the businesses inside, not for the store itself.”

He nodded.  “At my work there’s a bus stop we have to wait at and the bus comes, picks us up at 5:45 in the morning.  The bus drives us up to the factory.  We park our cars in a lot by the stop.   There’s no smoking at the bus stop anymore but people still do it.  5 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet from the bench, it doesn’t matter.  It’s all the same.  It’s not killing you it’s killing me, you know?”

I raised my eyebrows, “Yeah.”

If only he knew how many ways a neurotic, compulsive, head case like me could interpret that statement, I wondered what he would have thought.  The truth was, I wasn’t exactly comfortable, and wished he would leave me alone.

Or just leave.

But he didn’t leave.  He lit a smoke.

I lit another.

“I just feel bad about littering,”  I told him.  “Before, I always put my butts in the ashtray by the door, but now that they make us go so far away, it’d burn my fingers before I got to the ash tray.  They should really put an ash tray further down the walk here.  They’re just causing more problems for themselves.”

He exhaled his smoke and shook his head.  “I got them to put an ashtray by the bus stop. Nobody uses it.”

“That’s funny.”

“Yeah and as soon as everyone gets off the bus they light up again because it’s ok to smoke in the parking lot but not at the bus stop.  They light up and smoke alllllll the way to the door sayin’ ‘I gotta have one more before work since I can’t smoke at the bus stop’, even though they smoke at the bus stop all the time anyway. Doesn’t make any sense.  They were saying at work they might put out a security guard to stop people from smoking too close to the doors.  I came from California.  Can’t smoke anywhere in California anymore.  California’s messed up you know?  Where’s my rights?  Here’s the same though.”

His shoulders dropped a little and he fell quiet.
I shrugged again.  Having dealt with my own addictions, and having been surrounded by people dealing with their own addictions pretty much my whole life, I couldn’t help but offer my opinion. “People are addicts. They’re gonna do what they want to do.  That security guard could put a gun to some addict’s head and they’d still light up you know?”

Half yelling, half laughing, he shouted, “Boom!  There it is!  There!  It!  Is!”

His sudden volume startled me, but I settled down quickly.  I was pretty sure he was just expressing his agreement with what I’d said.

“Yup.”

I tossed my second butt down to the concrete and tried to snuff it out.  It stuck to my shoe.

The man erupted in laughter.  I just said, “Fuck.”

“Get that off that nice shoe miss, you’re gonna need ‘em to look nice and shiny inside.”

I wiggled my foot into the concrete, trying to get the thing to dislodge.  It didn’t want to give up, but eventually, I managed to shake it loose.  “Gotta go.”

“Keep smoking if you like it, stop if you don’t.”

“I will.  You too, I guess.  Thanks.”

I told him goodnight and walked back inside.

They were closing the doors to the bank already.  Surprised, I checked my watch.  It was already 7:00!  I’d been outside for nearly an hour, which explained why my fingertips felt frozen.  Everyone thought I’d left for the day, I think, because when I came back, they looked confused to see me.

I logged off my computer, dumped my shred bucket, locked my drawers and tightened the scarf around my neck.  It was already tight, but I wanted it tighter.  Everyone around me was mumbling quick ‘goodbyes’ and ’see you tomorrows,’ rushing out, in a hurry, just like normal.

I sat inside the bank for a moment in my nice, cushy chair, collecting my thoughts.

Then I walked back out to my spot.

I must work here because if I didn’t, I’d be in my car on my way home right now.
How can a stranger know me so well by my shoes?

Then it hit me.  Some things I couldn’t run from or put away.

Some things nobody can.

I lit a smoke and stood there, finishing it slowly.  The cold and fog sank into my skin.  I exhaled.  The smoke twisted and curled around as I turned into the light of the old-town lamp post, or something like it.