HOUSTON — Local vaper Chris Garcia finally hyped himself up enough to hang out with a group of cigarette smokers outside of a punk show late last night, sources who tried to discourage him confirmed.
“It took a lot of guts to do that,” said Garcia while slowly releasing billows of vape smoke simultaneously from his mouth, nostrils, and both ears. “I rehearsed everything I was going to say ahead of time so l could come across as spontaneous before walking over there to join them. I was going to talk about how I used to smoke cigarettes too, and how I switched to vaping for health reasons but they could take that the wrong way. At first I didn’t think they liked me being there, especially when I told them I was vaping a mixture of something called Vanilla Vacation and Monkey Jizz. But I stood my ground, popped off a few clouds that were milky and fat, and blocked the venue entrance so they had no choice but to accept me as one of their own.”
The group of smokers did not share the same account of events as Garcia.
“We saw him staring at us for a very long time,” said Jake Flaherty while smoking a Marlboro. “Then he audibly talked to himself, saying ‘you can do this’ and ‘you’re just like them’ before coming over and filling a parking lot with vape smoke. So gross. I came outside to feed my nicotine addiction, not to smell your Fruit Loops vape. Maybe if he got an American Spirit vape we could have vibed, but we kept things very icy with him.”
This interaction is representative of a greater problem that many in the vape industry have identified.
“Cigarettes are so fucking rad and it’s killing us,” said CEO of Vape Ape Sandra Mezzinger between inhalations from her pen. “If I’m at a party and someone hand rolls a cigarette, everyone’s panties drop. But I can’t get away with filling the room with Juicy Genocide vapor, even though it smells way better. Ciggies have centuries of badasses smoking them, we can’t compete with that! They have Clint Eastwood and Humphrey Bogart, all we have is Dave Chapelle ripping clouds in between transphobic jokes. We’ve tried to sponsor Clint to use our vapes on a horse, but he hasn’t returned our calls.”
At press time, Garcia attempted to approach a group of people who just rolled a joint, but aborted the plan last minute and vaped in his Pontiac by himself instead.