Walking to the back room of Fanelli's there was this smell again. At the end of the bar was an old man, maybe 70, looking right through me, at the wall with photographs of boxers, the pictures much older than him. In his right hand, stuck between the middle and the ring finger, a half burned, lit cigarette. How daring. Smoking in bars is not allowed in New York these days. There he was, breaking the law, the bar breaking it with him. What could have been worse, a prohibition, a ban of old photographs, people over 65 banned from bars older than 100 years.
For now, there he was, looking on a wall with heroes who sold their bodies to make a living long before he or me or the cigarette were born. He was smoking indoors. A rebel, harming himself faster than others? Peacefully.