The Etiquette of Smoking

Filthy Frank

Joji closed the door of his bedroom and came to sit beside me on his bed. His laptop sat in front of me. I noticed were the notes written in Japanese he had taped down to the computer.

"What do those say?" I asked him as he settled down beside me, crossing his legs in front of him and his eyes following my finger. He sighed, pointing to the note on the left.

"That one says 'don't read any comments'," He explained before moving to the two notes on the right. "This one says 'It's okay' and the other says 'don't compare one comment to a thousand comments' I used them as reminders for my sanity." He pulled his finger back and looked at me for my reaction. I'll admit, I felt a sting in my chest at his words. How bad were the comments he was receiving that he needed to do this?

I nodded simply, not saying anything and allowing him to continue. George brought the laptop into his lap, typing in his password when the screen immediately lit up and we both waited for the desktop to appear. Unfortunately, it appeared as if he had forgotten to exit his browser the last time he used the computer and the evidence of his internet whereabouts were exposed to me. A black and orange webpage immediately appeared before us. Images moved all over, one large video in the middle and several ads with gifs and images just as profane flashed on the side of the screen. Moans and cries so quiet I wouldn't have been able to hear if it weren't for the dead silence of the moment, came through the speakers before the lid was slammed shut.

"I- um..." He stuttered, looking for words before I quickly cut him off.

"That's okay, no need to explain." I felt my face set fire but thankfully he wasn't looking at me to see. His face was fully turned away as well and the tips of his ears burned crimson in his embarrassment. He nodded, clearing his throat and lifting the lid just enough to hold his finger down on the power button.

"Sorry." He mumbled, keeping his eyes low as the soft whirring of the laptop died, leaving us in complete silence.

When the computer restarted, he tried again, typing in his password and holding the machine slightly away from him while it loaded.

An average, blue default screen appeared on his desktop and a quiet sigh escaped his lips. I didn't react, choosing not to say anything to embarrass him further so I watched quietly as he opened his browser and pulled up YouTube. Joji typed into the search bar and suddenly the page was filled hundreds of page results with tiny pictures of a man in a variety of poses and silly faces. Before proceeding any further, he put the laptop back down in front of us and turned his head toward me.

"So, listen, before I show you any of this shit I just gotta say that I stopped making these for a reason. I..." He sighed, looking at the ceiling of his bedroom before looking back down at me. "I stopped finding the humor in them, it-it wasn't fun anymore. The hate was one thing, but the stress this shit put on my body and mind was too much." He struggled with his words, looking nervous. This was important to him, more important than I realized so I listened.

"I have this disease; I get stress seizures basically and I take levetiracetam to help but I couldn't continue making content like this because of the amount of stress it put me under. I really...I really want to just focus on my music and the amount of people telling me I was wasting my potential on stuff like this made me realize I needed to quit while I still could." Joji spoke passionately, looking deeply into my eyes almost as if pleading with me to understand. I nodded, letting him know I was hearing him.

"So... anyway, just know that." He sighed, clicking on the first video at the top of the page that was titled "100 ACCURATE LIFE HACKS." The video started and George watched with a grimace as his voiceover spoke on the video. I watched, trying hard not to laugh because it was clearly something Joji was not proud of, but about half way through he hit the space bar, pausing the current clip.