It turns out I'm not the only one leading this paradoxical mental dance. My girlfriends and I were at our favourite pastime, standing around looking arrogantly bored. The most angelic of them suddenly said, "Guys, I know smoking's terrible. But it still turns me on."
We don't represent the mass consensus here. In fact, I know a slab of young people who find smoking abhorrent, and a total turn-off.
But there is also sizeable chunk of people like me, who are wracked with guilt at finding it attractive.
I've been turning this over in my mind. It's come at an interesting time; smoking seems to be going through a cultural renaissance.
Not in terms of numbers. Between 2006 and 2012, there was still a drop of 8 per cent in the youth smoking rate. And even now, it feels like we don't smoke as much as our parents, or even teachers, did.
But the coolness of smoking has been clawing its way up again.
I think it's because its infamous reputation has made it a concrete symbol of defiance. With the last decade's firm anti-smoking push, this generation of bright young things has grown up knowing exactly how bad smoking is.
Everyone knows it gives you cancer. Everyone knows it gives other people cancer. Everyone knows it turns your insides into poisonous jelly. So when you see smokers, they seem to say, "I know this, and I don't give a shit".
Upping the emphasis on the awful consequences of smoking has also upped the impressiveness of defying said consequence.
In the '80s it might have been rebellious; you might have pissed off your parents. But now, it appears very rebellious. Not only do you piss off your parents. You are telling science to suck it. You're telling fact to suck it. You're telling fate to suck it.
Our culture loves rebellion; the rebel is sexy. We're living in the age of individualism; nothing is more attractive than standing out from the crowd.
So we've now got a perverse situation where we find something disgusting sexy. Just because it embodies rebellion.
As much as I am a product of cultural forces, I don't want to be. I don't want to find smoking sexy.
Firstly, I've got a nagging feeling that people like me may be reading too much into the situation.
We may look at smokers and think, "what rebellious vigour! Be still my beating loins!"
But smokers probably aren't being rebellious.
I don't think they sat down and thought, "hmmm, I need a way to defy the crippling expectations of a conformist society. Knitting? Crochet? No wait, fags!" They're probably just doing it because they fell into it, and now they can't stop.
Secondly, I don't want to encourage smoking. Not just because of the dubious sex appeal of a smoker's future; the future as that shrivelled dude coughing phlegm into a hanky at the bus stop. But it also kills people.
We need to get away from the sexiness that sticks to smoking. We need an alternative, and actually conscious, rebellious symbol to attach our raging hormones to.
I've thought about this a lot. I'm afraid there's only one option. We're going to have to start rocking socks with Crocs.
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Verity Johnson: @TheBumbleVee
