tracilicious
05-07-2008, 11:57 AM
I wrote this for a creative nonfiction assignment for school. I sorta like it, even though it's a first draft, so I thought I would share. It's kinda long, so it's comin' in two posts.
********
When I lit up for the first time, there was no “peer pressure.” No groups of kids circling around saying, “Try it! Come on, you’ll look cool!” like in the after school specials I used to watch in the eighties. There wasn’t even anyone around to bum a cigarette from. Just me, the desert night sky, and a small purple lighter.
I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life buying whole-heartedly into the dire warnings of teachers and anti-smoking campaigns. I lectured friends, did a lame fake cough when I passed someone smoking, and went on long tirades about the dangers and horrible smells of smoking to my kids. In short, I was somewhat of an asshole towards those who had the gall to support murdering corporate evil with the sacrifice of their own bodies.
This was no easy feat, considering that I spent several years working jobs where I was the only non-smoking employee. At nineteen, I spent half a year selling used cars in Mesa, Arizona, on a lot that catered to customers who needed social security numbers doctored and marriage licenses printed from the sales manager’s computer in order to get a high interest loan for a piece of **** longbed. Raised, of course, and with nice rims. My coworkers consisted mainly of friendly, middle aged men, all of whom chain-smoked. We would sit outside for hours, them lighting up one after another, couldn’t be more mellow if they had yoga mats and Zen meditation tapes; and me, naïve, idealistic, highly religious, and above all young. Every so often I’d throw in random comments about the grave damage they were doing their lungs and mine.
“Smoking will kill you, you know.”
“Ya gotta go sometime baby.”
When my illustrious sales career ended, I went to work at a used bookstore down the street from the car lot. The staff there was built out of rebels, societal rejects, and those of us that just really liked being around books all day. It was the sort of cool that populates countless early nineties films about disgruntled youth making a point out of being poor. Out of fifty employees there were three of us that didn’t smoke. Me, the bitchy store manager, and a friendly girl with a squinty eye that listened to Christian rock on her breaks. Not wanting to be grouped in with the other two, I toned down the anti-smoking propaganda quite a bit. As I became friends with my walk-on-the wild-side coworkers, I realized how many more breaks they were getting because they smoked. In a grand gesture of non-smoking rebellion I began insisting on fresh air breaks, which I would spend sitting next to my smoking friends. I still managed an occasional for-your-own-good remark about their health.
“Smoking will kill you, you know.”
“Yep. That’s true. You want one?”
The truth is, by that point I actually did want one. I had spent so much time sitting next to smokers that by the time a “fresh air” break came, I craved the cocktail of nicotine and tar that they exhaled. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the teachers, t-shirts, and commercials of my youth, all reprehending tobacco and its users, held a strong enough stanchion that I always refused. Even if there hadn’t been a “just say no” campaign looping in the back of my head, I could feel God’s heavy breath on the top of my head, and his eyes glaring at me, full of looming condemnation.
I left the bookstore freshly, and accidentally, pregnant, and went straight into the suburban world of full time parenting. My new “coworkers” were moms; all clad in an odd uniform of the damned, khaki pants or shorts, solid shapeless T-shirts, and a ponytail. They were well defended against spills and spontaneous attacks of color blindness. None of them admitted to smoking anything.
In fact, for the next half a decade, my universe was devoid of cigarettes entirely. This left me somewhat at a loss as to why they suddenly began to populate my dreams. In real life stress levels were reaching an all time high: time crunched me like a flimsy can, my marriage, which had long coasted on memories of time spent together before kids, was quickly losing steam, and my children seemed intent on convincing me that they were growing up to be either couch potatoes or bank robbers, depending on their mood. But my dreams were filled with long, slow burning sticks of awesomeness. Sometimes it was me, placed in random scenarios, inhaling deeply. I was infinitely smarter, sexier, more in control, cooler. Sometimes it was just the cigarette: huge and glowing, the paper burning down with an intoxicating red.
********
When I lit up for the first time, there was no “peer pressure.” No groups of kids circling around saying, “Try it! Come on, you’ll look cool!” like in the after school specials I used to watch in the eighties. There wasn’t even anyone around to bum a cigarette from. Just me, the desert night sky, and a small purple lighter.
I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life buying whole-heartedly into the dire warnings of teachers and anti-smoking campaigns. I lectured friends, did a lame fake cough when I passed someone smoking, and went on long tirades about the dangers and horrible smells of smoking to my kids. In short, I was somewhat of an asshole towards those who had the gall to support murdering corporate evil with the sacrifice of their own bodies.
This was no easy feat, considering that I spent several years working jobs where I was the only non-smoking employee. At nineteen, I spent half a year selling used cars in Mesa, Arizona, on a lot that catered to customers who needed social security numbers doctored and marriage licenses printed from the sales manager’s computer in order to get a high interest loan for a piece of **** longbed. Raised, of course, and with nice rims. My coworkers consisted mainly of friendly, middle aged men, all of whom chain-smoked. We would sit outside for hours, them lighting up one after another, couldn’t be more mellow if they had yoga mats and Zen meditation tapes; and me, naïve, idealistic, highly religious, and above all young. Every so often I’d throw in random comments about the grave damage they were doing their lungs and mine.
“Smoking will kill you, you know.”
“Ya gotta go sometime baby.”
When my illustrious sales career ended, I went to work at a used bookstore down the street from the car lot. The staff there was built out of rebels, societal rejects, and those of us that just really liked being around books all day. It was the sort of cool that populates countless early nineties films about disgruntled youth making a point out of being poor. Out of fifty employees there were three of us that didn’t smoke. Me, the bitchy store manager, and a friendly girl with a squinty eye that listened to Christian rock on her breaks. Not wanting to be grouped in with the other two, I toned down the anti-smoking propaganda quite a bit. As I became friends with my walk-on-the wild-side coworkers, I realized how many more breaks they were getting because they smoked. In a grand gesture of non-smoking rebellion I began insisting on fresh air breaks, which I would spend sitting next to my smoking friends. I still managed an occasional for-your-own-good remark about their health.
“Smoking will kill you, you know.”
“Yep. That’s true. You want one?”
The truth is, by that point I actually did want one. I had spent so much time sitting next to smokers that by the time a “fresh air” break came, I craved the cocktail of nicotine and tar that they exhaled. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the teachers, t-shirts, and commercials of my youth, all reprehending tobacco and its users, held a strong enough stanchion that I always refused. Even if there hadn’t been a “just say no” campaign looping in the back of my head, I could feel God’s heavy breath on the top of my head, and his eyes glaring at me, full of looming condemnation.
I left the bookstore freshly, and accidentally, pregnant, and went straight into the suburban world of full time parenting. My new “coworkers” were moms; all clad in an odd uniform of the damned, khaki pants or shorts, solid shapeless T-shirts, and a ponytail. They were well defended against spills and spontaneous attacks of color blindness. None of them admitted to smoking anything.
In fact, for the next half a decade, my universe was devoid of cigarettes entirely. This left me somewhat at a loss as to why they suddenly began to populate my dreams. In real life stress levels were reaching an all time high: time crunched me like a flimsy can, my marriage, which had long coasted on memories of time spent together before kids, was quickly losing steam, and my children seemed intent on convincing me that they were growing up to be either couch potatoes or bank robbers, depending on their mood. But my dreams were filled with long, slow burning sticks of awesomeness. Sometimes it was me, placed in random scenarios, inhaling deeply. I was infinitely smarter, sexier, more in control, cooler. Sometimes it was just the cigarette: huge and glowing, the paper burning down with an intoxicating red.