Lighting Up

[tracilicious]

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.

[tracilicious]

I confessed to a friend over sushi and Japanese beer that I was convinced that Philip-Morris had a new marketing scheme that involved invading the nation’s sleep state.

“Maybe you should try it.”
“I would, but caffeine takes up most of my addictive capacity.”
“I’ve smoked probably two packs in my entire life and I never got addicted.”

That sentence was enough to convince me. I left the sushi bar and headed straight for a Circle-K. I was a grown up damn it, God and I had long since split the blanket, and I had five dollars in my hand with Big Tobacco’s name on it. I walked into the convenience store with the same fear that must inhabit seventeen year olds buying cheap beer with a fake ID. I, the anti-smoker, was buying cigarettes.

“Ten dollars on number seven and a pack of cigarettes.” I said, setting my Diet Coke on the counter.
“What kind?” Sh!t. There were different kinds.
“Umm…I dunno. They’re not for me,” I panicked. “What do you recommend?” As though this was a restaurant and I was ordering the daily special. Cigarettes with a side of hummus, please.
“You aren’t supposed to buy cigarettes for someone else,” the stereotypical Indian-in-a-gas-station mumbled with a thick accent. I shot him a look that said, “You have got to be fvcking kidding me.”
“Depends on if you want menthol or no menthol,” the woman clerk chimed in helpfully.
“Umm…I dunno,” I repeated. “Menthol then I guess. Yes, menthol!” I declared, thinking that menthol sounded like an odd mix of petrol and mint, and how could you possibly go wrong with that combination?
“I recommend Marlboro’s with menthol,” she chirped.

I gave them my money and walked out, mortification mixing with a thrilling sense of accomplishment in my gut. At home I crinkled off the plastic wrapping and snapped open the box to discover a layer of foil, and underneath that were twenty sticks in two rows, lined up like bullets. The smell hit me like a metaphor. Heady and sweet, the contrast a perfect summary of my life.

Outside, in a beat up old pool chair, I sat on the porch and awkwardly lit my first cigarette. I sucked in the campfire smell and let the mint and gasoline taste swirl around my mouth before blowing it out in a slow string of smoke like a seasoned pro. I burned it halfway down, impressed with the finesse with which I smoked. No coughing and gagging like you would expect from a first time smoker. None of the spectacular smoking effects I had heard about either. I realized that this is what a former president meant when he said he didn’t inhale. I was faux-smoking. I pulled it deep into my lungs with the next breath. The sting raced down my virgin throat and filled my lungs with punishment. I took it with only a slight gasping and watering of the eyes. Two more breaths and my first cigarette was done.

As I lit another my husband, Michael, came out. After a disjointed explanation and large amount of cajoling he sat down and took a cigarette, his first. A sudden buzz circled my head, filling me with smooth and clear. The first of its kind, all the best parts of drinking, even better than the best parts of drinking, without the hangover or idiocy. Michael hacked and gagged across from me, looking cool to me even though he was a terrible smoker who complained about it.

“I’m always surprised by the lightness of a pack of cigarettes,” he said in between sucking and coughing.
“What do you mean?”
“You spend so much of your life listening to how bad they are. Just seems like they should weigh more.”
“That’s fvcking beautiful.”

And it was. The cigarette in my hand was thin like air, and the pack weighed nothing. Billions of dollars was spent each year on these things, buying, selling, selling buying and selling not buying. The weight of smoking suddenly seemed completely justified and completely ridiculous at the same time. This small thing, a nice buzz but not a whole lot more. What’s the big fvcking deal? But smokers pay for their cigarettes with their skin and their voice and their last years, and are rewarded with twenty slow, easy moments and a legal high for every five dollars they dish out. In our soul crushingly fast world, that is a big deal.

Michael continued his hacking. “God, this is awful. It’s like eating a campfire.”
“I love it.”
“God this is so good,” he said as the high hit him. We sat together silently, the smoke marrying us in its interweaving loops. A rare moment of quiet connection. The baby monitor crackled from inside the house. We waited for silence or a cry. When silence came Michael stubbed his cigarette on the concrete and began to get up.
“Don’t you want another?”

As he walked inside the social implications of smoking zoomed into focus. Every cigarette was an opportunity to stand next to someone else for no reason. To stand or sit in silence or scattered conversation. To share a somewhat unholy communion. Breathing in and out of each other just because you are there and you are a smoker too. Or a cigarette can be an opportunity to smoke alone, to grasp a small and rare minute of peace and introspection. It’s an excuse to observe the swirling around us without anyone asking us what we are looking at.

I’ve smoked four cigarettes so far, and I’ll smoke who knows how many more. Aware of the powerfully addictive properties, I ignore the mild cravings that follow each smoke for a day or so. I don’t want to be tied to a small box long after the high has faded, or to end up wearing a plastic patch infused with drugs in exchange for my freedom. I don’t want my kids seeing me smoke. But I do want that slow pull under a starry sky. The cigarette sized conversations and brief participation in an increasingly unpopular subculture. I want to feel the scorn of the anti-smoking assholes as they pass by, oblivious to the wonderful vibration behind my eyeballs. I want to smile and say, “You want one?” More than anything else, I want to hold a cigarette that’s lighter than a thought between my first and second fingers, and feel the full weight of smoking.

[wendybeth]

I want a cig now.


Great story, Traci! I started smoking so young I'd forgotten what the allure was, but your story reminds me of the first few hits I ever took. I'm glad I quit, but I must admit I miss it.

[Capt Jack]

omg...I dont think Ive ever heard (read?) it put more precisely in my life.
I do it
I dont condone it
yet I still do it.

beautiful...truly

[JWBear]

Wow.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Terrific work, Traci. (And don't tell my husband, but I miss it a little bit. Not enough to smoke again, but your story definitely stirred it up in me more than anything has since I met him. Have you considered working for Philip Morris?)

"cigarette sized conversations" was my favorite phrase.

[BarTopDancer]

Awesome work T.

Put me right up there with H and W. I miss it a bit. Every once in awhile I'll have a downward spiral and smoke a few - either ciggs or cloves. Usually while drinking.

[tracilicious]

Thanks everyone.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

As someone who has never smoked a cigarette, I have to say that this was the best piece I've ever written on it. Your outsider perspective helps you perfectly capture something I've never understood. My parents smoke, my brothers smoke, lots of my friends smoke, but I have never felt compelled to even try. You explained so many angles of smoking....I'm just stunned, I really don't know what else to say.


Doesn't make me want to start though. It makes it seem even more insidiously evil.

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

I have to say that this was the best piece I've ever written on it.

Hee hee. I did feel a bit possesed when I wrote it. Now I know why!

Doesn't make me want to start though. It makes it seem even more insidiously evil.

Good! After the responses here I think I may have failed to capture the many nuances of smoking and only hit on the positives.