Cigarettes

I've recently been fascinated with cigarettes for some reason, and I'm trying to resist the urge to start smoking. This is my first preventitve measure.

 

I stood in a Borders bookstore in downtown Chicago, and watched a pigeon toddle by outside on the street. Only in New York had I ever seen pigeons – when you live in Colorado, the birds you see the most are robins – and I felt like this would be my first chance to observe pigeons in their natural environment, as natural as industrial buildings and capitalism can get.

After a moment or so, my focus shifted to a car driving away with its passenger door wide open. And then a group of friends who seemed to be arguing across the street. Two buses stopped, one in front of the other. Then the pigeon reappeared. My mind was obviously not focused on the bird.

As I stood in the Chicago bookstore window, I noticed the amount of cigarettes in the fingers of those who passed. Every ninth or tenth person smoked. If they weren’t texting, talking on the phone, or listening to music, they were smoking their cigarettes like it was a requirement, some prerequisite for staying in Chicago. I felt like I had missed something.

 

 

I had never been to Chicago before, not seriously at least. Seeing the airport isn’t seeing the city, and every Chicago resident will tell you so. I had no real intention of ever visiting. Though the train ride from my college town to the city was less expensive than a tank of gas and only three hours each way, I enjoyed the idea of remaining ignorant to the lay of the land in which I went to college. My school did a lot to connect its tiny town with grand ol’ Chi-City, but many of its students still stayed away.

My aversion lay in my love and ongoing passion for the dream world I’d created in my head for Denver. All I wanted was to live in the city of Denver, teach in DPS as one of the few people to change the district around, and pursue my master’s degree within walking distance of my favorite club scene. My vision of Chicago was just a destitute version of Denver, and I refused to desecrate the memory of my city with the imprint of another one.

But a Wednesday afternoon trip in a coach bus loaded with college students and Slumdog Millionaire brought me to Chicago to see the Broadway musical RENT, my third favorite musical ever produced. I hadn’t seen it on stage, but the movie took my breath away. So, to keep my breath out of my chest, I immediately signed up when a group announced they were heading to Chicago to see RENT on stage.

 

 

Standing in a bookstore seven hours later, I wondered about cigarettes. Roughly one-fourth of the student population at my college smoked cigarettes, and did so without shame. I had never encountered so many smokers in one vicinity before, never heard so many strangled coughs in the late night hours, and never met the smell of toxic plumes as I left every building.

The Chicago passerby seemed content with their vice, using the cigarettes as extensions of their fingers, almost like the burning sticks were part of their bodies. My student body bought packs by the dozens, and those who attempted to quit barely had a chance with the constant presence of smoke in the air. Illinois law had made it illegal to smoke within fifteen feet of any public door, but no one seemed to care. Smoke on the go, smoke after sex, smoke while intoxicated, smoke before class. I felt the air turn toxic as my weeks at school continued, and the pressure to pick up the habit started to press on my lungs.

 

 

The musical RENT has managed to make itself into one of the most controversial in history. With its homosexuals and transvestites and HIV references, it has succeeded in making audiences uncomfortable all over the nation. My father refused to see it once he realized its relation to homosexuality.

But RENT held a special place in my heart. It showed love, compassion, truth, action. The actors on stage were like the actors in the movie that I saw before coming to Chicago: they all believed in what they were singing. The decision to fight AIDS sprang from their fingertips as well as their lungs. The call to action that rang in the words of “La Vie Boehme” sent chills down my spine. That’s right, I thought, shivering in my seat as their words echoed off the theatre’s walls. That’s f*****g right. I need to fight AIDS. And from that it became not just fighting AIDS – I needed to fight every disease that forced the singers to say, “And to everyone living with, living with, living with, not dying from disease!”

Smoking was the furthest thing from my mind sitting in that crowded theatre with hundreds of other Illinois residents. But as I shuffled past the actors into the street, I realized that the best way to fight a disease is to prevent it from even invading one’s body. Smoking, I knew, would invite a whole host of various diseases into my temple – and, knowing that my body is my temple from hundreds of self-esteem books my mother made me read when I was younger, I refused to let my temple be desecrated by cigarettes.

 

 

I stood on the corner of State and Wacker, shivering slightly in the night air, trying to hear the words coming out of the mouths of the women with whom I stood. They were trying to contact the thirteen missing students who had wandered the wrong way out of the theatre fifteen minutes ago, and were succeeding marginally. Strangers passed us: some muttering to themselves, others walking with purpose, still others looking lost. A cab driver ran a red light. A police car turned slowly up State Street. An attractive gay man talked animatedly on his cell phone, explaining to the caller that he wouldn’t wait much longer.

“No, no, tell me where you are and I will direct you to where I am,” our supervisor Stephanie shouted into her cell phone to yet another lost soul. “Oh d****t!” she cursed as she lost signal again. “This is so frustrating!”

“Did anyone call Jeff?” one of Stephanie’s student assistants, Lee, asked to no one in particular.

“I called – he didn’t answer,” I replied, resisting the urge to add a dreamy hint to my voice. Jeff was gorgeous, but no one else needed to know I thought so. Lee nodded to me and turned back to Stephanie.

“Jamie called and he didn’t answer.”

“Oh crap,” Stephanie moaned. Suddenly she jumped, the vibration of her phone sending her three inches off the ground. “Hello?”

As the fiasco that was locating lost students continued next to me, I glanced about, and saw the same thing I had seen earlier.

Save for the frantic women flipping back pages of phone numbers and fighting to be heard above the traffic to their callers, nearly everyone I saw smoked cigarettes. The gay man on his phone, the valet for the hotel on the corner where we stood, the muttering man in the bright orange suit who passed us and gave Stephanie elevator eyes – they were all smoking. I felt out of the loop.

Most of my friends on campus didn’t smoke – in fact, those that did rarely did so around me. I couldn’t see any reason why smoking would be so inviting. My last boyfriend cringed whenever I even said the word smoke, whether in reference to pot, hookah, or cigarettes. He couldn’t stand the idea. I had just encouraged my best friend to stop smoking after she started because of her abusive ex-boyfriend. The taste of hookah was nothing to the taste of cigarettes, and of the cigarette I’d had since getting on campus, I couldn’t compare it to hookah. They simply didn’t taste the same. I didn’t understand the appeal that attracted other people to the cancer sticks that beckoned fire and ashes.

I felt lost.

“Okay, someone call Stuart and ask him how many people are on the bus,” Stephanie ordered, her phone still to her ear.

“I just called him,” Lee answered, “and he said forty-two.”

“Forty-two, okay,” Stephanie repeated. “So how many are we missing?”

“Five.”

“Five? Really? Where are they?” Stephanie was becoming hysterical. She was usually so much better at this.

“They’re right here,” I replied. I pointed to the five of us standing in a circle. Stephanie counted and frowned, hanging up her phone.

“All right, then let’s go!”

 

 

The anti-cigarette campaigns were well-worn into my memory. The Truth commercials and magazine ads burned images of dead bodies and photo-manifested lies from tobacco companies into my brain – I knew the slogans and chants well. When I was nine years old, fresh from my parents’ brutal divorce, I was coerced into signing a little sheet that promised I would never touch drugs or tobacco in exchange for a little card that got me discounts on pizza and ice cream. Not really a fair exchange, but to a lonely fourth grader with no hope for love, pizza and ice cream discounts seemed like the best thing. And all I had to do was not touch cigarettes and drugs? Done!

I went home to pay off a speeding ticket in the middle of the second term my freshman year of college and I ended up staying an extra two days. My mother was thrilled to see me. I spent time watching television and talking to her. The “talk to your kids about drugs” commercial came on, and neither of us said a word. I knew it would make her uncomfortable, and I wasn’t about to make my mother’s daughter’s visit unpleasant.

But I remembered all the commercials. I had them memorized, and I knew what they all said. “Talk to your kids. Tell them to stay away from drugs.” And they were right. How do you keep your kid from getting addicted anyway? It’s hard.

 

 

At school, before I traipsed off to Chicago, I had my first cigarette. It didn’t taste anything like I thought it would. My mouth didn’t feel cottony; my throat didn’t swell up; I didn’t die like I’d always thought I might. In fact, I was just fine. I loved the feeling of the entire action: the lighting of the white tip, the back and forth motion of my hand to my mouth, the slender stick sweetly secured between my index and middle fingers. What I did was sexy. I felt sexy, exotic, older. I finally understood why parents feared their children might start to smoke: because it was all that it promised. It promised self-esteem, maturity, satisfaction, a distraction. It promised everything you would expect an extension of your hand to deliver.

When the cigarette was almost spent, I was almost sad. I wanted another one. I wanted the entire pack. I was so in love with the idea of the type of sex the cigarette delivered. No fumbling with a condom – the protection was already there in the filter. No worrying about popping a pill every day at the same time – the hit of nicotine could be achieved at any hour. No waiting for a boy to properly give me pleasure with his heavy breathing underneath the painted glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling in my darkened bedroom – the exhale action gave me all the pleasure I needed.

I remember asking Lee, who offered me my first cigarette, why she smoked. Taking the lit stick from her painted lips, she slowly blew out the smoke and looked at me. Her voice was low. “I’m a social smoker. I usually only light up when there’s a cute boy around who smokes. It sparks conversation.”

I looked around and noticed an attractive boy standing in a cloud of smoke ten feet behind where we stood. His friends stood in an awkward circle around him, and sucked uncomfortably on the ends of their cigarettes. He smoked easily, naturally, as if the cigarette belonged between his fingers and inside his lips.

Lee called him Jeremy, and he was rather attractive for his average build. His friends seemed out of place in the cloud that surrounded him, only smoking because this boy smoked, following what he did because he was a junior – that’s what Lee told me – and he knew more than they did. They were first-years. They were in a fragile position: a position to be easily influenced by older students, prone to believe everything the upperclassmen said because they had more experience. The sophomores, juniors, and seniors who were still on campus had wisdom, the first-years assumed, and they were not liable to get in trouble with alcohol, drugs, and sex like the freshman would if they neglected to heed the advice of the older students. After all, they had declared majors; they had studied abroad; they had educational plans that would lead them to graduate in the spring of whatever year they were destined to leave school. First-years were the ones prepared to smoke weed outside in the quads – because they had seen other students doing it without getting caught – and were the ones who were ticketed the most often. All they had to do was attach to some older student and learn how to enjoy the vices of the world without getting caught.

The first-years crowded around this junior, smoking their cigarettes like they had just learned to inhale without coughing, and talked listlessly about the evening’s activities. A girl who lived in the building outside which we stood stuck her head out the nearest door and called to us.

“Lee! Jamie! We’re going upstairs. You coming?”

Her name was Sara, one of thirty on this campus, and she was short and pretty. Everyone loved her because of her laugh. It was high pitched and tinkled in a way that felt pleasing to the ear. Her roommate and she had invited Lee and me to their room to drink before we headed out to one of the fraternity parties.

Our cigarettes essentially spent and Lee’s plan of sauntering in Jeremy’s general direction thwarted by her lack of courage, we smashed the tips of our burning sticks into the ashtray above the trash can, and tossed the butts into the trash. We followed Sara inside, Lee making eye contact with Jeremy one last time, and proceeded up the stairs. Inside Sara’s room, surrounded by techno music and shot glasses, the scent of smoke hinted at my nostrils. No one else in the room smoked cigarettes – I had noticed that out of this group of friends – but the cigarette had taken the fear of alcohol away from me. I clinked glasses with Sara and the rest, taking shots like it was my job, and settled into a happy drunken daze.

We headed to the frat house where the party was being held, and danced energetically. I found myself pressed against guys I’d never met, and even kissed one. My phone vibrated under their hands, and I started fielding text messages with Jeff.

I had known Jeff through orientation, and he was the roommate of my suitemate’s boyfriend. We had barely talked, but we were Facebook friends. Of course, that warranted the exchanging of phone numbers at one point, and explained the first text I received about him wanting to hang out after I left the party. I vaguely remembered he was part of this fraternity as of January, and I was thankful he had texted me. It meant I had someone to walk me home. I was sobering up only slightly near the end of the party, and I looked around for Jeff.

Standing off in a corner, Jeff flipped his lighter in his hand, lazily waiting for me to notice him. I walked over to him.

“Ready?” he asked slowly, his voice lost in the drone of the dying sounds of the music. I only saw his lips move.

“Yes,” I answered, nodding my head in case he didn’t hear me. He pushed himself off the wall and opened the back door that led to the porch. I walked out and immediately thanked God for the spring weather in February – no snow, no rain, just a cool breeze cutting through a high double-digit temperature. I heard the click of a lighter behind me, and turned around just in time to see the red glow of the cigarette illuminate Jeff’s face. He had a nice face – soft features, gorgeous skin the color of a deep tan, lips like two large cuts from an over-ripened, oversized berry. He grinned at me and jerked his head toward the porch stairs. I slowly moved toward them, feeling his hand on the small of my back, and remembered that I was drunk.

“I’m not too drunk for this, you know?” I said to him. My voice was too loud. He walked next to me now, his hand never leaving my back.

“I know,” he replied. “I’m not either. Alcohol isn’t the only thing that’s making me want to hang out with you.” I nodded absently.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. A few moments passed. My hands were in my pockets, and I felt the Chap Stick tube I had stuck there three hours ago. I hoped it hadn’t melted – the combined heat of my thighs and the hands of various men would have made it hot enough to turn from gel to liquid.

“So where do you want to go?” he asked suddenly. My building was in sight, and I knew that we had choices of our hang out venue. My room, his room, or the suites in our buildings would do. I just wanted to be in my own pajamas and roll over to sleep.

“My room,” I said quickly, pulling my keys from my back pocket. Jeff nodded and followed me inside and up the stairs. Outside my room, I fumbled for the key to open the door and he stood behind me, kissing my neck softly. God, I hate that all boys know that a weakness for women is their neck. Always. I’ll turn to butter under the lips of any guy with the guts to kiss my neck.

I finally got the door open and we practically fell inside. We both straightened and he slowly closed the door behind him. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen now.

“What do you want to do?” I asked. My voice was shaking. I wasn’t drunk enough to forget my fear of making the first move in a sexual situation.

“Do you know how to give massages?” That was a strange request.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Do you want to give me one?” he asked. I could tell he was still drunk because his short term memory had completely dissolved. The kissing of ten seconds ago was forgotten. His thoughts were on to something else.

I remembered the cigarette that illuminated his face, and thought how easily he had inhaled that smoke. As he climbed onto my bed and I climbed on top of him, I thought of the essence he must now possess in him. He had had the sexual encounter with the fire stick that I craved – I would need to satisfy my craving with Jeff. He, after all, contained all the smoke of sex. I had to have it.

 

 

Thirty-six hours after the arrival of the coach bus outside my dorm, back at school and in my room, I watched a tall Indian boy light up a cigarette outside my building. I had spent too much time sitting on my bed watching the freshmen play Frisbee, sunbathe, and study on the large lawn that sat in the center of three first-year dormitories. It was better than doing homework, and far more entertaining than sitting on Facebook for hours on end. Largely unproductive? But of course.

The boy with the cigarette was Jeff. His dark curly hair had been cut shorter since halfway through last quarter, but it still shielded his eyes a little bit. I watched his hand move back and forth in the open air, smoke surrounding his body and dissipating as quickly as it appeared.

We had been lovers once, for only one night during the winter months, and I could still remember how his kisses tasted: beer and cigarettes. We weren’t supposed to be together that night – he was drunk, I was self-destructive – but texting brought us together, and a massage brought us closer. I felt his back beneath his shirt as he lamented about his last girlfriend, listened politely as he raged about her inconsideration, and tried to work the tension from his muscles. Soon, the words of aggravation became moans of enjoyment and the distress in his voice filtered into applause for my skills. He pulled his shirt off, turned around to face me, and pressed our lips together.

But now, the memories of our one-night stand vivid in my head, I watched him smoke, looking dejected and alone. I slid off my bed, grabbed my keys, slipped on some shoes, and walked downstairs. He looked like he needed someone to talk to, even if we didn’t talk anymore.

 

 

I hadn’t given in to the urge to buy a pack of light cigarettes and a lighter. The closest I came was a walk into the local convenience store off campus with money in my pocket behind the guy who was buying us alcohol. But all I bought was a pack of gum. My fear of my promise to that little discount card scared me still. Even though I’d had a cigarette already, and had relished in the carbon-monoxide smell of cigarettes being smoked, I felt like completely giving in was not going to help me.

The main reason I couldn’t start smoking was my last boyfriend. Even though we ended on bad terms and we didn’t talk anymore because he was roughly 1200 miles away, I felt like if I started to smoke I’d give him yet another reason to hate me. And I really didn’t need that. It didn’t matter what he thought, I understood, but that wasn’t going to stop me from caring what he thought of me. If I started to smoke, his blasphemy would not only include “w***e” and “b***h” as names to call me, but also “smoking twat.” I didn’t need that.

Though every time I took money out of the ATM I calculated how much I might need for a pack of Camels and a cute cheap lighter, I never acted upon my craving. I’d get it from somewhere else. Either this craving would manifest itself in another addiction, or I’d eventually give in. I was willing to give it more time before I obliterated my lungs with cancer-causing sticks of death.

My choreographers would be pissed off, too, if I suddenly started losing stamina. Smoking kills your ability to hold your breath – and as a dancer for a group that performed three times a month, losing my breath would definitely kill me faster than the choreographers would like. I’m sure they’d enjoy murdering me themselves for screwing up the dance.

 

 

“You okay?” I asked, sauntering over to his darkened figure. The sun rested above the roof of the dorm behind me, casting a shadow on Jeff’s black clothing. He shrugged and we walked toward the lonely picnic table at the edge of the lawn. We sat down, our feet resting on the bench of the table, and he sighed.

“Why do you ask?”

“You just look a little out of it, you know?” I answered, leaning back on my hands and exhaling slowly. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” he replied, taking a long drag. I watched his movements – strong, familiar, seductive.

“I like how you do that,” I whispered.

He turned to look at me. “Do what?”

“Smoke.”

“What do you like about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “It’s just…sexy.” Jeff laughed, the sound raspy but melodic. I smiled. “You mean there’s nothing sexy about smoking?”

“I don’t know; I guess it fits since people smoke after sex.”

I nodded. He finished the cigarette, ground its tip into the edge of the table and flicked it away.

“Litterer.”

“I’m a smoker, what do you expect?”

I grinned. He slid closer to me and put his hand on my thigh. “So why did you come out here, Jamie Warren? Just to tell me how sexy I am?”

I rolled my eyes. “No.”

“To keep me company?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you want a cigarette?”

At his question, I sealed my lips. I wanted the action of smoking without the potential of cancer, wanted the action of sex without the potential of pregnancy, wanted the basic thrills of life without the potential of a reputation. Jeff’s eyes met mine, and part of me wanted to say yes. I knew how to smoke cigarettes. I knew I wasn’t addicted to them. But part of me knew that another cigarette would be the end of my lack of addiction.

If I didn’t care, I would smoke with Jeff all night. If I didn’t care, I would become like the Chicago smokers and make his offering of the thinly rolled tobacco part of my hand. If I didn’t care, I would start this detrimental habit just to indulge myself in a harmful addiction – but I did care. So much so that I realized it wasn’t the cigarette that he had held between his long fingers that excited me – it was the absence of fear associated with the cigarette.

The Chicago residents who smoked seemed fearless in their decision; they seemed like they never regretted anything in their entire lives. I wanted that lack of regret, that lack of fear.

To decide to start smoking is to take up the responsibility that you may die from one of its related diseases. To start smoking is to start an oral fixation with something between your lips. To start smoking is to give up holding your breath and give in to sleeping with fire in your throat.

Jeff’s hand was still on my thigh.

I didn’t want the cigarette – I wanted him. My recent curiosity associated with the nicotine sticks was the oral part, the physical act of putting something to my lips. I wanted my addiction to incorporate a familiar movement, a familiar taste, a familiar sensation.

If it was something physical I was after, the easiest way to get it wasn’t through cigarettes: it was through kissing. That addiction wouldn’t kill me, if I was careful. I smiled at Jeff.

“No, no cigarettes for me.”

He frowned playfully and slid his hand further up my thigh.

“Do you want something else?”

Still smiling, I leaned forward, whispering in his ear, “If you can handle it, you know where to find me.”

I got up from the table and walked back toward my building, suddenly understanding why so many people smoke cigarettes. They need something to replace the absence of a physical addiction.

 

Author's Note

Is there something missing?