This Is Happening

Ok, so I broke. You probably figured that out; I hadn't posted in a while. It seems to me it would be obvious that a lack of posts implies that I had cheated or given up, but maybe not. Either way, I smoked, and I smoked a lot.

Lets skip how or why for now, it wasn't that exciting. I'm here to write about the fact that I'm having a profound cigarette right now. The urge to write struck and I decided to take action. Suspense ensues?

I had just gotten off the phone with my girlfriend, Teresa, and said that I was to head to bed due to an early flight I have to catch tomorrow. I told her that I loved her and that I missed her, but still said I was to bed. I was still fairly awake, so the obvious solution was whiskey and a book.

My roommate, and best friend of more years than we usually admit, sat down to work and somehow the new Radiohead album ended up on the speakers. A hookah was packed and lit. There isn't a word for how relaxing it was. The hookah ended, and I lit up a cigarette. Inside. Not a common event in the apartment, but Alex silently agrees and lights one up himself. A song ends, flows into the next, and suddenly I'm struck by... something. Life, I guess.

Sorry Teresa, I was not intending to stay up I promise.

I was smoking, nay, relishing a cigarette with my friend. One of the real ones, the ones you can't fake for sake of convenience. A friend who happens to be moving to San Fransisco in a few short months, consequently taking away the possibility for moments just like this thing of beauty.

The very nature of the cigarette at hand, and sharing it, almost feels like a collective "fuck you" to the future and it's potential struggles. All smokers, myself and Alex included, are not immune to the constant badgering from people at bars: "Cigarettes cause cancer you know. You should quit." Great, thanks. They have warnings on the damned box, I get it.

But the joining in what will be one of the last of these ceremonies, the decision to smoke way more cigarettes than is normal in a moment of extreme indulgence, was powerful. It was a simple moment, but a descriptive one. Long after I quit smoking, and long after my friend moves on to bigger and better things, I will look back on moments like this one.

Who cares about the future when you can lose yourself in the present?

Where Is My Mind?

I tried to break my streak today, and I tried using the smoker's code to do so. I feel pretty dirty about it as I hate violating smokers code. Let me explain.

As I've stated before, I'm on site for my job doing an all-week training session. This particular session is pretty high pressure in nature to begin with; ten hour sessions each day filled with executive speakers and specialty positions giving us Powerpoints on different products and aspects of the business in order to "enable us." With these presentations come quizzes and tests that contribute to a final grade, and that final grade is used during the yearly review to determine if you get raises/are fired. I finished towards the bottom third of my training class in the previous two trips out here, so I had additional pressure to get my shit together this week.

The reason why I picked this week to stop smoking, of all weeks, still eludes me.

Today was our last day of graded material. We had our last quiz, last presentations, and final test. I kicked its ass. I haven't done that well on a final since, well, ever. I did this by locking myself in my hotel room to study all week, and it paid off. I haven't been social, I haven't even eaten meals with people. I didn't want to get caught up in the social gatherings, and put myself near smokers.

Well, I felt pretty awesome about the whole ordeal, and I wanted to celebrate. My excuse-machine called "my brain" got right to work. "Just one, to celebrate! You've gone 4 days without a smoke, and you just accomplished a major goal with a lot of work. One celebratory cigarette wouldn't hurt. Just go ask the guys! They'll give you one for SURE."

The guys are Jay and Martin. They're the guys in my class who smoke. We had formed our little smoke community, which comes with certain responsibilities. We all know a bit too much about each others' personal lives at this point, and definitely are closer than we are to most of the rest of the group (or at least I am with them.) It comes with the territory of 3-4 breaks of 10 minutes a piece every day for half a year.

I mentioned responsibilities. The smoker's code. I'll probably devote an

entire post to smoker's code at some point, but one will suffice today. This particular item dictates that if a man is a smoker, you must give him one if he's out. Now, there are exceptions of course:

'

1.) If you only have one left in your pack, even if you're smoking one at the time, you have the right to reserve the lastie without judgement.

2.) If you don't know the guy in question, AND he doesn't have his own lighter, he's probably not a regular smoker and you can withhold the smoke.

3.) If it becomes a habit, use your own discretion as to when to cut him off.

I did not fit into any of these categories (I even had my own lighter because I feel naked without it) So I asked Jay if we could go out to celebrate. He knew I was trying to quit, and said "no."

"What?"

"I'm not going out, and neither are you."

"... *harumph*"

"wait, are you pissed?"

"no, Jay, you're right. I'll just take a walk."

And with that, I was gone. I walked around outside pantomiming a cigarette in my hand , hoping it'd make me forget there wasn't anything there. It didn't. I have to thank Jay for saving me from myself, I know it's for the best. I just feel badly now, trying to use Jay. I have no intention of ever buying a pack again, and I knew that at the time when I asked to bum that smoke. I asked anyways, flying in the face of all I hold true.

I am a firm believer in Item #2, if a dude isn't a smoker for real he should ball up and buy a damn pack. He is entitled to a borrowed cigarette if he will have them later to pass it on should the opportunity present itself. A "pay it forward" type of situation. I, however, was looking for Jay to subsidize my weakness. If I'm going to break, I should man up and buy a pack.

Not tonight, though. Off to celebrate like normal people: with lots of booze.

SO MUCH RAGE I WOULD LIKE TO SMOKE BUT I CANNOT.

Two Summers Past

I was smoking quite a bit during this summer, and putting on a sketch comedy review with some friends. Now that I'm thinking about it, we entitled the group/show "Everybody Smokes" because the whole group did, and it was a topic of conversation during a break. We had been tossing around a ton of ideas, but after someone had said it we knew right away that that's what we wanted to be called. It defined us, and it defined that summer.

I was working on that show during this particular memory, working on it at my friend's house (that I was practically an inhabitant of) with that friend. We were looking over a sketch he had written about Moses' conversation with God regarding the Ten Commandments. We were also discussing the many pros and sparse cons of going to the corner store to pick up 40s (40 oz bottles of malt liquor, Mickeys to be exact).

But these were fairly commonplace occurances, as the whole thing was. I guess I remember it for the way it felt. For a moment, I had stepped outside myself. I was gazing at my surroundings (while still telling Alex, my friend, that his sketch got too wordy towards the end and I didn't care if that was the point), and I was appreciating the moment I was in. The moment felt timeless.

So I lit a cigarette.

It was one of those perfect cigarettes. The inhale has just the right amount of burn to it. The weather was warm and a little humid, but only enough to remind you of the season. The air was embracing and almost encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing. The surroundings were familiar, but for a moment were more beautiful than normal. Alex lights one too, and we keep talking about the sketch, but we both know neither of our hearts are in it anymore. Eventually we both shut up and Alex puts on some music.

We both have a couple more cigarettes, largely in silence (save the music).

"You having another one?"
"Yep."
"Me too."

The whole "moment" couldn't have been longer than 20 minutes, but it was one of the more relaxing 20 minutes of my life. In a world with too many things to do, too many pressures and too many chances to screw up, the opportunity to have nothing on your plate except a number of cigarette butts and empty beer bottles was one of those small victories that can make you feel like maybe everything will be alright. You can watch the smoke hang in the air curling itself into oblivion and have an actual moment to yourself.

I'd be curious to know if Alex had felt that way too, if the moment was supernatural or an invention of my own overactive imagination. Either way, it was a smoking memory to treasure, and one of those "types of cigarettes" that I will truly miss.

Getting ahead of myself.

I'd like to be explicitly clear: I am fed up with smoking. Future posts may suggest the contrary, but I have felt fed up and ready to quit for the better part of a year and a half. I have spent this past year smoking 5-10 cigarettes a day, which equates to at most an hour a day, staring down at the smoking stick of leaves in my fingers and hating myself. Drowning in self loathing because I couldn't find the willpower in myself, couldn't be bothered to not do something. I would go to great lengths to keep myself stocked, and when I ran out I stopped at nothing until I had one in my mouth.

There are a bunch of reasons to stop, and I've repeated each one to myself so many times they're almost second nature to recite: My breath smells. My teeth are getting yellow. Girls hate it. People hate it. You have to go outside in the winter. Non-smokers respect you less. It isn't professional. It's expensive. It's inconvenient. It's rude to excuse yourself from a group of friends, and even ruder when all those friends but one also smoke. You can't smell, reduced taste, and you're stuck with a constant 5 year cough,

Oh, and get this! One of my friends was reading the internet, and that friend told me the other day that cigarettes cause cancer! Good thing she reminded me, otherwise I would never have known.

The biggest downside I've been focusing on lately, however, isn't necessarily a constant side effect. As I've smoked for 5 years, I have built up an immunity to feeling like shit from smoking a cigarette. However, every once in a while, I get swept over by a wave of soul shaking badness. It's really a hard feeling to describe; it's almost as if your insides want to become your outsides, but they're trapped by that damn skin, and you're nauseous. More often than not I'm hung over when this happens, but sometimes I am just not at peace with the smoke and it's a truly awful feeling.

And that's really what motivated me this time more than anything else. On Saturday, after a night of NO DRINKING, I smoked 2 cigarettes within an hour of each other. The first one made me feel like shit. Then, of course, I did it again, and I felt like shit again. I couldn't stop myself, and I knew it. It was then, standing on my back porch playing my ukulele, that I first played around with the idea of quitting and blogging about it. I was out with my roommate but decided not to mention it; too many times I confess my hair-brained schemes in just such a situation only to have them go nowhere.

There was nothing profound about it, I simply looked at my pack like I normally do on my first of the day, to check if I need to go to the nearest gas station. I saw that I was pretty low and thought "you know, I should be hitting my last one when I get to O'Hare." From there, the idea took root. And now we're here: with me rambling to try and forget my cravings and watching Sarah Marshall. Tomorrow is another day.