I QUIT SMOKING (AGAIN) TODAY

I want my kids to go through this. Giving this up is a rite of passage. And it truly is a giving up—letting go. This addiction is not to nicotine, no matter what they say. This addiction is masochism. It is excessive drinking—that understanding that every sip you take will only make tomorrow hurt more. The cigarette is bourbon neat. The cigarette is coffee black. This cigarette is cynicism, discontent, unhappiness, loneliness, anger, and elegance wrapped into burning self-certainty and self-loathing and self-deception. This is living.

My parents used to smoke with life versus outside of it—there was no smoke-break, only smoke. My father was all bones and lank and Fu Manchu, smoking three packs a day through his twenties. This seems like a lot by today’s standards, but I’d do the same if I could get a pack for less than a dollar and smoke wherever I pleased. He quit cold turkey after getting a job he applied to as a nonsmoker. My mother quit as well, but still bums them from me after a few glasses of wine. Cigarettes were once a personal accessory, like earrings or footwear; they are now an event, an end in themselves. Today, someone wants a cigarette, they corral the other smokers for an excursion into the elements for nicotine and small talk. This is boring. So, today, I’ve given up.

Art reassures my drive to smoke—it tells me I’m right to desire smoke as accompaniment to coffee, books, or writing. I gaze through black & white photography and understand that these are my people: decadent celebrities and models. Cigarettes are noir. I wrestle with the difference between bettering myself and pretending to be someone else. Quitting very well may be a lie I’m trying very hard to believe. Johnny Depp smokes. He hand-rolls Bali Shag tobacco into licorice-flavored papers. Joan Didion smokes, though only five a day and only at the typewriter. Oscar Wilde wrote, “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

I quit smoking today. I am eleven years old and smoking menthol cigarettes that my little brother, who’s ten, stole from a convenience store. We are in a picturesque red barn, standing atop an ancient watering-truck. Footsteps rustle through the tall grass outside. Our eyes widen and my brother drops his butt into the opened truck-hatch, then jumps in to stub it out. I hesitate one second too long and toss my butt over the side of the truck. My grandmother sees it smoldering in dirt and dry hay. “What’s that?” she asks. We run.

After this my brother and I quit skateboarding and hanging out with that crowd of friends. It was as if the two of us knew the game was over without uttering a word—like we hit the reset button on one of our video games and started again as new characters.

I quit smoking today. I am fourteen years old and with my family on vacation in Germany. I sneak out of the hotel room and buy a pack from the vending machine in the lobby. It’s the middle of the night and the world is quiet. The lounge looks like the setting from a detective novel. I want a tailored suit. I want to be Philip Marlowe. I sit and pick up matches resting in a clean ashtray. I open the journal I’ve brought for pretense and rest it on my crossed legs. I remember seeing my big sister pack her cigarettes, so I do that before lighting a match. I don’t cough, but my heart is racing like I’m shoplifting. I slide the pack under the couch as if it were contraband and stub the cigarette out after a few drags. I trade the ashtray with one from a neighboring coffee table and sit back down. A waitress comes in and heads for the lonely, crumpled cigarette. I swear I hear a sigh. I start talking to her with my one year of 8th grade German. Initiating a foreign conversation is like asking a girl out. I know I’m doomed as I open my mouth, but have committed myself to the embarrassment. I say, “Last time.” “Excuse me?” she asks. “That is my last smoking,” I say, “I did when I was small and wanted to see again what it was. I find it not good.” I hear, “Good, it is unhealthy” before I completely lose what she is saying. I smile. I nod. She leaves.

I quit smoking today. I’ve been at it since high school; it’s been five years. The girl I’m seeing doesn’t want me to quit for her, so I do it for myself—to be better for her. I will make it three weeks before she pulls far enough away for me to buy a pack. The relationship is long-distance, but she’s stronger than my cynicism. In three weeks, she’ll have stopped loving me. I’ll buy cigarettes the night before I bring it up. That scratch of flint off my Zippo will be the sound of us falling apart. The smoke will catch in my throat like it hasn’t in years. I will smile like reconnecting with an old friend.

I quit smoking today. It’s been a month since I let my girlfriend know that she was breaking up with me. It’s getting cold out—harder to justify a break for smoke, harder to look stoic in biting winds. I just look addicted. I’ve been getting bored with my cigarettes for weeks—stubbing them out midway through. It’s as if I am more attracted to the idea of having a cigarette than the practice.

I want a cigarette.

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