Smoke Break November 6, 2007

My body, the damn enabler, wants a cigarette right now.
 
Technically, I have quit smoking. Technically, I quit after I graduated from college two years ago. Not coming close to achieving this, I technically quit again this year.
 
In truth? I greedily eye every cigarette smoker that I see and I filch guiltlessly, smoking a barrage of cigarettes every time I am out – the latest incident this past Monday (yes, Monday) – acquisitions for my right hand while my other holds its nth drink of the evening.
 
I grew up hating cigarettes. My father used to smoke when I was very young and some of my earliest memories recall Pigtailed Me approaching Moustached Him (hey – it was the 80s) in his study, navigating through a hazy curtain of smoke, crinkling my nose at the acrid smell. Add the poster that hung over the sink in my second grade classroom of healthy lungs (red, large, vibrant) next to the lungs of someone who had smoked for 50 years (gray, shriveled, dead) that to this day I can still picture in clear pixel pixel clarity, and I was one kid hell-bent against smoking.
 

My father is a very health-conscientious man who, recently, was kind enough to point out that I’ve gain weight, why you not same size as when you in high school? You still not waking up every morning at 5 am and running 3 mile like I tell you? How you feel that your father still do push up with one hand only and you not even run 3 mile at 5 am everyday?, so I always found it incongruent that he had ever smoked, let alone smoked until I was 8 years old. My mother eventually explained to me that he had picked it up while serving his mandatory two years in the army his homeland required. To learn that even my father is not entirely impervious to temptations, albeit in a shit-fucked situation like forcedly serving in one’s national army, was comforting.
 
Of course, like everything my father does, once he decided to quit, he quit with conviction. Cold turkey. No wobbling back and forth like his prodigal daughter.
 
During Thanksgiving break my sophomore year in college, I made the mistake of trying to smoke while I was home. A couple months before, I had made a new friend who smoked like a fiend. Probably because she was one. My lungs were still red, large, vibrant. But I was in college, and I was open to any and all ways to erase feelings and stress. So I bought my first pack of cigarettes with her – Marlboro Menthol Light 120s – and with that, I sold my soul to the nicotine devil.
 
Well come Thanksgiving family dinner did: My father who wants to sit down and make life plan for you! I draw arrows to paths you follow!; my grandmother who reminds me that someday I need to marry good man and make babies or break grandma’s heart, O.K.? But only after you go to Harvard Law School, O.K.?; my aunt who satisfies her predilection for comparing her eldest daughter to me by reminding me you know she get into top program at MIT? Right now, you two stand next to each other, back to back, let’s see who taller! Then you both play Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 3rd Movement Part 1, we decide who better; my recently college enrolled cousin who regales me with charming tales like Dude I met this kid who went to your high school and when he found out I was related to you, he was like, Dude, your cousin’s so hot, and I was like, Dude, I know; and my mother who is strong and incredible and is able to laugh through all of this mayhem with a graciousness and poise that I can only hope to exude 1/10th of someday.
 
Severely erred in judgement but desperate for a temporary reprieve, I determined that smoking in the windowless bathroom on the second floor was the best place to indulge my guilty pleasure once I arrived back at our house. This reflects the tenuous (at best) connection I have with common sense, because seriously, what the fuck was I thinking? I came out of the bathroom and there stood my mother, with a look that clearly reflected how severely disappointed and shocked she felt.
 
She thrust a can of Glade Air Freshener Aerosol Spray Clean Linen in my face and said, “Spray this, everywhere, NOW. Open all window. If your father smell the smoke, he kill you.”
 
I’m used to disappointing my father and having him make that very clear to me. However, when I feel like I’ve done something to disappoint my mother, I’m compelled to run to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum on bare feet and procure the Hope diamond to show her how sorry I am. She’s that effective.
 
The incident shocked me into early retirement from the whole gray, shriveled, dead route.
 
For a moment.
 
I picked it up once again with gusto when I became friends with Tim during my junior year in college. (Are we seeing a pattern?) One could even say our friendship was born from the time we spent together during our frequent smoke breaks.
 
I can’t figure out how to finish this paper about Jaruzelski.”
 
“Smoke break?”
 
This pattern continued when both of us were foolish enough to think that writing honors theses in history would be a fun way to spend our senior year. Smoking while huddling in front of the library doors at 2 a.m. became synonymous with sticking it to the Man/Higher Education and reflected a “Fuck you, we do what we want” attitude. Combined with the 6 out of 7 nights a week we’d go out, get drunk, and smoke a pack each, my throat had never known such manhandling. (Please insert your best deep-throating joke here.)
 
But now I’m an adult. Technically. And smoking is bad for you. Technically. And none of my family smokes and almost all of my close friends are responsible care-takers of their lungs. As history has proven, if I am one that must follow the pack when it comes to my cigarette addiction (pun intended?), one would assume this should be enough incentive to quit.
 
Then there’s the smoking ban that will soon be enforced in all Chicago bars and clubs. Fact: It is cold in Chicago 9 out of 12 months. Fact: This will be the real reason I kick the habit. Nothing is worth battling below 20 degree weather with 40 mph winds in a backless halter top.
 
For now, I suppose I’ll have to distract my absolute desire for a cigarette after very little sleep and showing up late to work and being screamed at by my boss who finds nothing abnormal about telling me to send out something today so that it got to the person five days ago by popping some Advil and humoring my caffeine addiction.
 
Because I’ve quit smoking. And sometimes, the easiest way to end one addiction is to distract yourself with another, mildly less harmful one. Especially when you are at work.