The first time I tried to smoke a cigarette I was thirteen. My friend Krishna stole a pack from her father’s stash in the pantry and we gathered in the woods behind her house for a singular purpose: to learn to smoke. Four of us stood in a furtive circle, shoulder to shoulder, giggling with excitement, as Kris struck a match and lit the cigarette and took a short puff. You have to inhale quickly, she said, or you cough before the smoke can get into your lungs. She recommended we pretend we were going to get caught and to take the smoke into our mouths and think “My momma’s coming!” with a sharp inhale. We each did this. The smoke entering my body was like a punch in the chest. I doubled over coughing and for a second thought I wouldn’t be able to inhale again. The panic subsided. We all reached for a second try. It got easier very quickly. I went home feeling devious and adult and a bit smug.
By the time I was seventeen I was a seasoned smoker, having had at least one cigarette a day for years. All my friends smoked. Our high school in the Vancouver suburbs had a designated smoking area: the “Pit”. This was a 10 by 10 space in the common outdoor area where kids passed from one building to another. There was a roof over the Pit and a cement pillar in the center with an ashtray in it. At recess we would brave the pouring rain to huddle under the shelter and smoke and laugh and talk shit. Most of the time the cigarette would take away my appetite so – bonus – I could skip lunch.
When my family moved to Ottawa during Christmas break of grade eleven, I started at an arts high school, where I had been accepted based on my portfolio of writing and some drawings and photographs. My new friends were aspiring visual artists (many of them professional artists to this day), dancers, and actors. Even the dancers smoked. After school we would catch the bus downtown and sit in Oz Cafe smoking Marlboro lights and drinking espresso and eating fries with gravy.
I smoked all through high school and university. I smoked when I worked nights at Charlie’s American Pub in Montreal, where they played classic rock non-stop and I served beer and shots to middle aged men. I smoked on dates and I smoked when I waited for the bus. I have leaned against a million walls and asked hundreds of strangers for a light. I have stood outside nightclubs in the freezing Quebec winter to smoke with random people, shuffling my feet and crossing my arms to stay warm. I have sat on the floor at house parties, drinking beer and bonding with strangers around a black plastic ashtray.
Cigarettes are better than cell phones because you always have something to do with your hands, you always have a reason to be alone, but are still available for conversation. It’s an activity with a lot of social potential. Rather than being drawn away into the internet, when you smoke, you are present, approachable. You are only a “Can I bum a smoke” away from a new friend.
When I was twenty-four I was living alone in a 600 square foot apartment on the second floor of a five story building. My living room and balcony looked out onto a clean and orderly downtown Vancouver alley. If I stood on a chair I could see the ocean over the tops of the buildings down the hill. I was working as a temp in the office of the Computer Science department of Simon Fraser University. I had a cat named Oliver. I had been smoking for ten years. I remember sitting on my futon one night, watching TV. I was smoking a cigarette but I had to do it carefully because I had strep throat and every drag I took was excruciating. I was sitting cross legged, with a lemon tea on the coffee table beside my beautiful ceramic ashtray. I was wincing from the pain in my throat and I was smoking and smoking. I looked over at my cat who was staring at me with complete contempt, one paw casually draped over the other. He was watching me smoke through my infected throat and his eyes and the tilt of his head very clearly said, “What the fuck?”. I looked at the hot cigarette in my fingers and knew I was totally screwed. I was a smoker. I was addicted.
This pissed me off. I pressed the half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and decided I wouldn’t have another one. For weeks I struggled. I had never drunk a cup of coffee without smoking a cigarette. I had never sat in a bar or restaurant without smoking. I had no idea what to do with my hands when I was talking to someone at a party. I started to tuck my hands under my thighs when I sat down at the bar. I put my hands in the pockets of my jacket when I waited for the bus or stood in line for a movie. I started chewing gum.
After about a month of no smoking I developed a disgusting, wet cough – ironic since I had never had a cough when I was a smoker. But something else happened too. I realized I didn’t have a headache. Apparently I had maintained a mild headache for ten years and didn’t notice it until it went away. My skin cleared up. Eventually the cilia in my lungs had finished pushing all the phlegm out of my lungs and my cough went away. I felt better. For over a year I kept the remainder of that last pack of cigarettes in a tupperware container in my freezer. Many times I stood with my face in the foggy freezer and stared at the tupperware, my hand gripping the handle. Each time I decided I could wait a little longer.
I have a vivid recurring dream in which I am lighting a nice fresh cigarette with my silver engraved Zippo lighter, the smell of flint sharp in my face. I take a deep, blissful drag of smoke, my lungs caressed, relief and pleasure coursing through me, savoring the feeling of the cigarette between my fingers, the tap tap of my index finger to clear the burnt tobacco off the tip. Exhaling a series of perfect Os of smoke into the air and watching them stretch larger and larger until they finally turn lopsided and break apart.
Quitting smoking was like ending a toxic yet passionate love affair. Decades later, when I pass a smoker on the street I still feel a physical pang of nostalgia and longing. It’s like catching sight of an old love holding hands with someone new and all the feelings of loss and unfinished business grip my heart. I don’t regret quitting. But I don’t regret starting, either.