I have to approach seven different people before I find anyone willing to give me a cigarette. I fondly recall a time when it was easy to find somebody that generous - whatever happened to the brotherhood, the fellowship, the unspoken bond between smokers...? Time was a selfless act like giving away a cigarette would karmically ensure that were you ever to run out, somebody would reciprocate. All smokers knew this - though you would be forgiven for not giving away your last one - it goes with the territory: welcome to The Cancer Club. Here is your membership card… This is the club charter…
No more. Generous smokers are now a dying breed.
So I sit on the wall outside work, kicking my heels against the brickwork and rolling my hard-won cigarette, unlit, backwards and forwards between my fingers.
I gave up smoking for her. Almost two years now, without a single puff. And all done by willpower alone. No patches, no gum. No hypnosis, no support groups. Just willpower. And the desire to please, to impress - she gave up smoking a month before I met her and inspired me by her example. I had always said that I would be willing to quit for the right reason. She had certainly been reason enough. Or so it had seemed.
In any case, I hadn't wanted to mess anything up between us by still puffing away while she struggled through her own cravings.
A dutiful boyfriend or a doormat wuss? It seems to matter very little now that she's gone.
What matters is the powerful self-destructive impulse to start smoking again.
…the crackle as it burns, the scratch down my windpipe, the lazy twirl of blue smoke in the air…
I tuck it behind my ear. I'll save it. Maybe smoke it later.
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