Smoking

The dark and drizzled day finds me frustrated. All I want is to smoke, to sniff, to suck in polluted air and nicotine.

A friend of mine once said that people who smoke really want to breathe air. So I inhale deeply with my mouth pursed. A little whistle only I can hear - weoooohw - as if I were pronouncing the huh sound of an "h" backwards. I concentrate as hard as I can on the fresh air I take into my lungs. I even pretend its smoky. My pen becomes a plastic cigarette. And of course there is some type of relief, although never the relief I am looking for. That air doesn't have what I need.

As the day goes by, my mood gets darker and darker. The smoke is my Prozac, my own personal party, an homage to myself and all the sinful desires I have ever had. When I smoke, I feel free, I associate with old Hollywood stars like Bogey and Bacall. I liked that cartoon camel when I was young. He never got cancer, so why should I? The Marlboro man did, but I don't smoke Marlboros. I smoke Camel Lights.

"Lights" refers to the taste, not the results you see in anti-smoking ads when they show a smoker's lung and a healthy lung. Smoker's lung. Black and oily and full of holes. It takes years they say. That's how I rationalize. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Shot by a stray bullet on New Year's Eve. Those things have nothing to do with the color of my lungs. What are my odds of surviving into old age?

This crap shoot with cigarettes seems foolish and young. How long until I realize its too late?

Its already too late, that little voice says. You might as well enjoy the cigarette now. Whose voice is that? I wonder to myself. Is it me? Is it the devil inside? He sure makes one cigarette seem as harmless as a fly. But flies lay eggs and those eggs hatch. Maggots eat my lungs, lounge in there, pop my alvioli like Icarus balloons flying to the sun. My cilia cease to serve their purpose. My coughs are loud and wheezy. Hacking doesn't just refer to a cheating writer or illegal computer games.

I think about this as I light myself on fire and I phfffffooot away on tasty tobacco.