QUITTERS SOMETIMES WIN

Non-FICTION SHORT

I am twenty-five years of age in Los Angeles, Kale-ifornia, and I am a full blown smoker. What does that mean? It means ordinary tasks are all accompanied with a Marlboro 27 cigarette. None of that pansy shit. 

When I wake up, I have a cig. When I make a meal, I have a cig. When I finish a meal, I have a cig. When I drive, drink, write, take a break, socialize, you name it, I smoke. Essentially, a full blown smoker is a person, like me, who can’t accomplish normal, basic tasks without the aid of a smoke before, during, or after.

And that’s just what it has become for me. My aid. At first, when I started smoking a cigarette here or there at eighteen, I didn’t think much of it- the reasons I was drawn to nicotine. I just thought it was something fun to do. I downplayed its presence, its importance in my life, especially since I was living in New York as a collegiate creator. Not an artist, mind you, a fucking creator. While no one snaps after poetry readings or wears berets, we do wear slouchy beanies atop our heads and always have a cigarette betwixt our lips like a badass.

Because nothing says badass more than smoking nicotine. It’s like saying, ‘Hey, you want to kill me? Well, you can’t, because I kill myself.’

And that’s exactly what I am doing. Killing myself. Well, killing myself and my mother if she knew. Why? Probably because of both of her parents.

Her mom, my grandma, died. I was two and my grandma was fifty or something. I saw pictures of her as I got older, and in her last years, my grandma was thin, frail, wore a black wig and drew on eyebrows because she didn’t have hair. That didn’t stop her from cursing like a sailor, though. I know she was a tough broad. She had lung cancer and then colon cancer, or colon cancer and then lung cancer. Thirty plus years of smoking, drinking, and cursing adds up, they said. 

My uncle spoke about the stuff she had to put up her backside three to five times a day, about the pills she had to take, the drinks she had to drink, about her radiation treatment that burnt her from the inside, all that trying to kill off the bad inside of her but not the good inside her, even though the good inside of her was killed too, until she was just killed, all of her. All of that pain and suffering she went through, ‘til the bitter end. And it was bitter.

Then my grandpa went in his fifties, too, multiple years behind Grandma when I was seven or eight. That was hard because I knew him. He was a fighter, the strongest man I knew, he couldn’t die, he just couldn’t. When my mom had to work multiple jobs as a single parent, she let Grandpa watch us for just one day because on day two of dropping us off at Grandpa’s, my brother, all of five years old, kicked on the door and yelled, “Let me in, you son of a bitch!” That was day one with Grandpa, imagine day five. 

But Grandpa also had his softer edges. There was a softness that came with his age, close to death. He always told my mama, “That one, she’s going places.” He said that about me. He believed in me. He saw something in me I didn’t see in myself.

And as he was dying, I saw his immortality wither away. He became thin and frail, but still cursed like a sailor. His stained, deep, bright yellow nails, I see them so clearly at his bedside. His krinkly hands, like he had sat in the bathtub too long and didn’t think to get out. He didn’t have teeth due to nicotine rot and he loved the classic party trick of taking off his dentures and dropping them inconspicuously in his neighbor’s glass. Thirty plus years of smoking, drinking, and cursing sure adds up, they said then and they said again. He didn’t have colon cancer, didn’t have to put anything up there, ya know, but he was burnt from the inside once or twice or three times. It just didn’t work and he couldn’t stop smoking, he wanted to stop smoking, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to be in the hospital though, and he didn’t want to be burnt alive anymore by anything but cigarettes. He just wanted to go.

So they moved my grandpa back to his home, setup his own personal machine with stuff around him in his bedroom and his personal nurse, to die. 

As messed up as it may be, a part of the reason I smoke is because it brings me closer to Grandpa and a sense of my family. That smell, the smell that lingers in my couch fibers, in the threads of my puffy, tweed jacket, in the strands of my thin, blonde hair- that smell is home.

On particular down days, I wonder if life would be any different were my grandpa to last longer than he did. What if he didn’t prematurely end his life with vices? What if he were around when I was fifteen, sixteen. Would he protect me? Would my mom feel like we had somewhere safe to go?

And on those particular down days, I smoke. And smoke. And smoke. No answers, just more questions to smoke away.

But let the record state, I’m not, like, addicted. No way, not addicted, addicted. I could totally quit if I wanted to, it’s not like, serious, or anything. I’m serious, as a cre-ate-tore. But my habit, that’s not serious.

I tell myself this once, twice, three times a day, almost as much as I smoke. Almost.

Did my grandpa tell himself the same? Why did he smoke, why did he drink? What light and dark was he attempting to squelch out with his smokes, with his drinks? Did it ever work?

Grandpa and me, we both know the answer to the last question. 

I should quit. I know I should. It’s just.

I’m going to quit. I’m going to do it. I mean, I’m not addicted, so it won’t actually be a problem. Right?

***

It is a problem, turns out. I’ve become accustomed not just to the act of smoking, but all the activities I do around smoking are lacking.

It’s hard to explain, but, breakfast isn’t as delectable, drives aren’t as epic, conversations aren’t as deep without a cigarette present.

Which makes it that much harder to just quit, on the spot, cold turkey. ‘Cause believe me, I’ve tried. I try my damndest to wake up and not have a cig, to drive and not have a cig, to talk and not have a cig. It’s just, at some point during my day, I find myself unsatisfied, and in that dissatisfaction, in that discomfort, I find comfort in my hand, at my mouth, in the form of a cigarette. That all-over, calming body massage.

Ahh. 

How do I stop? Because just ‘stopping’ isn’t working, because I’m not. Stopping, that is. I’m just smoking more erratically now, with less routine.

I mean, I Googled ‘How to quit smoking’ recently and stumbled upon nicotine patches, which seemed to me like I wouldn’t be quitting at all but just taking it in a different form that wasn’t enjoyable, so I passed on that. Then I tried e-cigarettes, which seemed like an enjoyable way to still consume nicotine. I smoked with the little chargeable, white cigarette for awhile, until it got old and wasn’t enough for me and then I intentionally let the charge go out so I had an excuse to buy a real pack and start smoking. Then I had a friend swear to me gum was great, gum was the way to go, and it was. That’s why I would smoke a 27 and then follow up with a piece of Nicorette. Like a boss.

WWGD. What Would Grandpa Do?

I hear Grandpa say, “Die of cancer.”

Okay, but what would your spirit do, huh? I want to quit, I really, seriously, do. I just, my will isn’t strong enough. I enjoy it too much. 

Well then, don’t enjoy it.

I laugh for a moment until I realize Grandpa isn’t shitting me. Don’t enjoy it, don’t enjoy it. How do I force myself to not want to smoke? 

Make smoking undesirable. 

And how do I do that, Grandpa?

When I was little in rural Georgia, I remember hearing the same story, from a few different families. A story of a mother wanting her child not to smoke, so instead of warning her child, instead of telling her child the dangers, or even showing her child pictures of what it does to the human body, the mother sat their child down at the age of sixteen, always sixteen even though that’s technically illegal, and made them smoke- a whole pack of cigarettes, right in front of them. 

Genius. Absolutely genius. 

Before I know it, I’m walking out of the local convenience store with a brand new pack of Marlboro Menthols. There’s no turning back back now.

The first smoke feels refreshing, like I’m walking through glaciers made of toothpaste. The second, immediately following, feels complimentary. The third, fourth, and fifth consecutive smoke, are just a game of when I will blow. I barf chunks on the fifth, although I really thought it would’ve been the fourth. I want to stop, I really want to stop, but I can’t. I know I can’t.

You like smoking, huh, you want another?

I don’t. I don’t want another. But if I stop now, I may not actually stop forever, and we couldn’t have that now, could we?

The sixth burns my throat, stripping the sides entirely of phlegm. I cry as I smoke the seventh, throw up again, cry, scream, and then, smoke an eighth. I’m on the ninth cigarette when I can’t take it anymore, not one bit. 

I throw away the pack. I would’ve burned it, but I couldn’t stand another whiff, another breath, another thought of cigarettes.

***

I knew it was over and done, I knew I officially quit, when I was blackout drunk at a house party and someone offered me a cigarette. 

I took it. 

But as soon as I attempted to take a drag, I immediately felt like vomiting, so much so I made a regurgitation noise. And then I tried to give back the cigarette, but the guy didn’t want it back. So I stomped it out and threw it away.

Forever. 

You hear that Grandpa? If you can hear me, I quit- I’m going places.

***