I Am A Non-Smoker

I haven’t had a cigarette for two days since I got a cold, not the swine flu (oink), just a tad bit of something that’s got my nose stopped up with no place to go. I figure it’s a good time to quit because when I’m ill I’ve no desire to light up. I’ve tried curtailing the habit, but for the past week I thought it better to completely secede from the federal states of nicotine. I’ve quit many times before for varying durations, from days to a week to months to a year, but I always returned. I’d quit before my mom died, but when she did shuffle off the first thing I did when I returned to the city was buy a pack and light up. It’s been on and off since then. I never smoked a pack a day, sometimes one cigarette, sometimes two, usually never over five.

I am a non-smoker. I’ll write that mantra out nine more times.

I’m usually not one to point fingers, but I have to blame Bogey and Bacall for my smoking. I was six years old. It was a Saturday afternoon. Grandmom lived in a long blue trailer in our backyard. I remember the day it was hauled back there and placed between the oak trees, like it was always meant to be there. We sat in her living room, ate ice cream and pretzels, and watched “The Big Sleep”. Black and white sex oozed on the 20-inch cabinet TV. B&B never had sex, but what they couldn’t do on screen they could do with a cigarette. Watch Bogey light up her smoke. Study how Bacall takes a long drag, stares deeply into his eyes and seductively exhales, all the while engaging in noir foreplay:

Bacall: You've forgotten one thing - me.
Bogey: What's wrong with you?
Bacall: Nothing you can't fix.
(Fade to Black)

As a child, I knew I was destined to be a smoker. I too could be a man like Bogey – a man’s man. I too could smoke.

I am a non-smoker.

The first thing I did when I arrived at college was buy a pack of Camels. Grandpop smoked them. I looked at myself in the mirror in my dorm room and Bogey stared back, smoke curling up from flaring nostrils. Here's looking at you, you sexy smoking kid. I was hooked. I coughed up half a lung and kept practicing.

I am a non-smoker.

One of the times I quit was New Year's Eve, 2001. I wanted to clear my lungs, clean my breath; to smell the bouquets at the corner bodega; to taste the lemon of chicken francaise or savor the intimations of citrus and stone fruits on the palette from a Pinot Gris wine; to be able to sit through three hours of “The Two Towers” and not get the jonesing jitters.

I stood on my friend’s roof and on the stroke of twelve took one last inhalation and threw the cigarette away. It hit some drag queen below who screamed, “I’m gonna come up there and give you such a pinch!”

When I woke the next morning and had the usual feeling of lethargy I was happy that it would be gone after a few days. I’d done my research and learned that nicotine leaves the body in one to two days. If I could get past that, the physical addiction would be gone in another two weeks. It’s the psychological addiction that kills all attempts at cessation.

I am a non-smoker.

What God forgot to divulge to the prophets is that not only does each of us have a guardian angel, we also have our own personal gremlin. Some may call them daemons; others may say they're elves or dark angels of mischief. I call it a gremlin.

My gremlin's name is Lucius. It helps to name them, bring them out into the open and acknowledge them. That’s what my personal coach told me. I never thought I could use a coach, but she was really good. At the time, she got me motivated and had me draw out a plan for what I wanted to accomplish. It lasted two months because for some reason she stopped returning my daily calls. I found out later that she had an emotional meltdown, curtailed her coaching gig, and fled the city and disappeared inside an ashram. I still hope I didn’t have anything to do with it.

On the second day of quitting, as soon as I walked out the door, Lucius popped up his hideous head. A diminutive, scaly, pugnacious imp, he sat on my shoulder, blew smoke in my face, and whispered sour nothings into my ear.

"You’re walking to work?" he asked.

"Yes,” I replied. “Www.quitsmoking.com suggested exercise was good for quitting. Pump the heart and get that nicotine out as fast as possible."

"But you love smoking. You have no choice – it’s in your blood, your genes. Everyone on your father’s side smoked and nobody died of cancer."

"Yeah, only heart attacks."

"At least they went quick.”

"Shut up.”

"What about reincarnation? You get to come around again and again. Your soul is immortal. The body is dust. You’ve got eternity to live and smoke!"

I remembered my Sunday school and commanded, "Get thee behind me, Lucius."

“That only worked with Jesus, and you ain’t Christ.”

"Bugger off!"

"You sound more like the Apostle Paul."

I am a non-smoker.

I stopped and took a deep breath. In my “Nicorette Quit Smoking Guide” it suggested that whenever the desire to light up raised its pernicious head, when you had a hallucination, the sweats, or the overwhelming desire to grind and eat your own teeth, you were to stop, breathe deeply and let the feeling pass through you. It actually helped because Lucius grumbled and slinked away behind my head.

I am a non-smoker.

I popped a Nicorette. Chew, chew, park. Chew, chew, park. My Nicorette mantra. That’s what the instruction manual said. One chews for fifteen seconds, waits for the peppery taste to hit one's gums, and then parks the gum in one's cheek. Wait until the pepper taste is gone then repeat until the nicotine is depleted from the gum. It was awful: a tasteless mass of lightly flavored mint-pepper silly putty that made me feel like a cow with the obligatory cud.

I made it to the 47th Street and Broadway donut cart, waited in line, and thought that normally I’d be having my before-walking-into-work cigarette. I ordered my egg sandwich and watched as a woman walked up in a fake waist-cut fur coat, tight pants, and dirty old moonboots. She ordered her dollar coffee and donut special and took a drag from her smoke – one of those cheap generic Basic 100s.

"No chocolate?" she asked.

"Glazed, glazed!" barked the Greek. Then he winked, but his ample wife, frying up my egg, didn’t notice.

The woman sneered, exhaled, and somehow the two-inch long ash didn't fall. She was one of those distinctive people who can do that. It just hung there, the tobacco cherry glowing red every time she inhaled. The ash didn't even fall when she picked her nose with a long crimson pinky nail.

I am a non-smoker.

Work went fine for the first two hours. I was busy writing a grant proposal, keeping my mind off the habitual need for a mid-morning smoke.

Lucius knew my routine. "You know, you could quit when you're thirty, you don’t have to do it now."

I popped a Nicorette, chewed and parked. "I’ll be thirty in six months."

"So quit when you’re forty,” he said with a grin. “There’s plenty of time."

"Shut up."

Lucius leaned his elbows on my head. "Remember the movie, ‘The Thin Man’? Nick and Nora Charles drank like fish and smoked like two factories in Dickensian London. They were sexy, classy people."

"And I bet they smelled like a factory."

"You never smelled that bad."

"I'm not listening…hmm-hmm-hmm…"

Lucius stretched his hands above his head and curled himself around my neck. "Why put yourself through quitting? You’re causing more stress on yourself by trying to quit. And besides…you really do look sexy with a cigarette."

Did I really enjoy it, or had I been smoking for so long that I'd actually convinced myself that it tasted good, fooled myself into believing I liked it, even though I woke up wasted and dehydrated. Had I forgotten that there’s a reason they call the tobacco remnants “butts”?

Lucius piped up, "Drink more water."

"Shut up. Go talk with my future self."

"No."

"I command you."

I knew that my future self was a non-smoker and that he’d tell Lucius a thing or two.

I am a non-smoker.

Maybe smoking is a part of who I am. Did I say that? Lucius?

"Yeah, it’s me."

I am a non-smoker.

Now, seven years later, I’ve quit again. My sense of smell will return and I will taste things better. I’ve learned that I’m human and liable to make mistakes like a guilty, backsliding, penitent Christian. I’m going to do my best. Although I would love to be able to do it, I can’t have just one cigarette. I can’t have any. I am an addict. Like a junkie, an alcoholic, a chocolate fiend, it has to be all or nothing for me. I’ll take the nothing right now and continue to breathe deeply every time the urge comes. I think I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life.

"Yes, you will," Lucius says, barely above a whisper.

I am a non-smoker.