in tandem

ben and i are trying something today that strikes me as very velvet underground/warhol superstar-ian: we're writing 'blogs about the same thing at the same time. (find his at tony wears a tux.) he's apparently in some fancy boston coffeeshop with a large soy latte, listening to some kind of up-with-african-power-don't-eat-animals music; i'm sitting at my desk, not listening to any music. i can't listen to music while i'm blogging because i start concentrating on the music and writing sentences like "when i we done seen ship it the secret's in the potty boathouse." so, no music for me. on to today's topic: baby's first cigarette.

i was an avid non-smoker. i didn't just not smoke, i was one of those annoying know-it-all teenagers who hated to be around cigarette smoke and shot nasty glances at people who were participating in what would become one of my favorite vices. i can pinpoint exactly when smoking cigarettes stopped being something that i thought of as a filthy habit and became...if not glamorous then at least dangerous and exciting. i idolized a hip dyke named leah; she was several years older than my friends and i, was openly queer, had an openly queer brother, and smoked cigarettes as she talked to me in her laid-back way. i skipped seventh period so that i could go to her vintage store on south avenue, across the street from the dixie dog, and soak up lessons on being "alternative."

i can't blame my smoking on leah, though. i can't really blame it on anything. mandy (my best friend from high school who could be dead now, for all i know. that'll be another 'blog) and i bought a pack of camel red lights because we liked the packaging. actually, someone else bought them for us because we were underage. it wasn't a week, though, before we'd opened the pack of cigarettes we bought for show and taught ourselves how to smoke them. mandy had a fleeting experience smoking when she was 15; i never had. standing there next to my gold honda, on a hilltop in the oklahoma countryside, i learned how to inhale cigarette smoke. through the rest of high school, mandy and i fed each others' addictions. she was the perfect ruse--my parents hated her anyway, so when i told them that i smelled like cigarettes because she was smoking, they fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

i have lots of romantic memories involving smoking; intimiate conversations over cigarettes, feeling the high of caffeine and nicotine after smoking half a pack in the coffee shop; but this entry is only about my first cigarette. i look back on that moment with both fondness and regret: fondness for the memory of myself as a rebellious, young, excited teenager, and regret that the same memory is tainted by five years of addiction.

just writing this has made my lungs ache, not because of tar or damage, but with the desire to be filled once more with a poison that has killed so many before me.