it's that time again

Smokeout

“How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?” the doctor asked me, standing with a clipboard next to my hospital bed. She couldn’t have been more than five years older than me; her short-spoken, tight-lipped bedside manner gave her away as the first-year resident I suspected she was. A little too matter-of-fact; a little too threatened. The doctor was, I suspected, my age; I was sure that this girl left the hospital after her 24-hour shift and crashed in bed with her boyfriend, threw on her ratty Hopkins Medicine sweatshirt and watched Lifetime. Why, then, did I feel like I’d been caught with a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches on the far side of the playground? Underneath my tattoos and my cigarettes and the acrid humor I’d been relying on all day, I felt like I’d been exposed for what I was: an addict, no better than any other. Paul, my boyfriend, the dentist, the non-smoker, non-drinker, the one who’d constantly reminded me that smoking will not only kill me, it will make my breath stink and cause my newly-whitened teeth to turn back to a rancid yellow, gave me a pointed look. Well, his look said, answer the nice doctor.

“I smoke one cigarette a day,” I told her, lying. The truth is that I smoked at least one cigarette a day, sometimes two, and in times of stress or a death in the family it was more like a pack. I’d been stressed and my family had been dying. “And,” I went on, “I know that it’s bad, and I know it’s stupid and useless and that I should quit.” It was the same self-effacing, puppy dog-eyed, I know I’ve done something bad but isn’t it cute the way I’m asking for forgiveness speech I’d given to my primary care doctor, a matter-of-fact, aging lesbian who had kind eyes and responded with the same forced laughter that my pre-teen Hopkins doctor was responding with now.

The truth is I knew I should quit. As if the long-term effects weren’t bad enough—lung cancer, for instance, which claimed my boyfriend’s grandfather; or emphysema, which claimed my own; or throat cancer, which would put a permanent end to the singing career I was just trying to build—there were the more immediate effects to worry about, effects that seemed more pressing to a gay urban 25-year-old: yellow teeth; bad breath; difficulty putting on muscle mass no matter how often I hit the gym. Why, then, did I keep accepting invitations to go outside and have a cigarette? Why, when I thought about high school, about my youth, about freedom and about the possibility I felt ahead of me, did I always imagine a cigarette in my hand? Why, when I knew what it would do to me in the end, was smoking still so alluring?

I’ve quit more times than I can count. My last, most successful, period of non-smoking lasted for a year and a half. At the time, I reflected in my journal about what I thought it meant to be a non-smoker. I quit, I wrote, because, unlike the boy I was when I was 17— an outsider, a queer in small-town Oklahoma who wanted nothing more than to fit in, look tough, cross the tracks and be one of the kids his mother warned him about—I no longer want to die. How profound, I thought, I’m choosing life. Then, two months later, I walked home from the Mt. Vernon Super Mart, shakily opened a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights (my cigarette of choice after “giving up” Camel Reds) and took that first, long-missed, sour-tasting drag. It didn’t burn anymore, or feel as foreign in my mouth and lungs as it did when I’d taken a hiatus when I was younger. After a year and a half, it was still familiar, a constant in my life when nothing else seemed that way. And I knew, as I always did, that it would kill me if I gave it the chance.

And so here I am once again, on the edge of this field I’ve never understood or been able to stand on for long, the one called “not smoking.” And, as always, I’m going to give it a concentrated effort; I’m going to think about lost grandfathers and lost singing careers and more time spent in hospitals. I know that it’s bad, and I know it’s stupid and useless and that I should quit. And, once again, I’m going to try.

update: my last cigarette was (last) wednesday afternoon. as in a week and two days ago.