Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of the Bad Idea Pants Club. Longtime readers may know that I was a smoker 4 jillion years ago, before I even started writing on the internets. My affair with smoking was short, and torrid, and very very VERY enjoyable. I think I eschewed harder drugs when I was young for a variety of reasons, but in large part because of the intense and scary lock cigarettes got on me from the start.
In one sense, I smoked for the first five years of my life. I remember laying on the floor of our trailer, fascinated by the dust motes and smoke swirling around in the sunbeams, as I was trapped indoors by many feet of snow and bitter cold outside the thin walls. My grandmother took up smoking at 27 after her divorce (Mores, brown papers, green box), in what was probably a FUCK THIS SHIT moment after my grandfather fled and left her with a tiny baby (my mom) and my two-year-old uncle.
When I was divorcing at 26 I felt some affinity with my grandmother, though I had a three-year-old and was most of the way through grad school instead of being faced with long hours as a checker with an eighth-grade education. I thought of her as I tried to finish papers and read and kept breaking to smoke. I smoked on and off for about four months that time, until my ribs showed from the stress and the not eating and the calls from my lawyer taken in my GA office. Is this being an adult? FUCK THIS SHIT. I am having a cigarette. Of course everyone smoked outside, so on the moments when the wind was still I would watch the smoke curl out of the tip with the sun shining and think of being a very small child and of how everyone else worried about things. All I had to do was lay on the floor and make little smoke tornadoes with my hands.
Before I grew up into a smoker myself, I had a childhood allergy to cigarette smoke, among other things, and I spent a fair amount of time in the hospital as a tiny kid under oxygen, my cold having mysteriously escalated into pneumonia. I had dark circles under my eyes and pale skin, and a nagging cough. This lasted until I moved in with my mother, who uncovered the source of my illnesses and wouldn’t let people smoke around me.
Of course she smoked, too, having her own FUCK THIS SHIT moment after divorcing at 19. Are we seeing a theme here? When I became a teenager, I nicked cigarettes from my mother’s purse (Benson & Hedges, gold box). Cigarettes were part of my tough girl costume. I learned how to spit impressively without getting any on myself, ew (necessary, because since my lungs could not climb out of my body and run away, they did their best to stay clean).
My watershed moment with smoking, when I discovered how truly cool it could be, was when I went into my usual seedy gas station that was sort of on my way to school and was frequented by truckers and bikers. Plus the clerk there never ever ever carded me.
“Camel Regulars,” I said, like a confident legal citizen who was well within her own rights of accelerating her own demise when it was my turn at the counter. The guy had a shaved head and one of those assertive goatees, those ones that look more like some kind of animal has entered into a symbiotic relationship with its host rather than, you know, facial hair.
The clerk plunked down a too-small box of Camels that were a little cheaper than the usual price. I did not want to argue with him for fear of having him demand ID. I casually tucked them into my pocket and randalled out as if everything was kosh. I took them out once I was behind the wheel and packed them by slamming them against my palm as usual, and opened them up.
No filters…holy shit, old school. When I asked for “regulars” I meant non-light. I was not counting on this. Well, I had paid for them, I might as well try them. With no filters on the end, I was just holding a big block of tobacco in my hand and it smelled delicious. I took one out, lit it. At this point I was probably smoking about 15 cigarettes a day, but the unfiltered experience was like a donkey kick to the head. This was it, I thought. I will smoke regulars from now on. This lasted for a blissful two weeks until my cough got worse and to the horror of my vain 16-year-old self my fingertips started turning YELLOW.
Anyway, all this rambling is in service of telling you that after thinking about it for a couple of years, I bit the bullet and bought some snus from Sweden. I still love tobacco and I was hoping to find some way to enjoy it every few days or once a week in a way that will not freak my children out, but now I sit around and fantasize about cigarettes. There is no ” somewhat pregnant” and there is no halfway point with me and tobacco. If I make it to 80 I will resume smoking. True fact.
Yeah? I smoked the same camels for the same reason at 16. For at least an hour afterwards I was so sick I worried that I was going to die. The hour after that it got worse and I wanted to die. It was awful and I felt thoroughly poisoned. I remain permanently cured of smoking from that one night.
My mother says the same thing. If she makes it to 85, she wants to sit out on the porch in her giant old southern lady hat, drinking scotch and smoking cigarettes.
Smart girl–you are like me. Stay the fuck away from those suckers until 80, then have at ’em. From experience I can tell you that each renewed foray into the lifestyle snatches your addiction-prone self tighter and faster than the last, and each said foray is less and less pleasant than the last, until, ultimately (I swear to GOD my last WAS MY LAST!) the physical need is as undeniable as the physical revulsion.
Stay. The. Fuck. Away.
signed,
Clean now, and for the last 17 years, but only after 6 successively grotesque attempts at quiting.
The quitting was never so hard, really. I am not really a hardcore relapser/cheater. I quit after high school when I moved here because the price doubled and I wanted to spend my money on other things. I don’t like the thinking about it when I am dabbling, though. I want to be ALL IN or ALL OUT.
Here’s to turning 80! Though I am drinking scotch now.
When I was a little kid in rural Missouri (pronounced with an “UH” at the end) my grandfather used to give me dip. I’d pack it and spit along with the rest of the “men” working at the saw mill (yes 8 years old, stacking wood for.. no money ah child labor) I got into some harsher stuff and got sick and that ended my forays for a while. I relapsed a few times in high school, and college. The strangest relapse occurred when a girl I had a crush on (member of the women’s rugby team at that) ran into me at a party (she was a little drunk) and kissed me and it tasted like dip.. best relapse ever.
I never did the smoking thing.. but I am intrigued by your Scandinavian packets of love.
They’re pretty fun, NGL. Tidy, no spitting. Sigh. I hear the USian ones are not as good. Me and my disgusting habits.
“Sing Do Wah Diddy!” Just had to say that. I love that movie. Nice reference.
:) Nice to see you updating!
I smoked filterless Lucky Strikes and Chesterfields for a year because I was 18 and pretentious and I desperately longed to be a character in a Tom Waits song. (I regularly wore a fedora -on purpose- as well. It was an embarrassing time.) They worked better than menthols at making sure no one would bum them off you. Homeless guys would ask me for a smoke, then practically RUN AWAY when I started tapping one out for them. Glorious.
I didn’t have a hard time quitting, which my smoking friends found weird and annoying. I just woke up and lit one and it tasted yucky so I stopped. I have a few drags off my husband’s on occasion, but I sort of agree with my father that it’s the dumbest drug in the world —If I’m gonna smoke some drugs, I want some noticeable goddamn effects like RIGHT NOW; slightly enhanced alertness does not cut it. (Having said that, I also think that once you reach a certain age, they should let you smoke fucking crack if you want to.)
Never tried the smokeless stuff. My early childhood is a blur of being babysat by my mom’s younger brothers, perfumed with the aggressive scent of Brut cologne and Skoal.
I wonder why B&H is often a teens first choice in cigarettes. I started off with those too.
If I make it to 80, I want to go back to smoking, drinking, maybe try that X-tasy the kids talk about. How funny would that be? Someone should make a short film, a la Cocoon, about octogenarians getting their belated party-on. Oh wait. That is what Cocoon is about, right?
Oh LOL Cocoon.
@Tigerlilley! I’m watching Muriel’s Wedding and I’m pretty sure that I spied a carton of B&H cigs when Rhonda goes into Muriel’s weding for smokes.
When/how did the zeitgeist switch from B&H to Parliament Lights as the training cigarette of choice for teens? Walking in front of the local high school all I see these days are blue and white butts with those recessed filters. Haven’t seen B&H – or for that matter, cloves – in a dog’s age. I liked those Britishy gold boxes.
I think it is an Empire thing. Muriel’s Wedding is an Australian movie, I believe, and Tiger is from NZ.
My mother smoked them as an adult–no clue where she picked that up. Everyone around me smoked Marlboro, Camel, or for the extra ghetto experience, Newports. The hipster cigarette of choice here (behind American Spirits) is Parliament Lights.
@Krumpy: Read Jimi Hendrix Turns 80 by Tim Sandlin. Hilarious book about an LSD laced revolution at an old folks’ home. Tim Sandlin’s a hoot.
I smoked for a million years and still miss it, and sneak the occasional puff puff give at a party.
@Styro: Sounds awesome. Will definitely check it out. Thanks!
Ugh, I can’t smoke at all. I quit 10 years ago and still dream about it. And the dreams are so real! I wake up feeling like, “Well, I guess I’m a smoker again” and resigned to smoking half a pack of those blue natural cigarettes a day. I get nervous now if I inhale very much second-hand smoke. I’m terrified I’ll “relapse” by accident.
My best friend Anna and I will wait until we are 70 to try heroin. I can’t wait to get old!