smokin'

I stopped smoking about two months ago.

I need to quantify this statement before people start congratulating me for kicking such an immensely addictive habit. On average, I was smoking one cig per day and I don't know if that's enough nicotine to hook a 20-lbs child.

Sherry smokes. So maybe I'd sit on the front porch with her in the early evening stillness and suck down a cigarette while being serenaded by the shouts of whacked out crack addicts and the mumbles of drunks stumbling back to the corner liquor store.

Maybe I'd be chilling at a café with a mug of black, black coffee. What better compliment to the bitter taste of coffee than the smoky death of tobacco?

Maybe I'd be enjoying a rare scotch or vodka and follow it with a cigarette chaser.

Maybe a truly spectacular crap would necessitate a victory smoke.

Maybe the gentle sorrow of a summer rain would invite me to the moody seclusion of the tree in our front yard. There I could sip simple melancholy from the lit tip of a smoky cigarette.

Maybe I'd be hanging with Brooklyn. Hell, he's the reason I started smoking. Back in the day (say 1994), people used to kick Brooklyn out of his own house when he felt the urge to smoke. What an injustice. He paid rent; he should be able to do whatever the fuck he wanted to in that house. So Brook would get exiled and I, as a true and loyal friend, would slink away with him. I eventually started bumming smokes from him as we stood in his yard. What else was I going to do?

Through my inconsistent decade of smoking I've oscillated through sinusoidal phases. I bum smokes; I don't buy them. I only smoke when I drink. I only smoke once a day to wind down after work. I smoke pipe tobacco (a direct result of reading the The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, everybody's always smoking their damn pipe weed). I only smoke in the mornings. My favorite phase was the roll-your-own year, but rolling cigarettes proved too labor intensive for my lazy ass.

Anyways, I'm done. The simple fact is that I don't need it. In my ne'er-ending quest for self-betterment I have decided to stop smoking. At times I do miss it… taking a timeout from life… the meditative nature of ritual… the romanticism of breathing smoke… the peacefulness of being alone…

Damn it, now I want a cigarette. Can somebody bum me a smoke? Anybody? And a light?
...and so it was written, shenry at 8/24/2004 01:57:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .