On smoking

Sometime last year, an anti-smoking group invited me to take part in an orientation program of sorts for media persons whom they were presumably interested in winning over to their campaign. I politely declined the invitation, since I didn’t have the time. Besides, — I told the group — it was like preaching to the choir, in my case, being what the morally minded would call a reformed smoker. I promised them that I would, one day, do my civic duty and write a piece on smoking, and here it is.

I didn’t say, however, that I would write about its evils, which have been fairly well documented, even if ignored by millions of our countrymen.

What people who have never smoked don’t realize is how pleasurable it is. Those fingers of nicotine reach deep into your rib cage to scratch and soothe your every little itch. On a cold night, it’s a warm balm; on a hot day, it keeps you cool, venting your inner heat into the atmosphere — into someone else’s atmosphere, for sure, but do smokers really care?

Like food and sex (with both of which a cigarette goes swimmingly well), smoking’s all about pleasure and, to some extent, sustenance — that bolt of energy that swarms through your senses with the first long drag, tapering down into a buzz that just might get you through another page of prose or another stanza.

What’s smoking got to do with writing and literature? Everything, if you ask the guys I bum around with — two-legged chimneys like Krip Yuson, Jimmy Abad, and Joel Toledo (there’s Charlson Ong, too, but he correctly if primly calls himself a “social smoker”) who probably can’t write a couplet without sucking the life out of a Winston. I don’t know if Nick Joaquin ever smoked, or NVM Gonzalez, or Franz Arcellana — I certainly never saw these old gents light up, but then I didn’t know them in their 20s and 30s, which is when it’s cool to puff away while staring at the ceiling thinking aloud of a perfect rhyme for “orange.” A beat-up Underwood, a sweet chick, cheap gin, piano jazz — what more can a guy ask for? A Marlboro, of course.

I doubt that scare tactics work. Heck, I doubt that any amount or method of persuasion can work, unless the smoker is willing to be persuaded. I had a friend who was dying of emphysema and who yet insisted on being fed a lighted cigarette on his deathbed. In his case, it was too late, so it didn’t matter.

But even for those with a realistic chance of recovering, I don’t think that all the finger-wagging in the world is going to get them on the wagon if they haven’t convinced themselves that a smoke-free life is more fun — and generally lasts longer, if you’re interested in getting a senior citizen’s discount card.

I know all the horror stories. I used to smoke up to four packs a day, one unopened pack in my shirt pocket and another in my pants, the easier to fish out a stick — often to be lit with the smoldering butt of the previous one. You know you’re a serious smoker when the skin between your second and middle fingers turns a dirty, unwashable yellow and your gums lose their pink and the first thing you do every morning is to cough up and spit out a sticky green blob. Been there, done that.

So why did I quit? Because I wanted — still want — to see a granddaughter, with her lola beside me, and because I’m intensely curious about the future: about what computers and cars will be like in the year 2025 (remember that 2025 song?), who’s going to be the president (who is already alive), and how many more novels I can churn out before croaking.

I’ve actually quit smoking twice — cold turkey — for two long stretches. (Remember Mark Twain, who supposedly said, “It’s easy to quit—I’ve done it dozens of times!?”) I started smoking in high school, like most Pinoy teenagers in the ’60s, and didn’t stop until 1980, when, on my first visit to the United States, I picked up a book that said that it takes about four days for the smoker’s body to get rid of the physical gunk; beyond that, it’s all in the mind. What a silly claim, I thought — but I was intrigued enough to try it, and, yegads, it worked.

I stayed clean for a whole decade, until — appropriately or ironically enough — I returned to the US for graduate school, and resumed smoking as I was finishing my PhD. That set me off on a steep slide back into the old four-pack-a-day habit. What’s worse, Beng began smoking with me, too, and soon our small apartment was swathed in fumes, with badly charred ashtrays in every little corner.

And then we both quit — together. I know how corny it sounds, but Beng and I made a Valentine’s Day pact in 1995 to quit smoking for good. We finished one last Marlboro each — then tossed the rest of the carton into the trash. We haven’t smoked a stick since; I haven’t even touched a cigarette to my lips these past 16 years. When I finished my first novel without a single puff, I knew I was over the hump.

My lungs can’t thank me enough for that decision — but there’s been another price to pay, in terms of the ample poundage I gained, just because my taste buds came alive from having been embalmed in nicotine. Am I sorry? Heck, no — I’m still enjoying my food, if a bit too much, and I’m sure there are better weight-loss options than taking up tobacco again. I can always buy bigger shirts, or get them from the ukay-ukay; I can’t buy new lungs.

Let me tell you something, though: quitting smoking, even after all these years, is still a day-to-day decision. You never quite lose the urge, you never forget how good that tingle in your throat and chest feels. Sometimes, in a crowded café with friends, I cheat by sniffing second-hand smoke — I know, that’s worse — but then I pay for it the next day by coughing my guts out. Your body will be its own alarm, its own reality check.

The best advice I can give to non-smokers is, get off smokers’ backs if they resist your efforts to get them to stop. If you can’t stand their smoke, steer clear of them, or designate spaces where they can burn their lungs away.

These people (paging Noynoy and Barry, here) have made a presumably informed and intelligent decision to the effect that the pleasures of smoking outweigh its dangers. It’s sad that some smokers can no longer decide for themselves, as it’s their chemistry making their minds up for them. But once upon a time they had a choice, and they made it. If they want help and are willing to be helped, good; if not, wish them as long a productive and happy life as they can manage, and a quick passing, which unfortunately will very likely not be painless.

My own father died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, but I’m convinced that it was the decades of nonstop smoking that really did him in, that weakened his resolve and his body’s ability to help itself. He knew his end was coming — he was all set for an operation but chickened out at the last minute and walked out of the hospital (for a quick smoke, I’m sure). Today, when someone in the family sniffs a curl of smoke that seems to be coming from no one in the room, they’ll say, “Oh, there’s Tatay.”

To smokers, please don’t smoke in a no-smoking zone. Certainly you have rights to do as you please, but not at the expense of the people around you. It’s an imposition many of us would be happy to be without. If you smoke and I still hang out with you, that means I like you enough to shave a few minutes off my life for a few in your company — so buy me a beer, will you?

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.