Setting myself on fire

I smoked my first cigarette when I was 15 years old, at a house party, after two quick glasses of cheap Gran Matador brandy. Before then I had been vehemently against smoking; it was bad, it just wasn’t right to intentionally slowly kill yourself. My late grandmother Betty Go-Belmonte wasn’t a smoker, but she died of lung cancer nonetheless. Why would I want to expose myself to that risk? Wasn’t it somehow insulting her, to possess a perfectly healthy set of lungs and, in spite of that, willfully play with the possibility of ending up just the same?

As a young child I had seen a pair of smoker’s lungs in a museum, cancerous blackened lumps that couldn’t possibly belong to a human. They made an impact on me, but at 15, I didn’t care. I drank two more glasses straight down the hatch. Ooh, smooth. What a thrill it was to be bad. I urinated in a glass of beer and had some poor soul unknowingly drink it. I told a good friend of mine she was the most beautiful girl in the world then tried to take off her skirt. Or so they tell me; I don’t remember. I didn’t care. I was drunk and I was smoking. I got carried home puking all over myself and no recollection of much at all.

I turned 16 and found myself on a class trip to Germany. I was in Stuttgart, the city I currently live in. I don’t recall making a decision to start smoking, I just found myself doing it. A classmate of mine, already a smoker, wrinkled her nose at me. She told me that if I was going to bum cigarettes off her, I should at least be smoking them properly. I was wasting the smoke the way I was doing it, she said. Real smokers don’t keep the smoke in their mouths, they draw it in deep. Like this, she demonstrated.

Back in the Philippines, I started buying chocolate-flavored cigarettes  Black Bats, they called ‘em. I couldn’t handle the taste of regular cigarettes when I was sober. My cousin introduced me to them; we were at a billiard hall and at some point one appeared between his fingers. He smoked while we played. I thought he looked great.

I started smoking menthols when I got tired of chocolate. I thought they were cool. Mint in a stick  why not? That didn’t last very long either; I bummed a regular cigarette at a party when I was out of smokes and found I liked it better than all the others. I skipped lights and went straight to reds.

My mother found out I started smoking and wasn’t happy. Awesome, I kept it up. In between my fingers was a smoldering stick of power. I would turn to it in good times and in bad, when I was busy and when I had nothing to do. I was a pyromaniac, and my conversations with others like me were the most interesting. Soon I was opening up a pack every day. Sometimes more, especially on the weekends. My girlfriend at the time started worrying about my cough. I didn’t listen to her; she was a smoker too. She had no right to tell me what was good for me.

I read a bit more about the effects of smoking. One thing scared me above all others: the possibility of a lazy Johnson. No, my manhood was not going to suffer such a fate. I tried quitting. I managed for a few weeks and started again. I kept going. I started regularly coughing up dirty-looking stuff in the morning. I stopped. I started. Stopped. Started. Stopped for the 17th time and stopped drinking alcohol too since I recognized that my capacity to say no to a cigarette was null after a beer. This worked. I was able to stay off it. I was 19.

I went backpacking in Europe. I was 20. I started drinking again. Soon I was smoking again. I met interesting people I wouldn’t have met if I wasn’t a smoker, the same story all my smoking life. I stopped when I got back home.

Two years later I was back in Europe. I met an old friend from my first visit to Stuttgart in 2006. I had bummed cigarettes off him back then; now he offered me a smoke. I accepted for old times’ sake. It had been such a long time since I felt any cravings, I figured I had it beat. I smoked a few with him and that was it. I was quite pleased with myself.

A few months later I had to write something important and I was stuck. The famous Block had come to visit. Out of the blue I got hit real bad; I knew that unless I had a smoke, nothing would come out. Okay then, just this once. You’ve done it just this once before, you can do it just this once again. I bummed a smoke from a security guard and wrote what I had to write. The next day I bought a pack. I was smoking again. Just this once, just this once.

I rationalized it. People are dependent on so many things to stay alive, like food, water, shelter, and so on. Are cigarettes really so different? Sure, they’ve got some side effects, but even water will kill you if you drink too much. Cigarettes are emotional shelter and soul nourishment. Do your best to minimize the risks and you’ll be fine. Smoke additive-free cigarettes, because it’s the additives that kill you. Cancer statistics only started rising around the time they started using additives. Use a tar-catching filter like Hunter S. Thompson, because the next worst thing is probably the tar. Take it easy, you’ll be fine. Yeah, you could get cancer. You could get hit by a bus. Thus I was back to a pack a day. My cough didn’t come back, so I thought I was doing something right. A few months later I ditched the filter and kept on smoking.

Stuttgart, present day. I fall in love with a non-smoker and declare I will give it up, just for her. It shouldn’t be too hard. I know myself. I’ve done it before. I quit. We start dating. She goes off for a week in Milan with her best friend. I smoke while she’s away. I quit when she comes back. I sneak in smokes when I know I’m not going to see her, which is not often, since our rooms are 30 seconds away from each other. I feel like I’m hiding from my mother again. Great. Finally I tell her. She’s not as cross as I expect her to be. Don’t quit for me, she tells me, and gives me a hug. Smoke for as long as you need to, but if you quit, quit for yourself. Wow. I could marry this girl. Nope, I say. I’ve already decided. I’m quitting on Sunday.

Today is Sunday. I had to smoke to write this article. Don’t worry, I’m quitting again tomorrow.