Farewell, My Beautiful Stupidity
4/10/2010 12:27 PM – 12:53 PM
Sitting next to me. Right there, about 8 inches away from my left hand. It’s the last cigarette I’ll ever smoke. If I don’t fuck it up. I’ve fucked it up before. But there it is now and I might not. I am 34 now. I was supposed to have quit two years ago. So here I am now. It’s a beautiful day outside.
One of the things that I read that I’m supposed to do is make a list of all the things that I won’t miss about smoking. There isn’t much. Bad lungs for running. Throat nuggets in the morning. The burnt taste in the back of my throat and on my teeth and tongue. How little I can smell. Constantly stuffed-up nose. I liked running to the store in the rain at two in the morning for a pack of smokes. I like spending my money on such a wasteful enterprise. It’s my money. Which is in the same spirit as why I started and kept smoking. My money. My lungs. My body. The government and church can go fuck themselves. This is my stupid little life. It still is.
But this stupid little life of mine is getting older. The small body of mine has been smoking for 14 years. Most of it with unfiltered, hand-rolleds. Twice the punch. This last cigarette isn’t a hand-rolled. It’s a Camel 99. As close to what I started on as they carry. Well, it would have been a Camel Light 99, but those are too weak for what I like now. I smoked my first cigarette in Southampton, Long Island sometime in the fall of ’94. I was at the first college of my choice. I had started to pull into my shell by then, planning my escape. Planning to go home. The power went out. I bummed a cigarette off of the kid that lived next to me. He smoked Camel Light 100s. Later, he told the small group of my acquaintances there that I had bummed one and they thought it was funny. I was a good kid still then. I lay down on the couch in the dorm’s public area. There were no emergency lights in that part of the building. Someone had left the door open. I looked out the doorway and smoked. “This is something Hemmingway would do,” I thought. A man in himself. A man has to grow up and make his own choices. Not his mommy. His dad is dead. Not his pastor. His God never really says anything. Not his government. Sure as fuck not his government. Fuck them all. Men smoke alone in the dark and think about Big Things. Ha. Stupid little boy. Beautiful stupid little boy. Times up. Out to the porch. The Last One. And then the work of throwing out everything that marks me as a smoker. I still haven’t given up on our stupid dream, little boy. We just need to find another way to get there.
Sitting next to me. Right there, about 8 inches away from my left hand. It’s the last cigarette I’ll ever smoke. If I don’t fuck it up. I’ve fucked it up before. But there it is now and I might not. I am 34 now. I was supposed to have quit two years ago. So here I am now. It’s a beautiful day outside.
One of the things that I read that I’m supposed to do is make a list of all the things that I won’t miss about smoking. There isn’t much. Bad lungs for running. Throat nuggets in the morning. The burnt taste in the back of my throat and on my teeth and tongue. How little I can smell. Constantly stuffed-up nose. I liked running to the store in the rain at two in the morning for a pack of smokes. I like spending my money on such a wasteful enterprise. It’s my money. Which is in the same spirit as why I started and kept smoking. My money. My lungs. My body. The government and church can go fuck themselves. This is my stupid little life. It still is.
But this stupid little life of mine is getting older. The small body of mine has been smoking for 14 years. Most of it with unfiltered, hand-rolleds. Twice the punch. This last cigarette isn’t a hand-rolled. It’s a Camel 99. As close to what I started on as they carry. Well, it would have been a Camel Light 99, but those are too weak for what I like now. I smoked my first cigarette in Southampton, Long Island sometime in the fall of ’94. I was at the first college of my choice. I had started to pull into my shell by then, planning my escape. Planning to go home. The power went out. I bummed a cigarette off of the kid that lived next to me. He smoked Camel Light 100s. Later, he told the small group of my acquaintances there that I had bummed one and they thought it was funny. I was a good kid still then. I lay down on the couch in the dorm’s public area. There were no emergency lights in that part of the building. Someone had left the door open. I looked out the doorway and smoked. “This is something Hemmingway would do,” I thought. A man in himself. A man has to grow up and make his own choices. Not his mommy. His dad is dead. Not his pastor. His God never really says anything. Not his government. Sure as fuck not his government. Fuck them all. Men smoke alone in the dark and think about Big Things. Ha. Stupid little boy. Beautiful stupid little boy. Times up. Out to the porch. The Last One. And then the work of throwing out everything that marks me as a smoker. I still haven’t given up on our stupid dream, little boy. We just need to find another way to get there.
posted by Spike at 9:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home