Living Through Cigarettes

I'm writing thirty posts in thirty days, again. This is number seventeen.

My relationship with cigarettes was one of my primary relationships, for years. Quitting was one of my major breakups. When I write things about my life and cigarettes aren’t included, it feels weird. There’s a certain kind of lame Bukowski vibe about dwelling on the subject, but there’s no reason, prima facie, I shouldn’t wonder why I spent so much time with my Belmonts, just as I wonder why I’ve done everything else I did.

There is a popular idea that cigarettes are popular because they offer smokers an act of ritualized self-harm. As someone who was an inveterate smoker for many years, I disagree. First of all, smoking feels better than other acts of self-harm. Although I can’t recommend it, it is pleasurable, at times, or at least better than punching yourself in the face. Secondly, in a weird way, smokers are in love with life. It’s just a specific variety of life.

Smokers live through a paper tube. Your whole life revolves around this highly controlled procedure. The smoker’s life is constantly self-determined; without your small addiction, everything stops. The day is marked by a series of ellipses. Given that we still have cigarette breaks and that we can still smoke outside—not everywhere, but in most places—you can interrupt everyone else’s agenda with your dumb little ceremony whenever you like. It’s a freedom that can be easily bought. Knowing that it’s bad for you makes this more true, not less.

In the incredible show The Leftovers, there’s this cult, the Guilty Remnant, who smoke constantly and never speak. Basically they do this because they want to be undead; the show centers around the mysterious disappearance of a small percentage of the world’s population, and they feel that this marked the end of life as it was previously known. They can’t live life anymore, they can only do something related. This totally makes sense to me, aesthetically. Cigarettes are a way of lustily grabbing half-life.

Possibility is terrifying if you have significant psychological damage. Potential success is potential exposure, pain, the chance that you’ll be revealed as the forgery you are. Instead of that, cigarettes offer you the choice of a little cave filled with smoke. It’s a place where there’s no challenge beyond wondering where your next ten dollars will come from. If you do that, the central question of your life is resolved, once again. I don’t miss it. But I understand why I chose it as a home for years, inhospitable as it was, and why so many others do the same.