I like to write sometimes. This is a short piece I wrote for my creative nonfiction class. Did I tell you I'm going for an english major? Because I am. Anyway, I hope you like it... let me know what you think.
Much love.
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I am the Capitán.
All the cool kids were doing it. Is that reason enough? There were probably other reasons why I started… It's all tied on up in what used to be, what I wanted it to be, and what it should have been. A cigarette is the quickest way to happiness. There's no effort required beyond a quick reach into the pocket, a flick of the wrist, and a long, slow breath. Then, relief. A wave of numb euphoria crashes the shore, and everything buzzes. It's simple enough. My parents don't like it, but they'll allow me to have my "adult habits", as they call them.
I'm pulling death a little closer every time. The cancer will take over, and the righteous abstainers will all smirk and say "I told you so". I don't doubt that it will happen, so why does everybody have to tell me to stop anyway? Can't they see that it's good for me? It's cheap satisfaction, cheap enough that I can scrounge some money off of the floor and lie to myself for a few more days. I can keep it up.
We're writing our own bibles.
And I'm in the fucking crusades. Only I'm not a buzzed-out white kid like I am, but I'm one of the bad guys. They're coming with swords, and we're pushing them back with the decimal system. Hookahs and shit like that. Modern civilization.
But in the end, they'll be left because they wouldn't let us live, wouldn't let us enjoy our moments, had to KILL us every time we do it. You know what kills smokers? Every single person who tells us,
"You're going to die of cancer." It's a rough effort, especially considering everything we hear from almost everyone. But We isn't so much the right word; it's suggesting that we smokers are unified. Not a chance. We all stand at separate edges of the plane that is human existence; on the fringe, but not always in a way that makes us look like Brando in the movies or Job in the bible. I am a future corpse, and all of the other future corpses will do their own things in other places. We know exactly where we're going, god damn it, and we don't need to be reminded.
Add a bit more contrast. It makes things easier to see.
And then, at some moments, it's even better. The drugs make me forget the reasons, and then the cigarette is nothing but happiness. After leaving the party, another hastily-rolled cigarette finds itself born, burnt alive, and then left smouldering on the ground once I'm done. I'm not grown enough to use one properly. The cigarette isn't an escape from everything else, but life itself seems to shape itself around two minutes of nicotine-induced euphoria. I'll smoke the entire pack, and pick at the bottom of the bag like a lion picks at a carcass. It's a survival instinct.
What of the others? What of composure, restraint, self-respect?
Blessed, tortured,
Painful thing!
Had the gods not stirred; drawn us here,
Life would be dull, and we would hate it.
And there, under the dancing lights, across the floor, stands a cigarette with tight jeans and painted face. She's here to be smoked, and I'm here to satisfy my habit. One step out of the party, and the cigarette is in my mouth. For two minutes everything is happy again. Once the cigarette burns out, it's dropped to the ground, stamped out with my foot, and the craving settles down for the night. Hopefully the cigarette is put out before it can be left to burn. A fire would be terrible at the party.
You have to blur a camera to focus it again. You start from nowhere and work your way in. Not like that, no, but try to put her onto the film.
I went to New York City once. Cigarettes there are more expensive than most places, because the dealers know that people will still buy them. I stayed with a cigarette girl. Neither of us told our parents. We were allowed to have our habits as long as nobody got hurt. We smoked each others essence, felt our hunger diminish outside of bars, in dimly-lit bedrooms, under a blanket on the sand while the waves rolled in. At the end, we threw our ends to the ground, stamped them out.
Nobody picks up cigarettes once they've been discarded. It doesn't matter if the smoker only had the time to take one drag, and left the rest on the ground. That cigarette is dead without running out. No one will touch it until it's thrown away for good, picked up by some custodian of the grounds and sent to the trash. I'm not like those people. I'll smoke my cigarette to the last, good and burnt, until I need to pull out the filter to get the last of it. If I paid for my happiness, why waste any? When I see another's half-finished efforts, smouldering in anger or burning on the ground, I have to ask myself: "Why did they waste so much?"
I didn't always do it. I can remember when I could wake up in the morning without having to go outside and smoke. There was a time when I could go days and be happy on just the glow of the sun, or the prospects of something beautiful coming to me. Happiness was something different before I picked up my habit. It took time and effort, energy, resolve. Now, it all comes too easy. I'm old enough to do what my parents wouldn't; stupid enough to ignore them when they say I shouldn't. It might be something to drop off, and I could if I wanted to do it, but the rush is pretty good, and I don't need to stop to prove it.
My cigarettes smoulder and then burn out. Each of them shines another ray of hope, burns into life and invigorates me, and then before I know it the buzz is over and the hunger comes back.
I feel you with new nerve endings daily.
I might stop one day. I'll probably want to eventually, but for now I'm just hungry. I have a full pack. There are cigarettes waiting to be smoked; pulled apart from the others, set on fire, drained to fill me, all of it. Should such things be significant? Will I die from some horrible tragedy, or will I live on to be a crotchety old man, or as they put it:
Old. Creepy.
A bit lacking in solid self-defense.
A crippled, misguided youth
Sprung out to some… sad, harsh offense.
Other people have managed to go through life without the habit, without the danger, but they have something else. There are pleasures in life, small lights in life, that far outweigh those of shining ash, dulled buzz, but for now I can smoke. Cancer is forty years away. And what of me? Doesn't it say something that I haven't taken up heroin, gambling, corporate crime? Instead, I've committed the crime of a probable suicide, pleasurable as it may be. If I go, the world will write its own suicide note for me—carried aloft in scathing tones; wraithlike, prophetic.
Don't you know that will kill you?