Tucked almost imperceptibly into the pages of a recently purchased used copy of a paperback 2005 edition of The Best American Essays I found a piece of Mondrian Hotel (8440 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA / Phone 323 650 6999 / Fax 323 650 5215 / Email Mondrian@morganshotelgroup.com/ / www.morganshotelgroup.com / Morgans Hotel Group - New York Miami Los Angeles San Francisco London) stationery, with the following gracefully handwritten in upward slanting cursive pencil:

I'm unsure how to react.  Matt's not home and my stomach is aching.  Two tests said yes and I feel terribly anxious & at peace all at once.  How do I tell him???  I want it to be most special; but for tonight, it's all mine.  Tomorrow it will be ours.  A prayer to God.  Amen. 

Turning the paper upside down, an entire calendar has been drawn in the same hand, with the following dates circled:  9, 10, 11, 12, 25, 26.  26 is circled slightly more emphatically than the rest, and written to the side is the date AUGUST 26.

It's been two months without smoking for Nick.  That's something.  Or it's not, I dunno.  Either way, I can now zip my pants without having to sit down for a few minutes and hack myself lightheaded.

It's truly amazing how much better you feel after quitting smoking.  Which is really saying, it's truly amazing how shitty smoking makes you feel.  And we're in total denial as to the fact that a.) we feel shitty in the first place, and b.) that smoking is the cause.  I can remember having honest to god terrifying coughing jags of a morning which I would attribute, logically, to the crisp July weather as I lit four cigarettes at once in preparation for the seven minutes I would be unable to smoke in the shower.

But talking about quitting smoking is boring.

Why the fuck do girls wanna be dressing like goddam Robin Hood allthesudden?

I wanna see a girl with a bow and arrow slung across her back and a small satchel of gold, which she dispenses to the poor on her way to American Apparel.

The best girls are the ones that wear just the dumbest shit imaginable.  "Yellow high heels with sequined parachute pants? And a Skoal t-shirt tied up at the navel?  And an eyepatch?  And a goddam fanny-pack filled with candy and my American fuggin' Spirits?  Well, sure!  I'll wear it!  I have no regard for the fact that my children, when looking at pictures of me in my younger days, will be under the honest impression that I was a.) perpetually at Burning Man, b.) a literal clown, or c.) a mentally retarded prostitute."

fig 1.1

fig 1.2

On the interaction between two or more cats:

Cats more than likely have a language.  Something resembling a language.  This language may or may not be capable of conveying abstracts.  That I'm not sure on.  I have no idea if one cat would be able to communicate to another the sentiment, "I miss our rightful owners, but the man currently taking care of us is doing a well enough job, I suppose."  Because that shit's complex.  The cats would have to have an understanding of lots of concepts to make that sort of statement.  Things like ownership, that they are items to be possessed in the first place, the fact that their domesticity requires they be provided care for, the recognition of a variable scale of quality of life, these sorts of things.

Again, I don't know to what extent cats are capable of communicating with one another. 

I only saw one black guy the whole time.  The most prolific maker of generic foods I saw was called 'Western Family.'  The sun didn't set until nearly eleven pee emm.  I ain't never goin' back.

After work last night I found myself on the brink of passing the shit out.  So I did just that, at like nine p.m.  I'm far more likely to go to sleep at nine a.m. than p.m., which is why now, at seven o'clock in the fuggin' morning, wide awake and fully rested and partially caffeinated, I feel a bit alien. 

Have you ever woke up and felt the pressing urge to do something very specific with seemingly no outside influence?  As though at some point during the night's lapse of consciousness something inside of you peels off a psychic post-it note, scribbles a command on it, and plants it at the forefront of your waking thoughts?  Surely you have.  This is what my subconscious demanded of me first thing this morning:

"NICK?  REMEMBER THAT HILARIOUSLY WRETCHED MORRISSEY VIDEO FOR SUEDEHEAD?  THE ONE WHERE HE'S IN INDIANA OR SOME SHIT?  YOUTUBE THAT.  NOW, PLEASE."

Which is what I did, first thing.  Because I had to.  I could not have possibly gone about my day without first seeing a youngish Morrissey, at home in England:
-Take a bath whilst reading Lord Byron and pondering the death of James Dean.
-Employ his custom made 'THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT' bathmat.  (!)
-Receive a package from a four year-old postman.

Whatever the contents of that package, the end result is that Morrissey travels to the American Midwest in order to:
-Walk through Fairmount, Indiana -birthplace of James Dean- dressed like an 1870's Jesuit preacher, reading Le Petit Prince.
-Take a bunch of snapshots of Dairy Queen's and water towers.
-Have a reflective cup of coffee at a diner whilst, again, pondering the death of James Dean.
-Mount -but not ride, mind you- a vintage Indian motorbike.
-Visit Dean's old high school to alternately pace and ponder.

Morrissey then travels to Dean's childhood home so that he might:
-Read a book in a barn.
-Drive a tractor around a farm.
-Play a djembe near some cows.
-Carry a bloodhound a short distance.
-And, finally, sit quietly at his headstone.

And there you have it.  This is something I had to do this morning.  Just as Morrissey had to go to Indiana.  I'm sure you understand.

I'm going to quit smoking.  July first.  2056.  Ah, no.  Not true.  If only.  It'll be July first of this year.  That's exactly two weeks from now.  And approximately 280 cigarettes from now.  280 left... 279 now, because I just smoked one.  I smoked the shit out of it.  It was better than sex.  Which anyone who has ever had sex with me will readily agree.  I am deeply mournful about my decision, but it's a good time for it.

I started smoking six short years ago.  I was living in the house next door to the house in which I grew up.  Throughout my childhood this house was occupied first by an ever-hilarious family of yokels (one of whom once honest to god appeared on the Ricki Lake Show for having married a millionaire literally fifty years his elder) and next by a reclusive and creepy, but harmless, widower.  When he decided to go be weird as shit elsewhere, my parents bought the house for a very reasonable price and spent a year fixing it up in order to resell it.

I lived in the house for about half of that year.  I was absurdly, clinically depressed at this point over nothing terribly important, and generally would stay awake until about seven in the morning.  Reading, drawing, sobbing, what have you.  This was the period in which I decided to start smoking.

And I literally did just decide.  I had had cigarettes before, plenty, but never had actually purchased any, and was by no means a smoker.  But one night, at about four a.m., I drove to the gas station on the corner and bought a big ass Diet Pepsi and a pack of Parliament Lights.

It was rough going at first, but by the time I fell asleep around eight, I'd smoked half of them.  I finished them in short order the next day and bought another pack on my way home from work that night.  Bam.  Pack a day, right from the start.

Parliament Lights for about the first six months.  Camel Filters for a year or so after that.  Pall Mall Full Flavors for a year.  (Don't know what the fuck I was thinking there...  Pall Mall's taste like a dirty sock filled with sand and bits of broken glass being forced down your trachea.  And I was approaching two packs a day at this point.)  A brief fling with an online-purchased twelve dollar carton or two of a Native American brand called Skydancers, but no matter the price, the name was just way too queer.  Benson and Hedges for a while, which are probably the best cigarettes I've ever tasted, but they're too expensive and you can't find them anywhere.  Viceroys, oddly, for a summer.  Cheap as shit, tasted like ass, but there was something I really dug about them.  Back to Parliament (Full Flavor this time around) for a little while...  And then for the past three years...

Basic.  Fucking.  Lights.  I love the shit out of some Basic Lights.  And I will always love Basic Lights.  They are absolutely perfect.  I cannot reccommend them highly enough if you're thinking about picking up where I left off.  I've said it literally hundreds of times:  Good flavor.  Good price.  Basic!  Fuck it, I'm gonna smoke 278.

(There we go...  Yeah, that's nice.  I actually just experienced the brief moment of panic all smokers know when they can't remember where they put their pack.  Multiply that by forever and that's how I imagine I'm going to feel for the rest of my life.)

But, love or no, it's an abusive relationship and I gotta get out.  I hardly even notice I'm smoking anymore.  I don't enjoy it anymore.  I'm enjoying it now, immensely, but that's only because I'm writing a goddam essay about the fact that I'm quitting.

My past success with quitting other things -people, sports, driving, trying, caring, believing, shaving, etc.- gives me hope, however.  That, and I have what I believe is a well thought out plan.  Also, Bonadies is going to quit with me.  And Bonadies is fucking made of cigarettes. 

My plan is quite ingenious, I must say.  (Hold on one sec.  277.)  I'm kind of superstitious about revealing it, as I will grab hold of any excuse to cave in when the day arrives, but fuggit, I'm proud of it.  Here it is:

-Keep my Basic boxes from now until the first.
-Begin cutting cigarette package size squares of drawing paper.
-Put twenty squares in each pack.
-Continue going outside for smoke breaks at work and at the studio, and keep the pack with me at all times just as I normally would.  
-Instead of smoking a cigarette during these breaks, draw a three to five minute drawing and reinsert it in the pack.
-When the pack is finished, date it and tuck it away. 
-Continue until I feel like I'm done.

The plan is to turn the habit of smoking into a psychologically enriching excercise rather than a physically/financially damning one.  And viewing quitting as essential to this art piece may help to fill the void in my soul it will surely create.

The physical addiction, on the other hand...  That gon' be some whole other level shit.  Wish me luck.  And don't be a cock if you see me having one.