cigarettes

i used to smoke a lot. not like a pack a day a lot. but quite a bit. i enjoyed cigarettes. i liked the feel of them in my hand. i liked the scrape of the smoke against my throat. i liked the way they steadied me when i was drinking, they gave balance to my free hand.

i used to tell stories for the gift of spanish cigarettes from my writing professor in detroit. he would come back from his trips to madrid with the white and blue boxes filled with stubby cigarettes made out of fragrant black tobacco. they were so rich that i would usually be unable to speak after two or three.

i always kept a pack of cigarettes in the back of my glove compartment, just in case. usually marlboro or winston reds. even though i eventually switched to lights, i always liked to have reds just in case. just in case the boy i liked turned out to have a girlfriend. just in case i couldn't figure out where a story was going. just in case i hadn't finished that last paper for my senior seminar (the novel and the city). just in case my computer disk had a virus and was printing out wing dings instead of the actual content of Exorcising Robert (my mom's favorite "i like that one about the girl turning into her boyfriend, it's much nicer than the one with the weird mother. it's funny!"). just in case any number of things might occur.

for awhile i knew a guy, his name was john he lived with my cute friend chris (chris had no girlfriend but thought of me as a little sister, i am told he was a lousy kisser. now he is married and living on the east coast. i think) but john did marketing for the company that distributed camels and winstons. this meant free cartons. free. cartons. beautiful blissful free cartons of cigarettes.

see i had rules for smoking. no smoking before noon unless you hadn't been to bed yet. or unless something really really stressful was going on (see the above 'just in case' examples) and no buying cartons. the purchase of a carton of cigarettes, except at a duty free shop on the us/canada border which is just good fiscal sense, is the first sign of proper solid addiction. never mind the chronic bronchitis or the yellow teeth. cartons were the signal of the spiral. but free cartons are different. they are a gift and it would be wrong to turn down a gift. rude even.

this morning i found myself desperate for a winston light. i don't know why exactly, work's been kind of stressful, and it sucked coming back yesterday, but not so bad that i need a cigarette. they don't even sell winstons over. usually, in a pinch, i make due with marlboro lights. but this morning i wanted a very specific cigarette. a winston light from a free carton hidden behind my rickety bookshelf full of novels and textbooks purchased for classes at wayne state university. to be smoked in the lawn chair set up at my computer desk in my tiny room underneath my loft on a very very hot day.

none of these are attainable any longer. maybe it's because i just got secondhand greetings from my other writing professor (word is he was drinking coffee (COFFEE!) at his christmas orphans party this year) and i was telling jeremy and our friend kime stories about my time in detroit on christmas day. i don't know, i just know that if winston lights were available i would have at least broken my no smoking before noon rule. melancholy is a perfectly good just in case.