Author: admin

Aren’t we on a trip tonight to the place of the unknown, or we should be. Weekends like this do not roll around that often. I’ve got a cat, a borrowed cat, a borrowed car and we are heading south of the border. How can we make this thing makes sense to the people who have never had the desire to steal a car and go that direction in the middle of the night. Let’s start the weekend early and go bowling, and warm up to scores respectable. Let’s pretend you and I are believable beasts. Let’s talk of the things we would do if we had perfect time and money, and let’s pretend we don’t need an alibi. Let’s commit the crimes that they will sooner or later accuse us of. Let’s get off the hook.
When they tell us that we are not aging well… when they tell us that we are not who we are supposed to be… let’s tell them that there are women that things didn’t work out with, that we still hope might work out, and that those women might find it in their heart to love us for us, and to love the fact that we deny, deny, deny that impulse that was not ours, but someone else’s totally. That we can deny, deny, deny this thing for a little while longer, and maybe more.

This is the one in which we are milking the worms, but not of milk, but of crud and animal parts, the things it has eaten, like sticking our finger down their throats to induce vomiting, except we are really are milking are milking, squeezing it out of them like a tube of toothpaste. The Bangladeshi man encourages us on. Promises good meat. The skin rolls like a treadmill and we try not to be consumed by these worms as they rampage. These firehose sized worms… And then we eat. Thee slices are battered and fried and those of us with the Western palate do not take to the indulgence too well, despite the oversell. We have, perhaps, seen too much. We know where this food has been and that is more than our stomachs will allow.

It’s a day and a day, and perhaps there is too much oxygen, and perhaps there is too much nicotine floating in the air around the great Manuel’s Tavern, Highland Avenue, and tonight (and today for that matter) has proven to be, so far, the hardest of the days so far, and I wanted a cigarette after teaching that class, even though I am “great” and “the guru,” and even now as I type this I cannot believe that I cannot step onto the porch and have a cigarette. I rub very hard, with fingernails, on the nicotine transdermal patch on on my left shoulder. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on and I think I may need one, and I may need one just because I am not in bed yet, and before I read that book, and that movie is on which I left G at home for last year and she called me back from and told me she was leaving this house and R told me it was better that I didn’t see it (worst moment in cinematic history), that it was better that she called me home to tell me she was leaving here and me. Can I have a cigarette? Should I suffer this movie in the two ways that I will suffer it? I think I should cash it in for the night – pillow turned long – a prayer and a page and lights out and a new tomorrow where I will not want to pay the retainer to RJ Reynolds.

I have officially been longer without a cigarette now than I have since my feeble attempt at quitting 8 years ago. In about an hour and a half, I will have made it for my first 24 hours. Despite the anticipation that I had of how hard this first day would be, it was not very hard. I expect that things will get harder along the way though.
Today I had no real cravings. No freakouts because I was going through withdrawal or anything like that. It was just those times of the day, like when you get a task finished at work and are not yet ready to start the next one, a little break would do, a cigarette break, but then I would have to remind myself that that is not possible. Or when I was rebooting the computer this afternoon and thought it would be a good time to have a…. or when the TV dinner is cooking in the microwave… It wasn’t that I craved the cigarette, it was just those periods of downtime that I used to fill with smoking. I am glad I resisted the urge, but I cannot say that it did not make me sad. Just like the last one last night made me shed a tear or two. It really is like breaking up with a lover, splitting ways from a friend.
Things I have discovered today is that yes, I am craving food more, and that the box of 100 Pop Ice popsicles I bought 3 years ago indeed have a purpose other than delighting the occasional child in the house. I have had two of them late tonight and they seem to be somewhat of a surrogate for the more cancerous things I would like to be putting in my mouth, albeit I am not sure how safe that artificial coloring is.
Now Sigourney Weaver is smoking a cigarette in Death and the Maiden and it looks so pleasurable. Hell, I know that it is pleasurable. I am trying to take comfort in knowing that my carbon monoxide levels are half of what they are last night, and in the thought that this will get easier.

I am sitting here and I guess it is technically the day that I will quit smoking. I am staring at a pack of Winston Light cigarettes and there is one remaining. I will be going to bed soon, but before that, I will have that last cigarette. When I wake up, there will be no cigarettes in the house. There will be a box of nicotine transdermal patches, 21 mg, the highest grade. I have been trying all day not to romanticize this moment, but those of you who know me, know that it is impossible for me not to romanticize anything. I guess I have thought so many times about how the last cigarette would be. I have thought about who I would like to have it with. Would it be JT, or R, or G… I guess the fight that I am entering into will ultimately be mine to fight, and the addiction that I have developed is my burden, so I guess it is only appropriate that this last cigarette be something that I have on my own as well. I think I may go get it over with now.

It is 6 PM on this Friday afternoon and I have just finished the last cigarette that I will ever smoke in front of the AJC offices here at 72 Marietta Street. I am not quitting my job here at the newspaper, rather I have decided to quit smoking. On this Sunday night, some time before bed, I will have my last cigarette, and when I awake in the morning I will not smoke the morning cigarette, or the one on the way to work, or the one after lunch. I will not smoke another cigarette again.
My friends who have done this tell me of how hard it is going to be, and I imagine I have not even fully realized what I will go through yet, but I am looking for the relief from the burden of smoking. Hell yes I enjoy it. Every cigarette I have ever had has been good – a consistency that I wish other aspects of my life could achieve. However, it is a burden: the trips to the store, the counting of the dollars when the debit card is damaged, the planning my day out in cigarette demarcated spoonfuls.
People tell me that I must find something to take the cigarettes place. G ate carrots, my dad chews gum and exercises. I think I will exercise and write. I will write my way through this thing because writing is what has gotten me through the bad times in the last year. If it can get me through that, it can get me through this. If I can get through all of that, I can succeed at this also. Wish me luck and prepare for the breakdown phone calls.