I am extremely sorry to say that I did not write this beautiful piece of prose, but it’s been a favorite for years, and I wanted to share it with all of you. So enjoy it, and if you like this essay, you can buy the book it came from at Amazon.com, and you can link directly to that page by clicking the title above.
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Now that we’ve all been told half to death of the medical horrors lying in wait for smokers, those who were never lured into the filthy habit gaze in slack-jawed amazement at those who were: How could we possible have done such a disgusting and dangerous thing? Whatever possessed us? And not just once, mind you, but over and over, for years. Decades. In heaven’s name, why?
Well, it’s time somebody explained. No we weren’t attempting suicide, or deliberately trying to stunt our newborn children or poison the bystanders. We did it because it was fun. It felt good. It good like scratching an itch, or stretching, or biting a grain of caviar, or having your back rubbed, or taking off tight shoes.
There, I said it.
Cigarettes tasted good. Their flavor mixed happily with other tastes; apples, cold beer, after-dinner coffee.
They were sexy. The shared cigarette. The compelling gaze half masked by lazy bluish veils of smoke. The courtship gesture of the smoothly produced flame for her waiting cigarette, with an exchange of meaningful looks. The sensual implication of lighting someone’s cigarette between one’s own lips and then, slowly, handing it over. The sweet camaraderie of the after-sex cigarettes, the pair of identical small orange lights signaling each other like fireflies in the dark bedroom, their glow a wordless message of satisfaction that replaced speech, compliments, promises. It softened the abrupt departures of both parties into separate sleep; “I am here,” it said, and “So am I.”
The passing of cigarettes leaves all phases of romance impoverished.
One cigarette was worth a thousand words. The infinite inflections of producing and lighting it, inhaling and exhaling, spoke volumes about personality, mood, intention. Many famous actors owed their reputations to cigarette technique. The half-smoked butt flung down, or flicked over the shoulder, or ground out very carefully on the sole of the boot meant that the time for negotiation was over and the action would begin. The cigarette pause, in which the protagonist, halfway through a sentence or before answering a question, takes out and lights a cigarette, repays years of study by cinema buffs.
Men, notoriously shy of personal conversation, relied heavily on them. A group of men could gather and stand around and smoke together, enjoying each other’s company, without the need of speech. Now smokeless, they’re left just standing there like an arrangement of stones, hands dangling, until embarrassment breaks up the group.
The tobacco offer was a gesture of peace, as it was among American Indians. One took out a cigarette, then offered the pack to another, saying, “Cigarette?” The other might accept, putting him or her subtly in the first person’s debt and boding well for the upcoming transaction, or refuse, implying unwillingness to cooperate; coolness if not downright hostility.
The cigarette relieved tension, and became the traditional last rite and final perk before the firing squad.
It gave us a chance to think. Faced with a sudden decision or unexpected proposal or proposition, it delayed response by a crucial thirty seconds or so while we extracted one from pack or case, considered it, lit up, and thoughtfully exhaled.
After the battle, after the surgery or the car accident or the lost child found, the cigarette clutched in shaking hands gentled down our panic in its silken cradle of smoke.
Cigarettes were a social crutch, offering shy people something to do with their hands, along with welcome moments when they weren’t expected to talk.
They were the seal of a job accomplished, especially a physical job. Having finished painting the porch furniture or planting the daylilies or waxing the car or scaling a cliff, we stood back for a long, satisfying moment to admire what we’d done and smoke the cigarette of reward.
They gave us something to fidget with while waiting for the phone to ring, or the bus to come, or the baby to be born. Something to do during those inevitable blank spots in the conversation. Something to distract the whisper of hunger when we were far from lunch. Tic-Tacs and worry beads are not the same.
For the last smokers, as their numbers dwindled the private-club atmosphere strengthened. The gallant little band, half frozen in an alley behind the office, half-choked in a sealed hallway or smoking car, huddled under the marquee at intermission, or meeting by chance, led by the scent of smoke, in a damp, foggy garden halfway through a dinner party, were immediate companions in sin. Wordlessly, they shared mixed feelings of shame at their bondage, and a kind of defiant pride in their stubbornness.
The last smokers know the joy of walking into someone’s office after a long, smoke-free, corporate day and inhaling the sudden friendly reek of ashtray: liberty at last.
They recognize each other by smell. Like Henry V, a smoker meeting other smokers “bids them good morrow with a modest smile,/ And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen.”
Besides the human comradeship, the cigarettes themselves were company. All longtime smokers who have given up report the pervasive sadness of their absence, as of the death of a friend. The little white companions of our whole adult lives, more faithful and durable than many a spouse, are missing from our pockets, banished from our desks and bedside tables. We feel abandoned and diminished.
If you had to ask, it’s hard to explain. They’re no longer a legitimate pleasure, but they were a pleasure once. We may have been stupid to smoke, but we didn’t smoke from sheer stupidity; we smoked because we liked it.
--Barbara Holland
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