TOBACCO TUESDAY Park. Brake. Key. Deep breaths. Seatbelt and keys, step outside and freeze in the autumn air. I put my jacket on, the one I had to steal back from you earlier before I left. I’m sure you noticed, but I figured you wouldn’t speak up about it. This is the first time I’ve been to the corner store down the street from where I live, and to think it wouldn’t be until months after moving in and for reasons other than picking up beer or a bag of chips. I’m glad no one knows me in this neighborhood, so I can go in and out, back to my car, to my front porch, light a cigarette and no one will know the difference. Except you, because you’ll probably smell it on me later. Walk across the damp pavement, black and glossy from last nights rain, then open the door for a man my dad’s age, only he looks twice as old. Just put out what was probably his last Pall Mall, and judging by his beeline for the fridges in the back of the store and the Bud he’s carrying now, he’s here for the same reasons I am, only his have lasted twenty years and I’m hoping to be done with mine by this afternoon. Sometimes I wish we could ask people what happened, or what about an a.m. tall can is appealing before the week is even halfway done. “I’m not a smoker” and neither were you when you asked for a cigarette when you passed by last year, drunk but I didn’t know it, and we talked for a while under that street lamp before I made up an excuse about why I had to leave, or you did. I don’t remember. I know I was nervous, and flicked the ash to the ground too often and pulled on it too fast, coughing, but you didn’t notice and we kept talking, and I was deep in my head the whole time. I watched your lips move, the way you spoke and how the thin smoke leaked from your mouth when you smiled or laughed, and how I loved your red lipstick even though it’d rubbed off a little since you put it on. You stood with your hands loosely on your handlebars, as if you were about to ride away any second - I was afraid you would. And I kept shifting where I stood, the ground as glossy then as it is today and my scrappy shoes squeaking and splashing gently in the tiny wells and cracks in the pavement. The worst part about smoking cigarettes now, nauseating myself with nicotine because it’s supposed to help with whatever stress there is, is the feeling a little past halfway through, when just an extra drag or two pulls the ember close enough to the filter that I’ll still count it as a whole cigarette.  I’m not sure if it’s mostly guilt, or if it’s the tightness in my chest or the black hole in my intestines or how it feels like molasses is going to start seeping from behind my eyes. Maybe it’s the feeling that my feet are too far away and that I walk a little bit slower. I’ll take larger steps as if to show I’m still headed somewhere, as if anyone will notice, but I’m still lifted enough that my gait slows to barely above a stroll, hands stuffed in my pockets for the cold, pulling one out only to throw open the front door harder than I meant to, then walking through too slowly. I’ll carry myself carefully, throat feeling warm, a pressure inside halfway between hunger pangs and like I had one too many cups of coffee. It’s strange that I feel any of this at all considering how many people I see with their own smokey stress relievers. Maybe everyone feels sick. Maybe people like feeling sick. It wasn’t like this when we met, before we quit together and I didn’t actually quit and before I moved across town where I didn’t know anyone but the rent was cheaper so tried to make the most of it. I could smoke one after the other then, and you’d stop after one or you’d get a headache, or the next one you’d share with me. It’s different now, and some of the things that once made me happy (or that I thought didn’t affect me at all) make me sick, while other things make me happier than I knew I could be.
Robert Maciel