Smoking, I Love You

My love letter to cigarettes, at one time my best friend and forever my worst enemy. I still miss 'em, even a decade later.

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: smoking cigarettes and how Barack Obama may have saved my life.

Ingredient List

🎵 : What I’ve been listening to this week: “Country” by Medium Build. I know I mentioned him before as my favorite artist right now, and his newest album dropped on Friday. It’s only appropriate for this week’s newsletter that his cover artwork is a photo of him with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Listen to the album on Spotify

“Country” by Medium Build

📖 : “Ficciones” by Jorge Luis Borges: Just started this after a neighbor recommended it, but it’s surrealist fiction in the best way. Requires a lot of attention, but kind of wonderful so far.

I finally did finish “A Fever in the Heartland” after getting it back from Libby. It is staggering to know the influence the KKK had in America in the 1920s, during their second resurgence. And not in the deep south; in fact, the second coming of the KKK was driven mostly by communities and governments in states and cities we’d now deem progressive: Portland (still the whitest city in America), Denver, Indianapolis. And if it weren’t for the sacrifice of one woman in Indiana, the KKK could’ve gone the whole way to the White House.

And now, onto the smoke show.

But first, an Instagram account I love:

cigfluencers

A post shared by @cigfluencers

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Anniversary Dinner

Last week was my second, one-year anniversary of no nicotine. I say second, because I quit cigarettes almost a decade ago and already had a one-year anniversary for that. But in the beginning of the pandemic, I somewhat accidentally took up vaping and allowed that to take over my life for about three years, something that seems like a dream to me now.

I quit vaping on April 1 of last year, something I wrote about in this Men’s Health piece published a few months ago (that link is paywall free, so please read it). It was incredibly hard, for sure the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Far harder than all the marathons and ultramarathons I’ve ever done, combined. At one point, after many tried and failed attempts at quitting, I could never imagine making it a whole year.

Now? I really hardly ever think about it. I’ve even managed to not jump on the Zyn wagon. I feel so much better mentally and physically, and I can’t imagine it would ever be a part of my life again.

And for that I am grateful.

Course 2

Appetizer: Splash of Cloves

Barack Obama ruined my life before he saved it.

If you knew me two terms prior to his election, you would have known this: I went to a liberal arts college, I owned a pea coat, and I wrote a lot of poetry. If I could’ve died and been reborn, I would’ve asked to respawn in Greenwich Village in 1968. As such, it should be wholly unsurprising to you that I smoked clove cigarettes. It was the proper thing for an overly dramatic, wannabe writer to do at the time.

I’m not totally sure when I started smoking in general, and I can’t remember if it started with a tobacco pipe or clove cigarettes. I do know that only one of those was addictive to me, and I also know that it started with my best friend Andy (he’s still my best friend, no hard feelings). He occasionally smoked Djarum Splash, a clove cigarette that came in a colorful square pack with a surfer shredding a wave on the front. Even today, the design feels like summer. 

I don’t want to say I was hooked from the moment the smoke hit my throat, but you could get a really good buzz from cloves, and that was enough to rev my engines. Formally known as kretek, clove cigarettes were/are made in Indonesia and chock full of the chemicals you can’t get in regular cigs. Things like eugenol, which is a dental anesthetic that helps numb the throat so you can take bigger pulls. More carbon monoxide and more tar. In other words– the good stuff that hits you just right. Anyway, I wasn’t smoking cloves for the health benefits– they were fun, I was young, and we’d worry about that stuff later.

I’d usually buy my cloves at the tobacco shop, though you could occasionally find them in gas stations. At the time, they were around $5 a pack, which seemed astronomical, considering regular cigs were about $3 a pack at the time. I remember once paying $13 for a pack in New York City and thinking I’d never financially recover from it. While I wasn’t exactly chain smoking, a pack a week was still a significant cost at the time. So, the cheap person that I am, I decided to buy them online directly from Indonesia by the carton and have them delivered to my doorstep. I still don’t know if this was allowed or legal, but it worked.

As with anything that has nicotine and comes in contact with my body, I loved it to death and eventually became addicted. It wasn’t a morning-til-night addiction; I mostly did it while drinking with friends, while on tour, or during and after a long night of waiting tables. I only smoked during the daytime if I was golfing or fishing. I guess I never considered it to be a real addiction because cloves weren’t “real cigarettes,” which I never liked.

Then everything changed.

Because in 2009, Barack Obama passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, banning clove cigarettes in their entirety from the United States of America. They fell into the flavored category of tobacco, which supposedly targeted kids. Interestingly enough, menthol flavored cigarettes– reportedly Obama’s flavor of choice– stayed legal.

There are some conspiracy theories that suggest big tobacco lobbyists were behind the flavored cigarette ban. Cloves and flavored tobacco cut into their profit, so they lobbied the FDA to ban the products. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say, but I can say this– all those clove smokers were still addicted to nicotine, and after their drug of choice disappeared from the shelves, there was only one choice: start smoking tobacco. 

For awhile, I found alternative avenues for my supply chain. Tobacco shops with deep inventory, a friend of mine who was in the Air Force who procured some cartons overseas. But before long, my clove pipeline dried up. 

Eventually I had no choice– quit or start smoking tobacco. Of course, quitting is for quitters, so I chose tobacco. At first, it was off-putting, but I could get used to it, and that’s exactly what I did.

In some ways, it was great– everyone I hung out with smoked cigarettes, so the barter and trade system was pretty straightforward. Unlike cloves, I didn’t have people coming up to me in a bar, asking: “Can I get one of those? I haven’t had one since high school.” Plus, whenever we traveled in the south, we could get them for dirt cheap. I especially loved the Camel girls who’d come to bars and hand out free packs or BOGO coupons in exchange for signing up for the R.J. Reynolds email list. Life was good for a cheap bastard.

Eventually, I thought I should grow up, and that meant getting married and being responsible. My wife, Kimi, was not keen on smoking. It smelled gross, it was gross, it went hand in hand with drinking too much. She wasn’t wrong. 

I tried quitting a bunch of times, but when it finally stuck, it was final.

And here’s where Obama helped me quit: Without banning cloves, I’m not sure I would’ve ever just quit. Because I think smoking real cigarettes– which became socially unacceptable and smelled terrible and made me feel like an inside-out raisin after smoking a half a pack the night before– is what finally forced me to stop. I had to go all the way with smoking before I could cut off the dragon’s head. 

So really, truly– thanks, Obama.

Course 3

The Main: Turkish Delight

I don’t care what anybody says, smoking is cool. It always was, and still is. Pipes, cigs, bowls, cigars. Filtered or not, hand-rolled or machine-assembled, packed and lit. From Audrey Hepburn at Tiffany’s to Bob Dylan going electric to Tyler Durden in the basement of Fight Club, a cig between two lips or two fingers changes everything. The best years of Barack Obama’s presidency were when he was a smoker.

I haven’t smoked cigarettes in almost 10 years, and yet I still love everything about them. The nicotine high, of course. That goes without saying. But like the best things in life, it’s the smaller moments of smoking that I miss.

The way that everything matters, so many small details and intricacies. The difference in taste between Turkish Silver and Turkish Gold, the recessed filters on Parliaments, how American Spirits are great if you’re a hipster but terrible if you have things to do because they’re all-natural and don't burn as fast. The superstitions: no white lighters, a good luck cig flipped upside down in the pack. The way a Zippo lid clicked and the wheel flicked, analog ASMR that always hit the sweet spot in the brain. 

I miss the thrill of thinking you’re out of cigarettes, then finding one left in a random box in the bottom of your backpack. I miss late summer nights with a good playlist, friends on a porch with your skin soaked in the dust of Texas, when the conversation stops and there’s just a long exhale of smoke while the feelings wash over you. Obviously, I miss them at the end of a meal or the start of a drink. 

Everyone thinks the nicotine is the hard part about quitting. It’s hard, for sure. I don’t ever want to go back through the withdrawal process, because it’s two weeks that feel like two years. That’s the hardest part, the initial squeeze with mood swings and irritability and the jackhammer in your brain telling you to just do it, you’ll feel better. But it’s not the hard part. The hard part is that you have to stop speaking an entire language, a whole part of your life that was colorful and meaningful in everyday moments goes radio silent. 

I miss the loudness, sure. Stumbling through Brooklyn at 3 a.m. on the way to Crown Chicken, lighting up when your favorite band starts your favorite song at Club Laga in Pittsburgh. Getting reprimanded at Shea Stadium for smoking in the upper deck, then somehow finding our way to the incinerator room where we shared a smoke break with the concession workers.

I was once moderately cool

But there’s also the quietness. The intimacy of lighting your cigarette off another stranger’s cigarette, lighting one for a girl outside the New Brookland Tavern, or cupping your hands over theirs to block the wind coming down from Canada through the outskirts of Detroit. The myriad styles of holding a cigarette, how each one reflected the owner’s personality.

Cigarettes forced you to interact with strangers, to strike up conversations with people you’d never meet. No matter the differences, you had that thing in common. Standing outside a club, or on a work break, sharing a smoke with a homeless guy and asking him how he got here. They force you to slow down and take a break. To ponder life, complain about work, talk about that thing over there. Sometimes just staring at things, wondering how a telephone wire works. We don’t do that anymore.

There’s a reason analog cigarettes are making a comeback– aside from the rebellious nature that has never left and how all trends are circular, they’re really good at creating and maintaining community. Smoking has been a cornerstone of society for thousands of years and we’ve made some pretty good progress during that time– why are we trying to change that?

Of course, I’m painting this in the most colorful light possible. There were the frequent colds, the nicotine hangovers, the thousands of dollars spent, the sneaking around, the irritability, the smell of smoke in everything it wrapped its tendrils around, the long-term effects that made it hard to even ride my bike a mile. Then there’s the whole lung cancer, heart disease, and dying thing.

But I promise you this– if and when I’m old and everyone’s gone, I’m buying a pack of cigarettes, putting out my lawn chair as the sun sets in August, dialing into the Orioles broadcast, and taking a long drag of tobacco smoke before exhaling it into the humid summer sky.

I’ll probably cough like crazy and throw out the rest of the pack, but it’ll be nice to be a smoker again, if only for a minute.

Course 4

Dessert: Beef Jerky

I have a friend who is the poster child for self control. Even when we were out of control, he reined it in. He would stay up late, but not ‘til 6 a.m. He loved to go on runs while the rest of us were all struggling to go on walks. He could somehow open a bag of beef jerky or potato chips and not eat the whole thing in one sitting. He can also smoke cigarettes for an entire weekend and then put them aside for months. I don’t understand how he does it, but he does. I always wanted to be that person, and trust me when I say I am not.

I just love cigarettes too much to abandon them like that in a time of need.

All that to say– Marc, you suck.

Marc, smugly smoking (right)

End of Menu

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Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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