Chapter 1 - Stop Smoking

The first step to quit smoking?

You’re going to kick yourself here for not realizing it first. You are really going to feel dumb. And you are dumb. Because the first step to quit smoking, in fact, the ONLY step to quit smoking, is to stop smoking.

Stop smoking.

Stop it.

Stop.

That’s all there is to it, folks. You probably thought it was going to be so much harder, didn't you? You probably thought this was going to be chapter after chapter of arduous steps to follow, exploratory journal entries to write, incense to burn, entities to invoke.

But no.

If you want to quit smoking and gain enlightenment like I did, you just have to stop smoking.

Now here’s where it gets a little tricky. You have to stop smoking now, like I said. But you also have to stop smoking every moment from this point forward.

Ah, the caveat appears. But just wait, there’s more.

Not only do you have to stop smoking now, in the present, and not only do you have to stop smoking in every successive present moment (or, the future), you also have to stop smoking in the past.

That’s right, you have to perform an act that heretofore you would never have thought yourself capable. You have to undo the past. Remake your decisions. Undo each choice to pick up and light a cigarette you ever made.

But, how, D.B.? How?

I’ll tell you how. There are going to be some arduous steps to follow, though. And some exploratory journal entries you’ll have to write. You’re going to have to burn some incense, and there most definitely will be some invocation of spiritual entities. No one ever said this wasn't the case.

First, I want to tell you about the first time I smoked a cigarette. And then about the first time I really smoked a cigarette.

It was 1995, far enough away from the 80s, and not close enough to the new millennium, to be very visibly the 90s. Bill Clinton might as well have been there with me getting inappropriate hugs from some intern after playing his sax, which is exactly what happened as far as I knew then.  The ghost of the newly deceased Kurt Cobain might as well have been there as well, high-fiving the President. It was that 90s.

My 12-year-old self stood in the bathroom of our split-level, suburban Chicago home, the door shut and locked, the window that faced the backyard wide open to a late-Spring afternoon. The Marlboro I took from the pack of my mom’s reds in hand, between my fingers. I brought it to my nose, smelling it as if I were appraising a fine cigar.

How could an unlit cigarette smell so sweet when the smoke from a lit one smelled so abhorrent, I wondered. How could a person smoke so many of these that they end up with cancer eating them alive from the inside? How could that person continue to smoke them while the cancer gnawed away at their lungs, and then, insatiable, moved on to the rest of their body? What made these damn things so good?

Grandma had died only weeks before. Viola.  A small purple flower. An instrument that produces heavenly music. My grandma evoked neither the delicate, colorful flower, nor the divine music of the instrument with which she shared a name. She was a tall, bony Italian woman whose voice was deep and husky from years of smoking, whose hands were calloused from always working and always cleaning and always cooking, and whose spirit was worn from the gruff, cigar-smoking, whiskey-swilling husband she took care of.

I could not overcome my curiosity. Grandma was dead because she couldn't stop smoking these, and they killed her. What about them was so great? What about smoking was so amazing that she accepted their killing her and continued to smoke them?

In the bathroom in our suburban home wearing what I can only assume were acid-washed jeans and a flannel shirt, I did not discover the answer to these questions. I lit that cigarette, the smell acrid, filling the small room so suddenly, filling my nose and lungs so fully that I panicked. I puffed on it a bit, but my fear of discovery grew too overwhelming. I dropped it into the pink porcelain toilet, the lit end sizzling a brief moment as it was snuffed out by the water. The black ash spread.

 I tried pushing the smoke out the window, having about as much luck with my hands as I would have if I had just politely asked the smoke to leave. In my adolescent mind, it seemed a good idea to mask the smell of cigarette smoke with the smell of a different kind of smoke. It really did seem logical. I lit a bit of toilet paper on fire, filling the bathroom with the much sweeter smell of burning paper rather than the horrid stench of burning tobacco.

Imagine me slowly opening the bathroom door. Imagine me peering back and forth through the slight gap to ensure no one is nearby. Imagine me strolling out and down the hallway, totally nonchalant, oozing calm, whistling some jaunty tune, and then locking myself in my bedroom for hours cringing as I listened to every slight sound that might possibly be a sign of my sin being uncovered. 

It never came. 

No one ever found out.

And now for the magic. I am going to undo that choice. Pay attention.

I see that kid. I understand his feelings, now. Confusion. Curiosity. And sadness. A sadness he didn't know how to communicate to anyone else. Sadness that he had been at his grandma’s house that last day before she died. The kid had been kept home from school by his mom. It was Grandparents Day, that one fun day toward the end of the school year when the school is filled with all these strange, old people who are just so delighted to be there, and kids jubilant to show them their desk, and their classroom, and their latest art project.

The kid entered his grandma’s bedroom that day with trepidation in his heart. A bedroom shouldn't have a hospital bed in it. A bedroom shouldn't have an IV. A bedroom shouldn't smell the way his grandma’s bedroom now smelled. 

The kid was afraid of his grandma, lying there in her bed, immobile, her eyes closed, sick, so sick, as they’d learned over the previous months.

“Give her a kiss,” his mom urged him. 

He moved toward her slowly, afraid to approach her, afraid to touch her.

The kid stayed in the TV room for most of the day. The young Father Rich came to give her the last rites, and that made everything all the more strange--the priest that he only saw once a week up on the altar, the aura of the sun-lit stained glass behind him, transforming blood into wine, flesh into bread, here in his grandparents’ house, in his grandma’s quiet, shadowy bedroom.

The kid didn't know she would die that night. Nor did his mom. They left and it was like any other Friday night in 1995. The kid played Mortal Combat, maybe, on his Sega. His mom had drinks with friends.

And then the phone pierced the silence of midnight.

I see that kid at the funeral with his sisters. Crying in the pew at the church while the priest he had last seen at Grandma’s house gave the mass. Understanding what death means, but not understanding why that death occurred. 

Feeling ashamed. Ashamed for the fear in his heart at the sight of his dying grandma. Ashamed for having to be pushed into giving her a kiss. Ashamed for not saying goodbye. And sad that he would never be able to. This kid felt sad, and felt sad for feeling sad, because maybe he wouldn't be so sad if he hadn't been so scared. 

I understand this kid, and I accept.  I forgive him, the little shit that he is. As I watch him in that bathroom, trying to grasp what could make someone do something they know is killing them, I see him change his mind. He flushes that cigarette, unlit, because that is not a choice he wants to make. He’s smarter than that. He’s stronger. He wasn't strong then in his grandma’s room, but he could be strong now, and from then on.

That’s the magic. That is rewriting the past. You thought this was going to involve a DeLorean or blue Police box, didn't you? Well, those come later. 

You see, we can re-choose the choosings we choiced because at this moment, the past no longer exists outside of our mind. It’s nowhere but in our mind, and we can choose the choices chose. We can alter how the past affects us by altering the past in the only place it is still real.

That was the first time I smoked a cigarette, but the first time I really smoked a cigarette? That came a few years later.

In the backyard of that same house, beneath that same bathroom window were concrete steps leading down into the laundry room that adjoined the basement. My 15-year-old self crouched at the bottom of those steps, leaning against the closed door, in the shadows of a summer evening. Crickets chirped in the rocks of the landscaping above either side of that stairwell, silenced momentarily if I made too loud a noise, silenced by the flick of the purple Bic I used to light the cigarette, another Marlboro, again pilfered from my mom’s shiny, red pack kept hidden in the messy kitchen drawer of envelopes, and bills, and other junk.

A tall, gangly teenager now, my hair parted in the middle, hanging long and messy, I donned a too-large Smashing Pumpkins shirt, maybe, or Radiohead. I crouched there alone on this summer evening, the cigarette between my fingers, and took a very purposeful drag, forcing myself to inhale the blue-grey smoke completely, hold it, then exhale.

On this cool, summer evening, I crouched at the foot of those concrete stairs in the shadows, alone, and taught myself how to smoke. Over the course of a few years, smoking had transitioned from being something incomprehensible that had killed my grandma, to something mysterious, something that I felt would inform the world of my new persona. I was someone who smoked not because my friends did, but because I wanted to, because I chose to. I smoked cigarettes because I just didn't care about anything at all in the world, not even myself. Strangers on the street would see me smoking a cigarette and think, “Wow, that kid is so grown up and intriguing and mysterious and even though he is super awkward and alone outside the library on a Saturday, I’m completely envious of his life and the extreme level of cool he so obviously possesses.”

This is an approximation of the reasons I sat there, inhaling drag after drag of the cigarette, forcing myself not to cough, forcing myself to continue until I reached the filter. As I progressed, I grew light-headed. It almost feels good, I told myself.

As I finished, and stood from my crouched position, I grew even dizzier, having to steady myself on the concrete walls on either side of the stairway. Taking a couple deep breaths, I gained control of myself, and after hiding the butt under the rocks of the landscaping where I decided no one would ever find it until uncovered by future archaeologists interested in my past, I went back inside, encountering my little sister in the kitchen. 

She is only 18 months my junior, but at that particular point in our lives, it was a long 18 months’ difference between us. She said something to me then about the fact that I had just smoked that cigarette. It was a sarcastic comment in response to the lyrics of an Oasis song I was singing that referenced drug use, because I was just that cool. 

"Where were you while we were getting high," I sang in what I'm sure was dead-on Gallagher vocalization.

"Inside, doing the right thing," little sis called after me with such piercing disappointment, the words thrown at me, shredding through my flesh. In that moment, it was as if everything that I might ever have stood for in her eyes had now been contradicted. Had I been a stalwart, angelic figure in her mind, after which she desired to model her life, as I then imagined, I had now become a cowering, demonic figure, all aspects of which she should strive against.

That buoyant feeling I had initially attained drained from me immediately. Whereas I had thought that what I was doing would make me feel so much better about myself, would make me an enviable person in others’ eyes, and so, make me feel less the peculiar freak I normally felt and more the confident, interesting, artistic guy people admired—now I felt worthless.

The buoyant feeling was replaced by guilt. By shame.  A strange sort of shame, really, in the pit of my stomach. The sort of shame that suddenly felt like it was coming up from my stomach, that felt like it needed immediate release, immediate, impending release from my mouth.

I was about to throw up, and so made my way to the bathroom upstairs to do so into that same pink porcelain toilet I had thrown that first cigarette, years earlier.

The boy who crouched in that stairwell was yearning for something that he thought that cigarette might fulfill. He was alone, on that summer night. Alone. Having finished his first year of high school, having made new friends with whom he was accepted and had fun, he found himself alone. No phone calls. No plans. He realized as a few weeks passed that those friends he had made over the course of the school year were school friends. Friends, thanks to the required attendance in the same classrooms, the same activities participated in. Sure, he would eventually end up making the friends that would stick with him for years, and some friendships forged that previous school year would become these, but then, that summer, he did not know this. And so he crouched in that stairwell, in the shadows, alone, yearning for something he thought that cigarette might fulfill.

Unfortunately, that cigarette did fulfill a yearning. The nicotine both created, and fulfilled a yearning in his brain that had not existed before. In the wiring of his brain, in the neural pathways formed with the introduction of this chemical, maybe the two yearnings intertwined: the yearning for friendship, for love, for not feeling so sad and so alone, with the yearning for the chemical, for the dopamine release upon introducing this drug into his body.

And so, I can forgive this poor dumb boy, because I can understand him now. Feeling so shamed by his little sister, being pushed from his short-lived, precarious perch atop the jubilant feeling attained from what he’d done, back to the seeming abyss he had been occupying, of course he would succumb in the days to follow to the chemical that had buoyed his spirits, however short-lived.

I understand him. I forgive him. And I help him to make a different decision. 

Rather than sneaking that cigarette from his mom’s pack and telling his little sister to stay inside, rather than doing this thing to feel better about himself, to try to alter how others perceived him, instead, he and his sister sit down in the basement for another Mario Kart 64 competition. He, as usual, is Yoshi, and his sister, as usual, is Princess Peach (or Princess "Bitch" as they laughingly call her, pronouncing it to rhyme with Peach).

They’ll play a couple circuits, sitting on the basement floor with each other, the two, enjoying something they can still enjoy together for just a little longer, and then maybe later that night their neighbors will come over for some good Battle Mode play, and they’ll all laugh together, and someone will probably get frustrated and angry when another gets the Triple Red Shells too many times but then will forget their anger when they finally get a good win or two.

And maybe his little sister will go to her best friend’s house and he’ll end up there in the basement, alone again, playing on into the night. And that will be all right.

Maybe he’ll tackle Rainbow Road, over and over, the toughest course of the toughest cup. He’ll fall, certainly, from the sides. He’ll aim for the shortcut and miss, over and over. But eventually, if he keeps at it, he’ll finish the course, maybe in 3^rd or 4^th.

And that will be all right.