Perspective of Past Pedanticlessness

I still remember the first time I bought cigarettes. I was in Georgia at my parent's house and I was going through minor alcohol withdrawal. I walked, at one A.M. to a convenience store down the street and purchased a little, plastic-wrapped package of Bugler lights. They were the kind that are referred to as "rollies" since you have to roll them yourself. I remember thinking, as I sat down with my back to the wall of a carpet factory at the end of the road my parents lived on, that this was not what I wanted. I rolled the cigarette anyhow and poorly at that. There was too much of the wet, brown crap in the paper and it wound up looking like a mummy's finger and smoked like trying to suck the sap from a maple branch. But I smoked the whole thing. My lungs filled up and reflexively hacked the blue smoke back the way it had come in with gusto. My eyes watered, my nose petulantly spewed all of its contents out onto the sidewalk in front of me and I, of course, called Allison.

Now, six years later, I am still boggled at my inability to cope without this crutch. I can go, as I have proven, months on end without smoking, only to be called back to the habit and its inevitable smelly fingers like an easy chick to a good lay. Whenever I am stressed, irritable, drunk, over-tired, hungry, feeling fat, lonely or bored, I want a cigarette. Alcoholics Anonymous says it takes ten years to get past the psychological needs I have associated with my addiction but, even then, it will remain at the back of my mind until I die as a viable escape plan.

One packet of crappy tobacco and 25 rolling papers at one in the morning will forever be as much a part of me as the woman on the other end of the telephone that night.

Cast your roses, boy, and be off.