fountainhead

cross my mind - smoking - part 1

part 1

i stopped smoking on a monday. at 13h30 to be exact (i had no idea this would happen when i got up that morning, which just goes to show what can happen in a day). a while before that my friend elsie and i had been doing some errands in town. we were walking back to her car and i said, ‘elsie, kom ons hou op rook’; ‘elsie, let’s stop smoking.’ i have no idea to this day, where that sentence came from. she looked at me with her head bent down, eyes looking up from underneath her lashes, whites showing at the bottom. i’d spoken while she was busy talking. she didn’t smile and she didn’t stop talking, although it looked as if she wanted to say something to me about this. her eyes did all the talking, i thought. we did not refer to it again. we went for lunch. i remember we both had a ‘fullhouse brotchen’. a german breadroll with raw onion, tomato, cheese, gherkin and gypsy ham on it. lots of all of it. and fantastic filter coffee. we finished eating and i lit a cigarette. i remember thinking that this was going to be my last cigarette and that i must enjoy it. and i also remember thinking that it’s not fitting that i put out my last cigarette in this insignificant, light, puny little aluminium ashtray. little did i know.

i had never tried to give it up; i never wanted to, i liked it too much. honestly. i love smoking, i loved my zippos and my pretty ashtray at work and my special one at home. i was not the type to mess in ashtrays all over the place. i did not have ashtrays scattered in my home. i had a single one i used that i carried with me in my house and one specific one at work and that was it. if a visitor was a smoker, i would take out an ashtray for them. i thought that if i ever gave it up, there were two things i did not want: one was sitting around miserable and moping because i’d stopped, wishing for a smoke all day; the other was to not be a pain in the butt for other smokers, the way some people were. if i was going to spend my days being miserable, i would rather just smoke away happily and enjoy everything about it and not be unbearable and unpleasant to have around.

i started smoking when i was seventeen. my best friend carol wanted to try it. so we did. we tried a craven a menthol  and  a dumont. i remember feeling very nauseous. but we did it a second time (why, i will never understand.  never). after that, i took to it like a duck to water and i ended up the smoker.  her stomach literally couldn’t take it; she was always the queasy type and she also always got the bug that was going around. sometimes she could have coffee with milk, other times she couldn’t bear to drink it with milk or she’d be as sick as a dog. there was no consistency in her queasiness.

i loved smoking and everything about it. i loved beautiful cigarette cases and had many. silver, mother of pearl, wood, enamel. my most prized possession is a harley davidson edition zippo with my name and date of birth engraved on it, given to me by my father. it has a metal embossed picture of a woman’s face on the front with a mane of hair - she does have one strange shoulder though; i’ve looked at that for years wondering why it looks so odd, but could never figure it out. it is all the more precious because my father was not one to hand out gifts easily, not ones he chose himself, anyway. i have more precious zippos. another was bought in miami by a best friend and has and old galleon carved in ivory on the front. altogether i had about five breathtaking zippos. i even had pretty cigarettes over the years. attractive packets were an added pleasure and certainly had something to do with my choice of smokes. i remember there was this pretty pinstriped cigarette at one time. i would not be caught dead with those very slender, very silly cigarettes…and i sure as hell couldn’t stomach toasted cigarettes, yuk!

then at one time i started rolling my own. money was tight and this was much cheaper. what a ritual. i had a small metal container that looked like an old fashioned metal chest in which i put all the paraphernalia i needed: roller, tobacco, rizlas. i put a slice of apple in my tobacco (i just loved that touch). i rolled all the cigarettes i might need during lunchtime at work. i now smoked much less because they tasted like shit. but i still loved the whole ritual of it all. i loved how cigarettes tasted. i loved the taste in my mouth when i had a bite of cheese and then took a draw from my cigarette. divine… i couldn’t stand smoke getting in my face or dirty ashtrays. i disliked inconsiderate smokers even more than people who waved in front of their noses when around smokers and their cigarettes. i would not go to bed unless my ashtray was washed for the night. i never smoked in the dark, so i was not one to wake up and smoke in the dead of night (i think this had to do with not seeing the smoke, i’m not sure and i’ve wondered about this quite often). i couldn’t smoke unless i brushed my teeth mornings. i always had my ashtray near a window, in it, if at all possible.

continued in part 2