This list, nearly finished, is really running out of energy (Just like I was in 2006). Many of the last several have been vague ideas of cigarettes, residual, routine smoking experiences, not individual ones with individual cigarettes. I’ll try to remedy that a bit as we bring it on home:
16) 38th Street, Astoria, NY
That friend who lived down the street from me, in the other direction from the subway? Yeah, that was that familiar character Red, who’s showed up in many of these braindumps (not to say heartdumps, because that’s just a ridiculous word) but none very much earlier in time than this set here. We spent more and more time together during ’06, enabling each other, embiggening each other. She first told me about the band Dear Leader. I introduced her to Jameson. She helped me through some dark times which might have been easier if we didn’t just hang out at night. I repaid one of the many favors by correctly teaching her how to ash. We sat in her apartment on the futon by the big windows, which were cracked, cold air streaking in, soup can on the windowsill. I’d been ashing there all night but she joined in, too. In one of my proudest teaching moments, one I’ll never be able to teach a child, nephew or niece, I corrected what had been months of irresponsibility. She ashed by flicking the filter end of the cigarette vaguely in the direction of the opening of the can. This got some of the job done, but also scattered ashes elsewhere and in my arrogant eyes looked amateurish. I showed her my way: Instead of holding the cigarette between the index finger and middle finger and flicking with the thumb, hold the cigarette between the thumb and the middle finger, and ash from the top with the index finger. The ashes fall right into the can and declaratively so: I’m fucking done with you. I was never big on flicking the butt end of the cigarette toward a drain or something, least of all inside, so that’s as cool as it was going to get. It was a correction I had to make, for both of us.
17) The Rocks above Wollman Rink, Central Park, New York, NY
Two of my more glorious weeks of the time were the last two weeks of April in ’06. I was in a bearable limbo: My temp job did not initially lead to full-time employment, so after ten weeks I was out, but I’d expressed my interest in staying in some capacity and heard there was a possibility of my returning. So while my first goodbye seemed final, it wasn’t forever. I was again without work, and with the weather nice, I spent ten business days in Central Park, always reading, always eating lunch, smoking. It was fantastic. I appreciated the break but knew it couldn’t last, so I savored it all.
Oh, sure, I’ll bum one:
Hook and Ladder, New York, NY
I was indeed called back to work at the very beginning of May. Different office, different capacity, new responsibilities. I was lucky and thankful, and looked forward to spending more time with this group. Now, I can’t think what it was for, but at some point that summer we went out for a work function to this bar with a wonderful tented area in the back. It was down a flight of stairs and there were tables for beer pong, and everything! It was a brief flashback to the Big City days, drinking and smoking and playing games. I was playing beer pong, two on two, and the other team hit their last two cups. In our chance to retaliate, my partner went first and missed. I aimed and fired and sank that second ball. I took a drag, and thought nothing of it, or so it would seem. This was in the year before I got seriously into darts, but that slight athletic accomplishment added nicely to the evening and sneaked that cigarette’s way onto the list. (We lost in overtime, by the way.)
18) Hotel Wellington, New York, NY
Work soon became work and the smoking continued unabated. I did my best not to smoke during the workday because they have rules against that apparently, but even when I went outside it was only for one or two a day. Upon returning home, however, I accounted for the balance. Unlike me, the smoking wasn’t working anymore and it just had to go. I reeked. I was stained all over. That money could have been put to better use. Staircases were harder to climb. Subway trains weren’t caught. I was at my lowest weight in years and my lowest since (maybe not all bad). Worst, maybe: Sometimes I couldn’t make it all the way back to Astoria from Brooklyn. I’d take the Q all the way into Manhattan, and instead of transferring right to the N/W to get to Astoria, I’d walk upstairs out to 7th Avenue, stay warm under the hotel lights, and feed the beast. My willpower was constantly tested, I was ragged, and I needed new passions to pull me in. My confidence had been building itself up all year and now the smoking, the crutch, the ritual, would be the one to go.
19) 36th Street, Astoria, NY
I find it easiest to break habits on the back end of larger life changes, like legislation sneaked through stapled to the back of something more significant. By October 2006, I could not live in my 34th Street apartment anymore. While close to Red, the walls were caving in, and it was just a fucking depressing place. It was dark and dank and the only real view I had was of the laundry the old, overweight lady hung out her window. When I was looking for a new apartment, a broker asked me why I was moving out of the old place, and I told him, “There’s not enough light.” Suddenly, I was a plant. Pathetic but 100% true. I was drowning in there, man, and needed to get the hell out. So I moved about ten minutes’ walk south, and a hair east. I remember that first night sitting in my new living room, my bookcases not yet up against the walls, not knowing where I’d get my next meal. I lit up for one of the final times, watched the smoke swirl around up towards the ceiling. Finally, after so many times of trying to quit, and failing at those, too, it didn’t feel right to smoke anymore. It was almost my last gasp. One week later, I’d be done for good.
And you’ve already met number 20.
Deep breaths.