I don’t know if this is right. It can’t be wrong. But it seems to me I’ve heard or read or both that a person trying to quit smoking should postpone their – I have always hated what the English language makes me do here, using person/their, it should be person/his or her, but that’s just long and dangly and irritating – a person trying to quit smoking should postpone the first cigarette just as long as they – oh, damn – just as long as possible.

As with all my dog pictures, perhaps, for people who don’t give a whit, so it is, I assume, with the trials of quitting smoking for people who naturally have more willpower or who are strident non-smokers anyway. Regardless, I continue, as an egg continues in its own papery eggshaped dent nearly unaware of the rest of the carton. Postponing that first cigarette is the hardest.

First, of course, it’s a question of breaking habits. And coffee and smoking is, well, like sex and smoking. They just go so well together. Or dinner and smoking. Sometimes, the pleasure of dinner is the anticipation of the cigarette after. Of course, sometimes, yes sometimes, I confess, I can’t wait for sex to be over to have a cigarette. And sometimes, too, I want to take a break in the middle of sex to have a cigarette. My priorities are my priorities. But right now, it’s the first cigarette of the day that is the hardest to shake. Well, one will always be the first.

I try distracting myself with tasks. Have a coffee. I drink it too fast. Take a shower. Check my email. And every morning choice, or at least every waking choice, becomes this: Another coffee or the smoke? A shower or the smoke? Computer or the smoke?

Finally I give in. A fresh coffee. Ritually, the ashtray I like, emptied if it wasn’t, on a coaster in front of me. It’s not that I’m so fastidious that I put the ashtray on a coaster. It’s a habit, more than anything. Of course, I suppose, the fastidious are that way from habit more than anything. So for whatever reason, then, the ashtray on a coaster in front of me and my coffee on another coaster. I test the weight of the cigarette in my mouth, dangling. I switch it with the muscles in my mouth from left to right, effortlessly. I finger the lighter. Holding a lighter is very tactile. It’s like rubbing a smooth stone. I, still using my mouth and my lips, pop up the cigarette so that it points up. And I push the button on the lighter. Schwii. Contact. I suck in two or three quick drags and then one long one and hold it. I let out thin slow beautiful arabesques of wispy white poison.

Not quite so cheerfully, before I’ve smoked half, I squash off the glowing head and save the rest for later.

Well, since November 10th, I’ve stuck to my five cigarette rule. And I am quite disciplined about it. I like that I’m exerting some discipline. One of the biggest reasons I am trying to quit is to gain some control. Now it feels like I’ve broken up with a nasty but seductive lover. We’re not dating anymore and the illusions have been broken. Of course we still get together, you know, just for kicks. For now.

SS