Delivery Diaries: Alan and Quitting Smoking

I'm quitting smoking. All of a sudden, it seems that I've been a smoker for almost 10 years. It started out innocently enough, and by innocent I mean that I started because I was a teenager and always thought it looked cool. I smoked cloves because I thought smoking those was even cooler, despite or because of the fact that they were twice as expensive as regular cigarettes, even in Virginia.

My smoking habits grew exponentially once I got to college. Of course it did. I was going to school to be a writer in New York Fucking City. I started smoking other things too. Both habits worked well with each other and before long I was smoking cigarettes to curb the appetite caused by the other. It was about halfway through my freshman year that I heard that cloves were actually quite bad for you. I decided to switch to regular cigarettes - Camel No.9s in the pink lined package. And no, I didn't get the irony.

Breaks between classes, strolling the streets, drinking with buddies indoors or out, all the while smoking, smoking, smoking. There were moments in my post graduation career that I would approach a pack a day, my new loyal Marlboro 27s, but that was only if I was indulging in a number of other things that I though made myself look cool. I liked the fact that sometimes people were shocked when I told them I smoked, as if it was allowing me the right to smoke because I just didn't seem like that type. But I smoked whatever leaf grew from the ground and I really didn't give it any other thought other than that's just what I did.

But strange things started to happen. Despite my newfound fondness of the gym, my lungs were having a hard time keeping up with everything else. My once complimented skin started to break out and pores became larger. I noticed how my clothes smelled, my car smelled, my breath smelled. 

So along with every other "bad" habit I had so fondly adopted, I figured it might as well be time to cut it out. I just turned 27 and always felt a little guilty (although clearly not that guilty) that I didn't quit at 25 like I told my annoyed and concerned family members.

Turns out quitting smoking sucks. The first few days are complete shit, it's almost all you can think about. I suppose I'm irritable, but a good chunk of that probably has to do with the fact I'm in Los Angeles traffic 6-10 hours a day. The oral fixation can be solved by drinking lots of water, chewing gum, gnawing on a toothpick like an ol' timey Western rogue. There are dull cold-like symptoms and anxiousness.

But the worst part, by far, is a mixture of embarrassment and wistfullness due to the fact that I love smoking. I think about it every morning because I had a morning cigarette with my coffee. I think about it when I drive to work, after I have a meal, after the gym, during a walk, when I was just bored, and at night before bed, a quiet moment to stare up at the stars and pick out constellations. The latter was perhaps what started it all; staring up at the vastness and watching the plume disappear in the quiet Virginian evening.

Picking up a delivery from a bar we work with was murder today. Two men and a woman stood outside, laughing and smoking. I wanted to rush up to them and take a deep breath in, but I'm sure that would have made me look even more pathetic than admitting to the fact I have spent a decade spinning romantic tableaus around potentially developing cancer. The order was a large one and took both arms to carry back to my car. It was sunset and the perfect time for a smoke as I drove to Alan's house.

When Alan met his wife Patricia in college, she had just gotten sick in the bathroom of the sticky floored college bar. She didn't tell him this until a few months into dating, but Alan always liked this fact about their relationship. In the intervening years Patricia started to stand up straighter and roll her eyes more. All of a sudden she was one of those wives that egotistical frat boys have always sworn they would never end up with. But he loved her, and he loved their three daughters and being this version of an adult wasn't so bad.

Still, he had been counting down the days ever since Patty told him that she was taking the kids to her sisters for a weekend getaway. When she first mentioned it, it was a trip that the whole family was going to go on. But then she remembered that Alan hated her sister and hated road trips and that he had been so good lately with the whole kitchen remodeling thing, so she added the easy out "...unless you have to work." She knew that sometimes he thought of her as that wife but knew that the things wives do to contradict that wive-ness is actually never noticed.  

So finally the Friday came that the girls were to leave. He made sure to get up early so that he could properly send them off and assuage his guilt for being so excited that they were going to be gone. As the girls ate their smiley-face-chocolate-chip pancakes, Patty gave Alan a blow job in their walk in closet. The act was an unspoken conversation; Patty wanted remind him that she was a very good wife and also admitted that she was vulnerable and nervous that he would be seduced by a barely legal blonde in whatever bar he would inevitably get drunk at.

He waited a full thirty minutes before he decided to smoke the joint that his bachelor friend Kyle gave him four whole months ago. He rolled it over and over in his fingers, treating it like a piece of thin glass, capable of breaking at any moment. He thought that he should go outside but also feared any neighbors judging him. He would smoke it inside, windows open, and just tonight, so it could all air out by the time the girls got back.

It had been a very long time since he had smoked pot. Probably four years, at the office Christmas party with Kyle and Kyle's anonymous date and Patty in the stairwell of the building. It was a good memory. This was going to be a good memory too, he decided, as he prepared some chips and beer and backed up DVR-d basketball games. Thirty more minutes had passed when he realized he was too high. Fifteen minutes later he remembered about the frozen pizza he had put in the oven twenty minutes ago.

Panic. The kitchen filled with black smoke, the beautiful kitchen that Patty had worked so hard on. It had been a point of stress for the both of them over the past few months and he already ruined everything. He didn't know what was worse, the fact that he got too loaded to remember he was using the oven, or that the kitchen, costing six thousand dollars in remodeling, had been potentially ruined by a five dollar DiGornio.

After the fire had been literally and figuratively put out, he sat. He just sat. He sat for what could have been either three minutes or three hours. He fell into his thoughts like he used to when he was stoned in high school. Back then it was a day dream about shedding all societal expectations and just traveling the world in a backpack. Now it was a deep fear that he could loose everything he had around him, all because he wanted his fucking wife out of the house. It was a thought that turned into loneliness which turned into anxiousness for his family to come home. Finally, all of this concluded with the realization that he was fucking starving. 

And one hour later I knocked on his door and handed over the massive bag of food. Only nods were exchanged, the both of us too preoccupied with the fact that everything wonderful and terrible in life has to do with a little smoke.