Ah cigarettes. Just today I walked into my old supplier's shop and inquired as to the availability of American Spirit cigarettes by the carton (not seeing any on the shelves). The nice lady at the counter led me over to a cabinet where they were hidden, the store not having permission to sell them at a carton discount, and I grabbed a box and headed to the counter. Where I proceeded to cough up SIXTY-FIVE DOLLARS for the coveted 10 packs of slow death. Fucking hell. I thought they were expensive three years ago at $47!

So yes. Another chapter in my personal love/hate affair with cigarettes has begun. Started at 12, quit at 14, started again at 16, quit for a few months at 18 ... quit for about three years at 26 or 27, started yet again at 29, quit once more at 30, and now, just started again at the really-ought-to-fucking-know-better age of 33. Yea verily the grip of stupidity is a strong one.

I console myself with the fact that I smoke additive-free cigarettes ... that's 300-odd fewer burning substances filling my lungs with their noxious fumes than most folks get. And once you get used to 'clean' tobacco, those major-label brands really taste like nothing so much as burning chemical factories, even after three years on the wagon. (... why in the fuck does it cost more to buy cigarettes with less in them? A perennial question that applies equally to organic food ...)

But really, people. Smoking is fucking stupid. You know it's going to trash your lungs. It could very likely give you cancer. It doesn't even get you high, if you smoke more than one or two a day. It's fucking expensive. It makes your clothes smell, and your fingers turn yellow ... to say nothing of your teeth. It dulls your senses of taste and smell. It makes you cough.

There is, however, still a ridiculous, siren-like draw to it. The little rituals ... packing a new pack of cigarettes against the palm of your hand. Filling a zippo ... noticing the taste difference between zippo fluid, matches and regular butane lighters. Standing around outside the doors of places you can't smoke, with all the other smokers. Having an excuse to get up and walk outside for a few minutes during the work day (imagine what the boss would say if a non-smoker just got up from their desk and walked outside for ten minutes, repeatedly ...).

So help me, when I bought that first pack of Spirits a couple days ago, I was actually excited when I got back in my truck to drive home. I packed 'em, and tore open the cellophane like I was about to see an old friend I'd been missing for years. I liked every bit of it. That pack lasted not-quite-two days, because I smoked like a mad bastard that night ... beer, cigarette ... beer, cigarette ... etc. I went to bed feeling a bit like I'd been punched hard in the chest (and yes, I know from whence I speak). And when I ran out the following night, I knew I was going to buy a carton the next day. Oh yes, I did.

Most of my friends, over the years, have been smokers. I have never, even during the years I wasn't smoking, dated someone who didn't smoke. It's not like I have a smoking fetish, but still. I have rarely even been infatuated with a non-smoker: Two guys I had crushes on in high school didn't (although one of them started, years later), and I don't think Edward Norton does, but that's an awfully short list. I have no idea what the deeper meaning of that is, if in fact there even is one, but there you go.

If I quit again in a year or less, and stay quit for another three years after that, I'll figure that I'm giving myself decent odds of survival ... if I'm still smoking a year and a half from now, I'd almost ask that someone hunt me down and kick me for it, but I'm a bit afraid one of my friends might actually keep tabs and make good on it ...

... as a friend once said, years ago, while we all mercilessly teased him for lighting up again after a year off the damn things, "nobody likes a quitter."