Up In Smoke
The Cigarettes That Raised Me
My nana was always smoking. As far back as I can remember she had these long dark brown menthol cigarettes hanging between her index and middle finger like a movie star, thick plumes of smoke rising around her weathered golden face. She always looked so mystical with her glass of red wine, smoke swirling around her and whichever crusty white dog was alive at the time, golden bangles jingling as she flicked the ash into the coffee can on the counter like a spell. I always wanted to emulate her, she was the one person in my life that seemed like she understood it all. Painting in a long elegant bathrobe with the gentle pop and sizzle of a lit cigarette filling the air.
My mother and father both smoked when I was small but my father quit when I was nearly five. Mom never stopped. She smoked menthol lights, stubby little all white cigarettes with a little green stripe around the filter above the lipstick marks she left behind. There was always a crushed up pack around the house, maybe on the counter, maybe in the pocket of her favorite grey hoodie with the frayed sleeves that was usually hung on the back of a dining room chair. Her mom (my grandma) smoked the same menthol lights, so it just made good sense to her I suppose. For as long as I can remember my mom always had a hint of cigarette smoke on all of her clothes, in her hair, on her skin. I grew to appreciate the smell when I was a child, it smelled like home. Dad hated that she kept on smoking, tried time after time to convince her to quit, she would humor him for a week or two and then there would be a pack stashed in the cup holder of her PT Cruiser for another few weeks before she was just openly smoking again. Eventually, I think he gave up trying to convince her.
When I was 12 or 13 my friend who lived down the road and I used to walk home from school together, we lived pretty close and the path took us through the local apple orchard where we would casually snatch an apple once in a while (rebels, I know) and one day she stopped on the side of the road and bent down and started collecting cigarette butts that people had flicked out their windows as they drove down the street. She said she had been stealing from her dad’s packs when he was drunk so he wouldn’t realize they were gone but he was getting suspicious and she didn’t want to get caught so she was collecting all the cigarettes that strangers hadn’t quite finished.
“They’re still good!”
And that was the first time I smoked a cigarette. We tried to avoid any that had visible lip stains or were too old or soggy but I’m sure that didn’t make a difference. I didn’t become a regular smoker until I was 14 when my much older boyfriend would provide me with Djarum Blacks whenever I asked. I still hate the smell of those and thinking about smoking one now makes me nauseous. If you aren’t aware they’re clove flavored cigarettes and they’re extra stinky and they make your lips numb. I don’t even know if they’re legal anymore (Aging is weird like that) and I wouldn’t recommend trying them even if they are.
When I was 16 I got a job at a fast food spot and my coworker smoked Camel Crush cigarettes, they were new at the time and he was all about trying new cigarettes. They were menthol cigarettes that had a little ball in the filter you could pop and it would make the menthol even more intense. He would give me a few during our shifts together and for a while those were my poison. Then one day he came in and said he was switching to Marlboro Smooths. That was it. I tried those and was sold. I smoked them until the day I quit eleven years later. I smoked a pack a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
I finally smelled like all the women in my family: vaguely of menthol cigarettes.
There have been many stories in my life that cigarettes were side characters in.
A lot of moments connected to sex,
feeling desperate to be seen,
to be witnessed,
to feel hot.
To feel loved,
even if it came from people who weren’t actually capable of loving me.
Share a cigarette,
light my cigarette,
will you buy me a pack?
What can I give you in exchange?
What do you want from me?
What will it take?
Is this doing it for you?
Does desperation look good on me?
Look at me.
See me.
Don’t make me beg.
Or do.
It doesn’t matter.
February 23rd 2017 I was grabbing my pack out of my purse to go out into the driveway of my apartment to smoke and my then 7 year old daughter saw me and said something about, “When I grow up and start smoking, I’ll….” and that was it. That was the last day I smoked regularly. I was becoming the bad influence my mother had been. Normalizing such a nasty little habit that she was just assuming it was “what one does” and I absolutely hated myself for it. I simply couldn’t do it anymore. Not to mention that packs had nearly doubled in price, almost $10 a pack when I quit and I had become absolutely TERRIFIED of dying by that point.
The next time I smoked was when my nana was dying. She had been sick for a while and when she was finally admitted into hospice care I took a leave of absence from work so I could spend as much time with her as possible before the end. She was dying of cancer but as she reminded everyone, it wasn’t in her lungs despite the years of grandpa saying they would kill her, so she happily kept puffing. She was too weak to light them herself so I was picking her up, putting her in her puffy jacket, wheeling her out the back door of the hospice center, and lighting them for her in my mouth. After a few days of that I was smoking one or two with her or outside with my cousin when nana got too bad to go outside anymore. When she died we all went outside and had a cigarette, it almost felt like honoring her in a weird fucked up kind of way.
Then less than a year later, my mother died. I’ve told this story here before (and other posts, you could say it’s sort of something huge that happened in my life) It was sudden, it was mysterious, the only thing we knew was that she was a heavy smoker, she was diabetic, she was deeply depressed, and she wasn’t taking care of herself. My brother woke me in the middle of the night in a panic to tell me that my father had just called, sobbing, begging us to come to the house. Mom was gone. That whole first week was a blur. I do remember watching a lot of old Carvel cake commercials and finding half a pack of Marlboro Menthol Lights in her purse. I took them home with me. I took home the grey hoodie too, it still smelled like her skin and stale smoke. I finished that pack during that week.
Another small gesture, a closing of a book, something she left unfinished that felt wrong. She wouldn’t waste half a pack like that. So I took one for the team and I sucked them down over the next few days. When she was alive and I would be out of Smooths she would offer me one of hers but they were never strong enough so I would take a pair of scissors and cut the end of the filter off so they’d taste a little bit more dangerous. I didn’t bother with those, I wanted them to taste how she would have had them. That was the last time I smoked.
My relationship with cigarettes is complicated. I hate what they do to my body. They also remind me of people I miss. Times far behind me. People I have loved. People I have hated. So many versions of myself that no longer exist but are still a part of the current model. Sometimes I see someone smoking and I consider picking one up for a moment. Sometimes I think about my mom dying in her early 50’s with baseball sized lumps on her arms she told me her doctor said were smoking related that she refused treatment for. I think about my nana in her last days, small and fragile in my arms, telling me all she wants is a cigarette to take the edge off.
Sometimes I need to take the edge off.
What does that look like without vice?
jes🥹
the marlboro in me sees the marlboro in you <3 what a precise and gorgeous piece about this specific intergenerational inheritance.