![[smoke]](/public/2003/06/smoke.jpg)
One nice thing about Korman Suites: I could walk to the 7-11 in the middle of the night to buy Chesterfields. Chesterfields and ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. And some nights Pringles, or Doritos, or some other form of nothing-natural-added junk. And Chesterfields. This was close to the end, although I would not know that until later. I would not know that until I had reached the end, passed it and looked back, and even then I did not believe that it was the end. I was in denial about it being the end. But this is not about the end. That’s a story for another day. This is about the beginning.
Chesterfields. I did not always smoke Chesterfields. Before that I smoked Winston’s, the same brand my mother smoked while I was growing up. More on that in a minute. But first: I am under the impression that most smokers are more brand-loyal than I was. It seems I was changing allegiances and tastes all the time. Are smokers generally that fickle? Dora says she smoked Virginia Slims, and then Benson and Hedges Ultra-Lights. Only two different brands, in a decade of smoking. I burned through six different brands in six years. No pun intended. Not evenly spaced, though. The Winston’s did not last very long. They were a rebound brand, a phase after I had tried and failed to quit and was looking for Chesterfields, although I did not know that Chesterfields were what I was looking for until I found them.
I took to them immediately. The Chesterfields, I mean. Most people hate them, because they’re unfiltered and have a strong aftertaste. To me those were selling points. Also, and this is purely incidental, they were made by one of the smaller tobacco firms, and at one point the Chesterfields pack actually bore the words Warning: smoking is addictive
. Then the firm went out of business and was swallowed up by Philip Morris, who promptly removed that warning. If I had been forward-thinking, I would have saved a pack with the warning label; no doubt it will be a collector’s item in 50 years and I could sell it on eBay.
Before the Winston’s, I smoked exactly one pack of light cigarettes. Probably Winston Lights. A leftover pack, left over by a friend. Actually this was the true rebound brand. It got me off of clove cigarettes and onto normal
cigarettes. Winston’s. Which is why I assume the pack was Winston Lights, otherwise why would it occur to me to choose Winston’s? My thinking probably went like this: These cloves are killing me, but these Winston Lights, they taste like shit. And they’re so weak, I can’t stand it. Plus, they give me a headache. I wonder if the regular strength ones are any better. Let’s try them.
The addicted mind at work.
My mother smoked Winston’s too, when I was very young. Well, before I was born, and then again later when I was growing up. When we went on trips and she would light up a cigarette in the car, I would start hacking and coughing and spitting in the back seat and pretending to die until she finished. Then I started elementary school. See? I was always this obnoxious. And here you thought it was some recent deterioration of character. Ha! I hack and cough and spit in your general direction. Your mother was a smoker, and your father smelt of elderberries.
In elementary school, we all got the standard anti-drug lectures (candy good, drugs bad
), and this instilled me with a new-found confidence. I would draw little stick figures of people smoking, keeled over dying, or lying on the ground already dead with a lit cigarette hanging from their mouth. Then I would stick the drawing under the bathroom door in the morning while my mother was taking a shower or drying her hair. Aren’t children a precious gift? I drove her to quit. At least that’s the way she tells it. I’m sure there were other factors besides my harassment, and I’m sure my harassment took other forms besides my stick figures, but that’s the only part I remember.
And then I ended up smoking Winston’s, just like her. My mother didn’t find out until much later, after the end. She was so mad she could just… well, aren’t children a precious gift? Let’s just leave it at that, and we can each imagine the rest on our own time.
Before the Winston Lights, as I mentioned, were the cloves. This is where it all began, in college, with the cloves. If you smoke cigarettes but have never smoked cloves, let me tell you, it’s a completely different experience. As with Chesterfields, most people hate them. They’re extremely strong, and have a very different taste than regular cigarettes. They leave a kind of sweetness on your lips after a few puffs; you actually have to lick your lips after the first two puffs and savor the taste. I always did that. It was one of the things I missed when I switched to Winston’s, and later Chesterfields.
They also are rumored to make your lungs bleed. Cloves, I mean. I don’t know if that’s true, really, or if it was just a bit of smoking lore I picked up along the way. They certainly have a rawness to them that normal cigarettes lack. Cigarette ads boast smoothness
; whatever that means, let me assure you that cloves are the opposite of that.
I bounced around between different brands of cloves, too. Some filtered, some not. Those of you who have actually smoked cloves are groaning now at the thought of unfiltered cloves. They are, for lack of a better description, one step away from simply injecting nicotine into your heart. Djarum. That was the dominant brand, the one that I liked best. Although there was also Jakarta, and I’m sure I tried others at various points in college. Whatever they had in stock that week at the tobacco store. We had an excellent tobacco store near campus. You have to go to a real tobacco store to buy cloves, normal 7-11-type convenience stores don’t carry them. Unfiltered Djarums, in the red tin. Or, if they were out of those, the Djarum soft pack, the soft yellowish pack of 10. They came in packs of 10, I think they cost $2 and change. Yes, for 10. They were outrageously expensive, and this was back in 1994.
I don’t remember exactly how I got into cloves. I didn’t smoke them before college, so it must have been a friend I met once I got there. The details are fuzzy, but it was basically the standard story: I got one as a gift, then bummed them off and on, and eventually bought a pack with a friend to split
and ended up smoking all of them myself. I didn’t even own an ashtray; I had to flick the ashes into a half-empty can of soda, and then keep track of which can was which.
But that wasn’t really the beginning, because it doesn’t explain why I would accept a gift of a cigarette in the first place. Growing up I was an avid anti-smoker. Just ask my mother. Somewhere that changed.
(There must have been a moment, in the beginning, when we could have said… no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we’ll know better next time.
Rosencrantz, or possibly Guildenstern, just before the end. Their end was predetermined. My end was not.)
Ah yes, now I remember: oddly enough, the first thing I ever smoked was not cigarettes or cloves, but pot. I was offered some at a party. A New Year’s Eve party. The year I took off between colleges. I had never smoked anything before in my life, but the host of the party, a friend of mine, invited me to go to the back room. It was so cliché I can’t even stand it, to look back and re-tell it like that now. But that’s how it happened. The back room. I believe my exact words were sure, what the hell, I never wanted to run for president anyway.
I have no idea if that’s funny, but I was drunk at the time and it seemed funny then. She didn’t know what I meant, or didn’t hear me, but she didn’t react. I didn’t tell her until months later that I had been a smoking virgin. She had no idea this was the beginning.
Except that it wasn’t. Not really. The beginning, I mean. Why was I at that party? How did I come to run with that crowd, with those people, with her? If it had not been that party, would it have been another?
I remember now how I met her. The host, I mean. The month before was when I…
No, I’m sorry, that’s as far back as I can go today. The end is always easier to pinpoint than the beginning.
this is the very good weblog. I hope you have a good time. Thanks
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 12:59 am
it’s nice to read a good story, or the beginning of one, among all the other RSS blog-bites.
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 1:09 am
Is the beginning important?
“If it had not been that party, would it have been another?”
Of course it would have, but that doesn’t matter. For you it has ended, well done, I respect you for having the guts.
Clove Cigarette Trivia: The main brand of clove ciggies is Gudang Garam (”salt warehouse”) which is hugely popular in Indonesia. Its been said that many Indonesian males only need one match a day (work that one out) and from what I have seen over there I would tend to believe it.
Personally I find Gudangs very flavoursome, but couldn’t imagine smoking them regularly. It would be kind of like eating caivar for breakfast.
Anyway enough rambling from me. Thanks for another entertaining and candid tale, keep them coming. Also well done on giving it all up, especially the ciggies, they are the really evil ones.
Comment by another Mark — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 3:58 am
Beautiful post. Lyric, a bit sour, …
I like diving myself. The danger of diving is to know where to stop, and return back to breath.
So I read the “never starting” nature of this dive. At least if you are “snorkeling into Mark”, doing apnea diving, as we say technically in Europe. This it the diving I love most.
As Morpheus would have said: “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path”. Only the order of the words is quite often reversed. ;-)
Comment by Santiago Gala — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 6:07 am
These are great stories, Mark.
I think everyone smokes cloves in college. It’s like, something even the good kids do, just to rebel a little before getting sucked into a corporate 9-to-5.
I know I did, for a couple years, having never smoked before in my life. I thought “well hey, at least they’re not as bad as real cigarettes”… and then I found out that I couldn’t run and breath at the same time any more and decided to quit. :)
Comment by John — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 6:24 am
I’m informed that the tobacco market is an oligopoly, and the lack of brand loyalty is the reason why. Essentially, this means that demand for cigarettes as a whole is pretty inelastic, which means that people will buy about the same amount of cigarettes regardless of their price, but loyalty to a brand is elastic, which means that most people are relatively happy with the idea of switching brands. This means that, if one cigarette firm drops their price substantially, lots of people will switch to them, and then the other brands all have to drop their prices in the same way to win back custom, and the upshot is that the whole industry ends up selling about the same amount of cigarettes but making less money. That’s an oligopoly; there’s a pervasive thought in a lot of these situations that the prices of cigarettes (and other oligopolish products) are governed by a secret price-fixing cabal, and in essence they’re not; it’s just a natural consequence of the market.
Comment by Stuart Langridge — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 6:58 am
It’s very nice to read more personal entries from you. I really should try that myself every once in a while…
Here in Sweden, cigarette packs are required to have a warning label that covers at least half of the front of the pack. It has cheery motivational texts like “Smoking is highly addictive,” “Smoking causes cancer” and other reminders that people would very much like you to quit that disgusting habit.
Comment by Johan Svensson — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 7:46 am
Not originally mine, though I have borrowed it often in the years since I heard it:
“Children are a treasure. They ought to be buried.”
Comment by Dorothea Salo — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 9:09 am
The UK has recently introduced a similar labelling policy to Sweden - at least half of the pack must be covered by a warning. As such, your average pack of 10 Malboro Lights looks like this: http://www.neilturner.me.uk/photos/ciggys1.jpg / http://www.neilturner.me.uk/photos/ciggys2.jpg .
The most amusing one is ‘Smoking is highly adictive - don’t start’. A bit late if you’ve already bought the packet of cigarettes. Advertising of tabacco-based products is also now illegal here.
Comment by Neil T. — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 9:35 am
I smoked Camels for several years, and Drum, and snuff. The real snuff not that nasty chew crap. I “officially” quit smoking in 95. I still bum a smoke every couple of weeks or so. But anyway I started smoking Lucky Strikes because they were the cool cigarettes, and we all start smoking because it’s cool, right.
Anyone remember Death cigarettes, not Black Death, just Death? The pack was all black with a Pirate like skull and crossbones on it. The manufacturer had a warning on it that said “If you smoke please quit. If you do not smoke don’t start.” Or something like that. I still have a full unopened pack stored away somewhere.
Damn, I miss smoking.
Comment by Randy Reames — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 9:37 am
Here is a little bit on Death cigarettes. Horray for GIS.
http://members.tripod.com/alt-collector/Cigaretteaddiction.htm
I got my pack of Death in 92. I don’t know if they are still around.
Comment by Randy Reames — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 9:40 am
Could you contain a url off the root that contains everything except the Personal/Addiction categories, etc., just the technical stuff?
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 9:49 am
Rollies are the way forward: why buy off the peg when you can have tailor made?
Comment by Gary Benson — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 9:53 am
Ummm anony mouse, what the hell? Go read scripting news.We come here for the stories. We come here for Mark’s treasure, his l00t. Get it. His technical expertise is second. We want his Id.Comment by crak — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 11:11 am
anon — I’m more into his tech articles myself, but this is Dive into MARK, after all.
Anyways, the best part about Cloves is that they’re a “chick magnet”. And a college chick magnet at that.
Comment by Joe Grossberg — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 11:30 am
I do have to know: Why would a normal, well-adjusted person start smoking? Keep smoking I can understand, you’re addicted. When you smoke at first, it gives you a rush. But before you’re addicted, how do you not ask yourself whether you’ll regret that decision? It’s something you have to pro-actively do, start smoking. It’s even the path of least resistence.
Is there a concious decision? When you buy your first pack, my guess is there would have to be some. Don’t you think about the fact that all your non-smoking friends will avoid hanging out with you after work? Won’t go to restaurants with you? Health?
I really don’t understand how anyone could start smoking. It defies reason and destroys friendships.
Comment by Anonymous — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 12:40 pm
If anything so inane as smoking destroys friendships, you’re terribly shallow. 90% of the people in my life, except for the last few years, were smokers. I don’t, haven’t ever, but the people with whom I have a real relationship wouldn’t leave if I did.
However, if smoking is a sure-fire way to rid myself of the idiots who steal my time, I’m gettin’ a carton after work tonight.
Comment by Muraii — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 2:34 pm
HA! If smoking made idiots go away I’d have lung cancer… twice. And it would be worth it!
I know someone is going to come along and tell a story about how this isn’t funny because their grammie is dying of lung cancer, but please recognize morbid hyperbole when you see it, and refrain from commenting.
Great story mark. I always heard that about cloves too. That they make your lungs bleed. I don’t know if its true or not, but it sure is a graphic thing to imagine as you suck down a djarum.
Comment by crak — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 4:10 pm
To understand the mind of an addict you have first throw all logic to the wind and act on impulse, rationalizing all your actions after the fact in order to fit your actions to your impulses. A logical person thinks first.
Someone who is not an addict will probably never completely understand. Mark will probably look at me and say “You don’t have it quite right” because I’m not an addict, or at least I don’t think I am (I don’t smoke, don’t drink except socially, though I do have a pretty hefty mountain dew habit ;)).
Smoking can kill friendships, as any drug can. The US fosters a drug culture in that you can solve your problems by taking a pill instead of altering your lifestyle. If you want to find out how, ask Mark about “the friend” who stopped talking to him after he transformed his life. In fact he’s probably posted a few times on it, though I don’t believe he ever fleshed it out. I just did some digging and couldn’t find anything glaring. Anyway…
I personally despise second hand smoke. A friend of mine and I went to a restaurant with three other people, all smokers. Neither he nor I smoked but he was less than virginal in high school and didn’t mind second hand smoke. When the maitre’d asked “smoking or nonsmoking” I declared “nonsmoking,” as I was brought up that you don’t force a nonsmoker into such a situation and that was polite. My friend, however, insisted “smoking” in order to please the crowd, dispite my displeasure. We hashed it out for a few seconds and my friend say “Its no big deal you’ll get over it.” I was furious all night and could not enjoy the evening because I had to deal with smoke and because my friend had no respect for my position. When we left, and we were alone, I layed into him about it. Well we got over it, but he hasn’t done that to me since. To him its just a little smoke, to me it makes me sick and he couldn’t see that. Fortunately he was sensitive enough to understand my feelings later.
Having a drink at Mark’s wedding would have been a nice social thing to do. But the bar served punch only, as Mark requested. I completely respected that, and I didn’t need to have drink to have a good time. That’s the key. Too many people feel someone who doesn’t drink or smoke or have wild, crazy sex is by default an uptight person. I think wild, crazy sex is a great thing, but not everyone agrees! And I respect that. :)
Comment by Adrian — Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 5:54 pm
Ramses II Egyptian Cigarettes were awesome! but alas they don’t make them anymore :( which reminds me I should go try some of that Camel “exotic blends” crap…
Comment by Anonymous — Saturday, June 14, 2003 @ 2:18 pm