A Smoker’s History: Volume 2

This follows A Smoker’s History: Volume 1.

Later that legendary day when I bought my first pack of tobacco, I was at a bar and a fellow wannabe smoker buddy of mine and I decided to go outside to go roll a cigarette. We sat there in the dark passing it back and forth, using fresh papers, dropping the tobacco… It took us half an hour to roll that goddam cigarette. Two cute French chicks walked by while we were in the process and one asked us to borrow some tobacco; as they walked away with me staring at them, I noticed she had the cigarette rolled by the time she turned the corner fifteen paces away. There was clearly something we were missing.

I lost the pack somewhere on the way back, along with a few of the filters and the papers. Thank the gods, I thought to myself. I didn’t take any action for about a week, since I figured that’s how long it would have lasted me (as a nonsmoker: yeah, right) and I couldn’t afford to blow another six euros like that right away. So that time after that week had passed I just bought Marlboro lights. A couchsurfer had gotten me into them, offering them everywhere we went; so I just took a liking to them..

I’ll speed up the story: so I began rolling my cigarettes more and more (sticking to American Spirits only); and finally, in Germany, the boyfriend of the sister of the guy that I met at the airport waiting for the bus finally taught me how to officially do it, making sure the tobacco content was equal all the way through. Then a simple wrap of your outstretched index finger, and you have a rolled cigarette. It was so much easier to smoke, and I actually retracted the gift I’d given him fifteen minutes earlier of what was left of my tobacco and papers, saying I couldn’t handle it.

So that was it for Europe. I came home and after my welcome home dinner had to tell the folks I was off to smoke a cigarette (since that’s what I DO now, mom), and my dad asked me what else I was rolling inside as he walked out onto the patio. I chuckled. Halfheartedly.

Now I’d like to mention that during the first few weeks of said summer I only smoked three or four rolled cigarettes per day; even if I were drinking, things weren’t too different. I got my tobacco injection, and I was content. I never craved a cigarette: I merely wanted to smoke once in a while, so I did.

And then I ran out of filters and papers, so while I awaited my great friend back in Paris to come with my smoking goods, I smoked the black packs of American Spirits (this was the closest to the rolled ones in intensity), moving on to yellow and blue. Cigarettes were becoming so much easier to push down; I noticed I was smoking a few more than four per day… But then my filters and papers came, and since I still had discipline and morals at the time, I began rolling them again. This lasted all the way until late September, when I ran out of tobacco, papers, and filters while I was in Vermont, en route to Costa Rica after a school orientation.

Arriving in central America, things changed. Drastically. Hanging out with two Austrians on the organic farm on which I was working didn’t help me trying to not smoke so much. Long story short, within three weeks I was chain smoking like I’d never before. Like I’d never even imagined. A pack of smokes was but a dollar, why not smoke a pack per day? Then came the Swiss, and this new habit couldn’t even take the time to see where it was going: it just went. When I went off solo to Nicaragua for about a week, I was hoping that without the influence I wouldn’t do it so much. I didn’t want to do it at all, until the freeways closed down due to flooding and I found myself stuck with three Ticos and a Welshman drinking and smoking the afternoon away at a nearby bar.

I met up with the Europeans once again in Nicaragua, and voilà. I smoked until I came home. Come day after Halloween in the legendary college town of Isla Vista, I found myself as “that guy” who needed a cigarette, begging his best friend’s girlfriend to run home to grab her pack of yellow spirits. I started rolling again soon after that, and albeit that I smoked more than four per day, I still stand by the fact that it’s cheaper and healthier. And what happens late January? I run out of supplies once again.

This is where I officially became a smoker. Stay tuned for part three, coming soon…