If/when I quit, I want to be sneaky about it. I want to be able to say, “You know, I decided I didn’t want cancer, after all,” and pass it off with a chuckle.

Since moving to California, I’ve been spending a lot more time outside, and the sun is EVERYWHERE. I wear my SPF, because I've been told that the sun is bad for me, too.

My office building has a sign on the door which reads, “WARNING: This building contains a chemical which has been known to cause cancer.” I figure as long as I can refrain from licking the rug and eating the paint chips, I’ll be okay.

See? I’m taking precautions. I don’t need to quit smoking.

The first night I arrived in California, my uncle dropped me off, I hung out with my roommates for a bit, then I assembled my bed, unearthed some sheets from the pyramid of unpacked boxes, and fell asleep.

I dreamed that I was grocery shopping in my old neighborhood in Chicago. I was stocking up on cheesecake and ice cream, and other junkfood items that indicated that I wasn’t gathering food for sustenance, but for a binge and purge. I stuffed my face while walking through the grocery aisles. The fluorescent lights turned me green.

When I awoke, I was so relieved to realize it was a dream. My California home involves roommates, and purging is very inconvenient unless you live alone. It was awkward enough when I had a cat. Now I have humans.

I’ve been avoiding bulimic behaviors for long enough that the calluses that had reformed on my hands are all but smoothed over, thank God. I don’t do it anymore. I wish I could tell you why, because there might be bulimia sufferers who are reading, and hoping for a cut and dry plan, but I don’t have one.

The bulimia cycle is something I’ve long used as a crutch. It is a very concrete process of filling and cleansing, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still think about it when I’m feeling desperate or anxious. It’s like any other addiction, providing a temporary quick fix in exchange for long-term upfucking.

It simply got too ugly and exhausting, and I had other shit to do. I reprioritized. This doesn’t make me wiser or better than anyone else. My life just changed, and I paid attention to it enough that it sunk in.

Smoking is not an addiction I’m willing to abandon at this point. I enjoy it. I like the blue focused tunnels of toxins that hit the back of my throat when I stand on the porch and listen to the nocturnal creatures wandering through my backyard. I appreciate the bitter irony of enjoying the idyllic outdoors while at the same time polluting it. I like the fact that cigarettes provide me with something to do while I’m thinking. Like an idiot, I feel validated every time a sexy onscreen character lights up a cigarette during a scene. I like having my smokes as props, because haven’t you heard that smoking’s cool and glamorous and sexy? I like that each cigarette only burns for a few minutes, which means that I can plan study breaks around cigarette cravings, without my attention being too disrupted. I like that my Camel Lights remind me of friends I don’t see anymore, and settings I haven’t visited in years.

A few months ago I got off the #66 bus in Chicago, and as I walked to the subway station, I took my hair down from its fastener and gave it a shake. Then I lit up a cigarette. A woman I’d never seen before came up behind me and said, “Those things will kill you. Then you won’t be able to toss yo’ hair.”

Yikes. Thanks for the PSA, Surgeon General. It was spooky.

My roommate Matt recently referred to me as “The Peter Jennings of the Household.” That was kind of spooky, too.

Yeah, yeah, smoking's bad for me, my self-enabling excuses are weak as fuck, and the habit makes me a bit of a pariah in California. Lovely San Francisco is the most freakishly smoke-free city I’ve ever seen. There are garbage cans all over the damned place which people actually use, there are very few cigarette butts on the sidewalks, and there are relatively few people walking the streets with smokes hanging out of their mouths. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does make me feel more self-conscious about smoking in public places.

When I see a fellow smoker these days, I look at them and try to figure out how old they are, how long they’ve been smoking, and whether their skin would be smoother and their gait quicker if they had never started. I doubt these strangers lump me into the same kind of Smokers Allegiance, but maybe they do.

My dad quit drinking when I was fourteen. To handle the stress, he also started smoking again. I ran into him one day when he was having a cigarette and he thought no one could see him. He looked sheepish for a second, but then said, “Well, you caught me. I’m just trying to take care of one thing at a time, Kell.” I couldn’t really argue with that, so I kept walking, and he kept smoking. He finally quit for good ten years later. He’s still sober, too. If he had tried to tackle both addictions at once, I doubt he'd have had the same success.

Yes, my smoking is a crutch and weakness, and yes, I want to quit someday. But I’ve had to prematurely let go of a lot of things recently, relationships and income and freedom, all of which make me want to shake my fists and yell like a baby, so I’m not beating myself up too much about smoking.

I’m constantly weighing the pros and cons of my self-destructive habits, and I think I’m going to keep this one around for a while. It’s legal, it’s accessible, it’s not totally socially unacceptable, it doesn’t fuck with my head as much as the eating disorder, and it’s COOL!

Bulimia’s not quite the same. You don’t meet a lot of "social bulimics." At parties, you don’t see a buttload of people gathered around a bucket on the porch, shooting the shit while expelling their lunches. What would we do? Wander up to someone when there’s a lull in conversation and say, “You wanna go purge?” Or substitute the international sign for “Smoke Break,” i.e. the two fingers held up to the lips, with the international sign for “Puke Break,” i.e. one finger daggering down the throat?

So I’m going to go and smoke the last cigarette in my pack. Next, I’m going to do some homework. Then I’m going to take a break, and walk down the hill to buy another pack of smokes. One thing at a time.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Chunks - 11.06.05

Treasure Hunts, and Why I Have "Psychic Tony" Programmed into My Cell Phone - 10.24.05

The Lights Are Much Brighter There - 10.10.05

Concert in the Park - 10.03.05

Everyone Has a Fuckin' Opinion - 09.24.05

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