Smoking

I can remember my first time smoking.  My friends and I had just watched a Bruce Willis movie.  He smoked while fighting, shooting, racing and I think, sex.  By the time it was over we all had to learn.  So we found a cigarette machine and drove out to the middle of nowhere. 

 We stood in a ditch trying to light up in high wind.  Everyone was getting the hang of it except me.  I didn’t know you had to suck in while lighting. 

Meanwhile the smoke hung like a neon sign flashing, “First Time”.   We froze as cars crept by.  I could feel my rectum loosen as the passing headlights washed over us.  What possible excuse could we have for standing in a ditch with cigarettes? 

Between cars we tried to talk about things other than smoking.  But when they noticed I wasn’t inhaling everyone made fun of me.  Up until that point I thought I was doing great. 

Through out my senior year in high school I fought the good fight.  I tried to keep myself to a pack a week.  But it wasn’t easy.  Colds, flu’s, rashes, delirium… my small allergic body was rejecting the cool.  I was as weak as white E.T. at the end of the movie.

Worse still, my friends where now addicted.  So they made plans to smoke and said things like, “Ah man, I hacked up a lung this morning, how about you?”

“…Yes.”

“Do you want to sit in my car and smoke tomorrow night?”

“…Yes.”

I finally gave up in college.  But I’ll never forget trying.

“In my dreams I love you like, it’s a snow storm in the night.” - Nada Surf

Helper Bugs

       At work I’m told to clean out the pantry.  And the first thing I think is, “helper bugs.” 

       For years small, slow bugs have gotten into my cereal.  They’ve been my secret ever since I ate some with raisin bran.  Yes, I could have peeled back the shelf paper, set down traps, smashed them…  But instead I stored the cereal next to the microwave and waited.  I expected a slow migration that finally over took the kitchen.  But as the wheels of time rolled on, the pantry proved to be their home.

       I turn on the CD player and get out a spray bottle.  The words of my boss echo in my head, “If you could, go ahead and clean out the pantry.  You know, wipe down the shelves.”  The label on the spray reads “Kills ninety nine percent of germs - within’ seconds.”  How brutally efficient.  A lemon scented genocide. 

      A lesser man would have let that power sink marrow deep.  He’d kill and keep on killing until his hand couldn’t pull the trigger.  An orgasm of hate would rise in him.   And he’d scream through clenched teeth until everything was dead.

       I open the pantry door.  And there they are, just sitting around not a malicious one in the bunch.  They sit in a forest of canned goods that must loom like red woods.  I’m allowed one shelf and it’s filled with health food. And beneath it, bugs.  I take the protein powder, decaf tea and noodles down.  And I’m confronted with a white desert of shelf paper.  At first I sweep the crumbs and dead bugs onto the floor.  Then, cranking up some music, I take a breath, and spray.  The gentle rain is met with annoyance.  But to my relief the fascist liquid doesn’t kill them.