Extreme Smoking

(Blogger's Note - This is my Biographical fragment. I hope you enjoy it.)
I’m sitting on a wooden bench, outside the law building. It’s the break between the double lecture on a Wednesday afternoon. I’m having a smoke.

“When is a cigarette enjoyable?” asks Joe, the purity of his curiosity matched only by the cleanliness of his lungs. “When can you possibly enjoy smoking?”

With my yellow-stained fingertips moving the cigarette, piston-like, to and from my lips, lining the back of my teeth with the Marlboro Man’s brown mark, I contemplate a possible answer. An enjoyable cigarette – I’m not sure that it has ever happened. The wafting guilt of my habit has deprived my smokes of their pleasure.

Then, a memory:
A tow truck driver offering me a smoke from his box of Chesterfield Lights. I’m inhaling the shame of my poor driving, I’m exhaling instant absolution.

I answer, “A cigarette is enjoyable after a rush of adrenalin, or a panic situation. The last time I really enjoyed a cigarette was after I had my first car accident.”

Students start to move slowly back into the lecture hall. We follow them, taking our seats two rows from the front.

As the lecture begins, I drift back in time:
A windsurfer backflips on the legendary Hawaiian surf, cheered on by a gathering of dancing hula girls. A snowboarder jumps from a plane onto a snow-capped mountain top. Roulette tables. Shark cages. A flashback to the Peter Stuyvesant adverts that used to show at the cinema, when smoking was cool.

Determined not to linger in mere wisps, I will revisit the legacy of these daredevils that defined my initial, joyful perceptions of tar and nicotine. I will take on a new mission: I will become an extreme smoker.

The lecture finishes earlier than expected. I arrive home, my recently emptied box of cigarettes leaving me in a state of manic craving. But I can’t buy a new box because Joe is meeting me at my house. We have business to attend to.

I climb into his dark green Ford Focus. We drive to the stop street and then turn left. I see the trees of my neighbourhood, glistening with the bright green miniature leaves of late September. Newly green grass, freshly mowed, emits a vivid odour that oddly gets the attention of my tobacco-baked nasal passage. Another left and we arrive at our destination.

Our car, pulled over on the side of road, orange hazard lights blinking, awaits the arrival of our contact. Marvin appears, garbed in an unassumingly wretched grey workshirt and brown trousers. Walking briskly but coolly, he crosses the crowded intersection and approaches the vehicle.

Marvin comes up to the window, and, silently, secretly, the exchange is made. He walks away with his money, while Joe slips the stash into the side compartment by the driver’s seat.
Business done, we pull off, turning down the main road. Then, left into the Engen Garage.
A sky-blue Golf rushes in front of us. Angered by this sudden affront, Joe shouts out, but stops quickly. Blue flashing trouble swivels on the bonnet of the offending vehicle. A siren.

Two men in plain clothes step out of the nightmare-mobile and order us out of the car. We exit gingerly as they pounce. They find the weed. We’re in real trouble now – and we know it.
We leave the petrol station and they take us to an adjoining road.
“How about we let these okes go?” Says Officer Ratkin.
“Maybe we should…” replies Officer Onselink, “if they tell us what we want.”
“Who sold you the dagga?”
“Marvin.”
“That isn’t enough, my boys. We’ll chat more at the station.”
I will always resent those policeman for toying with us. For destroying the myth that we could be like all our other friends who had had run-ins with the law, and who had smooth-talked their way out of trouble. For delaying our ultimate demise. Bastards.

Joe and I are jostled into separate vehicles. I’m with Ratkin in Joe’s Car, while Joe is with Onselink in the police car. Ratkin passes me his black felt notebook, and tells me to write down everything – the story of our purchase, the phone numbers, my address, my parent’s names. I feel like this request is one of two things: an attempt to freak me out, or the most sadistic creative writing exercise ever.

After having scribbled pointlessly for about two minutes, we arrive at the station. Joe and I look at each other apologetically, acknowledging our shared culpability in this debacle. The smell of stale urine envelopes us as we are led through the concrete holding area of the police station into the interrogation room. Eventually, we are seated at a desk facing our two oppressors.

But then, something happens. Something amazing. Something magical. Extracting a box of Chesterfield filters from his shirt pocket, Ratkin points heaven in my direction.
“Do you smoke?”

There’s something extreme about the way that the front of the cigarette glows as I inhale. The burning cigarette is fast, red and destructive, as fiery strands shrink the tobacco rod between my fingers.

But it’s when I exhale that I truly appreciate it. The delapidated interrogation room; the wooden desk sheeted in arrest warrants and loose-lying weapons, obscured by the haze of grey mist creeping from my lungs. Cigarette smoke clouding everything, but the moment’s ultimate truth:

I’m having a smoke, and I’m loving every damn second.