Gotta Light?

He ignored the warning on the label. “Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health.” Magical thinking makes its first appearance.

This essay was originally published in The Rumpus on February 25, 2025. It was my first submission to a literary mag! I’m happily sharing it with you today.

Sarah Garfinkel and I snuck out of her house while our parents barbequed on a blazing hot Saturday afternoon in 1972. We ran down the hill, one long block to the deli across the road on Jackson Avenue. On a mission, we were both feeling a little nervous. Which of us was going to make the buy? Standing outside the little deli, we flipped a quarter, called heads or tails, and I lost. It was me. We lingered on the sidewalk for a few minutes while I found my courage. I pulled back my shoulders, stood tall, tried to look older than my eleven years, and walked up to the counter. The owner looked down at me and said, “Yes?” as I stood there, trying to get my request out. “Umm, can I get a box of Newports?” He smiled, nodding slightly, turned away to pull the pack from the rack behind him, and handed them over, saying, “fifty-five cents, please.” I counted out the change, and as we walked toward the door, I remembered at the last second to grab some matches, and then I shoved it all into my back pocket. I wondered to myself if I really looked old enough to buy cigarettes and realized that some grownups are just unprincipled idiots.

We crossed back over the avenue, then up to Jericho Turnpike. We ran the rest of the way to Toys “R” Us to hide in the alleyway behind the store. I’d never smoked a cigarette before. I felt brave and scared all at once. I pulled the box out of my pocket and pulled on the cellophane ripcord. I opened the lid and plucked the foil wrapper out of the box. It felt like a ritual. Neither of us said a word. Extracting two smokes from the pack, I handed one to Sarah, keeping one for myself, and then I struck a match, holding the flame to the tip of the cigarette, and nothing happened. Sarah looked at me, scoffing, “You have to inhale while you’re lighting it to get it to catch.” She was kind of a bad girl; she knew things. I tried again, inhaling so deeply that smoke filled my lungs as I was flooded with nausea. It was gross. I couldn’t stop coughing, and I watched Sarah deftly light hers, looking very cool as she held the cigarette between her thumb and index finger, nonchalant and tough. She told me she’d never smoked before, but I didn’t believe her. She was too good at it, and she didn’t cough at all.

I was getting ready to take another drag when a police car turned into the alley, and all of a sudden, Sarah wasn’t so cool anymore. He drove toward us and pulled up as we ditched our smokes, rolling down his window. “Good afternoon, young ladies. What are you up to today?” We didn’t know what to say, and Sarah burst into tears. What? Am I gonna get blamed for this? It was her idea. The policeman didn’t wait for an answer but instead asked us where we lived. Not quick enough to make something up, we gave him our addresses. He told us to go home and drove away. We threw the rest of the pack into the dumpster we were next to and ran up Hillside Lane, through her front door, and straight upstairs to her bedroom. Our folks were drinking gin and tonics in the backyard, waiting for the coals to get hot enough to start grilling the hot dogs and hamburgers. We sat on her bed and waited and worried. Sarah kept peeking out the window, looking for the cop. Was he going to show up and tell our parents? What would we say? Would we lie? Would Sarah cry again? A half-hour passed, and nothing. We decided he wasn’t coming, though we were jumpy and anxious. Dinner was yummy, and then we went home.

I was a little obsessed with the idea of smoking for about a week or two more. My father smoked throughout my life; he started when he was thirteen. It wasn’t a secret when he was a kid. They all smoked. My mom smoked on and off, mainly when there was a family crisis or if she was trying to lose some weight. She’d pick up a pack and smoke for a week or so, and then, she’d drop it. I went to the deli one more time, regretting that I’d thrown that first pack away. I bought menthol cigarettes again because that’s what the Kool kids smoked. They were disgusting. I got nauseous and dizzy every time I tried. And then I stopped. It wasn’t for me.

I could mark time by the different brands my father smoked. When I was a little girl, and we still lived in New York City, he smoked Kents for years. We moved to Long Island, and he switched to Marlboros. Every once in a while, he’d try to quit, first by changing to a lower-tar cigarette or trying brands like Silva Thins, the somewhat more masculine version of Virginia Slims. They were long and skinny; he thought that was better and less dangerous because the cigarette company told him so. He’d go back to Marlboros, and then, in 1971, Marlboro Lights came out, and that was his brand. He ignored the warning on the label. “Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health.” Magical thinking makes its first appearance.

I avoided smoking until eleventh grade. My high school had an outdoor smoking area for the students. It was what the tough kids did, and I wanted to belong. Being a tough kid sounded good. I’d been bullied enough. I was a pretty depressed teenager. Smoking fit with the “I don’t give a shit, don’t talk to me” persona I seemed to be cultivating. I also thought it might help me eat less. I was having a lot of trouble with food; I was gaining weight as my eating-disordered behaviors took hold. I hoped smoking would staunch my desire to binge.

I walked down to the deli and bought myself a pack. In the six years since my last purchase, the price had gone up to seventy-five cents—still a great deal. At seventeen, I didn’t have to worry as much about pretending to be older. And the deli owner still had no moral compass or sense of responsibility to the young people of our town. He was our dealer. What was my first brand? Camel non filters. How’s that for tough? I thought the pack was cute; the artwork was exotic, shorter than a regular pack, almost square-shaped. That pack was seductive. Smoke me. Smoke me. Smoke me.

I’m 17, a camp counselor, and yes, that’s a Camel non-filter hanging from lips

My father moved out when I was sixteen, so I couldn’t sneak cigarettes into the house using him as a cover. The habit wasn’t too bad at that point; I smoked a couple here and there. I wasn’t hooked yet.

But as time went by, I found myself smoking more and more. It seemed that almost everyone smoked, so it was much easier to do, and the shaming by non-smokers was less intense than it is now. My favorite college class at Hunter was Latin. Partly because my professor, Tamara Green, was quite the smoker herself. She’d walk into the classroom on crutches, the need for them the result of childhood polio. She’d unsling her briefcase from her shoulder, flame a smoke leaning on her desk, and welcomed us to join her. We’d all light up and practice declensions and conjugating verbs, amo, amas, amat, amatis, puff, puff, puff, amare, amavi, amato. Then we extinguished the butts on the classroom floor, leaving them there for the custodian to deal with. It was 1979. Gah!

I smoked all through my twenties, enjoying a cigarette, a line or two or three of coke, followed by Johnnie Walker Red neat to cut the high, and then more cigarettes. I was young, and I was healthy. Nothing could touch me. Magical Thinking, Act II.

I was living in Manhattan, going to clubs and bars, running around, losing friends left and right due to the AIDS epidemic, and I was addicted. I smoked and smoked and smoked. I was so afraid to get fat, and I kept telling myself cigarettes helped me eat less. I was in the worst period of my disordered eating to date. I told myself I didn’t have a problem with smoking. It didn’t affect my health. Well, except for the constant bouts of bronchitis throughout my twenties and thirties. I took repeated rounds of antibiotics that didn’t help at all. I didn’t have a bacterial infection. I had a nicotine addiction. My doctor never told me to quit or even make a connection to the smoking as a possible cause for my ailments. Why? Because he smoked more than I ever did. In the office in front of his patients. Yeah.

My father continued to smoke. There were times throughout my early adulthood that I’d live with him, pulling out the bed in the convertible sofa to sleep in his living room in his tiny one-bedroom apartment. He’d set up our coffee the night before, the machine plugged into a timer so the coffee would be waiting for us when we woke up. He’d shuffle into the kitchen, grunting good morning in my direction, pour himself a cup, shuffle back to his bedroom, and sit on the edge of his bed in his boxers, smoking one cigarette after another to jumpstart his day while holding his head in his hand, to accentuate his woes in case I missed them. No one talked to my father in the morning. He was immersed in his daily misery; his ritual could not be disturbed. I’d sit in the living room, drinking my coffee and smoking, too, but I could never match his consumption.

Periodically, I’d try to quit. I’d get fed up with myself and make broad declarations about how I was finished; it was filthy, and I had to stop. I’d throw away my cigarettes and begin my smoke-free adventure. In the first few attempts, I wasn’t very committed. Within hours, I’d find myself digging through the garbage and rescuing my pack, self-loathing lurking over my shoulder. I learned that if I was going to quit, I couldn’t dispose of my cigarettes in such a cavalier manner. Why? Because I couldn’t trust myself. So, when I’d try again, I’d take the cigarettes out of the pack, crush them in my hand, and then throw them away. A few hours later, I’d go to the garbage can and root through the trash, looking for one partially intact smoke. So, there we go. That didn’t work either. I’d have to get serious. Throw them out, but first, hold the pack under the faucet, drenching them and making them un-smokeable. A few hours later, I’d kick myself for doing it that way and run to the corner store to replace what I’d wasted. Quitting wasn’t easy, but here and there, I’d manage a year off, followed by a few years on. I tried nicotine gum, which, in my view, was more disgusting than cigarettes and not nearly as satisfying. And then, the patch. They were expensive and required a prescription back then. They left a rash on my skin and didn’t take care of the craving to inhale. I wanted to inhale, and I missed the ritual of smoking.

The first thing I’d do in the morning was light up. What could I replace that with? Coffee was never the same. I began to smoke again. And the coffee tasted so much better.

Then, I became a serious student of yoga. A serious smoking student of yoga. Devoted to the development of my higher self, my physical body, and my spiritual alignment. I was a vegetarian committed to doing no harm. I was more concerned with the safety of farm animals than I was with my own well-being. I was a smokin’ hot yogini. In my late thirties, I began to teach, and my magical thinking was so advanced, I was so good at it, that I’d convinced myself that if I smoked in my car on my way to teach and had my window rolled down and a Tic Tac at the ready none of my students would know that I smoked. I used to drape my entire body over their bodies to help them move into a deeper uttanasana, a forward bend. No. No one could smell it. Goddess, I was a schmuck.

As the price of cigarettes went higher and higher, the sin tax began to add up. I found ways to deal with the added expense. I ignored my shortness of breath. I started rolling my own. It was cheap, and it was fun!

Talk about ritual and distraction. Rolling cigarettes became an art form for me. I knew people who rolled their own and took care to insert a little filter to decrease the risk to their lungs. Not me. I started with Camel non-filters. I was no wimp. I loved rolling them. First, I invested in a rolling kit so my smokes would be perfect, but then, I taught myself to roll freehand, and I got good at it. I always loved craft projects. I bought a beautiful cigarette case to hold my meticulously rolled stash. Just as I began to tire of this hobby, someone had the inspired idea of marketing organic tobacco so that those of us who were hooked could apply organic magical thinking to our self-destructive behaviors. “It’s gotta be way better for me (better for me?) to smoke organic. Yeah.”

Let’s go, American Spirit! While the tobacco industry coopted Native American culture in search of the almighty dollar, they never shed a tear for the people who died from this habit, and those of us who smoked them convinced ourselves that this choice was less harmful. I bore the extra expense of the special smokes and jumped aboard the organic tobacco wagon.

Still getting bronchitis and colds, I was hopeless when it came to quitting. I was afraid to give it up. I was afraid I’d get fat. I can’t count how many times I tried. I tried, and I tried, and I was fat. And then, I’d give up trying. I’d rationalize my behavior by saying to myself, “Dad’s been smoking two packs a day since he was thirteen, and he’s okay. Until he wasn’t. An aortic aneurysm in 1999 almost took him out. After they saved his life, he met with his new cardiologist. I was with him at his first appointment. He neglected to mention how long he’d been a smoker and how much he smoked. I outed him in the examining room. My father quit for ten days. The ten days he was in the hospital recovering from the surgery that saved his life.

When he came home from the hospital, I stayed with him to help, and one night, I was lying on the sofa bed trying to fall asleep, and he was in his bedroom. The windows were open to cool the overheated apartment, and I noticed plumes of smoke wafting through my window. The angle it came from indicated it was moving from his window to mine. I got out of bed and tiptoed to his door, cracking it a bit to discover him sitting on the windowsill in his boxers, leaning out of the window. My father was addicted, and so was I. But I was young, and I’d be fine, I assured myself.

We weren’t stupid people. We were addicts.

A couple of years after my father’s aneurysm, I woke up one morning and reached for my pack of smokes. I was back to Camel Lights with ugly Joe Camel on the pack. They lacked the mystery and exotic appeal of the original Camel non-filter. My hardcore attitude was replaced by a cartoon character. Joe Camel was a lot easier on my lungs. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe. I reached for my pack, and as I picked it up, a voice that was mine but unfamiliar to me at the same time said in my head, “I don’t want to die this way.” And I threw them out and never went through the trash looking for a fix. I never went through nicotine withdrawal. I never jonesed for a smoke. I. Was. Finished. I was forty-three years old, and the addiction had lifted. I had no explanation for it; there was no inciting incident or plan to quit. I was done. I never smoked a cigarette again.

A few years later, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He’d been coughing, and he was having a little trouble talking. A tumor was discovered on one of his vocal cords. He went through a full round of radiation and was told all was well. So, he continued to smoke. Until the doctor said, “Oops, we were wrong. All is not well, Sid. You have stage-four laryngeal cancer. The only thing that might save you is a total laryngectomy.” Dad looked at the surgeon and flatly said, “No. I’m much too vain to have a hole in my throat.” I sat there, shocked and angry; he was opting out of saving his own life because of his vanity. I didn’t say a word.

My father, a true devotee to magical thinking, decided he would find a cure for what ailed him, and we repeatedly drove hundreds of miles to see the surgeon at Mass General who saved the voices of Julie Andrews, Steven Tyler, and Adele. The surgeon to the stars said his laser surgery technique probably wouldn’t help; my dad was that sick. My father insisted that he operate anyway. Dad went through debilitating rounds of chemo, too. And he finally quit smoking. A year before he died at seventy-five, he had an emergency laryngectomy after all, because the tumors had grown so large that they obstructed his ability to breathe. So, he had a hole in his throat anyway. Would it have saved his life if he’d opted in right away? I’ll never know.

What I do know is that this addiction may be the hardest one to break. I realized that one of the things that I loved about smoking was that it seemed to be the only time I took full breaths. I inhaled deeply. I’ve learned how to do that without the smoke.

As I travel my recovery road, I pray to have my eating disorder lifted from me the way my tobacco habit was. I’ve never understood it. Was it magic? Was it a Higher Power? I had no plan to quit. It just happened.

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