youth

02 \\ cigarettes

“A bitch always smokes." He looks back at Lucy. "A bitch is the opposite of a whore. A bitch doesn't need anybody. Or she wants people to think she doesn't need anybody. And she smokes to prove it.” - C JoyBell C, Saint Paul Trois Ch Teaux (1948)

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Cigarettes, they were the only flaw about yourself that you loved. All the other flaws gnawed at you but cigarettes helped you. Your parents were disgraced when they found out, your teachers dismissive but still disappointed, your friends admiring and strangers both scandalized and attracted. You loved all the reactions you got, from the lectures to the wolf-whistles. Either way you were getting attention.

When I saw you sitting outside the book store in the snow you had one leg bent at the knee, the other straightened out and one hand lifting clumps of snow and throwing them whilst the other rested on your knee, at the wrist, cigarette placed between your middle and fore finger. A lighter lay by your side and you hadn’t lit the cigarette yet but I could see the smoke twisting from the end, creating a veil of smoke of which to hide behind. You would never hide behind it though and this I figured out when you did actually light it, in the middle of our conversation, and instead of having your face fogged by the smoke it stood out even clearer. The slightly upturned nose; the oval face with a miniscule amount of baby fat still to shed; the pale blue eyes which would be like any other pair of blue eyes if it wasn’t for the world moving behind them; the stubborn set of your jawbone that I know now only relaxes when you’re in your own world; the cheekbones that were faded and heralded cheeks red from the brisk wind; the spattering of freckles across the bridge of your nose that always became obviously brown in the summer sun; the brown hair that fell, slanted, across your forehead in a side fringe and curled into a serene anarchy. You were so evident behind the cigarette smoke.

I had never smoked in my life but you always looked so tantalizing when you did I thought perhaps I might look… tantalizing. Or as tantalizing as a teenage boy can look when standing next to a girl. So when, on our fourth outing alone – the ones you refused to call dates because apparently dating was just contemporary shit – you offered me a cigarette from the cigarette box you had drawn a skull and cross bones on I accepted. I had my own lighter because whilst I didn’t smoke, yet, fire was enticing and on the walks I took alone at night it would keep me and my thoughts company.

We were standing in an alley way, the hue of winter still painting the city grey, and you were wearing your brother’s army coat and I was shivering in a jumper I thought you might think of as cute - you didn’t – and I was captured by the simple movement of the small bones beneath the tight skin of your wrist as you offered me a cigarette. I don’t know if you were too busy lighting your own cigarette to notice that my teeth were chattering and that the only thing to stay them was the cigarette. Maybe it was nerves, or maybe it was the cold. I’m not sure because the only effect the cold seem to have on you was to raise goose bumps along your arms and even they were faint, the army jacket giving a definitive warmth. I hope it was the cold.

I had seen you light a cigarette before and I had seen others do it too. So I knew that holding it with my lips and then bringing the lighter up was the best way to go about it but I still waited for you to do it first, your inked covered hand protecting the small flame of your own lighter from the restless wind, as if, because you had smoked before, you had a right to go first and I should respect that. A ridiculous notion but one that became habit whenever I smoked from then on.

The cigarette was lit and my lungs constricted, my lips pursed, my fingers tightened and I inhaled. Now I could feel your eyes on me, anticipating a cough to sign the contract of my weakness. But I didn’t cough, I refused to. I almost choked on that first lungful of smoke but if I did I would be abdicating the frail friendship we were still designing blueprints for. So I didn’t. And as you exhaled your own breath of smoke, tilting your head back and revealing the contours of your pale neck, I caught the fleeting smirk that rode your lips with victory.

After that the sky became sullen with the color of wild blackberries and our cigarette smoke hazed with the wistful fog rolling in. I had smoked eight cigarettes with you that evening and you had never once said a word about it, instead choosing to loosen the arrow from its quiver the next time we met.

“Did you only agree to take the cigarette because I smoke?”

“What? No. I agreed to smoke with you last time because I wanted to try it.”

“And what if I hadn’t been there?” You were leaning on the metal fence that bordered a park, ankles crossed behind you and shoulders hunched lightly.

“Then I wouldn’t have had a cigarette to take, would I?” At that you laughed, pushing away from the fence and swinging yourself neatly over it. The gate was right next to where you had been leaning. I didn’t say anything.

What I don’t remember is the brand of cigarette. Does it matter? I guess not. It’s just a flighty nag that holds no consequence or importance. What I can remember and what does matter is the actual act of smoking the cigarette. How we used to sit up above the world in the tangled branches of jagged trees at four am and smoke. How we used to laugh as we tried to blow smoke rings at eight pm in your attic. How we used to smoke together.