Cigarettes Rhyme With Butch

5.26.24

When you have no money, you smoke a lot of cigarettes. Last time I was in Paris, I smoked none. This is not to say I had any money then because I did not. It is to say some other things and to give them names, first and last. It is to say something and then to listen back.

I’ll be more direct, before I’m indirect: I studied abroad in France and Italy, months apiece, and I didn’t smoke cigarettes in either of those countries. Tris and I have just arrived in Paris now. I have an almost-empty pack of Camel Blues in my crossbody bag. I think there are two cigs left in there, or three. I might smoke this time abroad in a way I didn’t smoke last time. 

I’m not saying this in a way that makes it a big deal because it’s not, not like that. It doesn’t mean anything to me that I’m not smoking cigarettes often these days, though I’m smoking some. Last time I was in Paris, it really meant something to me that I wasn’t smoking. What did it mean. The story of that last time, it’s a story I tell quite often. It’s one of those stories in which who I am starts to look different from who I was. 

Paris, arriving late because they told us to. Getting so lost coming to my dorm from the airport, so lost I was crying. Hating where I was living, though I had tall windows and a big desk. Cutting my hair short with scissors every few days, so short it was dreadful and jagged. In all the photos, I’m not smiling and my haircut is jagged.

A brown suede coat. A visit from my mom. Leaving class to throw up from exhaustion in the bathroom. Staying up late, far too late, staying on Facetime. Keeping the lights on or the phone brightness turned bright, so I’d never adjust to the time change. Body on New York time because I’m afraid. Not afraid like that, afraid in the way that I’m the one who’s fucking up, I’m the one too afraid of being left alone without a lover. I rush home after class, so I’ll be there right when you wake up. I rush home from the grocery store on Sundays because I’ve left my phone behind, you asleep, you in New York, Manhattan, I don’t want to hang up the call.

It’s complicated. Preacher’s Daughter comes out, and I count down days. I lie often about where I am and where I’m traveling and why I’m traveling there and what I need. Who am I lying to. That was important to you. What do I need. A hug from someone who knows me. Another body who will carry my suitcase, so I don’t have to. What do I need. Anything but cigarettes. Anything that will prove I’m still good, rather, I’m still present. 

What do the cigarettes represent. Sex drive pills. Taking the train to the airport, always early, early in the morning cause I like it that way. A library card they never give me, always a temporary one, they’re out of the proper cardstock. Milan Kundera. All Men are Mortal. Am I mortal. If I smoke a cigarette, will I finally realize.

I realize. I’m cracking jokes. We’re on the phone every night, I can’t sleep more than four hours. I’m worried you’ll grow bored because you say it, you’re growing bored. I’m being dramatic. What are you actually saying and what am I reading into. And why do I cling so tightly, why don’t I listen to wisdom. Do the cigarettes represent wisdom. What wisdom is there in a cigarette. Not in the cigarette itself, but in the choice to smoke one and to buy a pack of your own.

Years pass, no cigarettes, I don’t want you to have to taste it on me and for you to say you have. Then, for me to have to justify why, why I chose cigarettes and not something better, weed or shrooms or alcohol, I don’t know. Why do I choose the cigarettes at the end of the day, even when we are still together. I’ve come back from Italy already. Didn’t smoke there, but I’m smoking now. I’m brushing my teeth to get the tobacco taste out, but cigarettes don’t go away like that. 

They stay on you. I smoke a cigarette on the New Year after we’ve broken each other’s trust. I have bad days, and I smoke on the balcony with friends and lovers. I don’t forget the bad days. Are the cigarettes accomplices. Do they hold me. I walk to the train, and on the open-air J platform, I smoke cigarettes. People tell me what it does to my body. I don’t smoke that many. I know it still does things to my body. It doesn’t matter because my body is going through other, far more compelling things.

I think the cigarettes represent a lot. I hardly smoke them now, but I do sometimes, enough to carry them around and need a couple lighters in the pockets of things. A pack a month maybe, a pack every two months. A pack for me and my lover, a pack for me and whoever asks. 

So I smoke cigarettes now, and I’m back in Paris. I’m writing the moon again right, just like the last time, the moon through your blinds. This time, it’s full out our airplane window. We’re going to Paris again. “We,” meaning I have another lover, we sit on the airplane. We sit on the airplane in coach class and sleep on each other’s laps and don’t sleep also. How many full moons has it been since then, right, isn’t that the question. How many since then and how many now, how many moons can fit into a life, how many moons can one big old mason jar hold for us, what is it to be overflowing with moon.

There’s a lot of time leftover between one trip to a place and another trip to that same place. A lot of miles between one thing and another, and in those miles, a whole other life. It’s complicated. A lot breaks down. With time and with borders. With student visas and the other shit that gets lost when lovers start writing about each other. This is about lovers, and it isn’t. It’s about cigarettes and why we do or do not smoke them. It’s about times when you slip away. Is slipping away to smoke a cigarette a choice, and when.

It’s that time, two years ago. I’m sitting at a cafe like a good tourist, like a good writer who studies Paris studying Paris. I’m not smoking cigarettes, and my phone is a useless block of metal in my pocket. Why didn’t I get cell service, I mean, at a certain point, why must I stay so miserable, I ask. I wish to call him, you are no longer, every second, wishing, glimmers. I’m not smoking cigarettes, but I’m smoking other things, right. I’m smoking everything else to avoid cigarettes. Sense, everything. 

The waiter approaches the outside table where I sit, I’ve ordered coffee. He says, your cigarettes smell so odd. They’re herbs, I say. He says, so odd. They’re herbs, I’ll smoke anything but cigarettes. I’ll do anything but get any damn cell service in my phone.

We’re killing time, I mean, we’re passing by the moon on the plane, and I never missed him, not once, and how evil does that make someone, not to miss anything. Save for rare moments, very rare. No one asks about how many days he spends in my room, like, no one asks about the nighttimes. And all the money spent, the coins at the bottoms of everything. All the places one goes just to not smoke cigarettes. 

And then, after it all, to smoke them and to wonder what it all was about anyway, the things not purchased from the tabacs and the bodegas and the bottle shops, how can you prove you’ve been anywhere without the cigarettes to show for it. Do hands age. Does one hold a pen like they do a cigarette and stare at the moon and the smoke clouds. 

And not really to miss the times before the cigarettes. The times when people worried about you and asked when you’d call. Or didn’t, but then you told them anywhere, where you’d been. A window only matters when you don’t have one. The cigarettes only mean something so long as you’re not really using them, just carrying them around. Or so long as you only smoke two at once. Or so long as there’s an even number left. Or so long as you only give them away to people you’re never reunited with, only left and left again. 

And then people, the same people, show up in your dreams and you kiss them and you kiss them and you doubt and you wonder is this what they were thinking about this possible dream when they cut the phone line you wonder if it’s all about the cigarettes and what they made you do made you into.

Right. There was a time before cigarettes. And then a lot of exhaling. And then a lot of burning a lot of smoke a lot of days with nowhere to go but one place you didn’t want to go but lived in, thank god. You have no choice now. And then a lot of days there were, saying you’re writing, a lot of days saying you’ve been somewhere other than you actually are. And a lot of lies and maybe blackmail from before the cigarettes. 

The cigarettes make you stop caring about all that. The cigarettes maybe make you better than you were in this one way that no one is seeing but you but you’re better even if no one is seeing it. You choose to smoke cigarettes finally and you hardly mention it to anyone. Because the cigarettes aren’t an isolated event. So you can’t smoke them without saying a lot more and without naming a lot of names you shouldn’t. Because you’re good like that. You don’t name names.

Right. I mean, now that there’s been a time before the cigarettes, there’s that time. 

Right, and now, that time is just that time. You look back. That time. The time before, sure, but the time with the cigarettes also, now you have that also. A mason jar can hold a lot, and a life can. And I haven’t smoked a cigarette since winter. But it’s not about that anymore. The cigarettes, I mean. Not the time.