The week I spent in smoke
story by Doug Gulasy :: illustration by Christopher Sharron
Nobody thought it was a good idea.
In the spring, my feature writing class was assigned first-person experience stories.
We were supposed to go out, do something and write about it.
There was only one problem: I had no idea what I was going to write about.
So when my turn came to explain to the class what my story idea was, I hesitated, and then …
“I think I’m going to become a smoker for a week.”
The response was immediate. “You’re kidding, right?” Nope.
“You’re going to get addicted.” We’ll see.
The question they asked most was, “Why?”
I didn’t know. But I was going to do it, and nobody was going to stop me.
Day 1
The BP on East Main Street was empty except for the clerk, a fact I was grateful for. I didn’t really want my first cigarette-buying moment to be witnessed by dozens of nosy gas-station customers.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but I acted as though I did. I strolled up to the register with my hands in my pockets, acting cool but feeling nervous.
“Can I help you?” the clerk asked. He was one of those 20-something, smart-alecky types with a soul patch and wrinkled shirt. I disliked him immediately.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like a pack of Marlboro Lights, please.”
I’d said it quietly, but I knew he had heard me. Still, he acted as if he hadn’t. “I’m sorry, what was that?” he asked, smirking.
“A pack of Marlboro Lights,” I said, trying to sound like I did this all the time but knowing all the while that I was failing.
“Do you have ID?” he asked, snatching a pack of cigarettes from beneath the counter. I nodded, taking my wallet out of my pocket and sliding my driver’s license out of its plastic sleeve and onto the counter. Still, I wondered — I’ll turn 21 in three months. Do I really look younger than 18?
He glanced at the license for a second and shrugged. “That’ll be $5.25,” he said, ringing it up on the register.
I took a 10-dollar bill out of my wallet and slapped it on the counter, then waited impatiently as he slowly — too slowly, in my opinion — got the change.
“Thanks,” I said when he finally gave it to me. He nodded and turned away as I left the store.
Outside, I took my last breath of fresh air as a nonsmoker. It tasted more like gasoline. I fumbled with the cellophane on my pack of cigarettes before getting it open.
Then I realized something. I didn’t have a lighter.
After buying a lighter without an incident, I tried again. I managed to get the cigarette lit, inhaling all those dangerous chemicals outlined in the surgeon general’s warning.
I’d had cigarettes before at parties, but this felt like a new experience. I was a smoker now, and it felt good — until I started to cough, that is.
Unsurprisingly, that first cigarette was my last one of the day.
Day 1 cigarette count: 1
Day 2
“Doug, let me show you something,”
my friend Sarah said, beckoning for the pack of cigarettes clutched in my hand.
I handed them over, and she immediately shook them at me. “Marlboro Lights are the sign of an inexperienced smoker!” she announced to the entire newsroom.
Rolling my eyes, I took them back. “I am an inexperienced smoker.”
Sarah isn’t alone in giving me unwanted advice. By now, everybody knows about my project — and nobody thinks it’s a good idea. Some people are telling me I’ll ruin my health, while others are telling me how I should carry out the experiment. Quite frankly, I want them to leave me alone.
On the other hand, I am getting better at smoking. I didn’t cough today, and I increased the number of cigarettes I smoked from one to three.
However, it is having some side effects.
“You smell like a giant cigarette,” Sarah said later, wrinkling her nose.
She’s right. After my third cigarette of the night, my gray shirt smelled like a tobacco factory. But I couldn’t really do anything about it because I was at work.
When I got back home, I took a shower, hoping to get rid of the scent.
It didn’t work.
Day 2 cigarette count: 3
Day 3
All of a sudden, people can’t stand to be around me.
“You smell like ass!” my friend Ben exclaimed when I stood within a few feet of him during a conversation. “Get away from me.”
He’s right, of course. By now, nicotine seems to be my natural aroma. I tried to get rid of the smell again this morning by using spray-on cologne, but because I smoked again after that, the effect was short-lived.
As much as I try to explain my project, nobody seems to understand. They don’t know what I’m trying to prove. I’m not even sure if I know.
But I’m pressing on — alone, if necessary.
“I hope you don’t get offended,” my friend Josh said when I pulled out a cigarette as we walked toward our separate dorms, “but I’m going to take a different way than you. I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes. It actually makes me want to puke.”
He sprinted off. Shrugging, I took out my Bic and lit the cigarette.
Day 3 cigarette count: 5
Day 4
I couldn’t breathe.
The DeWeese Health Center track was covered with Kent State Relay for Life participants, none of whom seemed to be having trouble navigating the 80-degree heat.
None but me, of course. I was representing the group Students of Scholarship at the 24-hour cancer walk, and I couldn’t breathe because of the tobacco I had been inhaling into my lungs.
I gave up after two hours and went back to my dorm. But something caused me to go back that night for the luminaria ceremony, when the event organizers lit candles in remembrance of people who died from cancer.
As I walked the track, gazing at the hundreds of paper bags filled with lit candles, I felt a lump in my throat. My grandmother had died from cancer — her name could have been on any one of those bags.
All of a sudden, I wanted a cigarette. To this point, I had compelled myself to smoke — but this was a different feeling. I couldn’t stay here. It was too much.
Sitting on a ledge outside my dorm, I smoked cigarettes back to back for the first time. I had three while listening to upbeat music on my iPod.
Still, I couldn’t get a song that I’d heard at the ceremony out of my head.
“Somebody said someone was crying.”
Someone was me. But somehow I didn’t feel alone.
Day 4 cigarette count: 6
Day 5
I need to buy more cigarettes.
That’s the first thought that hit me when I opened my pack at 9 a.m. Sunday and saw that only five cigarettes remained. Without noticing, I had smoked three-quarters of a pack in four days. With three days left in my experiment, buying more cigarettes was a must.
That need for more cigarettes became greater when I smoked the remaining five by mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go out to buy more because I had to work.
To make matters worse, it was the hottest day of the year so far, and it was 90 degrees inside the newsroom. I spent my afternoon in front of an overheated computer, feeling the only fan in the room circulate the sweltering air around me. I was cranky, not only because of the heat, but because I couldn’t continue my experiment.
Luckily, my buddy Tim came to my rescue that night. He came to the hot newsroom to escape his hotter apartment, and he brought salvation in the form of a fresh pack of cigarettes.
“Stop what you’re doing,” he told me. “I need someone to smoke with me.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice.
Day 5 cigarette count: 6
Day 6
Sarah was right: Marlboro Lights are the sign of a novice smoker. I found that out quickly.
They were awful.
Having learned that important consumer lesson, I stopped at the Circle K on East Main Street to buy a new pack of cigarettes. A few customers buzzed around the back of the store, but I went right to the counter.
“A pack of Camel Lights, please,” I said to the clerk, a middle-aged woman whose body language and facial expression screamed, “I’m irritated because I hate this job.”
Two minutes, another $5.25 payment and an ignored “Have a nice day” later, I was back on the street, wondering what I had to do to have a pleasant cigarette-buying experience.
But the Camel Lights were better, as I soon found out — which I was glad about, as I had the feeling I would be smoking a lot of them because of stress.
I had a 14-page paper due the next day, which we’d had all semester to work on. I, of course, had put it off until the night before it was due.
Tim, who was in my class, hadn’t finished his paper, either. At 5:30, sensing a potentially sleepless night ahead, we decided to have one final smoke break together before we split up to work on our papers.
Tim has told me that he tends to smoke either when he’s out with friends or when he’s stressed.
“When I smoke alone, it’s usually because I’m pissed off,” he said. “It gives me a reason to go somewhere and chill out.”
That became the case for me on this night. I took a smoke break every time I finished two pages of my paper. Each break enabled me to forget about the homework, if only for five minutes.
After my six-page smoke break, I returned to my dorm room and looked at the clock on my microwave.
It was 11:55. Day 7 of the experiment had almost arrived … and I still had at least six pages to go.
Day 6 cigarette count: 7
Day 7
“I’m done.”
Those words had two meanings for me on this day. First, I had finally finished my paper, and it had only taken 12 hours to do so.
More importantly, however, I had come to the end of my weeklong smoking experiment. Finally, I could answer “yes” to the question people had been asking me all week: “Are you done smoking yet?”
Of course, I still had to get through the day.
“Want to celebrate?” I asked Tim that afternoon, showing him the pack of cigarettes in my right hand.
He shook his head. “I have stuff to do. Sorry.”
That was all right with me. I had begun the project by myself, and it seemed almost appropriate that I finish it by myself. I smoked that celebratory cigarette by myself.
At 11:00 that night, I decided to have one final cigarette before I officially ended my experiment. As I sat outside my dorm, I thought about the week.
In my mind, the experiment had been a success. I’d learned a lot about smoking, both bad and good. I had verified some of the “truths” about smoking: It does make your clothing, your skin and your breath smell unpleasant. I’d debunked another “truth”: Addiction doesn’t necessarily happen after just one cigarette.
I also learned some things about cigarettes that people generally don’t talk about. I hadn’t known beforehand about the smoking subculture — how smokers can spot an outsider — and I found out about it the hard way.
Also, I learned firsthand that cigarettes aren’t always bad. They can keep you happy when you’re sad, relax you when you’re tense and help you celebrate when you’ve accomplished something big.
Most importantly, I learned something about myself — that I had the willpower (or stubbornness, perhaps) to carry on with something important, even when people doubted me. I was proud of myself for that.
These thoughts were interrupted when someone sat on the bench next to me. I looked sideways, seeing a freshman who lived in my hallway.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just waiting for my friend to pick me up.”
“That’s all right,” I said, dropping my cigarette and putting out its ember with the toe of my shoe. “I’m done anyway.”
And I was.
Day 7 cigarette count: 6
Total cigarette count: 34
Probably the best article I’ve seen come out of the Burr.