No Avoiding It

My brother returned recently from a trip to Turkey, and, being the storyteller that he is, described to me his adventures and experiences there, including noticing how popular smoking remains in that country. As he put it, “The toddlers smoke in Turkey.” I was reminded of my friend Tim’s recollection of 70s America where, in California where he grew up, there were ashtrays at the end of every aisle in the supermarket. Now, in Seattle, at least, I could go months without ever seeing anyone opening a pack of Marlboros.

I used to smoke. Everyone I knew seemed to be doing it, so why not? I wrote a poem called Cigarettes, which I quite liked, and included it in the batch I submitted to literary magazines. I did not consider it a paean to smoking but a portrait of the mindset of the smoker. Nonetheless, one editor rejected the poem with emphatic commentary. “We are looking to publish poems about life,” he wrote. “And cigarettes are about death.”

A simple, “No, thank you,” would have sufficed, I thought. Still, there was something appealing about this stranger bothering to tell me why he would under no circumstances publish my poem. It was the first time I truly understood the subjectivity of acceptance and rejection. This had nothing whatsoever to do with whether my stuff was any good. I also disagreed with him that it was about death, regardless of the subject. Everything was about life, really. Even eulogies were about life.

But I understood why he might believe otherwise. Now when I see someone lighting up, even in a movie, I can feel what it is to do so myself, and nothing about it appeals to me. There’s the ashtray taste and the feeling in my body afterward of being both jittery and tired, but mostly I remember the avoidance. I can’t speak for the other smokers, but I always used cigarettes to cope with boredom and fear. It was something, thank God, to do. As if the bottom could drop out of life, and there was nothing, nothing, nothing anywhere – as if there wasn’t another poem to be written, if I could but wait for it to come along.

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Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
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