Jonesing

A bad idea.

Photo by Uitbundig on Unsplash

Jonesing

Say you haven’t smoked in two years and there on the ground is a perfect half smoked cigarette, and without thinking you bend down and pick the damned thing up.. You have neither a lighter nor a pack of matches, so you take it inside, make certain nobody is around, and you flick on the left front burner and light the butt, open the door, sweep the yard for onlookers, then take it out on the porch. There are some pleasures you can rush through— beer you can down in thirty seconds, no harm done; a piece of cake can be gobbled then you cut yourself another. You can finish off half a box of See’s chocolates without even realizing it, or read a page a minute to get to the end of whatever bores you to death or scares you stiff.

     But half a cigarette goes pretty quickly and you want it to last, which it won’t, and you have to turn every tiny drag into something memorable but it’s still gone in no time.  So you try to make something more out of it, two sentences maybe, a paragraph if you’re pushing it, and you tell yourself you can work on it tomorrow until it’s almost as good as that half a cigarette. But even if that were possible, which it isn’t, it will never be the same as a whole cigarette. and more in the pack. So leave it lay where Jesus flung it, as my boss Cork was fond of saying.

     A few days went by before I bought a pack. I say to myself for god’s sake you’re eighty two. You can do want you feel like doing. Then I say to myself, for God’s sake, you’re eighty-two. What the hell are you smoking for?  And light up another.