Lydia’s Blog

Thank you for NOT smoking…seriously?

I smoke cigarettes. I am also aware that there is a satire out in cinemas in the U.S. at the moment that tackles the subject pretty thoroughly. Still, please consider the fact that this film won’t make it to Germany for several months yet…and so what I’m writing has little or no connection to the film.

Smoking for me started much in the way that it does for most people. A bad kid on a middle-school sponsored camping trip brings along a pack of Camel wides and the first puff is taken. One encounters cigarettes relatively often thereafter.

In fact smoking in high school is just about the most generic form of rebellion available. It’s like the international adolescent signal for “I hate my parents”. At Conard High School between 1992 and 1996, the music/drama geeks (which would have to have been my qualification) smoked to say “fuck the jocks”. The white supremacists, sluts, goths, loners, scary Puerto Rican girls, angry dykes, hippie outdoorsy guys, chicks that thought they were lesbians because they dug on Drew Barrymore, suburban gangsters, and even the popular kids all basically smoked to say “fuck you” to one another.

After high school, I went to a prominent music conservatory to study voice…and anathema, one might think, to smoking. Well, as per the pattern, I smoked to say “fuck singing”.

My smoking began in earnest in the summer of 1998, between my sophomore and junior years. It was my first job as an assistant director, at an impressively mediocre summer program. I wanted to drive a wedge between my persona as a singer and my newfound role as omnipresent cynic. This, I decided, could be accomplished by training myself to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes a day. The brand was Benson and Hedges Ultra Lights (in the box, just like my Olivier had preferred). At first it was really hard. I could do eight or nine a day in the beginning. By the time I left the program, fat, brokenhearted from my first big l*v* and none the better for my experience with the program…I had managed to reach my goal.

My insane Korean housemates my junior year were pros at playing bad girls, and then switching effortlessly into perfect princesses. (As evidenced by the seamless switch-in of Hello Kitty trinkets for boy-band posters, bribed Korean pals for skeezy townie boyfriends and strange fish products for western groceries within our apartment upon the arrival of any sort of parent). I learned from them how to continue smoking while manufacturing the appearance of a dutiful voice major.

At grad school, I was able to smoke in earnest. Outdoors. In my apartment. At restaurants. In front of people, without fear they’d rat on me. It was a drama conservatory, and I was in very good company. People routinely gave and received cartons as gifts.

Berlin, from the second I got there, and certainly from the dawn of tobacco imports, has always been a smoker’s paradise. You can smoke in airports, malls, hospital waiting rooms, universities, and most importantly, opera houses. Smoking, as far as I could tell, was part and parcel of adult human interaction in Europe. It’s not something your mom does in the basement in winter with all of the windows open, after she thinks the kids are asleep. It’s just the way it is.

I’m not you’re typical smoker in any case. I have absolutely no taste for cigarettes whatsoever until late afternoon or so, when I can begin smoking at regular intervals. I can go days without, not feeling like disemboweling colleagues. Mine is not an addictive personality, rather a compulsive one (if you’ve ever seen me around a bag of beef jerky, you’ll know exactly what I mean).

It’s just nice. Certain combinations are especially lovely. Alcohol and cigarettes. Social gatherings, particularly lame ones, and cigarettes. A moment alone on a balcony late at night and cigarettes. Writing and cigarettes. The one standard I don’t go for is coffee and cigarettes—it makes me poop.

One of my absolute favorite combinations is end of a long day of rehearsal and cigarettes.

Today I had to sprint from my afternoon rehearsal in some sultry jungle outside of Stuttgart to a meeting at the opera’s chamber theater. No time for the post-cigarette.

I got to the theater and begged the first person I saw, a production manager, where I could dodge out for a quick one.

“I haven’t had one yet today…” I said, breathlessly.

“Well then, just don’t.” he said. I looked at him like I was crazy and made some abstract begging gestures while whimpering.

He rolled his eyes and led me to a dock door. It was raining. I immediately stepped out and lit my ultra-ultra-barely-even-a-qualifiable-cigarette-it’s-so-light stoge and inhaled deeply.

The production manager clucked disapprovingly. Only seconds later, he was joined by a lighting technician and a props master who, like some overly-moralistic trifecta, began to lecture me about smoking.

There I stood in the rain, listening to these three men standing dry in the doorway. One said, “you know, I wouldn’t want to kiss an ashtray.” I used every bit of self control I have not to inform him that the ashtray under scrutiny wouldn’t want to kiss him, either.

You know, I will quit someday—and when I do, it won’t be the gum and patches fiasco it is for some people. Of this I’m sure. Until that day, however, I will simply puff away as I write my stupid little stories. With impunity, thank you very much.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.