Cigarettes cost WHAT? $9 for a pack of Newports (I'm black remember). Actually this all takes me back to when I first started smoking. (Hazy waves, hazy waves...)
It was my senior year in high school and I worked at a job with this totally rad grad school chick named Jen. She was also black and brilliant like me and working at a job with people she hated and didn't respect (which I would come to understand more viscerally as I got older). I was the office assistant and she had actual work to do and would send me to go get smokes for her when she ran of Benson & Hedges Menthol Lights. Only I was only 17 and we worked on a campus that was hard on ID'ing underage smokers. So she'd not only call and tell them who we were she'd also send me with a note (handwritten even).
The night I was formally presented to society I turned to my escort and said "let's get some cigarettes." All I knew to say was Bensonhedgesmenthollights, so that's what I got. By the next week when my escort was telling me how he'd had sex with his boyfriend in the car seat I was occupying on our way to see Tommy Tune in Bye, Bye, Birdie- we had cigarette holders, the long black and silver ones.
Smoking has always been so exotic and eccentric to me. It was also something grown-ups did. My grandma looked so elegant with her beautiful long brown legs crossed and smoke curling from her mouth. She'd look elegant until she got full of Schlitz and started cussing everybody out. But until that point, she looked like a movie star. And that's really the crux of it, isn't it. I'm an old movie queen and always wanted to move like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck. I remember in All About Eve when Bette's Margo Channing was checking cigarette boxes to make sure they were full. What decadence.
Fast forward 60 years to a pack of smokes costing $9. So does that now make them a luxury item? I'm buying cartons now and can't breathe because I feel like I have an unlimited supply. Until they run out. Then I'll cry because THERE'S NO WAY IN HELL I'M PAYING $9 FOR A PACK OF SMOKES. I'll have to start rolling my own, and I'm just too lazy for that.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Rose's Bloom
Calm yourself because no one can save you
But you
No one can replace you but you and are you willing to do what it takes to make it?
You hate to hear it, I hate to write it.
But you know betrayal and its sting never gets easier.
Do you even know who you are?
The older you get, the more difficult it is to know the answer to that question.
You just want to put your head in the sand and hope everything goes away.
But when you wake up sober and in pain cause you can’t breathe from all the smoke in your lungs, you know the answer.
You’ve done this to yourself. You’ve been on this path of destruction for the last 20 years.
It began as playful teenage angst, and moved into middle-aged nuclear destruction.
It’s not cute anymore, the damage you do to yourself.
Waking up with strangers who make you feel terrible about yourself isn’t cute anymore.
It’s dangerous, not just to your body but to your soul.
It’s damaging to your self-image, which is still based in a teenaged cool you learned from black and white movies.
Everyone you’ve loved died from the cigarettes you still relish.
You begin to see wrinkles, your skin doesn’t snap back and the weight you keep gaining still doesn’t go away no matter how much you go to the gym or how many slim fast shakes you have.
Your mouth tastes like ass and you think your teeth are gonna fall out. Most of the women in your family didn’t make it past their 30’s with their original teeth in their mouth.
More reason for shame. And you can’t even imagine what you must taste like to men. Not that any man has tried to taste you lately. Not even the man trying to be your long distance boyfriend.
Balls!!!
Wilted, that’s how you feel. The bloom is definitely off of the rose. And you’ve never even been married. How’s this gonna work?
Who wants this life? Balls!!!
I know who does. Me. Fuck all the answers I’m supposed to say. All of that supposed has gotten me here, so FUCK SUPPOSED.
I’m supposed to make a ton of money based on my breeding and education. But do I? No!!
So I’m gonna continue doing what I want to. I’m gonna keep going and telling everyone else to go to hell.
But you
No one can replace you but you and are you willing to do what it takes to make it?
You hate to hear it, I hate to write it.
But you know betrayal and its sting never gets easier.
Do you even know who you are?
The older you get, the more difficult it is to know the answer to that question.
You just want to put your head in the sand and hope everything goes away.
But when you wake up sober and in pain cause you can’t breathe from all the smoke in your lungs, you know the answer.
You’ve done this to yourself. You’ve been on this path of destruction for the last 20 years.
It began as playful teenage angst, and moved into middle-aged nuclear destruction.
It’s not cute anymore, the damage you do to yourself.
Waking up with strangers who make you feel terrible about yourself isn’t cute anymore.
It’s dangerous, not just to your body but to your soul.
It’s damaging to your self-image, which is still based in a teenaged cool you learned from black and white movies.
Everyone you’ve loved died from the cigarettes you still relish.
You begin to see wrinkles, your skin doesn’t snap back and the weight you keep gaining still doesn’t go away no matter how much you go to the gym or how many slim fast shakes you have.
Your mouth tastes like ass and you think your teeth are gonna fall out. Most of the women in your family didn’t make it past their 30’s with their original teeth in their mouth.
More reason for shame. And you can’t even imagine what you must taste like to men. Not that any man has tried to taste you lately. Not even the man trying to be your long distance boyfriend.
Balls!!!
Wilted, that’s how you feel. The bloom is definitely off of the rose. And you’ve never even been married. How’s this gonna work?
Who wants this life? Balls!!!
I know who does. Me. Fuck all the answers I’m supposed to say. All of that supposed has gotten me here, so FUCK SUPPOSED.
I’m supposed to make a ton of money based on my breeding and education. But do I? No!!
So I’m gonna continue doing what I want to. I’m gonna keep going and telling everyone else to go to hell.
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