Flashsense: Smell

About a month after you quit smoking, you get your sense of smell back.

It’s gradual at first, but soon the smells of your world flood back and a whole realm of experience you’d been missing returns.

Because, you realize, the world smells surprisingly good.

Food smells incredible, as does your partner while you’re intimate, flowers are everywhere, and you notice it again and again, as though for the first time.

But what you smell most keenly is cigarette smoke, and it’s the most appetizing scent in the world.

Intoxicating.

And that’s why I can never quit smoking for good…

Weekly Prompt Story: Starting Smoking

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=23405

Starting Smoking

By Christopher Munroe

You’d tried everything, but nothing had worked. So you came to me.

I sat you down, made you comfortable.

Counted down from 100, each number causing you to fall into a deeper state of relaxation, each word causing you to sink deeper, trust deeper, fall deeper under the spell of the soft, soothing words I spoke to you.

And once I was confident you were under, I whispered my command in your ear.

“You will smoke.” I told you, and you never smoked again.

You never would have, had it not been for me.

That’s the power of pre-hypnotic suggestion…

On My Lunch Break...

It started with a misunderstanding, though I maintain an understandable one.

I was at the smoking area in front of Chinook Mall, on a bench, enjoying a cigarette after all. I had headphones in, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying when he approached me. And to make matters worse, I’d not slept properly in four days due to over-scheduling at work, so my thought processes weren’t one hundred percent up to speed. He said something, his posture implied to me that it might have been a question, I offered him a cigarette without even taking off my headphones.

In reality, he’d wanted to know where the Bank of Montreal had moved to. The one in the mall had apparently been shut down and moved and he had no idea where it had gone. I found this out when he repeated his question and I took my headphones off to actually hear what it was.

Sadly I was of no help there. Bank of Montreal isn’t my bank, so I pay no attention to where they’re located. Still, he took the smoke, so you can’t say I was useless to him.

He took a seat next to me and we smoked, together, whiling away a few minutes in one another’s company. I was in no hurry to get back to work, had two hours between shifts in fact, and he was in no hurry to get much of anywhere, not knowing the location of his bank he couldn’t get anywhere in a hurry even if he’d wanted to. So we sat, and smoked, and shot the breeze.

He told me he was eighty-three years old, and had smoked all his life with no ill effect on his health. Spoke of his distaste for the current fashion for giving it up, told me he’d actively tried to convince his daughter not to bother quitting, because he still, after decades of studies, didn’t believe it was bad for you. Indeed, he thought the opportunity it provided to take three quick minutes to reflect upon your day was absolutely essencial to maintaining mental health.

I told him I agreed with the second part, at least, though I’d still like to quit myself.

He asked where I was born, and when I explained that I’d been born and spent most of my life here in Alberta he told me so had he, though for most of a much longer life than I’d yet had. He leaned back, dragging deeply on his borrowed cigarette, and told me that he’d watched Calgary grow over the course of his eight decades, but that he was still continually surprised by each new development.

This is a thing that happens to us all as we age, I suppose.

He’d known the man who’d owned the land upon which Chinook Mall was built, before Chinook Mall was built, when the area was a golf course. After selling his golf course to Mall developers, the man apparently took the money back to India and spent it building a hospital, because he’d wanted to give back something to the community in which he’d grown up, and that that’d left a tremendous impression on the friends he’d left behind.

“You can’t judge a man by the color of his skin,” the eighty-three year old stranger with whom I was inadvertently spending my lunch-break told me, “or the culture that he comes from. That’s what I’ve learned in my life, there’s goodness in everyone, if you look for it.”

Which is true, though I found the fervency with which he delivered it charmingly anachronistic. The idea that you’d ever have to say “racism, in general, is bad” as though there were people in mainstream society who might disagree wasn’t something that would ever occur to me, though at his age I suppose he’d lived through an era where the idea was more controversial than it is today. The arc of history, and all that…

“That’s certainly true.” I replied to him, smiling.

I don’t usually like talking to strangers. Maybe it’s the amount of my life I’ve spent performing, maybe the service-industry job I work in now, but when I’m alone I’m generally quite closed. Nonetheless, something about the man, maybe the energy he still had even at his age, maybe the willful obliviousness to the modern era that only octogenarians can get away with, maybe just that he reminded me of my own departed grandfather, was incredibly disarming. Given the opportunity, I could quite happily have sat there all afternoon, smoking cigarettes and listening to him tell me about his experiences, separated from mine by half a century, and while doing so reflect upon my own life, my own choices, and what they’ll sound like in fifty years, should I choose to regale another, younger stranger with them.

But, of course, I wasn’t given the opportunity. Cigarettes were finished, he had a bank to find and I a lunch to eat, and so there we parted ways, only knowing one another five minutes but in that time getting to know one another a little better.

Because that’s what life is. It’s connecting with people, even the people you’ll never see again, who you have nothing in common with other than a habit and a city. It’s about being there for them, and with them, and then remembering them after you’ve said goodbye. And most importantly, it’s about taking a little bit of time to stop, and sit, and relax and reflect on what’s going on around you. We all deserve that time, I think, though we don’t always remember that.

There are no Zombies in this story, nor any Orbital Weapons Platforms, Ghosts, Vampires or murderous Cyborgs. It’s just the story of two men who once sat on a bench, enjoying a cigarette, the older saying whatever was on his mind and the younger walking away when he was done in a calmer, more reflective mood than he’d been in five minutes before.

Which isn’t very exciting, I suppose. But really, sometimes life isn’t exciting.

Sometimes it’s just good.

Weekly Prompt Story: Smoking

http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2012/05/06/weekly-challenge-315-smoke/

Smoking

By Chris Munroe

Yes, I do still smoke.

I know I shouldn’t. I know that it’s expensive, and I know what it’ll do to my teeth and the lines around my eyes.

I also know that cigarettes are the only product that, used as directed, kills 100% of it’s customers. Cancer, heart disease, I know what smoking does.

But I also know that twice a day, at work, regardless of how long my scheduled shift is, I will hear a manager say, in essence: Smokers, take a five minute break. Non-smokers, shut up and get back to work.

So yeah, I still smoke.

Where there's Smoke...

It’s been said that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

And I’m inclined to believe them.

I’ve been trying to quit, really I have. And I’ve mostly done well.

I’ve gotten down to two or three a week, all told. But I admit, sometimes I can’t resist.

Like now. The smell of gasoline, the warmth of flames in my face, the sound of screaming inside as the owners of the house wake up.

It’s a beautiful moment. Tranquil, perfect. And afterwards I crave a cigarette more than I can resist...

...so maybe they have it backward.

Where there’s fire, I smoke.

25 Years Later...

I can see the smoking doors from my bed.

As I lay here, looking out my window, I see the doors the staff use during breaks due to a fascinating piece of architectural mismanagement.

They come, rain or shine, when they have a moment to sneak a puff. During lunch there’s a crowd of them, other times it’s groups of one or two, sneaking a cigarette between the more hectic moments of their shifts.

I don’t begrudge them, they have stressful jobs after all. It’s only natural they’d occasionally need a moment to unwind and reset in the middle of their day, and there are worse ways to find one. I dealt with stress the same way, back when I smoked. And when I had a job.

And when I had so little legitimate stress in my life that the idea my job would cause me tension wasn’t laughable.

So I watch them, from my bed. I’ve always been a people watcher. I watch them sneak out the side door for a puff, in groups of two or three, huddled together in the rain or luxuriating in spring sunshine. I watch them smoke, and laugh, and comfort one another, and talk about whatever it is they talk about.

I wish I could hear them. I could use the conversation, even second hand.

But I’m no lip reader, and there’s a pane of glass and a courtyard between us, so likely as not I’ll never know what it is they’re talking about. Which is fine. I have plenty to listen to.

What I can hear is the beeping of the machine to my right, the one that monitors my vital signs, and the artificial whirr of my respirator. When my wife visits, I can hear her telling me I’m going to beat this thing, trying to convince me, and herself, that I‘ll one day be whole again, and that we‘ll go back to being a family. And, when she thinks I’ve gone to sleep, I can hear her crying to herself, softly. I hear these things perfectly well, thank you very much. For all the things that’re wrong with me my hearing works just fine.

She cries more and more often when she visits now. But she visits less and less, so I suppose one makes up for the other…

And, as she tries to comfort me, my eyes keep straying to the window, to see the courtyard, and the side door, and the people sneaking their smokes.

A year ago I’d likely have been out there with them.

In another year, someone else will be in this bed, enjoying my view.

And there’ll be new people in the courtyard, by the side door, doing all the same things. Which is fine, I mean I can’t complain about it, can I? I made my choices, I knew the risks, what kind of a man would complain about the predictable consequences life choices freely made? No, I accept the life I’ve lived, and I’ve genuinely liked a lot of it. There are things I could have done differently, but I didn’t, because it was hard and I didn’t want to. And I accept this end as part of that.

Still, staring out my window, I can’t help feeling a little put out by it.

Is it meant to be a joke?

A mean-spirited dig at my expense?

Seriously, what?

What the fuck kind of architect puts smoking doors within eyeshot of a respiratory ward, anyway?

And do the administrators not know I can see it?

Although I admit, if they don’t know, I’ll never be the one to tell them.

Because, as I’ve said, the staff have stressful jobs, and they do deserve a break to live in their own head a little while, enjoying their own bad habit, owing nothing to anyone. Even if it’s just for three minutes at a time.

And really, who am I to stop them doing something I enjoyed for close to forty years?

When Alberta Banned Smoking...

When Alberta finally pulled the trigger on a comprehensive tobacco ban I was, at least in theory, in favour of it.

It is, after all, a habit both filthy and deadly, possessed of no redeeming qualities. An addictive drug as well as being the only product that, if used correctly, killed it’s user in 100% of cases.

Why was such a product even allowed on the market in the first place while other, far less dangerous, recreational substances had been long since banned? It was, everyone agreed, indefensible.

So when they debated the costs of tobacco, both in terms of human life and strain upon the health care system, I generally agreed with the points the anti-smoking coalition made. And when they banned it’s sale and use anywhere in the province, I cheered their courage in doing so.

And then I moved to Vancouver.

I was a smoker, I’m still a smoker, and I do sincerely hope some day to quit. I’ve tried a number of times in the past, but it never seems to take. As a smoker hoping to give the addiction up, I’m exactly the sort of person the law was meant to help. And it isn’t that I don’t appreciate their attempts to encourage me into a healthier lifestyle. I’m very appreciative.

It’s just that I’m a smoker, and one who’s tried to quit on numerous occasions, and I know what my moods are like when I’m in the midst of quitting smoking. And I have no interest in watching every single smoker in Alberta quit, cold turkey, simultaneously.

So; Two weeks before enforcement of the ban, I moved to Van. A decision which, in hindsight, turned out to be even wiser than I’d initially thought.

Two weeks after the ban the murder rate in Alberta tripled. It would continue increasing for the next eleven months.

Two months after the ban, the province could no longer hire new police officers, which was a problem as the cops with enough seniority to take early retirement were starting to do so, and the cops without said seniority were taking serious sideways looks at jobs in other provinces.

Four months after the ban the government fell, hounded out of office by protesters with an uncomfortable habit of turning violent. Strangely, few of them were protesting the smoking ban itself, instead they were protesting a variety of unrelated issues, that taxes should be raised or lowered, university tuition should be frozen, the provincial government did too much/too little for minority groups. The protestors had little in common, politically, but they did share a few qualities. They’d recently quit smoking, they wanted to keep busy to distract themselves from this, and they were in apocalyptically foul moods. Not the sort of people the Premier of a province wants to see chanting outside his office day after day, presenting demands that were by turns lucid and insane and then refusing to negotiate them or give up any ground.

He caught a flight to Vancouver five months after I did, two steps ahead of an angry mob. I saw him once as I was coming out of a 7-11 on Broadway, and gave him a wave. He flinched until he saw me light a smoke. Then he seemed to relax.

Political consensus by this point was to rescind the damn ban and get it over with, however without a stable government to do so this was easier said then done. And, to further complicate things, the majority of Albertans remained in favour of the ban. Even the newly ex-smokers, forced into their new, healthier state, agreed that they were going to have to quit eventually and, after months without a cig, didn’t want the temptation back in their lives.

They weren’t smoking, everyone agreed that that was good, everyone knew that it was healthy, and if they were going to do something about the constant, unchecked rioting in the streets and the breakdown of productive civilization, it would have to be something other than lifting the tobacco ban.

If only people would pause their day-to-day struggle for survival and think of something else that would work…

When things calm down a little, I’d like to go back to Alberta. It’s my home province after all, I was born in Edmonton and spent the majority of my life either there or in Calgary. But I won’t be going any time soon. Life back there is too nasty, brutish and short for my tastes at the moment and, much though I love Mad Max, I’m not well suited to live that sort of lifestyle.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about going back on the patch starting next week, so if I get snappy I apologize in advance. Wish me luck!