Let's start with smoking. I tried my first cigarette when I was 16. Many of my Amundsen Park pals had already begun smoking, Kools mostly. Those menthol cigarettes seemed more candy-ish than, say, unfiltered Camels and so were more tasty to my fellow teens.
One day I lit up a Kool. The sickly sweet smoke curled into the upper reaches of my nasal passages, causing me to reel. I regained my balance and surreptitiously dropped the smoke before I could even take a second puff.
A fellow named Carl started hanging out at the park. He was a poet, rather delicate of nature and appearance, and seemed to be attuned to the outside world. The rest of us were a more provincial collection of lunkheads - we thought the world began at Schmidt Drugs at Austin Boulevard and ended at the Sears on Harlem Avenue, a mile and a half away. Carl had travelled to Europe with his family and he knew lines of Shakespeare. Naturally, I was drawn to him.
One fall Friday night, he asked me if I wanted to get high very cheaply. It was a high, he claimed, that was every bit as good as that of pot - perhaps even better - and was virtually impossible for tyrants such as parents and the cops to detect. Why sure, I responded. He handed me what appeared to be a normal cigarette and directed me to light up. I shrugged and inhaled the tiniest of drags, remembering what had happened the last time I tried to smoke.
Within a few seconds it felt as though the top of my skull had blown off and my head was now spewing steam like a nuclear power plant's cooling tower. Carl sat staring at me, a smug smile on his face, as I attempted with all the might I possessed not to topple over.
Finally, I rediscovered the ability to speak. "My god," I gasped, "what was that?"
I nodded perfunctorily.
"Try some more," he said.
"I will, but I have to do something first."
With that, I dashed home and hid in my bedroom for the rest of the night. I never was any good at partaking of the more exotic drugs. Later, I'd learn that paregoric, in addition to being a strong analgesic, is an old-fashioned remedy intended to slow down peristalsis. It's main use through the years has been as an anti-diarrheal. Gee, thanks, Carl.
I didn't think about smoking again for the next five or so years until I started hanging out at dance clubs like La Mere Vipere, Neo and O'Banion's. Everybody wore black at those places. My friends and I would dance all night long to Bowie, the Vapors and New Order, emerging from the clubs with our clothes streaked white from evaporated sweat. Everybody smoked but me so I had to try it again.
I looked good with a cigarette in my hand. Conversation becomes an art form when the speaker can punctuate his utterances with the jab of a cigarette. I bought the mildest cigarettes I could find, Parliament Lights, and I still couldn't inhale, an act guaranteed to induce not only the old dizziness but now also headache and nausea. I'd light up a pack a night without inhaling once. Finally I threw in the towel. Sadly, my punctuation props cost several dollars a pack.
As for religion, I never could quite get the hang of having a personal relationship with god, as mentioned in my previous post. The old bird has never seemed interested in my dramas and if there's one thing I won't stand for, it's being ignored.
Hundreds of millions of people smoke. Billions worship one god or another. Both cigarettes and religion are addictive. What's wrong with me that I can't seem to get hooked on either?
