It seems like everyone is talking about smoking again. The Stranger writers couldn’t resist reminiscing about their first, their last, or their most memorable cigarettes. Illustrations by Pablo Iglesias The Frenchman Cheered For most of my life, I haven’t so much as touched a cigar ette. I shared one with a couple of friends in high school at a sleepover, barely inhaled anything, and never looked back. But last year, I went to Paris for my 34th birthday. I couldn’t resist the glamour of smoking in Europe. Unfortunately, I loved it. When I shared a pistachio Paris-Brest with my girlfriend on a park bench near the Père Lachaise Cemetery while smoking a Marlboro Red, a Frenchman on a bicycle whizzed by, cheering his approval. What was supposed to be a hedonistic vacation-only treat followed me home stateside, and thus began a habit of an occasional indulgent cig. I started carrying a battered pack of Marlboros in my purse for when the urge struck. Earlier this year, I snuck outside during a show at Bad Bar with my friend to escape the overstimulation and smoked as rain drummed on the covered patio roof. It was perfect. My most recent cigarette was after an evening of drinking Dirty Shirleys at Blue Moon Tavern with my best friend, a rare occasion for us in our 30s. We’d been excited to relive our college days, but ended up leaving early. I felt the craving for a tipsy cigarette and produced one from my Barbie-pink bag. Clumsily, I sparked up with my old-fashioned gold lighter, the feeble flame flickering in the wind. I asked my friend if they wanted to share it, and after a brief hesitation, they grinned and agreed. Bonded by guilty pleasure, we walked through the night together, passing it back and forth as we talked about life, and for a little while, everything was right with the world. JULIANNE BELL Pretty and Pink I made it through high school and most of college without succumbing to the peer pressures of smoking cigarettes. Although my 20-year-old self would have told you it was because of my moral superiority (saving baby birds from choking on butts, not supporting another evil capitalist system, etc.), the truth was that the social intimacy of smoking felt like more of a death sentence than the tobacco itself. Then one Saturday afternoon, while my longtime friend Noah and I wandered around downtown Olympia, jobless, broke, and surviving on chocolate chip cookies from the Greenery (the Evergreen State College’s buffet-style eatery), Noah pulled out a gorgeous pack of colorful cigarettes with filters gilded in gold leaf and lined up by color: blue, yellow, red, and pink. “Want one?” they asked. I paused. What would normally be an obvious “no” was complicated by the beauty of what I’d be rejecting. How could I turn it down? The pink cigarette matched my baby pink polo dress and Wet n Wild blush. While I imagined myself as Jayne Mansfield in her pink palace, Noah lit my cigarette. I inhaled. I exhaled. I nearly coughed up a lung. Then, I continued to let the pink cigarette burn down between my painted fingernails like an old Hollywood star. AUDREY VANN Not-So-Cold Turkey Honeymooning in Turkey, we entered a shop wallpapered with black cigarette packages. “While we’re here, we could split one after every meal,” my new husband, Harry, suggested. “Like locals.” I was raised to fear cigarettes. But this was Europe (and also Asia). “Sure, why not?” Each package featured a visceral image of a smoking side effect. A shriveled baby, gangrene legs, gross lungs, a foot with a toe tag. Ours had a picture of a woman gasping for breath. We bought it for $1.75 US dollars.  We split one next to the ruins of Pergamon. We had another after lunch, while stray cats climbed on top of and under our table. The cigarettes made us feel less like outsiders when we ventured onto a pirate ship for a swimming excursion frequented by Turks. When we shared cigarettes with young men on the boat, they commiserated about our government. “It sounds like Turkey,” they said, flicking ash into a soda can. We smoked at a water park just down the road from the ancient city of Ephesus. We chased a rooftop dinner alongside Cappadocia’s spires with a smoke, luxuriating. In Istanbul, we needed a new pack. That pack’s image was a mouth full of black, rotted teeth. I couldn’t look at it. I have a thing about teeth. Harry scribbled it out with a ballpoint pen. Better. Drunk on raki, we smoked while watching a soccer game at a bar with a Texan couple. Her family was in Big Tobacco. She didn’t smoke. Not for health reasons. She insisted cigarettes didn’t cause cancer. With one cigarette and one night left, we lit up on our balcony overlooking the Bosphorus Strait. The call for prayer sounded from mosques all over the city, creating an ethereal chorus. We savored the views, the sounds, the smoke. A new reality awaited tomorrow. NATHALIE GRAHAM My Last Cigarette Was This Morning In 1995, a little-known Bristol duo called Monk Canatella released a track, “I Can Water My Plants,” that captures the art of having a good smoke. The key line: “I can water my plants and smoke a cigarette or go out for a walk, on my own or with friends.” Now, this is how it’s done. The quiet smoke with your plants and in your slippers. Smoking with friends is ugly and ruins what should be a perfect moment: lighting the tobacco, taking a few drags, and letting your mind wander a little. In this perfect setting, which is domestic, one can reflect on, say, the fact that plants produce food by gathering sunlight. Riding a bike while smoking, a practice which boggles me and seems to be popular in Berlin, will just not do. The movements of a true smoker are always kept to a minimum; the conversation should only be with yourself. Not all solitary smoking is good, however. Take, for instance, this line in Prince’s tune “17 Days”: “So here I sit in my lonely room, lookin’ for my sunshine / But all I’ve got is two cigarettes and this broken heart of mine.” This is bad smoking and must be avoided because how can your mind wander in such a state? Each drag of the cigarette is captured and consumed by your lovesickness. You are, in short, not really smoking. You are burning time. One more point: Smoking, like reading a book, completely baffles crows. They just don’t get it. “What’s this business all about?” they ask. If you are not eating, then why are you putting that burning thing in your mouth? Crows think they know everything about humans. They don’t. The tranquility of smoking breaks their otherwise too-clever minds. CHARLES MUDEDE The Perpetual Nausea I didn’t make the decision to smoke my last cigarette, my body did. In my early twenties, I was a chain smoker of cowboy killers, Marlboro Reds—or, when I was broke, Pyramid menthols because the seafoam pyramid on the packaging looked “vaporwave.” (This was 2016, and I was an idiot.) Then my doctor prescribed Wellbutrin, an antidepressant, for my prolonged, lifelong case of the sads. At once, the drug, which is also used as a smoking cessation aid, snuffed out my shaky desire for nicotine. Not that I was quite ready to give it up. I was in a band, and being in a band is about waiting around. Green rooms are not exciting, but a smoker’s alley is, even in freezing temperatures. But the cigs never quite hit. In fact, more than a puff made me queasy. I figured this side effect would last as long as I took Wellbutrin, and if I was ever off it again, cigarettes would welcome me back into their crispy, smoldering arms like an old friend. As it turns out, Wellbutrin and I were just a fling. When staying with a bandmate’s relatives two weeks into a monthlong tour, I’d accidentally left behind my 90-day supply. Realizing this about an hour outside of the Atlanta suburbs, I texted the relative and prepared to turn back, only to learn that the garbage man had just hauled it away. Our hostess had tossed my prescription drug bottle in the trash almost the moment we left, one of the weirdest minor crimes perpetrated on me thus far. I’ve often wondered, Did she think it was, like, heroin? Molly? Did she confuse “drugs” and drugs? The Wellbutrin was gone, but the Wellbutrin nausea stuck. Encouraged by the whisper of alcohol over the years, I’ve bummed my fair share of cigarettes and suffered for it. I decided to stop trying three years ago, at my future drummer’s house party, while leaning dizzily over a porch railing. It was the right choice. My only regret is that it was a blue American Spirit, the most ass smoke out there. VIVIAN McCALL Chicago Made Me Do It I had never been to Chicago before, and I had never really wanted to because I just pictured icy flat coldness and dark winter skies. Here I am in Chicago in January. Peak dark, peak cold. Every city I go to just makes me like Seattle more. Sitting at the bar, where a man is bent over steak frites on the back of a black baby grand, fingering the fries and nodding gently at the thrumming of giant recumbent strings. Everyone looks chiseled here, in a certain weather-bitten Midwestern way. A cheese blanket at the steakhouse. Chowder fucking delicious, with oyster cracker crumble. It’s like clam gravy! No real clams, but the gravy is I’ll-follow-it-to-the-end-of-the-world good. How can I make the server laugh? He’s been here longer than Methuselah, all one-liners, riffs, and insincere winks. The tablecloth clears, all the crumbs barely there food memories. How long does memory last in the tummy? At the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, overheard: Maybe because nobody needs me. Just friends but not like before. Her thick glasses, this low ceiling, why can’t we have music like this back home? Intimacy on the verge of collapse of personal space, entwined in musical coitus with the mic, just five feet away. What is she singing, what is he saying? I don’t know, it’s like keyboarding in tongues. I love the strong, silent type. So sue me. The tablecloths draped in circles. It’s cold, it’s harsh, it’s flat. It’s cold. On the way out, a man asked for one cigarette, and you gave him two. This is why I love you. I can’t remember the last time I smoked a cigarette, but it was probably right then and there, a drag of American Spirit yellow, somewhere between a Negroni and an Uber. AMANDA MANITACH Every Lesbian, but Her I don’t know when I became a smoker, but I always knew when I was going to stop. Through my early 20s, I told myself that if I ever started dating a nonsmoker, I’d know it was time to quit. For a long time, that was deeply hypothetical. It was Brooklyn in 2014. Every lesbian in their 20s was at least a casual smoker—that’s what bar patios were made for. But then I met Billie. She was going through a messy breakup, and was extremely off-limits, but we became fast friends. On paper, at least. After a few drinks, I’d sigh and tell my friends, “It’s okay, I’ll just love her forever, and she’ll never know.” She knew I was a smoker, and we’d go out drinking until all hours of the night, but I always waited to light a cigarette until we’d said goodnight. Then one day, I was on a bar patio in Brooklyn. I was sitting on a bench with my arm draped over the back and a freshly lit Camel Blue between my fingers when Billie appeared in the doorway. When I saw her walking down the stairs, I looked at the cigarette in my hand, opened my fingers, and let it fall into the gravel.  I’d had a lot to drink that night before she got there, and more to quell the nerves once she did, so the memory is a little hazy. But that’s the night we consider our anniversary. I got to work late, hungover, not entirely convinced the night before had actually happened. A coworker asked me if I wanted to grab a smoke. While I recounted the hazy memories of the night before, I looked down and said out loud, “Well, I guess maybe this is my last cigarette.” It was. I married her. HANNAH MURPHY WINTER The post The Last Cigarette appeared first on The Stranger. ...read more read less