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"  Originally published in the March 2008 issue Five weeks ago, I was working the elliptical, my feet throbbing out those nasty loops. The entire machine panted its report, the morning mantra: down, down, down. Once I&amp;#039;d hit a certain threshold of sweat, I quit, grabbed my bag, and walked straight into the cold winter air, still huffing. I felt around in my pocket for my cigarettes, lumped together like a damp little brick of cash next to my car keys.  As the smoke filled my chest, my shoulders lifted so much that my keys actually rolled over in my jacket pocket. It was like my mouth was full of something viscid and metallic. My throat seemed to radiate heat forward and backward in the space where I stood. There was a taste, a little like burnt popcorn. I touched my tongue to the roof of my mouth, a gesture meant to calm the incipient cough; it lit there, a little electric. I pulled in more smoke, blowback from the cold wind in my face, and my lungs, raw and open from the workout, were suddenly soaked in it. The light of the world fell on me, soluble and absolute, and I looked around to see if anyone was watching, half hoping they were. I was a little high, something like all the other highs I know. My lungs were scissored by the hit. I had two stray thoughts: Something is wrong -- the ground rushed up at me, and I thought I might fall -- and Something is right -- I was giddy, eager to see what would happen next. I lowered myself to one knee. Then I inhaled again, cherried up the ember. The sky loomed bigger and my car seemed farther away and I stood, wobbling a little under the serous weight of the drag. I raised the cigarette again, drew on it, and the sun seemed to jerk upward, like a fish tugged on a line. I walked to my car, extra slow, savoring the glacial cool in my mouth, the burn in my chest.  I had been a smoker for barely a week, and this was the first one that really worked. I guess I hadn&amp;#039;t been inhaling correctly. But I was now. For the first time, I could feel it.  I went forty-six years before my first cigarette -- oh, maybe I pretended here and there, but I never took a real drag. Then I made myself a smoker in thirty days.  This story isn&amp;#039;t about quitting smoking. It&amp;#039;s about starting. And starting, for me, included thirty-four different brands of cigarette, eleven lighters, spiritual revelations and moments of clarity, gatherings at alley mouths, unions with strangers on the streets of various cities, huddlings on a ragged porch watching the hand-cupped flare of a match in a snowstorm, a perpetual sore throat, a nagging cough, several puking sessions, a six-day headache, an increased appetite, a bout of vertigo, and a wicked case of what I can only call moral confusion. It also meant joining a kind of club, getting bitch-slapped by hegemony, trying to fit in, and not wanting to fit in. I don&amp;#039;t like to mess around, so I worked quickly, and I don&amp;#039;t like to commit to anything, so I kept it short. I wanted to get to a pack a day, the arbitrary unit by which all smokers measure themselves, in one month. Then I would quit. If it made me sick, fine. I wanted to feel that. If I had withdrawal symptoms, okay, I would deal with it. I needed to understand. Plus, I figured, I might lose some weight.  So as the morning light rose on the day I decided to start smoking, I rolled over, took a deep breath, put my feet on the carpet, and got on with it. By dinnertime, I&amp;#039;d smoked six American Spirit Lights. I smoked out that first pack in two days.  My first: walking home the four long blocks from the school where I teach.  I didn&amp;#039;t know how to hold it. My fingers, clamped on the little cigarette, looked porcine, oversized, poorly positioned. The smoke, ashy and light, filled my mouth, made my eyes water. I coughed on every drag, even though I barely inhaled. I covered all this up by walking fast, figuring I&amp;#039;d just look like a man with places to go, a busy man, smoking his daily fact of life, not a poser considering the small elements of style that obsessed me: Was the cigarette well lit? How deeply should I breathe? Somehow, I cared, like some dumbass kid in ninth grade. From there, I tried to hit it every two hours or so. Within a week, I was up to twelve a day. I went to the store, bought a new pack, and threw it on top of my refrigerator when I was done. I tried every brand I could find. At thirty days, I hit a pack a day. On the thirty-first day, I smoked twenty-two cigarettes. So I can honestly make the claim that I used to smoke more than a pack a day. For a day.  Early on, my insecurities drove me to call a cigarette company and ask for some pointers. I threaded my way through the voice-mail menu of the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, maker of American Spirits, until I was talking to a representative named Shawn, who seemed, for the moment, nice enough.  &amp;quot;I just took up smoking,&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;and I think I&amp;#039;m doing it wrong. Something&amp;#039;s not right.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Sir?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t hold cigarettes right, I don&amp;#039;t inhale fully, I don&amp;#039;t know how to ash, I never know where to throw the butts. And when you&amp;#039;re old, just starting out, no one will teach you. Do you have anyone who can help me learn to smoke?&amp;quot; There was a long pause. I could picture this guy&amp;#039;s face, almost hear his lips purse.  &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t give advice to new smokers,&amp;quot; he said. Then he took a deep breath. Poor guy. He must get crank calls all day. Only I wasn&amp;#039;t a crank. &amp;quot;Well, when I inhale, it hurts,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;It makes me cough.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Yes, sir,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just looking for a little help,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;I watch people on television and I can see when they aren&amp;#039;t inhaling, you know? I know they&amp;#039;re faking.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yes, sir,&amp;quot; he said, his voice stonier with each exchange. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want to fake. I want to inhale.&amp;quot; Pause. The guy&amp;#039;s leg must have been tapping up and down like a lawn-mower piston. He kept his cool. Good kid, Shawn. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s really no instruction available,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;You just inhale and you exhale.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I used your promotional offer,&amp;quot; I said. It was true. A twenty-dollar gift certificate. He thrummed along, finger on the disconnect button. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s really nothing I can do to help you.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No one seems to want to,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Yes, sir.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Do you smoke?&amp;quot; I said. He allowed that he didn&amp;#039;t, and at that point I thought, The hell with him. He has no idea what I need.   My girlfriend has smoked on and off for twenty years. She&amp;#039;s not a chain-smoker -- six or seven a day. She&amp;#039;s quit for years at a time, but found it next to impossible to quit for life. But this -- she wanted no part of this. She cringed at the thought of my taking up smoking at forty-six, and with what seemed like sophomoric relish. She worried that I was mocking her, or trying to make some point. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not a hat you can put on and wear around just to see how it looks,&amp;quot; she said not long after I told her about the experiment. We were walking along a street in town. She held up the cigarette between her fingers like courtroom evidence. &amp;quot;This is serious stuff. And you&amp;#039;re not taking it seriously.&amp;quot; More than anything, she said, she was concerned for me. I reached over and took a pack from her coat pocket, lipped out a smoke, asked for a light, and made a bad joke. A cigarette, I figured, could help me duck anything. She grunted and wheeled on me. &amp;quot;Are you going to use this against me?&amp;quot; she said, suddenly angry. She even made a fist, with her cigarette pinched tight in it. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t think I like this. You can&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You mean me smoking?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No. Me smoking.&amp;quot;  She was right, in a way. I was using the whole thing as a gag, lighting up at forced moments rather than acting like a smoker, a person who puts some thought into the time and place for a smoke. I hugged her and we lit up, standing in the half-haloed lamp of a vacant storefront. Smoker&amp;#039;s footholds, these last unclaimed places. I wanted to feel a calm, and the cigarette granted that. I wanted it to overtake us both. Anger at me ran deep among nonsmokers, too. My youngest son, an asthmatic, an athlete, an upstanding guy if there ever was one, pleaded with me. &amp;quot;You cannot do that!&amp;quot; he said when I told him what I was doing. &amp;quot;No way. You&amp;#039;ll get addicted.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Nah,&amp;quot; I said. We were driving back from a gas station where I&amp;#039;d purchased three different kinds of Pall Malls and an orange lighter. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just going in for a look. I&amp;#039;ll be back out before you know it.&amp;quot; But it wounded him that I would even consider it. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s crazy, Dad. There&amp;#039;s nothing to try. What do you need to know about smoking? Just read a book. It&amp;#039;s stupid.&amp;quot; He looked out the car window; gas stations rolled by, each one, I knew, fitted with huge overhead racks of cigarettes, ranked by color, intensity, size of dose. Kingdom. Phylum. Class. Every window blared the ugly and indistinguishable price of a carton or a pack. He sighed. &amp;quot;You just think it looks cool.&amp;quot; There, with the world flipped on its head -- the son chiding the father for smoking -- I kept up the lowest frequency of argument. &amp;quot;Cary Grant did look cool,&amp;quot; I mumbled. &amp;quot;And Sigourney Weaver, in Alien.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Who?&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Who is that? Honest to God, Dad. That doesn&amp;#039;t sound smart.&amp;quot; First cigarette in a bar: a Kool, with a guy I was meeting about a job, in a basement joint in Indianapolis. When I bellied up to the bar, there was a pack in the ashtray. It was late afternoon, he was on the tequila, me, bourbon. We were two doors and one staircase from daylight. After twenty minutes, I said I wanted a smoke. &amp;quot;You do?&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I mean, you smoke?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I just started.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;You just started,&amp;quot; he said, echoing my nonchalance. He had to repeat the question, for himself: &amp;quot;You smoke?&amp;quot; When I looked for his Kools, they were gone. He had palmed them away when I wasn&amp;#039;t looking. &amp;quot;You smoke,&amp;quot; I stated, pointing to the ashtray. &amp;quot;I saw your cigarettes.&amp;quot; He pulled them from his pocket, tilted the pack back and forth like a bell. &amp;quot;I just picked it back up,&amp;quot; he said. He put a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pinched his eye slightly. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s always good news to meet a fellow smoker.&amp;quot; I struck a match. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m beginning to see it&amp;#039;s like a club.&amp;quot; He shook his head and blew a tunnel of smoke into the dark bar. &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Like Rotary.&amp;quot; He shrugged and looked at the Kool.  &amp;quot;And not without its charms.&amp;quot; I started a little game. I gave every drag a different name in my head. Every time I took out a cigarette, I tried to inhale it more deeply -- I called that the stovepipe. It tended to kill me, send me into a coughing fit. I haven&amp;#039;t thrown up in twenty years, since I can&amp;#039;t remember when. After that first week, my throat was a dark, wet chimney; my belly a bag of smoke; hence, stovepipe. After vomiting, I always made myself inhale at least one more time, because it was better then. Later, when I learned to inhale successfully -- in fast and deep, out quick and smooth -- I called it a bench press. Then there was the doorknob inhale, which I did in the presence of real smokers. I&amp;#039;d turn my head (like a doorknob) to exhale in the other direction, because real smokers know inhaled smoke comes out cloudy and with some speed behind it, not in the tendrils of vapor I blew. The doorknob hid the fact that I hadn&amp;#039;t hit it right. There was also the blackbird (a hard, squawking cough that came in the fourth week), the extra point (a smooth, hard draw following a meal or an argument), and the dart (a little in-out), which worked well following a workout.  I named them all. I considered it a new level of awareness.  As a person who likes his vices, I have brought down enough permanent damage for one lifetime already. I needed to know if I was, you know, killing myself. I called Mehmet Oz, the chief heart surgeon at Columbia and Esquire&amp;#039;s health writer. The first thing he asked about was my &amp;quot;dosage.&amp;quot; I told him the number I was up to. He was completely analytical, treating my no-brained experiment like a clinical study. &amp;quot;We should have put you on a patch to start. We should have eased you in. How do you feel now?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Sick,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;It makes me dizzy, it gives me a headache. The first drag or two is easy. After that it&amp;#039;s different every time.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re poisoning yourself with nicotine. It takes a while for your body to learn how to deal with that. You&amp;#039;re going a little too fast. Your brain hasn&amp;#039;t learned yet to produce the dopamine necessary to cause addiction. The nicotine&amp;#039;s not throwing the right switch in your brain. This is about the insula, the insular cortex. What you&amp;#039;re really after here is dopamine production. A smoker uses cigarettes at particular times during the day to produce dopamine as a means of self-medicating.&amp;quot; I asked him if I was going to end up talking through a hole in my neck.  &amp;quot;After a month? No. Not if the risk factors aren&amp;#039;t already there. You&amp;#039;re in uncharted territory here. No one starts up at your age. But if you quit, your body will repair the damage pretty quickly. That&amp;#039;s the great thing about quitting. The lungs repair themselves.&amp;quot;  The night before, I told him, I had drawn as hard as I could, straight down into the center of my chest. It made me throw up. For three days I could make myself throw up on command. (It was like a card trick. I showed my cleaning lady once. I told her I would clean it up. She&amp;#039;s a big smoker. &amp;quot;I thought you didn&amp;#039;t want anyone to smoke in here,&amp;quot; she said afterward, staring blankly at the cigarette in my hand.) &amp;quot;I believe it,&amp;quot; Dr. Oz said of my throw-up gimmick. &amp;quot;That I would like to see.&amp;quot; He said it with the curiosity of a scientist. Here&amp;#039;s a good cigarette:  from the second week: We were eating out. I&amp;#039;d ordered a light beer, a rib eye, and something called snazzy peas. My girlfriend was across from me, the two of us in one of our back-and-forths, laughing, delighting each other, speaking as characters, teasing out familiar jokes. We never need company. The steak was nicely cooked, the peas -- snazzy. And as I pushed back the plate, I was struck for the first time in my life by a faint pinging sound in the center of my chest. It was a kind of tug, as if someone had wrapped a string around my rib, a string gently pulling me somewhere. I laid a hand flat on my chest, and my girlfriend looked at me, vaguely alarmed. &amp;quot;You okay?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m okay,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just, I feel like, I don&amp;#039;t know. . . .&amp;quot; I paused and swallowed to be sure this wasn&amp;#039;t some weird new need for more food. &amp;quot;I think I need a cigarette.&amp;quot; She smiled and stood, held out her hand, and we went to the exit, stood on the handicap ramp, and smoked two American Spirits. She didn&amp;#039;t like my smoking any better now, but she accepted it and even allowed herself to enjoy it in moments like these. Up and down the street, now blanketed by darkness, the streetlamps formed friendly circles of light, so it looked like a kind of orchard. People stood, one and two per light, out there smoking cigarettes, looking up quietly at the stars or the cars or the windows of houses and stores. &amp;quot;Wow,&amp;quot; I said.  &amp;quot;Cold.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s a lot of smokers.&amp;quot; I flicked a finger up and down. &amp;quot;A smoke for every light.&amp;quot; There were others out there, I supposed, standing in the dark.  &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;There are a lot. There always are.&amp;quot; One Tuesday, I lit up in the Detroit airport. I wanted to smoke, but I also wanted to see what would happen. Heh-heh. It seemed a dangerous act, yes, and quite possibly stupid, but something I could talk my way out of. Cigarettes gave me balls in situations like this. I even had a fleeting thought that I might make converts, start a mutiny right there near the Mediterranean Grill in concourse A. I tucked myself into the deepest recess of a gate area -- thirty feet from any other passenger and even farther from anyone with the authority to shoot a blow dart into my neck and put me on the 7:05 nonstop to Gitmo. Then I pulled out my lighter and coolly lit up a Virginia Slim, my brand that day. (Awful.)  What happens when you light a cigarette in an airport -- because my advice is that you never try to find out yourself -- is that a series of reactions fall into place mechanically, like science fiction, as if the collective consciousness of the place were spread among everybody equally, allowing for one singular, zombified reaction. Heads turn on the flick of the lighter, bodies move in your direction immediately.  I took two heavy drags, because now a janitor had popped up out of nowhere and was coming up hard on my right. A gate agent was fast-walking in the distance, and a woman holding a baby approached with a scowl. Two other men stood up for a look.  &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t smoke here!&amp;quot; the woman said, turning her baby from me, as if protecting it from the heat of a fire. &amp;quot;Sir, put that out,&amp;quot; the Northwest agent said, reaching me in a full-out jog. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry,&amp;quot; I said to everybody, stamping it against the bottom of my foot, ashes falling all over the carpet like sparks from a welder&amp;#039;s gun. &amp;quot;I just started smoking. I didn&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; The janitor pursed his lips. Thirty-five seconds had passed. Around the corner came airport security. I was surrounded. &amp;quot;You may not smoke in here,&amp;quot; a guard said. I looked at each of them. Four faces, five, each twisted in a twittering spasm of disbelief and discontent.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;I just didn&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Didn&amp;#039;t know?&amp;quot; the gate agent said, backing away from me, eyes meeting mine. &amp;quot;Who doesn&amp;#039;t know? This is an airport!&amp;quot; As a nonsmoker, I always figured cigarettes were an indulgence run amok. But there is something tangible about need, even when it&amp;#039;s self-created. It feels good to need. There&amp;#039;s the moral confusion -- do I need or do I want? And three weeks in, on a day when I smoked fourteen cigarettes, I realized that I could finally enjoy one following sex. This was because I could finally enjoy a cigarette, period. It had ceased to become a chore or a challenge. I liked it. I liked smoking. Dopamine? I don&amp;#039;t know. Didn&amp;#039;t care. Just wanted a smoke. I practically jumped out of bed. My girlfriend and I wrapped ourselves in blankets and stood on her porch. The smoke filled my chest so that my body heated itself in a new way. We jabbered. Winter approached. &amp;quot;I always wonder,&amp;quot; I said, taking a drag of my cigarette, &amp;quot;how many more winters do you get?&amp;quot; I sounded morbid and wistful. Pathetic. I coughed a little. But that&amp;#039;s how it went with smoking. A cigarette amplified truth. If you were sad, you sounded sadder. But the cigarette notched everything upward, too. Everything seemed more potent and brilliantly illuminated. The sex, the beer we were sharing, the apple I&amp;#039;d left at our bedside, even the cold breeze up under the blanket, tightening my scrotum. I was a dopamine factory just then. &amp;quot;It always sounds like it hurts when you smoke,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;That little cough? It sounds bad. It can&amp;#039;t be good.&amp;quot; The blackbird! Singing in the dead of night! Another week and I would quit, I told her. Another week and she could go on hurting herself by her lonesome. Just like that. Or she could quit, too. But now that I understood the supreme pain of that dependence, even in my shallow way, I wanted to be back where I didn&amp;#039;t have a stake in this. Besides, she was right. It did hurt when I smoked. Every stinking time. Last spring, my older son admitted to me that he smokes. In my reflexive anger, I snorted, ranted, threatened privileges, but he persisted. I felt I&amp;#039;d been duped, that someone was working behind my back. Goddamn cigarette companies, goddamn Joe Camel. I tried to chase it out of his life -- banning it in the house, the car, on the grounds of the house -- to the very edges of the world I controlled for him. I figured he might be just toying around with it, playing a part. But he kept on. And I realized that sometimes, or at least now, disapproval -- even of your own children&amp;#039;s behavior -- is really not a command so much as an observation. My son smokes. I tried to deal.  I watched him smoke as I stood with him outside restaurants and, when I relented, in my own yard. This was before I&amp;#039;d smoked a single cigarette myself. I saw that smoking altered him just slightly, like a course correction at sea, one degree toward a new point on the horizon. His face grew softer as the cigarette seemed to dull the razor&amp;#039;s edge of unhappiness that sometimes dragged through his life. I remember realizing that it really worked for him, thinking: That shit is inside him. It did something to him. Lord. I was sad, pissed, and a little bit jealous. I told him he was a fool, once, but after that I bit my tongue. Make no mistake, smoker or not, it sucks to watch your son draw on a cigarette like it means something to him. That&amp;#039;s when a smoke looks less like a casual comfort in a cold world and more like an abyss, a dark deception. I&amp;#039;m responsible for my own stupidity. This. This is my boy, and in some way I can only bear witness to this. My boy, smoking like some barfly. That&amp;#039;s when you feel like strangling a tobacco executive.  Five great cigarettes: a Camel straight. The doorway to a church, me and two maintenance workers. We discuss steroids. A Pall Mall Menthol. A brassy blond on a smoke break, outside the casino in French Lick, Indiana. She hit a deer on the way to the casino. &amp;quot;Everyone hits a deer in this state,&amp;quot; she says, as I light her cigarette. &amp;quot;You hit your deer yet?&amp;quot; A Marlboro Red. Driving my brother&amp;#039;s SUV, on a black corridor of nighttime interstate outside Albany, listening to seventies radio on the satellite, tossing the cigarette, still lit, into that firecracker spin on the road behind me. A Nat Sherman MCD. On Fifty-eighth Street, New York City, with an ex-smoker, in a drizzle, after happening upon a sushi bar that had a little table left outside with menus on it. We put a coffee lid down for ashing. This guy hadn&amp;#039;t smoked in eight years. His face grew softer, eyes wider, with each drag. A Winston Ultra-Light. At a video-poker machine at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. I kept telling myself: I won nothing. I won nothing. I won nothing. But I would, any minute. I saw my old friend Wade one day, rushing off to some meeting, carrying a sandwich in a plastic box. I&amp;#039;d known him as a smoker for seventeen years. &amp;quot;Hey,&amp;quot; I said, hopefully. &amp;quot;Have a smoke with me?&amp;quot; He looked a little stunned. I told him about my experiment, and that this was what I&amp;#039;d wanted from the get-go: that elemental, highly social, always surprising experience of taking the time to smoke with an old friend. I don&amp;#039;t have that many friends who still smoke, see.  &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re actually taking it up?&amp;quot; he said, his voice rising on the verb, accenting the acquisition of the habit. Wade is a biologist. He laughed and stuck his chin out at my shirt pocket, at the smokes there. &amp;quot;I quit,&amp;quot; he said. I nodded and slipped my pack of Pall Malls back into my pocket. Respect. He looked right, then left. &amp;quot;Well, I&amp;#039;m cutting down, anyway.&amp;quot; Jesus. Cutting down? &amp;quot;So you&amp;#039;re saving your one cigarette for a time when you aren&amp;#039;t standing here with an old friend? Come on, man. What the hell&amp;#039;s a cigarette for? Sit here on the bench and have a fucking smoke.&amp;quot; I know, I know. I&amp;#039;m a lousy, undermining guy. But he sat, and he stayed for fifteen minutes. We smoked two cigarettes and talked about his daughter, about Richard Dawkins, about Wade&amp;#039;s nosebleed seats at Colts games. Pretty soon, I looked at him and said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re late for your meeting.&amp;quot; Wade looked in the direction he&amp;#039;d been heading, smiled a tight, muscled smile, and said, &amp;quot;Oh, man. They don&amp;#039;t need me.&amp;quot; Then he stuck his chin out one more time and stood. He thanked me, genuinely, for stopping him, looked up at the sky, and shook his head. &amp;quot;You just gonna sit here all day and get people to smoke with you?&amp;quot; I laughed and said maybe I would. &amp;quot;Nice life,&amp;quot; he said, walking away. &amp;quot;Shouldn&amp;#039;t be hard at all.&amp;quot;  One afternoon in New York, I got an education in some stuff I still wasn&amp;#039;t clear on. It was cold, late fall, and every time I stepped out for a cigarette, I found myself on the same street corner with a bunch of guys who always ducked out of the office to smoke. I liked their energy, their group commitment to transgression. Some of them smoked like they were born doing it. I still looked like a coed on her first weekend away from home.  I&amp;#039;d bought a pack of upscale cigarettes, Nat Shermans, that I shared. They liked what I was doing, learning. And then, spontaneously and unsolicited, they began to offer pointers. I felt like I was in a new-mommies group. &amp;quot;Never gesture with a cigarette,&amp;quot; one of them said. The others laughed in agreement. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t flick ashes too aggressively,&amp;quot; said another. &amp;quot;It makes you look like you can&amp;#039;t wait to get out of here.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t French inhale. That&amp;#039;s beyond silly.&amp;quot; We shifted our weight, exhaled into the cold. &amp;quot;Seems a little nuts, what you&amp;#039;re doing,&amp;quot; one of them said. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;ve been watching you to see how often you go to the street. I wanted to know if you were for real.&amp;quot; I raised the cigarette to my lips and drew hard. &amp;quot;Am I?&amp;quot; I asked, pinching the cigarette between my thumb and forefinger, a move I picked up from De Niro in Casino, a hard-drawing, knee-cracking motherfucker. Showing off. But then I coughed, and coughed again. Even after three weeks, the smoke still hurt me. And that made all of us laugh, even me, still buzzing from the drag.  The streets sizzled with traffic burning up the rain. A woman wandered by, asking for money. She had a baby carriage, but I didn&amp;#039;t see a baby. She asked one of the others for twenty dollars, and he shook his head. I offered a pack of Winstons, left over from the day before. &amp;quot;Here,&amp;quot; I said, holding it out while I reached into my coat for a buck. But the woman turned. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t smoke,&amp;quot; she said, and walked out into the city. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not stupid.&amp;quot; Here is something I wrote after smoking twenty-two cigarettes, on the last day of my experiment, when man, I was zinging. My mind was bent over. I&amp;#039;d jammed down that last bunch in one great mess of drinking, walking, talking, standing on curbs. Tomorrow I would quit. It wouldn&amp;#039;t be that hard. I&amp;#039;d miss it. I&amp;#039;d feel that tug in my ribs after a steak or a Scotch. But I would not know unfailing need. I still hadn&amp;#039;t thrown the switch that Dr. Oz had mentioned. But I felt as if I could see something I hadn&amp;#039;t before, something I couldn&amp;#039;t name. So I channeled it, like a smoking oracle: America is a constant tug-of-war between order and chaos. When you smoke, that just shines out at you as a fact. People glare. They hustle past. Nonsmokers. Bah! To them, my smoking represents lawless inconsideration. The brainlessness of an animal. The order of the world once lay in the absolute calming pleasure of the smoke. But they reordered it, and now smoking is the upset, the smokers stand on street corners, at the fringe of everything, stamping their dead soldiers against their shoe bottoms. When I drive past, I feel them. That&amp;#039;s my country right there. They remind me of the updraft, of the stovepipe of heat, they make me want to smoke! And yes, I even like the coughing. I actually like the hurt in the chest plate. It lights up my brain. It sets me into a state. But -- that&amp;#039;s just because I&amp;#039;m new to it. For a real smoker, it provides calm, it provides order against the chaos of their lives. Columbus! He didn&amp;#039;t discover anything, except cigarettes. There were no cigarettes in Europe before him. That fucking guy. And the Puritans! Those guys made rules. They wanted to lay order on the land and stamp out what they didn&amp;#039;t understand. That&amp;#039;s the smoking-ban people. Puritans. Black and white. Smoking is the essential American rip -- the need for moral order versus the instinct for exploration. After that manic takeaway, I quit. For six days, I sat in my house playing Madden on Xbox Live, unable to think, unable to write, unable to lift myself out of an endless headache. Somehow, I&amp;#039;d gained ten pounds and started drinking too much. Smoking seemed to gear up all my other addictions, all my failings rolled up from below. Yet I missed it. I liked the stepping outside. I liked the smell of tobacco on my fingertips, on my towels even. I missed the weight of a full pack and the airy tension of an empty one. I missed my new chums, street-bound and unrepentant. Most of all, I missed the propulsion a cigarette lent me, the daylong momentum of one cigarette to the next. You sail by them, like polestars. I missed that. Still do.  Toward the end, in the academic quad at my school, I had a cigarette with an economics professor I had known for years as a heavy smoker. Back when I didn&amp;#039;t smoke, I walked straight by her, waved a little wave, and moved on. Since starting, I&amp;#039;d begun to stop and light up with her. The sort of chance meetings I&amp;#039;d missed out on in my previous forty-six years. She was never unhappy for the company, nor I for hers. These were the best kind of cigarettes -- existent due to happenstance and ripe with discovery.  She told me she was going to quit when she retired. &amp;quot;How long is that?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;A year and a half from now,&amp;quot; she told me. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been planning. I have to quit.&amp;quot; I hmphed, puzzled. &amp;quot;Why wait?&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Why not do it now?&amp;quot; She shook her head, as if there were something I didn&amp;#039;t get. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve quit before, and every time it&amp;#039;s the same. I cannot speak. I can&amp;#039;t e-mail or talk on the phone. Nothing. It will take me six months of confusion to get this over once and for all. Without cigarettes, I can&amp;#039;t work. Everything changes.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Same with starting,&amp;quot; I said. She laughed and blew a rope of smoke that disappeared. I pulled a drag so deep, it felt as lush and revealing as a bite of peach. &amp;quot;You think that&amp;#039;s how it will be for me?&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;You think I&amp;#039;ll feel a little of that?&amp;quot; She shook her head. Then she looked at me, reconsidering. &amp;quot;You might get some sense of it,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;You might have some idea how deep it goes.&amp;quot; We looked around, she for an ashtray, me for a bench. I was light-headed again. There was ice on the sidewalks. I felt like I might fall. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a4263/learning-to-smoke-0308/>