<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  I smoke Marlboro reds \u2014 about a pack a day. They&amp;#039;re strong cigarettes, and if I&amp;#039;m going to indulge I want the whole nine yards. People walking down Madison Avenue might spot me at night hanging out the window of an Upper East Side apartment smoking my Reds, banished from the table by the smoke-averse hostess. That&amp;#039;s what happened at a dinner party given by literary agent Lynn Nesbit: I felt the urge, excused myself from the table, and retreated to the powder room. And that&amp;#039;s where I was discovered, leaning out an open window \u2014 in black silk Vera Wang \u2014 with a butt in my mouth. A few people still allow smoking in their homes (my husband barely tolerates it in our own), but even in friendly quarters a request is generally followed by a theatrical display, as the hosts search for their lone ashtray, a relic from a bygone era. I have been relegated to fire escapes, sent down to the street, and given lengthy lectures about my habit by friends and family. (This happens so frequently that when Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer loudly condemned Herman Cain for the campaign video in which his chief of staff blows smoke directly at the camera, I felt Schieffer was yelling at me.) Sometimes in the middle of January I can be found smoking outside a French bistro, trying hard to convince everyone that winter is the ideal time to dine alfresco. Natasha Richardson once told me she chose restaurants based on which ones looked the other way when she lit up. La Goulue, her favorite, closed down last year. You have to work to smoke cigarettes these days. It&amp;#039;s a dying art, so to speak. In 2002, New York City passed the Smoke Free Air Act, making all workplaces smoke-free. In 2003 the prohibition was expanded to restaurants, bars, private clubs, theaters, public conveyances, sports arenas, malls, stores, banks, and schools. In 2011 smoking was banned from public beaches and parks. There are even smoke-free co-op buildings. And it&amp;#039;s not just New York. In Asia almost all hotels are smoke-free. On several safaris in Africa I was out in the bush on my own, smoking among the rhinos and lions. Fellow smokers report a more laissez-faire approach in France, where, despite a similarly draconian ban, the habit is tolerated. Designer Lisa Fine says she lives in Paris part of the year so she can eat at restaurants with her dog and a cigarette. We smokers remain an inventive bunch (some might say desperate). On a recent visit to a smoking cessation spa, Barbara de Kwiatkowski managed three transgressive smokes. The first involved a long walk in the cold to freedom outside the front gate, the second required a solitary foray into the woods, and the third took place in the dark on the balcony of her room, in pajamas. It&amp;#039;s not just the nicotine that&amp;#039;s addictive. There&amp;#039;s the seductive ritual of smoking itself: the allure of having a man light your cigarette, allowing a momentary flicker of sexual tension, even if he&amp;#039;s disgusted by the habit. I like that lighting up gives me a moment to pause for thought after a tricky question from a dinner partner. I love my exquisite Dunhill lighters and the vintage crocodile cigarette case that looks so pretty in my bag, or the beautiful gold one with the sapphire bead closure, inherited from my grandmother. A friend once gave me a tiny silver receptacle for butts that fit in even the smallest clutch. She felt that if there were no evidence, perhaps it would be easier for me to sneak cigs over the course of an evening. This became a bit absurd (and I stank up a lot of lovely bags), so I went back to using any old dish on the coffee table as an ashtray. I smoke when I write, when I eat (cigarettes always seem the perfect side dish to a great meal, the perfect complement to a glass of wine), when I walk in the woods in Millbrook enjoying nature and the clean air. (I used to appreciate the contrast. Now I appreciate the irony.) I picked up the habit when I was shipped off to school in Switzerland at age 12. All the older girls in my dorm smoked. Back then it was a totem of glamour and sophistication, right up there with false eyelashes and push-up bras. I got hooked. When I returned to the U.S. as a teenager I stealthily smoked through my boarding school years at Miss Porter&amp;#039;s, delighting in the danger it entailed, given the risk of expulsion. When I was a Ford model, smoking on set was nearly universal. (It was certainly encouraged when I did an ad for Barclay cigarettes.) If there is one upside to my lifelong cigarette addiction, it&amp;#039;s the husky voice that I came to be known for \u2014 surely a side effect of tobacco. Casting agents describe my voice as &amp;quot;golden gravel,&amp;quot; which has served me well on TV. At the top of that career, the head of a network told me to never stop. I have tried to quit. Over the past 30 years I&amp;#039;ve gone cold turkey, taken Chantix (a prescription drug that made me crazy), and attempted hypnosis. I agreed to one therapy that involved being put under with a cocktail of scopolamine and sodium pentothal. I went to a famous &amp;quot;Russian&amp;quot; doctor in Boston and smoked on the way back to the airport. I have just booked a session at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires in an effort to quit \u2014 once again. Smokers tend to seek each other out like freak animals in the ark. (There&amp;#039;s a new electronic cigarette that can sense other people smoking within 50 feet \u2014 maybe so you can ask them for a real one.) Friendships are built on sidewalks. Odd conversations are struck up, usually beginning with a grumbling comment about being outside to smoke. I have found myself smoking next to a stranger, only to find out that I used to date his father. There are countless tales of inveterate smokers and their walks of shame. Writer and editor Gully Wells, author of The House in France, calls herself an occasional smoker, but she still feels the need to hide the evidence \u2014 particularly from children. &amp;quot;I spray perfume all over the house when people are visiting,&amp;quot; she says. Manhattan real estate broker John Glass met with a drastic situation when he stuck his head out a high window to smoke at a dinner party: &amp;quot;Someone on the street called the police, thinking I was on the verge of jumping.&amp;quot; One has to wonder where President Obama \u2014 according to a recent report, now tobacco-free \u2014 used to smoke in the White House. Others find a certain amount of pleasure in openly flouting the law. &amp;quot;When I&amp;#039;m on the road,&amp;quot; says Michael Lindsay-Hogg, cigar smoker and author of the memoir Luck and Circumstance, &amp;quot;I invoke the doctrine of Personal Space: I&amp;#039;m paying for this room, so I can do what I want in it. After dinner I&amp;#039;ll have an abbreviated conversation with the friends who&amp;#039;ve paid the check, then find myself back in the hotel, sitting by the open window blowing smoke, with my traveling scented candle also at work to denoxiate the room for the spy who will come in the following morning to tidy up and, in my imagination, report the evidence to the management, who will then call Mayor Bloomberg, who will have me arrested.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a1123/a-dying-art/>