Voice of Addiction, pt. 2
What if she dies?
What?
If she dies: you’d smoke then — right?
Why even think something like that?
Well … it’s kind of inevitable, isn’t it? No, don’t answer that — too morbid. Instead, all right – imagine this: you’re a widower. Okay? A sophisticated widower. Let’s say you’re in your sixties, still holding-up well – you live a solitary life, but that’s cool. You wear a lot of black. See how smoking fits the image? Kinda distinguished, like?
Let me get this straight: you think that, in my sixties — so, after I’ve successfully quit smoking for the past thirty years, more than twice as long as I smoked in the first place — you think I’d willingly start again?
Why not? You’ll be fucking sixty, dude — it’s not like you’ve got much else to live for.
Yeah, I don’t see it.
…
Maybe if they invented a pill that cures cancer. Even then, can you imagine what cigarettes will cost in the future? Especially if they’re not bad for you, anymore.
I’d like to address the matter of life expectancy.
All right.
Do you remember that guest speaker in health class? Senior year? He said that if you smoked, you should give it up ’til your sixties, then take it up again.
Okay: there’s something fundamentally flawed with that recollection.
But –
First of all, I don’t believe he was encouraging any of us to start smoking in our sixties, or any other time. He was being facetious.
Yeah, but remember you did the math?
What math?
The same guy said every cigarette represents eight minutes off your life — so you whipped out a pen and did the math. You don’t remember this?
Vaguely …
Twenty cigarettes to a pack, so approximately three hours per pack. That’s eight packs to a 24-hour day; so, essentially, for every week that you smoke a pack a day, you’re chopping one day off the back-end of your life expectancy. And, need I remind you, those are not your most attractive or productive years.
So — what?
What d’you mean, “what?” If you start smoking again at sixty — not now, I’m not advocating now — but at sixty, and you expect to live to eighty (which could easily improve, since this is the future, and science may have addressed all kinds of shit), just do the math: fifty-two weeks a year, so you’re lopping-off fifty-two days for every year that you smoke a pack a day. If you smoke a pack a day from your sixtieth birthday until your sixty-seventh? You will have reduced your life expectancy by one year, from eighty to seventy-nine. Seventy-nine! Are you honestly telling me there’s a difference between seventy-nine and eighty?
… nah, not buying it. Sorry.
Then what if she cheats on you.
Excuse me?
If she cheated on you? You, a cuckold.
Where did this come from?
I’m just saying: what if you came home one day and found her in bed with another man — maybe you’d smoke then?
Will it make any difference if I say no?
Just imagine: you were out for the afternoon — but you didn’t dress warmly enough, so you come home earlier than expected. The first thing you notice when you walk through the door is a strange coat draped over the chair. Hmm, you think, that’s a strange coat. Then you notice this sound –
Am I wearing all black, too?
– then you notice (don’t be a fucking smartass) a sound coming from the bedroom: a sound like someone’s in pain. You follow the noise to its source … and what do you find?!
I can’t possibly imagine.
Her! In bed! With ANOTHER MAN!!!
(Sigh.)
Tell me you don’t have a cigarette then!
What “other man?”
I don’t know — some other dude.
She doesn’t meet “dudes” — most nights we’re asleep by ten. So who’s this other man?
Uh … a neighbor?
Upstairs or down?
Shit, dude — does it make a difference?
Certainly, it makes a difference. Andy, who lives downstairs, is going bald. And Mitch, upstairs, has this strange white spot on his beard. It’s almost like, just that little patch of hair is albino. So, I mean, if she has to contend with either one of those two irregularities — while conducting an illicit affair right under my nose? — then, yes, I think it does matter which neighbor.
You’re not taking this seriously.
No, I’m not.
Even if she dies.
Even if she dies.
…
Don’t feel bad: those were all very compelling scenarios. Compelling and disturbing.
How about weed, then? Is weed off the table?
