Burnt-out Ends

That comedian guy Jerry Seinfeld was on the TV doing this great bit on smokers. All about how they smoke because they’re control freaks: “Look at me, I command fire at my fingertips, I breathe smoke, I am powerful!” Or something like that. My friend Tom was trying to give up at the time. Takes lots of self-control to do that. But then, wouldn’t quitting also mean losing control? Me, I don’t smoke. But I do have a problem with control. Tom used to call himself a social smoker, but he pretty much became a pack-a-day guy. He got upset when people said he was addicted. “I could give up any time I want,” he always said. And then one day he decided to. I said there was no way he could do it.         People do it for different reasons - smoking, I mean - cause they like the taste, although I reckon that’s just fooling yourself, and maybe for the buzz, or to calm down, be cool, look cool, feel confident. But I reckon cool is isolating. Cool means you don’t need anyone. Times when I was feeling really isolated, Tom said the reason was I wouldn’t let anyone in, I wouldn’t share myself with people, open up. I tried sharing myself once. There was this girl I knew from school, and I opened up and talked all about myself, and thought it was really working because she was laughing and being friendly. Then she stopped laughing and said some really cruel things and left me alone, and I was hurt and told myself I wasn’t going to share myself with anyone anymore.         I went to church a few times and the preacher kept on talking about surrendering to Jesus. God, I’d love to do that: just let go of all the burdens and cares of this world, just like he said, and let Heaven look after me. But I couldn’t - I didn’t trust Heaven enough. I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone, not even Jesus. How can you trust anyone these days? Everything’s gone wrong in the way people treat each other; lying, stealing, hurting. I guess I do all the same stuff. Even Tom, who’s my best friend (and he’s got no reason to lie to me or hurt me or anything), sometimes he does it.         Three days after he decided to give up smoking, I asked him how it was going and he boasted that he hadn’t touched a cigarette the whole time and that I should apologise for not believing he could quit just like that. I said it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in him, actually I was real proud of him and he should keep it up. Later that same day I thought it’d be nice of me to get him a congratulations-present, so I bought a pack of those fake chocolate cigarettes as a joke and went round to surprise him at work. Tom works as a telephone salesman so he doesn’t leave the office during the day. Anyway when I got there he wasn’t in and I asked where he was and this lady said, “Same place he always goes,” and pointed to the back door. Tom often complained about how it was a no-smoking office and he had to go outside for a smoke break; I remember cause I said to him no, that was nice, he could take a break from work, stretch his legs. So when that lady pointed to the back door I knew what it meant. I went outside and saw Tom puffing away without even looking guilty. Then I just went mad, yelling at him that he was a liar and a bad friend and so ungrateful for the present I had brought him and didn’t his parents teach him anything about honesty and decency. At first he looked all sorry-faced, but then when I said that part about his parents he came for me like he was going to punch me. Tom’s folks were killed when he was a small boy, so it was real thoughtless of me to say that. In the end we both just shouted at each other and Tom started crying and I started crying and we sat down in the dust and were quiet for a long time. I couldn’t see then how God’s looking after us all so well, when even best friends make each other sad. Anyway we said sorry and Tom promised he wouldn’t lie about the cigarettes and I said he should call me any time he needed help. When I said that I didn’t feel so lonely and even though I’d cried like a woman I was sure Tom wouldn’t tease me about it. After all, he did the same thing. I trust him. Maybe there’s hope that one day I’ll trust God too.         Another thing I have to talk about. Somewhere in my head it was hurting. It was making me really cranky and I didn’t have any idea what was causing the pain. That was the worst part; if I just knew what the problem was, even if I couldn’t fix it straight away, at least I could have tried to figure something out. But without knowing, I couldn’t get my mind off it and I worried all the time - except at night when I was sleeping, I didn’t notice it then, or when I was watching a movie or doing something distracting. It was like … like wanting to get it right was what made it all wrong and sore. If it was a tooth I could get it pulled, for example. Tom reckoned it was my wisdom teeth that were coming through; he’s always joking about me getting clever. But really he’s the one with all the wise cracks. Usually we can enjoy a good laugh together and feel better afterwards, but between my headaches and Tom trying to give up smoking, we were both pretty cranky like I said.         A week passed, and Tom didn’t have another cigarette. He seemed to be doing okay and he also managed to cut down on all the junk food that he was eating just to keep his mouth busy and take away the jitters during those first few days. That was bad news for me, cause every time he needed to pig out on hamburgers and chips and ice-cream I ended up doing the same. Actually, I felt like it helped me too: with my mouth full of different flavours and my brain busy with figuring out all the tastes, it forgot all about the other sensations that had been giving it trouble. Kind of like getting drunk, but without the hangover. Mind you, I did have pretty bad indigestion. So it was just as well we didn’t carry on bingeing for too long, although I had to find some other way of not letting the discomfort, the … uncertainty, that’s what it was … I had to find another way of making sure it didn’t get to me.         Tom and I started buying and swapping books. Not just sports books or DIY either, but proper storybooks, some of them by famous writers. It was Tom’s idea (all the good ideas are usually Tom’s) and it all happened like this: one day he was looking through the newspaper and he saw the name of our high school English teacher. Apparently the poor guy had died in a drowning accident or something; he was still quite young, although he had never seemed it back in school. Tom said it was a “tragic obituary” and that there were some lines from a poem quoted at the end, and that he was so moved by the whole situation that he felt guilty about not paying attention when we were studying Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Walt Whitman and stuff. So to make up for it we went to the bookstore. We decided that Tom would read Uncle Tom’s Cabin (for obvious reasons) and I would read the other one, which turned out not to be a book but a person, a poet actually. Tom made as if he knew that all along but I’m not so sure. Anyway, as we agreed, once we’d each read our book we swapped over and then compared what we thought. It turned out that we both enjoyed the story more than the poetry, but the poetry was really interesting, like the lyrics of a song but with no music in the background.         That was about two weeks ago. Since then we’ve bought two more books and we’re going to swap them too. At first I thought that reading would make my headaches worse, but in fact it took my mind off the pain and even when I wasn’t reading it helped me, because I thought of some of the really hard sadness and suffering of the people I had read about and then my own problems didn’t seem so bad. And Tom found that reading was the best thing when he was craving a cigarette. It’s been over a month now. “Books are a great replacement,” he said, “but you don’t have to burn them - unless you’re a hypocrite.” I think that was a joke, but if it was, I didn’t get it.         The thing with the books wasn’t quite enough. This morning the phone rang at four-thirty. 4:32am the clock said; it was still dark outside, but I had already been awake for a while, even though I normally sleep right through the night. It was Tom. He said he was sorry to bug me but I did say a while back he should call me if he was craving, and he was, he was really sweating for a smoke. He was way past cold turkey, but the thought of having a cigarette had kept him up all through the night. There was panic in his voice, and he kept saying, “What’s wrong with me?” I told him to calm down, that it was probably just his mind playing tricks on him. He agreed, saying something about - how did it go? - the distinction between physiological addiction and psychological addiction. I said, “Yeah, that sounds right,” even though I wasn’t so sure what he meant. Tom said he probably didn’t want a cigarette, actually; he was just wrestling in his soul. That was why he couldn’t sleep. It sounded a bit strong but I thought maybe it was why I couldn’t sleep either. I guess that happens to everyone, now and then. There are a lot of things we all have to deal with.         So we talked. We talked and talked for hours, about all kinds of things (except cigarettes). We talked about God, and I told Tom about how maybe God did look after us, in different ways for different people; like the two of us having each other to talk to. We got onto really philosophical topics like war, which led onto gays in the army, and then Tom told me about this gay guy at work who was just like the rest of them and drank beer and talked sports and you would never know he’s gay. And then of course there was plenty to talk about with sports, and then sports on TV, and then violence on TV, and then the responsibility of celebrities to be good role-models, and movies, and then I remembered that they made a movie version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and so then it was all about the books we were reading. I felt like a college professor.         Talking like that, about God and the world and the universe, I realised we weren’t just talking to take our minds off Tom’s cigarettes or my sore teeth or whatever. It was a little bit like when we sat down in the dust together; but not sad like I was then. It was more like the other day, when an old lady knocked on the door selling stale biscuits for charity, and I didn’t have much cash on me but I gave it to her and ate a stale biscuit and she smiled, a smile I hadn’t seen since I was a little boy. A warm smile. But then she was gone, and it was gone. Her smile made me comfortable and secure. I wanted to go after her and invite her in, make her tea or something. But I didn’t. Times like that always get away.

 

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