“Do you wanna’ hear something gross?” Her voice turns secretive, hushed.

She had been talking politics, bragging of her newfound faith in Obama. She’s picked up one of his books and even Hilary’s It Takes a Village. She thinks the liberals might cure her financial crisis. She blames the republicans for her husband's lay-off at the cabinet factory in Jasper. She's hoping the stimulus bill will trickle down to the gutter. Her husband thinks Obama is the Black Horse mentioned in the book of Revelations.

I push the ear piece of the telephone closer to my ear lobe. I say, “Sure.”

She tells me how she was interviewing at a temporary job agency, answering questions, smiling without showing her teeth, keeping her legs crossed in a floral skirt and sandals, no hose. She says the interview went well. She felt that the girl on the other side of the desk was impressed, but looking back, maybe overly impressed; maybe she had intimidated her. Maybe she was too lofty in her speech or she glanced too often too anxiously at the chic’s computer screen. She recalls how she couldn't stop shaking her knees.

She adds, “I was on my rag.”

I know her periods are dismal, literally draining her of everything. They disable her. She becomes anemic, takes iron vitamins and ends up constipated. Her husband slips pain pills into her coffee, and she mostly sleeps through the days, all heavy seven of them, ruining sheets.

She says she stood up to move to a separate desk where her words-per-minute would be officially computed and dually noted. She has amazingly nimble fingers, long and skinny with a flexible pinky. She can morph herself to a keyboard. She took a blizzard of office classes in high school. She has an associate’s degree in “Legal Secretary” or some shit. She’s worked front desks and cubicles in Seattle and Evansville, never for a law office, always for energy companies managing gas bills or invoices for repairs on pipe leaks. She can work Excel like a garden. I imagine her on the other side of the phone line picking at her teeth while she speaks or smoking a menthol, blowing her smoke into the glass pane of her closed kitchen window, a pair of flies buzzing around the ceiling fan’s light bulb above her. All four of her kids are sleeping.

She tells me that, when she stood up, blood dropped from between her legs and landed on her toes. Some kind of sick hello. Two thick, wine-red spots. A royal gift from Gaia.

She tells me she excused herself properly, quickly. Surely no one noticed. She tells me she hurried to the bathroom and locked herself in and threw her foot up on the sink and washed herself clean with wet brown paper towels. She says, luckily, she didn’t stain her skirt. She says she padded herself up enough and then walked back out, sat down at the desk and kicked ass on the typing test.

One week later, she calls me to tell me she didn’t get the job. Her work experience makes her too pricey, she says. She says these employers all want young, cheap, unburdened novices behind their front desks. And I know she's right. I stutter that she should "open her options." I ask her about her prospective website business. I toss out the word "hope" and remind her of her crush on the new president.

I think I might've quit smoking. It sort of hit me like an epiphany this morning amidst the 8AM sunshine sifting through the dusty kitchen window (in the mornings, the sunshine can hit this small tear-drop crystal I have set on the window ledge and shoot mini rainbows all over my bright yellow kitchenette walls - quite a spectacle, really - one mini-rainbow tinkled smack dab in my eye). While making the coffee, I took a deep breath and felt buzzed by it. Not groggy buzzed - energetic buzzed. I've gone two days in which I've smoked maybe two cigarettes. For the last week, I've been on a steady slow-down during the day - letting more time stretch between my menthol 100's and mostly just chain-smoking at night (staying up late to make up for lost daytime opportunities - never actually smoking "less"). Yesterday, I was down and out with a migraine - one nasty bitch of a migraine like I haven't had in months upon months, maybe years. It made my legs twitch. It made me sweat and cry. I could actually feel that my brain was swollen at the base of my skull and behind my right eye (typical). STRESS. PMS. Combined and evil. Dual forces. The Joker and Two Face. I was drifting in and out of dreams about a massive mechanical brain pincher with big silver, terminator-type fingers pressing my temples together, trying to pluck my head off my neck like it was some juicy gooseberry (no lie). The migraine was light for the first half of the day (I woke up with a slight sense of disorientation, in the hospital room with Justin), but then I smoked one cigarette later after coming home -- I had to -- my daughter was chin-deep into the Lifetime movie "Fifteen and Pregnant" (!!!!) and it was stressing me out -- and the fall-out from the ciggy was massive. I should've vomited. The effect was Pavlovian. I tried burying my head in the cushions of the couch until the others got tired of tip-toeing around me. The four-year-old and the puppy have a guaranteed solid hyperactive hour between 8PM and 9PM - and even if I tried to hold my position and deny them this in the livingroom, they would only explode in the kitchen, and these walls hide no sound, and, when they jump and spin (take turns trying to catch each others' tails) the whole house shakes. So I crept upstairs and found my beloved lavender-scented eye-pillow which literally presses my eyeballs back into my skull to the point that when I wake up they feel like they might be pancakes. My vision is blurred for hours, my eyelashes are always stuck together, and the strap hurts the tops of my ears. BUT the smell of lavender and the cool press works. Earlier, I had whimpered and prayed that I might discover just one more Imitrex in the cabinet; my generic Excedrin was only giving me the shakes and I was certain nothing would work. But I woke up at 2AM and my headache was gone. This morning I think I'm liberated of even more.

The night before, Justin had called me from the hospital because he was suffering, weak, and scared - since he's had the epidural removed, the pain meds weren't working all to well and he wanted his mommy to spend the night with him in the room - to hold his hand, kiss his forehead, watch South Park with him, etc. etc. Tubes are still in place to drain excess fluid from his chest cavity, and now he's feeling every plastic intrusive inch of them. Of course, feeling needed is something every mother instinctively jumps on. I took the call and threw all else aside. The nurse made a bed for me in a fold-out chair. I had to walk in through the ER entrance at 10PM and acquire a visitor's tag. I saw a helicopter land on the roof as I was walking in. I might've slept two hours total in the room with him, BUT I missed my typical smoke-filled evening and I lived. I'm not sure if I even thought of smoking until lunch time the next day.

I should probably stop writing about it so that I might stop thinking about it. I should get up and go for a walk or start grading papers or clean up the house a little. But there is a greater issue at hand. This will have an effect on my marriage. Our smoking habit is something Matt and I claim in fun, something that drains our extra money and our energy and makes our breath and clothes smell nasty but something that we treat as some sort of nimble reward. We use it so that we might steal a few minutes alone, apart from the crowd when we're among crowds, or to find a sense of community when we're seeming oddballs (which is often). When we first started dating, he - an avid smoker since fifteen - had managed to quit smoking for six months and I had just restarted, having been smoke-free (sorta') for three long, miserable years. We were both peg-legging it out of failed first marriages. He picked up the habit again for me, I think (although he has denied it). Still, he was eager for a green light and picked it back up easily. When we first started dating, he'd stop by my duplex after I'd put the kids to bed (or we'd find a bar or spot to camp if they were gone for the weekend) and we'd just smoke and smoke, one after another. It was the filler for our conversations. Still is. He would have every right to be upset with me now. It may be like tossing a grenade in his comfy bunker. We have tried quitting together before -- It worked three months tops but then we realized that we'd stopped talking and freaked out and enjoyed the rebel nature in beginning to sneak them when no one was looking. It was like having an affair. How immature-ish, eh? This time, I hadn't even discussed the plan with him. But I don't want to smoke one - not now, not this morning, not later. I don't want to feel nauseous. I'm so sick of feeling drained. I don't want to be a smoking mother. I know how stupid it is and I've been kicking myself over it for years. And I want energy. Often, I talk myself out of doing creative, productive, or more rewarding things so that I might take a smoke break. Later, I say - and then I lose the focus and interest. I want to be in control of something.

Note: this might or might not work. He's not up yet and has yet to blow smoke into my air so that I might sniff it and my addiction kick in full-throttle. Last night, he brought me home two fresh packs. They are here, staring at me, shiny in their cellophane, on the end table five feet away. There's a full ashtray here on the desk under my nose. He stayed up late last night working on a paper while I slept off my headache, and he must've smoked a whole pack. I'm afraid to empty the tray because I don't want to touch it. I tell myself often that I don't have an addictive personality. I even insist this to friends and strangers. I've quit a dozen times now - all fairly easy endeavors. If I manage to quit now, with all that's going on, I will stun the mother fucking shit out of myself. Sorry, for the harsh language. I'm feeling a little irritable. I think I need another cup of coffee . . .


I poked around on YouTube for a cheesy old smoking commercial and found this (above), but I also found a bazillion other videos of people smoking - just smoking - puffing and inhaling and french-inhaling and hot-boxing and blowing smoke into the camera for no apparent reason. In silence. How cruel. How gross. For what purpose? Here is a creepy dude "Pall Mall power smokin" perhaps for his swanky internet lover (?):