The Last Smoke Goodnight

Our story starts earlier on, in the good ol’ days.

Well, not really good, but not as bad as now.

Well, when things were easier. Before the epidemics and wars and famine.

Well, anyway.

Our story starts with the cigarette. The cigarette was the invention, stemming from the humble regression to the hunter gather, of peasants who’d roll the cigars for the high and mighty hoity-toities. They’d hang on to the scrap tobacco, lining their grubby pockets like the petty vagrants society saw them as. Pretty soon the market caught on and saw that the scraps be sold, in pouches or tins. Just because the market catered to the creation does not mean that cigarettes were accepted. They’ve always been relegated to the lower classes. From the time of the esquire blue blood to the white collar of wall street. It reflected the small nasty pleasure of the smaller nasty little people.

We don’t have that anymore, lower class. Or even higher class.

No, we’re not socialist. We’re fucked.

There is no society anymore. Come to think on it, we don’t have much of anything anymore.

See, while the world was going one way, we were looking the other way. Global warming? A new child idol. Famine? A reality TV show about a court case. Total societal meltdown? Just stay inside, it’s nicer there. Then the bees died. Then the trees started to go. Then the air started to change. Distractions, distractions, distractions. And here I am getting nagged and teeth sucked at me for my filthy little habit. Really, what’s one more distraction? Anyway, now all the food is gone and all people seem to be living on is distractions, a good bitch and moan, or whatever you can find. And finding is getting much harder.

When we sort of came to, and when we had to answer the question as to why the grocery store started to get smaller and why the cashier and lunch ladies had to start carrying guns, we did what we did best; place blame! Yes! More distractions! But who to blame? Us? Nah, couldn’t be us. Government? Nah, couldn’t be them, they said so. Our neighbors? Well, we’ll get to that later. It had to have been the farmers. It’s always the farmers. And seeing as the people were primed to take what the box in their living room had to say seriously, when the farmers were at the forefront of the blame for monocrop field exploitation, livestock CO2 emissions crimes, and reckless mismanagement of resources ( I still laugh when I think about the whigs in the white house having the gonads to put that on the farmers ), the people were foaming at the mouth to do something about them.

So they did. They did what they always did.

No, they didn’t take action on farmers.

They let the government do it.

So, farmers became the pariahs of the country, AKA the world. Should’ve fixed the problem, right? Going plant based and eating what grows, not what moos. Damn I miss burgers. Beans don’t do it for me and haloumi just gives me gas. Anyway, it didn’t. Who was to blame? Farmers. Who got the boot? Farmers. Who grows the plant based diet? Well-

Anyway, now it’s just canned food or whatever can be grown in a lab. No more apples, peaches, or berries. Damn, I miss blueberries too. No more animals. Even pets running around would disappear and around the corner you’d smell someone barbecuing. Nobody really makes anything anymore. If you got it, you found it. If you found it, it’s probably the last so you hang onto it, savor it. Did you know people would just carry around a pineapple, just to show that they had one? Never ate the fucking thing, just flashed it around. The nerve. The absolute sophistry.

Well, now it’s back in fashion. The last semblance of celebrity we have, señorita chiquita, walks around with a headdress of fruit. A cornucopia cap. Won’t let anyone touch it or come near it. Had it insured and guarded at the cost of a grape a month, and she’s running out of grapes. Lots of rumors came out that the fruit is wax and she’s already run out of the real stuff. The debate is heated but, honestly, I wouldn’t want to walk near her if it were real. I could only imagine the funk.

So people deal on the market, make marzipan knock-offs. Some find and save, some find and eat.

Not me though, no sir.

See, I’ve got a secret that’s been building up in me that I can’t hold in anymore.

Don’t blame me though, it’s generational. Got a secret? Post it up. Just allude. It diddles.

I’m something of a collector myself. Only by necessity however. Figure we’re all dying at this point. The slacks that hugged my hips a little tight, whose button was once holding me all in with the grip of God, are more like backwoods coveralls now. Or a toga, dependent on the day and mood. Lucky for me, baggy is the new chic. No food lately. Just TV. And you can’t eat TV.

Anyway, the secret. What is a cigarette besides the odds and ends of cigars, gathered over the course of a week for a rollie at the end of a night? Just that. And now, after months of saving up paper, which should’ve been eaten by now, and tobacco, that should’ve been smoked to the nub, I’m pretty sure you’re catching my drift.

I’m pretty sure that I have the last cigarette in the world.

Can you eat a cigarette?

No, granted. But, it’s not what it is. It’s what it means.

Before the world went to shit, it went to battle with the smokers. See, smokers were the manic deplorable degenerates of a fit-centric society. The world, having nothing else to focus on (See. Global warming, famine, societal meltdown) had to take on change in comfortable fun sized ways, starting with the man in the mirror. Like curves today, cigarettes were not only accepted but embraced as a symbol of identity and individuality, two things not really idyllic to the society so hyper fixated on both of them that they went disregarded at the tip of their nose. They were once the thing to keep silver screen actors doing something when the scene didn’t require anything of them. A moment of pause? Fill it with smoke. And so it went with every joe schmoe worth his salt or plain jane that wanted to stay thin or sane. But, like all good things, the world had to snub it out. Cholesterol? Alcoholism? Lead paint and asbestos? Nah! The cigarette was the cause of sloth, dysfunction, and a mark of lacking self care. Cherished one day, demonized the next. Unhealthy this, cancer that, longevity. Another cigarette, another nail in the coffin, like every passing day wasn’t a nail in and of itself.

The cigarette was an escape from the busy world, forcing a pause, a break from the hustle and bustle of a world operating at sprint’s pace, and they wanted to take it from us. For our health. Said if we wanted to see the future, we’d have to sacrifice in the present. Well, that’s what the Surgeon General said, and my wife who would parrot the fucking phrase any chance she got. Look who's laughing now.

Not her. She’s dead. Long dead.

Like mostly everyone I knew.

Anyway,

Everyone was so optimistic about making a better future, so forward thinking, so progressive. Eat this not that, sock away for a rainy day, learn more and forget what you thought you knew. I remember the block I used to live on had a gingko tree, there was one on the block before and one more after, whose roots grew out and broke the sidewalk, creating a lip in the grade. I was running late for work one morning, figured it was better to be less late than more late, which only gets more funny in hindsight, when I thought to get the lead out of my walk. I was near jogging when my right foot caught the lip and sent me face first into the ground. I had coffee in my hand, now it was all over my clothes and bag. I had to go back and was even more late. I figured it was my fault for thinking too much on consequences that hadn’t happened yet. An epiphany struck me. So, on my mornings off, I’d sit on the steps of my building, light up a cigarette, and watch all the runners, who were so focused on getting where they needed to go or what was going on in between their ears, trip hard on the crack that was right in front of them. I’d watch them fly and try hard not to laugh, otherwise I’d choke on my smoke. Funny how little we are focused on what’s in front of us. If only they knew what they had. If only I knew.

I realize I’ve been rambling for a bit. You probably want to know what happened to that progress we aimed for, what it looks like. Well, it’s dry. There’s not much food, nobody wastes any extra energy on talking with one another but that’s nothing really new, the colors of everything faded after the long trend of vibrant colors that shouted look at me!, and everyone is as fit as a twig. Everyone looks out for one another, but for a different reason. Real estate is cheap, pretty much free so long as the building doesn’t collapse on you. Everyone is still just as forward thinking, but now it’s more on solving personal hunger than solving the world hunger thing. I live on a street like mine, but closer to the inner city where they dole out rations, or in some sad hope that someone will keel over and you get second helpings (No, I’m not a cannibal). There are still tents set up along the street. We never really solved homelessness. I drag myself along the streets, sweeping around to find whatever scrap of cancer stick I can find. My scope was much wider, but then again so was I. Now it’s tightened. But I got what I needed after all. Well, what I wanted.

What’s the point of life that’s restrained to the continuation of life? You’re here once, why not live it up? Why not eat that thing that isn’t going to do you much good in the long run but damn did it feel good at the time? Why not tell your boss to shove it for a day with a cough cough here and a cough cough there? Why not turn off the reality TV and go take a walk, have a sit, and just watch it as it happens, not as it happened? We’re there now, but we got here a little too late. I’ve figured it out, and today I’m living by it.

I’m going to smoke this damn thing if it kills me.

Nobody is making it out alive, so I’m going to smoke.

Now, if I could just find a lighter. And a place to smoke.

When I was a smoker, you had to either be communal or secretive. Smoking was a communal thing. In fact, a ritual thing. The chief passed you the pipe, you smoked that pipe. If you were given an extra break to smoke, you took that extra break and you smoked. If you smoked, you always had a light and you always had an extra. If you said it was your last, you were lying. If you weren’t lying, you’d offer a drag. In that time, you’d do the unthinkable, or what was limited to the chan; you’d talk. You’d bullshit here and there about bullshit that was neither here nor there. You’d meet strange and interesting people. People who knew that this time was sacred, this two minute fraction of time that was limited to doing nothing but being. Pretty soon, those areas where it happened, was where it happened. You went to that place, outside on the curb, out in the back of the building, the bench far from the yuppies and families, and you gathered round the plume. If you smoked and someone was dry, you’d pass them a drag or a stick. If you were dry, you’d always carry a lighter and trade a light for a thing to light. If you were shy of both, you’d talk. You’d offer your being to their being for that moment of just being.

Or, you’d be a slouch and you’d walk with your shoulders slunk and keep your focus on the cherry in front of you, or hug a wall or corner. You’d look around like you were hiding something because you were. You’d hoard the smoke and steal the moment you were given, greedily. You’d stick to the shadows and hope light didn’t find you in your angsty state of apotheosis to a somewhat agreeable person.

Today, I was playing slouch.

There is not another stick in the pack.

This is my lucky.

The trick of getting outside is stepping over everyone in the hall and holding your breath. I live in a run down apartment complex on the first floor. Mostly everyone lives on the first floor, or anyone who lived on the floors above at one point have settled for the first floor, not being able to take on stairs. If you were looking for an enemy in this story, it’s hunger. Its henchmen would have to be stairs, or hills, or heavy doors. We made doors with buttons for the handicapped, which my lazy ass would just press to avoid effort, which had come in handy until the point they stopped working. You really don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone. Like neighbors. So, getting out, you step over and you hold your breath. If someone is home to more than three flies, or a hungry neighbor has their teeth sunk into them, it’s safe to assume that they’re dead. Otherwise, it’s just sleep, or just sheer lack of gumption to move. You have to be strategic about where you go, when you eat, how you move. This never really came as a surprise as not too long ago, it had been building to a head. Everything started to get more finite. People wondered whether you really needed things. Again, everything is limited, even life, so why not enjoy it while it’s here. Nah! People started to police one another. Did you really need to drive that far? Did you really need that quarter pounder? Did you really need to have that third kid? Well, seeing as people started to get more scrutinizing, their eyes shifted from speculation to hunger, that third kid really came in handy. My brother’s keeper gained new meaning; luau style.

Anyway, I made my way through the maze of bodies that scattered through the halls, and tried not to look at anyone. The trick is to not to look at anyone directly, but remember that they are there but also to disregard that they are and that they’ll probably be dead soon. If you didn’t follow this three step program, you’re liable to get jumped for as much a bite as they could get. Or for whatever you have. Even if you didn’t have anything, they’d still sniff it out. And I could smell the tobacco from inside my pocket. I kept my shoulders slunk and made my way out into the street.

Nobody was really outside. If you were walking around, you were on the hunt. Again, you had to keep your wits about you. It was every zombie for themselves. The only exception would be that hunger had finally eaten away at whatever brain matter people had, so all that was left was the hollowing out of one’s self through memories and realization of the coming end. Or, whatever was on TV before you went out. Everything else was dead. Tents on the streets were mostly just tombs. People didn’t tag walls with scripts anymore, there were a lot of names, sometimes manifestos or memoirs that tapered off to scribbled lines that hung above bodies that slunked against the walls. All the trash in the world was scattered in the wind from garbage cans that got tipped over to spill out whatever could be eaten. Nobody minded anybody. When someone fell over dead, nobody would notice. But damn if you had something to hide, it would be found out. People knew the shape of bones under clothes and they could tell the difference between that and something else, whatever it was.

Lucky for me, I didn’t have food.

Well, not really lucky.

Anyway, I realized today was as good as any to die. One last smoke goodnight.

I made my way for the one place that people went to die, or otherwise didn’t go;

The Hill.

Making my way up the street, the cigarette started to burn a hole in my pocket. At this point, my eyes were dancing around corners and up the street. I was just waiting for someone to sniff me out. I heard the grunts and shuffle of a small group that gathered at the mouth of an alley. Why I felt the need to walk by it, I couldn’t really tell you. Maybe it’s the principle of when you’re trying not to get looked at, you go to the most crowded place. Maybe that’s why the cities were always so packed. You went there to lose yourself and buy and large you were usually successful. As I got closer, the sound of scraping and scraping turned into ripping of clothes and then tearing of something more delicate. The small grunts and stiff screams of pain turned into quiet acceptance. I could smell the smoke from the fire, probably started as a barbecue, pour out from the alley. I got looks from the crowd as I snuck around the corner towards the fire. It was like shark week in a way. The cameras get a glance from the sharks, but are they really looking? Was there any regret left in those less than human eyes? Did they see any in mine? Anyway, I needed a light.

I made it up to the dumpster fire they had burning. It was rank of rotting flesh more than it was of trash or even shit, which wasn’t even a thought at this point. I kind’ve miss it now that I think on it. A time to clear your head while you clear your bowels. It’s probably what I craved most at this point. A moment of thought, not a BM. I looked around the scattered trash, whatever there was left amidst the licked clean food wrappers and bones. Anything to hold a hot coal without me having to play hot potato all the way up to the hill. With some searching I found an empty Spam can and tried hard to hold myself back from scoping it out in hopes of finding a morsel, or even crushing it out of sheer fucking envy. Now came the hard part. I reached in and grabbed a coal from the fire. I didn’t really feel much, but I cannot lie that smelling myself toast a bit got me a little hungry.

Sick isn’t it?

The pleasure of eating or seeking pleasure as an end had overpowered any human need.

I didn’t know whether I was less human for this or even more so.

Anyway, I got my light and carried it in the can as the crowd, who couldn’t hold themselves back, started to stuff themselves with who should’ve been cooked. I looked onward to the hill and knew it was going to be the same for me, holding back. Every step taken was just one more closer to the end. I knew it, so I guess it made it less heavy. There wasn’t any more threat. Beyond getting to the top, there wasn’t anything more to look forward to. Everything behind me was just a reminder of what was waiting for me had I turned around. There wasn’t anything new under this sun. But damn was it hot today. I would’ve killed for a glass of water. Not really, but you know what I mean. I think. The weight of the heat and gravity was killing me. The gravel that got in my shoes was cutting my feet up. I really wanted to just skip to the part where I was at the top and toking on glory, huffing and puffing all the while, but I remembered that I could skip to the reward. I huffed and puffed and whistled against the coal in the can and watched it glow bright around. I carefully slipped the cigarette out of my pocket and pressed it against the coal.

Holy shit.

Was this the world we forgot?

Something as simple as smoke being the closest thing to God up on high?

I pressed the end to my lips, some loose tobacco sticking to my lips, I took my first drag and I could taste the sweet breath of a kiss with death. It actually sung in my head. I forgot what it felt like to not worry. About anything.

Then I immediately remembered.

There is a hell.

And they were coming up the hill.

With the new found feeling of float, I took flight. I heard them coming en masse, making their way up the hill, chasing the trail of smoke I left behind me. I didn’t run, I couldn’t run if I wanted to. I could pick up pace so I hauled ass up the hill. One stomp at a time. The grade got steeper and the dirt kicked up left a trail for them to follow, but I could see the park and benches at the peak. When I made it to the small grove at the top, a barrage of eyes fell on me, surprised by the newcomer. Before I thought to turn around, I could feel the heat of the crowd behind me. I took one last hard drag and stepped into the crowd in the front that seemed as impending as a geriatric uncle rushing for a hug. I offered the smoke like any good neighbor would. A chieftain in my own right. The older man, more apt than the rest, reached me and gave me a nod. This came as a shock, as I was ready to fight the old fighter. I nodded back and he took it and took a drag.

Just then, as soon as he exhaled, the crowd behind me poured over and was ready to charge the old man. They were stopped dead in their tracks by the secondhand smoke. They stood and basked in it. It was only for a second before one of them reached for the cigarette, furiously at first, but slowed by the offer of the old man. The man took the cigarette carefully and took a small drag, but a pull large enough to make the cherry burn bright at the audible dismay of the crowd. They all gasped and he slowed his roll. Just then a woman grabbed him by the collar, and I was half expecting her to rip him to pieces. She pulled him in and kissed him. I watched his chest compress and hers expand. They stayed there longer than just sharing air. Someone snuck into the fold and grabbed the smoke from the man’s fingertips that showed no resistance. A small drag, and a pass to one of his friends. Then to the next. And then on.

At this point, I should’ve been pretty mad at being robbed, but I wasn’t.

I figured the cigarette was the collection of odds and ends, and so were we.

There was a beauty to it. A moment of relief. A pause to the madness.

Anyway, it made its way back to the old man when the ash burnt his fingertips and he dropped it. It hit the ground and everyone scattered to snatch it. People pushed and shoved, grunted and squealed, only as brief as what little energy they had would allow. The smoke, or what was left of it, danced from the embers that twinkled from the flattened mess of tobacco and paper.

The crowd just looked down and stared. Most people started to cry. They looked up at the panoramic skyline and soaked in what was last of the incensed air. I did too. We all just looked out over the city, our failing hearts catching up with the journey up the hill. The cigarette was gone, but we were all still here, for however long or short. The smoke was clear, but the air tasted just as sweet. We were all here for a moment longer. Then, the same people I was once afraid of started to lean against one another, someone throwing their arm over me and mine over them. Some of them tried to talk to one another, reminisce as that was all there really was to talk about. Remember the better times. Talk of bullshit here and there that was neither here nor there. Mostly, everyone just was for a brief moment. Here I was, here they were, we were all here to exist for a taste of the fire.

Then, I realized what it all meant.

Then, I realized what everyone was afraid of for no reason.

Then, I realized what a cigarette was.

Well, what it meant.

Anyway-