I remember it well. I was fourteen and it was a stolen cigarette. I had taken it from my mother's pack, which she kept in the fridge. The brand was Prince and I think it was a Swedish brand because I've never seen them anywhere else. Friends from school were smoking on the breaks and I knew there was some talent to it, like you couldn't just light one up and start puffing. I had seen friends do that, and they looked stupid, especially when the coughing fits started.
I walked outside and went to the side of our house, where there were bushes to hide behind. My intention was to try to learn how to smoke. I had already decided I wanted to smoke, and now, all there was to do was to figure out how to do it. I brought one cigarette and a box of matches and off I went. I lit it, puffed on it, coughed and got nauseous. I must have inhaled because I felt dizzy and like I wanted to throw up.
Smoking at summer camp in the late eighties...
But I kept on going, because when I want something, I don't let anything get in my way. And this was important. It could change my whole high school experience. The nausea subsided and I started to move the cigarette around with my fingers, to figure out what looked cool as far as holding it. It wasn't long before I was a secret smoker, "sponsored" by my mother without her knowledge. She always kept packs and cartons in the fridge, and I helped myself. I can't remember how long I smoked before my parents found out, but the way they found out was quite funny.
I would hide the pack of cigarettes in a box of "Salty Bears" candy. The box was just a hair bigger than a pack of cigarettes, so it fit nicely, and allowed me to carry my cigarettes in my jacket pocket without fearing discovery. One evening my step dad asked me if he could use my house keys for something, asking where they were. I yelled down from my room that they were in my jacket pocket, and didn't think anything else of it. Until I heard, "Yum, Salty Bears," coming from downstairs. If there was anything I had underestimated in my clever cigarette camouflage plan, it was my step father's love for licorice.
Smoking with Jack on New Year's Eve 1997
The next thing I heard was, "Elise, come here for a minute." I could hear my mother's footsteps downstairs and low talking. So I did what any mortified teenager would do, I turned the lights off in my room and threw myself on the bed, pretending to be asleep. It's funny, if I had thought about it calmly, I would have realized how ridiculous it was to pretend to be fast asleep, a minute after I had yelled down about the keys. But this was about survival.
My parents came upstairs and with every step I grew more nervous. They came into my room and stood in the doorway for a minute. Then they said something. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it wasn't at all what I was expecting. They weren't happy I was smoking, I know that much, but they didn't go crazy either. It was like everything else they said when they discovered something they didn't know about me, or found out I had done something that I was too young to do, or something that was considered "bad."
Smoking (and most likely drinking) in London in the late eighties...
And whatever it was that they said, through this blog, revisiting some of my "bad" behavior as a child/teen/young adult, I'm starting to understand that there really wasn't anything "bad." They were well aware what my friends and I were up to, and they were merely just making the point that they were right there, not freaking out about it. They would much rather know what I was up to, and have me do it at home, then out on the streets of Stockholm. And I think that made me feel like I really COULD tell them anything and everything if I wanted to. And there were times I did and times I didn't.
Smoking at my college graduation....
At some point my step dad and I were walking somewhere in Stockholm, and I lit up a cigarette and he said "you know, it's not very ladylike to walk the streets smoking." That stuck with me, and for all the years I smoked, you'd never see me walking down the street with a cigarette. At a restaurant, bar, cafe, in my car, at parties. But not walking down the street.
I smoked for a lot of years. Like twelve or thirteen. It's hard to remember. Like my mother and grandmother, I was a social smoker. I could never roll out of bed and light a cigarette, so perhaps I wasn't a real smoker. But after lunch, or an afternoon coffee, or with a drink, I loved it. Driving in LA. I smoked about a half a pack a day, a full pack on a drunken night out.
Smoking with Heather & Ozzie, fellow FRIENDS assistants at an EMMY party in the nineties...
I smoked until the day I had a cigarette while having bronchitis. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't breathe so I had my boyfriend at the time take me to Cedars Sinai. They put me on a breathing machine for the night, and as "luck" would have it, my friend Jill's brother was the Doctor who treated me. Dr. Fishkin had treated me for a car accident injury a few years prior, and was happy to see me, although the circumstances weren't exactly ideal.
Before sending me home with an inhaler, he looked me in the eyes and said "if you don't stop smoking, you will die from emphysema." Something about a week bronchial and lung area. That stuck with me so I quit right away. Although I don't have an overly addictive personality, it was really hard, which only made me more determined. I decided that nothing would have that sort of power over me, then, or ever. I decided that I am above addictions. That I am stronger than any need or craving for anything or anyone.
Which is probably what gets me in trouble with the gentlemen. Sometimes when I get in too deep, when I find myself really attached, I let go just to prove to myself that I can. I leave because I don't like the feeling of needing someone, of being completely vulnerable, of someone holding that kind of power over me.
The only thing I smoke now...
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