I Started Smoking Again

I started smoking, after work. Oh, you know, work, those cunts are enough to drive anyone back to the old tobacci, as they say. Maybe, I should get a new job rather than a new packet of smokes.

My addiction councillor, Jackie, says it might help to record my fails at quitting, so I can look back and use it somehow to stop smoking completely. 

I'm not really sure how that works, but assume more information will help somehow. I guess it’s gotto. Hey?

Jackie is pretty fierce. She has a take-no-prisoners attitude to addiction and her clients. 

Keep trying to stop! Never stop trying to stop, is the motto.

I say nervously, fingering my cigarette packet. I like it all. The smell. The taste. The feeling. Just holding it in my hand, I think. I like all of that. The packet. The lighter. Putting it to my lips. The action of the lighter. How I hold my head as the tip turns red. Inhaling, that lovely feeling. The smoke rising up off it, and swirling about my head. Inhaling the aroma. I like it all. 

The smoke swirling in the rays of the afternoon sun, when I sit out the back on my wicker chairs in the garden. I have taken photos of that, I have to admit. The beauty of that white smoke swirling in the rays making them visible to the eye.

I guess I am supposed to call the group and admit my failings?

That’s how it works, in Group Think, Jackie’s Quit Smoking Group. She guarantees success, one of the reasons I signed up, a guarantee, or your money back. That has to count for something.

Jackie is a treat with her green hair and her thick black rimmed glasses. She swears and drinks like a fish, which I really want to point out to her is, surely, against her ethos. The drinking. But I guess it is more do as I say, not as I do, that’s how the world works anyway, isn’t it.

When she calls me, she is always yelling into the phone. “James, James, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“James, James, speak up I can’t here you, the reception is bad here.”

“Yes, Jackie, it’s me.”

“James?”

“Yes.”

“James Matterhorn?”

“Yes, Jackie, it’s James Matterhorn here.”

“Oh, good, I’m glad I’ve got you James. I wasn’t sure I had the right number.”

“You have the right number,” I yell into the phone.

“Okay, okay, no need to yell, I’m on the same fucken planet as you James.”

“I thought it was the reception?”

“It’s not that bad, keep your pants on.”

“Okay.”

“We have a meeting of Group Think next Friday.”

“Is that the Friday coming up? Or is that the next one?”

“It’s the next one.”

“So, Friday week?”

“No James, next Friday. Are you listening?”

“Yes, Jackie I’m listening.”

“Friday 31st?”

“Um, er, ah, let me just find my phone. Now where did I put my phone?”

“The one you are talking into?”

“Oh yes. Ha ha. Goodness me. Now just a minute, where is my calendar.”

The call drops out.

The phone rings.

“It is next Friday the 31st, James, did you get that?”

“Yes Jackie, next Friday.’

“Yes, next Friday, isn’t that what I said?”

“Yes, Jackie it was what you said.”

“Well, I am fucken glad we have that sorted out. James. I’m talking to James, aren’t I?”

“Yes, Jackie, James here.”

“Just with all this ringing around, sometimes I’m not always sure.”

“No, I got it Jackie.”

“Abe won’t be coming, he’s dead.”

“What?”

“Yes, dead. Heart attack, from all accounts, on a table in a Greek restaurant smashing plates.”

“OMG! That’s terrible. Poor Abe.”

“Yes, indeed, went down like a bag of shit, from all accounts, dead before he hit the floor. Poor Abe.”

"Poor Abe."

“Anyway, everyone else with be there, Even Hatchet Betty, she’s out of hospital, the wounds have healed and the charges have been dismissed, so that’s good news.”

“Really? Is it?”

“Good news for Betty.”

“But what about the rest of us?”

“She’s just misunderstood.”

“I thought the problem was medical.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, James.”

“I thought the problem was that she stopped taking her anti-psychotic medicine.”

“Yes, well, she’s back on them now, James, and as gentle as a lamb.”

“Good to here.”

“So, can you bring a plate?”

“To Group Think?”

“Yes James.

“Next Friday?”

“James, I am pretty sure we have been over this.”

“I’m just wanting to be clear, Jackie.”

“Good habit to get into, James, don’t get me wrong.”

“Yes, Jackie.”

“Remember, just good habits, James.”

“Yes, just good habits.”

“Lovely. Next Friday then.”

"Yes."

I went and emptied the ashtray, as soon as I hung up the phone. I got a chill up my spine as I did. It was my shame. I didn’t tell Jackie. I’m not really sure why? Guilt. A sense of failure? Ego? I don’t know? All I knew is that I had until next Friday to stop smoking again. Could I go to a meeting while I was smoking? No. No, I couldn’t do that. Out of the question. 

I had a week to stop again.