I would really like to open this one by posting a dozen pictures of my non-smoker friends smoking my cigarettes. I won't do that, of course, because to do so would be to out them as casual smokers/moochers, and there's no need. They know who they are. These are the people who ask me to remove from Facebook really pretty pictures of myself because they can be seen in the background puffing on a Parliament.
What's going on with Parliaments? When I started smoking, everyone smoked Marlboros and Camels. When did all the cool people start smoking Parliaments? I don't care. I'm not switching. I smoke Marlboro Light 100s which are 5,000 yards long. I need a
Nifty Nabber to light them and I'm not ashamed of that at all. They last longer than regular cigarettes. And they make me look ridiculous, which is of no concern to me. Not when I'm getting cigarette savings.
I have been a smoker for a long time. I started at 16 for the same reason that kids in after-school specials smoke: I had a friend who tried. Also, it was the only thing I could do and get away with that was "bad" because I didn't have the balls to get bad grades or drink, and I needed to defy my parents in some fashion.
My mother loves to tell people the story of how she found out about my smoking. First of all, let's just get out of the way that I was really a piece of crap as a teenager. I was smoking in my bedroom. I wasn't fooling anyone and I wasn't even trying. Although I was sticking my head out my window, my window was right above the kitchen window. My mom was making dinner and she smelled smoke coming down from upstairs. She came banging on my door. I opened the door and she said, "Are you smoking in here?" I looked her straight in the eyes and said, "Yeah." Then I slammed the door in her face and turned up "Guns in the Sky," ("Well, I'm sick of it. It's a load of shit!") I was SO DRAMATIC.
Then my mom grounded me for like, the rest of high school, which is why I never went anywhere when I was in high school. I snuck out to smoke and write and give blowjobs in cars, which is the way it seems to be with parenting: if you try to control your kids, you will just make everything worse. What my mother should have done was sit me down at the kitchen table and force me to smoke pack after pack of Marlboro reds (that's what I smoked back then) until I puked. Then I'm sure I would have never smoked again. But as is was, she drove me to suck dicks. It's the same old tale.
I've never even considered quitting smoking, even though, as all sentient human beings know by now
For this reason, I am obviously NOT a proponent of smoking. It is a filthy, disgusting habit, but it is addictive for many reasons, and I like to do it when I do certain things, like, for example: I like to smoke when I drive, when I drink, when I write, when I lay out by the pool, before and after running, after sex, and generally any time when I am putting my mind to some sort of "use." For years I said that I would quit when I had a baby, but no baby = no quitting. And anyway, if I have no progeny, who really cares how long I live? May as well tap out early in that case.
Part of the problem with smoking is that it is legal. If you could get an 8 ball of coke at the 7-11, I would totally do coke every day of the week. But, as it is, you can only get liquor and cigarettes and Slurpees at the 7-11, so I have a very real alcohol/cigarette/Slurpee problem. I'm sure there are people who DO have access to coke as if it can be found in a 7-11, and to those people, I say, I'm sorry for bumming all that coke from you. You must feel about me the way I feel about the people who are always bumming cigarettes from me and acting as if they don't know how to go about getting their own damn cigarettes. With all the sin tax piled on, a pack of shitty cigarettes costs $10 in Chicago. That's why I buy the super long ones.
Rather than worry about quitting, I've recently decided to class up my smoking. I'm going to start smoking expensive cigarettes -- no matter that I will no longer have money for food. I'm also going to carry my cigarettes in a classy silver cigarette case engraved with the words "FUMARISTA LOCA" in cursive and use a comically long cigarette holder.
Also, I will always wear a really fancy hat from now on when I smoke.
I feel the need to do this because I say, take pride!! Drinkers are allowed to drink in style. Why not smokers? Smokers are the most pathetic, marginalized, hated group of citizens in America today. Have you ever seen the outsides of buildings in Chicago in the dead of winter -- all smoking floors have been abolished, so they're out there in the freezing cold, with no mittens, having foregone their 15 minute lunch breaks to huddle in doorways while trying to eke out a few drags before taking a 10 minute elevator ride back to the 56th floor.
You used to be able to smoke in bars, but not anymore. I am always trying to get away with things. My friends are annoyed by this, but I will smoke just about anywhere until someone comes up to me and tells me to stop. I will act like I am from Europe and had NO IDEA that I wasn't allowed to smoke in the ladies room at Wrigley Field. I don't care if I get caught. At that point, I've gotten when I needed. If I have to put my cigarette out, so what? I was actually told I couldn't smoke on an outdoor sidewalk while a truck was driving by spewing black smoke. The server and I both actually coughed while we were having the exchange where she was telling me that I couldn't smoke in the street, and this truck is going by infecting my lungs and the rest of the sidewalk a thousand times more than I could do if I smoked one million cigarettes at this sidewalk part of the restaurant.
I know smoking is gross. But you know what else is gross? Gaucho pants. THOSE should be illegal in bars.
I'm not married. I have nothing against marriage, and I would like to get married some day, if a marriageable suitor who suits me should cross my path and want to eat hot dogs with me forever. As part of the maturing process I feel must be necessary to get to a place where I can treat relationships seriously, I have compiled a list of reasons why I am single, and I will endeavor to work on these things in the future:
(1) The only man I could ever love and feel safe with is Westley from The Princess Bride, and that's too bad for me, because a man like Westley is no more likely to exist than an R.O.U.S. If you don't know who Westley is, or if you don't agree with me, stop reading my blog, because you're stupid.
[D.B. Sweeney]
(2) I say things like, "If you don't agree with me, you're stupid." To wit: while being driven home from a first date that had gone really well, my date mispronounced the word "nuclear" and I demanded that he stop the car. I yelled: "Stop the car. STOP THE CAR! I have to get out of the car!" He said, "You're gonna walk home because I mispronounced a word? That's kind of extreme." I said, "I agree, but what you just said made my skin crawl. I can't help it. I liked you better when I didn't know you were one of those people who mispronounces the word 'nuclear.'" He said, "How are you supposed to pronounce it?" So I told him. And he said, "OK. I didn't know. But now I do." I liked the way he diffused the situation. I really thought that he'd let me roll out of the car and I'd never hear from him again, but it was masterful. He was like a lion tamer. He made me see that I was being ridiculous and that the problem could be solved with less drama and less jumping out of cars. He did that a lot (I try to jump out of things a lot). So we dated for a couple of years. But he never could marry me. How could he? I would always be the girl who tried to jump out of his car. You don't want people like that raising your kids.
(3) Music is really important to me, and men are always wanting to listen to Jimmy Buffett and Jimi Hendrix and KISS. I'm not going to say anything bad about Jimmy Buffett or Jimi Hendrix or KISS, but I don't want to listen to them. I had a very healthy, 3-year relationship with a guy who willingly went to more than one Tori Amos concert with me. And liked it. And he wasn't even one of the gay ones. That kind of lightening doesn't strike twice, so I kind of know I have it coming. The next guy I date is going to be a total parrot head and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm gonna have to iron palm tree shirts and eat at Margaritaville every single time I go on vacation for the rest of my life. How can I get keyed up about marriage knowing that?
(4) I just made it sound like I want a heterosexual man to go to Tori Amos concerts with me.
(5) I don't cook. It's not even that I can't cook. I don't cook because I have no interest in it. But I like to eat. My last few boyfriends have enjoyed cooking, so it worked out nice for me, but my luck has to have run out there too. Someone is going to expect more than a Pop Tart out of me one of these days, and I'm not going to go there willingly. And certainly not before I threaten to jump off the roof.
(6) I'm a divorce lawyer. The "So, what to do you do?" portion of first dates is BRUTAL. I recently went on a date with a very nice guy who said something innocuous but nonetheless derogatory about lawyers within the first 5 minutes of our date. He then told me that he was talking to a friend of his before the date, that he told her he was going out with a lawyer, and she told him not to say anything rude to me about lawyers. But he still did it. Guys ask me outright if I'm bitter or don't believe in marriage. Actually, it's the opposite. I take marriage very seriously. I don't want to get married just so I can register for Corning-ware I know that no one wants to get divorced. But knowing what it entails, I really don't want to get divorced, and the only fool-proof method of avoiding divorce is to not get married in the first place.
(7) I want to adopt. I have a loose plan in my head of waiting until I'm in a position to adopt a child, and then I'll take the mean age of all my friends' kids and adopt a kid that age from the local foster pool. So you can imagine how strange people are going to think it is when all of a sudden I'm living with a 15-year-old black boy.
(8) It's often quite scary to be a passenger in my car. But the larger problem is, I don't care. I'm taking the bend by the Drake on Lake Shore Drive at 85 mph, and you're grasping at the dashboard thinking, "Why does she have to drive an aluminum Japanese coffin? Why can't she at least have a Volvo?"
(9) I have a tendency to start off as one person, and then partway through the year, I change into someone completely different. I had two boyfriends in 2002. The first one opined that I was too much of a party girl. The other one said I didn't want to go out enough. They were both right. But, to be fair, the first guy gave me an eight ball of coke for my birthday, and the other guy moved his DVD player and his huge TV into my condo and signed up for Netflix so it wasn't all my fault.
(10) I blurt out things like "I got an eight ball of coke for my birthday!" I sort of know you're not supposed to say things like that out loud, but I do it anyway. You weed out a large portion of the respectable/marriageable population when you have no governor between your brain and your mouth.
(11) My wardrobe contains no tube tops. Guys only want to date girls who wear tube tops.
(12) I have a problem where I think it's natural to write things in a blog that may or may not be true... and I don't care whether people know what things are true and what things aren't. Someone recently asked me if I really have a lot of STDs and do a lot of blow. "Why, yes! Yes I do! I was hoping you would notice that I wrote that in that blog of mine! And by the way, do you know any great guys you can set me up with?!"
(13) I twirl a baton when I talk on the phone, and I am always hitting myself in the face with it, which causes me to swear and scream and abruptly hang up the phone, and people never know what's going on with me because I never call back. I once split my left nipple in half with my baton, and nothing looks more unsightly in a tube top than when your left boob is being held together with an ace bandage.
(14) There is now, as you may have surmised, something wrong with my left nipple.
Oh, and that may or may not be true.
My college girlfriends and I have had a tradition since we got out of school: whenever it is one of our birthdays, we all go out to dinner and the birthday girl doesn't have to pay. We do this because there are too many of us to keep track of and we're cheap and we don't like to buy gifts for each other. So on your birthday, you get a free pork chop and maybe a bottle of Bud Light. Most of your girlfriends are pregnant, so they watch you drink your beer and probably think how they shouldn't have to pay as much since they aren't drinking, although no one ever says this out loud.
Another part of the tradition, which started when we were in school, is that every year on your birthday, someone blurts out, "It's your year to shine!" Megan started this. It's a fantastic tradition. It makes everyone feel good, as traditions are meant to do. It's a ridiculous statement. It's cheesy. But it's your birthday, and you've got a whole year before you -- anything could happen. You could shine the fuck out of this year.
Sometimes it's your year to shine, but some years it's not. Sometimes people get married or have a baby or start to be better looking. But most of the years, if you're me, you have a year like all the other un-shiny years, where you have regrettable sex with a lot of people you shouldn't; one ex-boyfriend or another comes back, remembers why he didn't want to marry you, and then leaves you again; you don't pay off your car again; you don't pay off your law school loans again; you mean to go skiing, but you don't; no one ever tells you he loves you; and probably you get another cat. Also if you're me, you move at least once, after selling your real estate (that was supposed to have been in an up-and-coming location -- the realtor said so!) at a loss.
Now, I am massively clinically depressed, I drink vodka like it's water, I have more STDs than you can shake a stick at, and I take so much medication I should be dead, but every year on my birthday, I get caught up in the hype. So when Megan says, "It's your year to shine, Jules!" and we all laugh, I secretly, quietly think to myself (the voice in my head sounds like the chorus of intermission mice from the pig movie Babe), "Maybe it is my year to shine!"
But this year, ten out of ten of my best girlfriends have other plans on my birthday, which makes perfect sense, because Wednesdays are known for being the night of the week when people go out of town or have important things to do (I suspect that Jersey Shore is promoting a particularly compelling episode). I don't get my birthday dinner tonight, so I'm going to sit in my apartment alone eating Cheerios and cigarettes while listening to Tony Robbins' "Get the Edge!" It takes like 400 days to listen to this program, and so far I've put in about 25 minutes and I've learned that Tony Robbins is so fucking incredible at having The Edge, that he owns Turtle Island. Let me say that again: He OWNS Turtle Island. I don't even have a fucking pork chop. And for the first time in 14 years, no one is going to tell me that it's my year to shine.
But no matter! Be not afraid. I do not own a shot gun. I'm not going to the post office. It's a new year and things are really starting to happen for me! For one, I have this blog, and now when I go out of my house, people are always saying to me, "Are you going to write about this in your blog?!" and "Please don't write about me in that blog!" and "That's so weird that you have a blog." So all of this makes me think that people are secretly frightened to be around me now, and this may work to my advantage. People will perhaps do insane things to try to get me to write about it. Or, alternatively, people will be on their best behavior so I don't say bad things about them. People let me be in pictures all by myself because no one wants to have their photograph posted on this thing. It's very empowering having everyone around you completely on edge and biting their tongues and kind of not liking you very much anymore.
I went on a date this week and the guy said, "If I do something wrong, are you going to write about it in your blog?" He said it as a joke. I was quiet for a few seconds. I took a sip of my drink. Then I said, "Try me." I think it made me seem very mysterious and sinister, and there are few things that men are looking for in prospective wives than someone who could at any moment say, "Watch your step, bitchface -- I could totally fuck up your career with shit I post about you in cyberspace."
The other night when I was out with friends, I was introduced to a co-worker of a friend, and the co-worker asked me what I did. My friend said, "She's a blogger," which made me feel like a total jackhole, because it made about as much sense as telling the guy, "She likes peanut butter", because this isn't my job. But it was still one hundred billion times better than how I would have felt if she had said, "She's a divorce lawyer." It is always the case that one-one-trillionth of a second after I say that I am a divorce lawyer, and his eyes start to dart around the room for someone else to talk to, I wish that I had said that I am an airline hostess. But saying I am a blogger is so bizarre, it is almost like saying, "I'm independently wealthy and need not work," or "I'm a cosmonaut."
Another way in which things are looking up for me is that I cancelled my Netflix subscription. Netflix is the bane of my existence. I have wasted months of my life perfecting my queue with all of the movies I want to see, and the thing is like 140 movies deep with really great stuff. When the red envelopes come in the mail, it's like Christmas... "What will it be? What, oh what will it be!! Please let it be The Departed. I could so totally watch The Departed again! Or The Hurt Locker! I really meant to see The Hurt Locker in the theater, but I missed it. I really hope it's The Hurt Locker!" But the movie that keeps showing up is like, Land of the Lost or Wolverine: Origins. "Where is Sin Nombre? Where is Food, Inc.? I don't want to watch fucking Wolverine. How did that even get in there?" Any day that I don't feel obligated to watch Wolverine, well, it just puts a spring in my step. So, good riddance, Netflix. Happy Birthday to Me.
Finally, this year I am going to officially give up running. Running is a stupid hobby. Sure, it's great cardio, makes you want to eat right, helps you get better sleep, gives you a confidence boost from the endorphin high, is something you can do with your friends, and keeps your ass from becoming a continuation of your back, but it's bad for your knees, it takes up a lot of time, and it's really getting in the way of how much I like to smoke.
I think this is what Tony Robbins has in mind when he's coaching me about getting The Edge. If I keep up the good work and keep making all of these positive changes, I'm sure I'll own an island and comfortably sport a fu man chu too someday. I may even be asked to speak about my success, and the name of my program will be, "It's Your Year to Shine!" Everyone will get a pork chop for lunch and an eight-ball of coke, and no matter what I have to say, you are going to walk out of my speech with so much self-esteem.
