Early Morning Smoke Alarm
Sunday morning, my wife wakes up and stares at the bedroom ceiling for twenty minutes. This sort of behavior never bodes well for me. Twenty minutes of deep thought is usually followed by the sort of pronouncements that can ruin a man’s day.
Examples range from “you spend entirely too much money on books” to “is it really necessary to leave your dirty socks under the bed” to “we’re going to spend the morning cleaning the house.”
This particular Sunday, her truculence is aimed uncharacteristically inward.
“I really need to quit smoking.”
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath this entire time until I exhale it all out with an exhaustive sigh. She isn’t going to lecture me on the frivolity of spending so much of my income on Clive Barker original art given the instability of the current economic trends. I could return to scanning eBay auctions free from guilt.
“I’m going to need you to help me.”
I don’t know what sort of assistance I can lend short of slapping Virginia Slims out of her hand. She takes my silence for ambivalence.
“I almost quit smoking before I met you.”
And there it is. Though we’d only known each other for fourteen years of the forty-five years she’d been a smoker, her addiction is somehow my fault.
“Don’t take that the wrong way,” she added.
There are also the stressors at work. And every time Milt, her eighty-year-old, live-in stepfather opens his mouth about the weather, an unbelievable tidbit he garnered from the evening news, scuttlebutt gleaned from the Michigan Wolverines fan site, my wife reaches for her cigarettes. And, apparently, my very existence inspires her to crave nicotine.
“I’d have switched to vaping by now if you hadn’t kept comparing it to sucking a robot’s dick.”
“Android’s. Android’s dick.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The way it rolls off the tongue, I suppose. The words, that is.”
I realize I might not be the first person to compare vaping to sucking mechanical cock, but it is entirely reasonable to assume I’m the best-looking.
“You don’t want to vape,” I assure her. “Aside from looking absolutely ridiculous, it just can’t be healthy. I think no less of a prodigious mind, the prestigious scientist adjacent man, RFK Jr, made the connection between vaping and inflamed perineum. And we all are aware he was dead on concerning the link between Tylenol and autism.”
“I’m trying to be serious.”
The problem with “trying to be serious” is that she was trying to be serious back in the day when she assured me Virginia Slims ultra-light menthols were considered a “healthy option” by people whose opinions somehow meant something.
I can’t say this, though, because I want to find a way to enjoy the rest of my day.
“Whatever I can do to support you, I will.” This seems like the safest conglomeration of words I can offer.
“You need to find something I can use to satisfy my oral fixation. The hand-to-mouth part is gonna be the hardest habit to break. And don’t say carrot sticks or celery stalks or any of that bullshit, cause I’m not gonna be walking around all day with vegetables hanging out of my mouth.”
I knew a kid way back who use to chew on a plastic missile from the G.I. Joe Wolverine ground-to-ground missile launcher vehicle. It seemed to gratify his cravings, but I doubt my wife would see the value of it. I honestly remember the toy well, even remember the pilot’s name, Cover Girl, which has to go back all the way to 1985. Which is odd, because I just watched that Jason Momoa/Dave Bautista action movie, The Wrecking Crew, last night, and I don’t remember a fucking thing about it.
“What are you thinking about?” My wife asks.
She knows what I’m thinking. Beneath the fleeting surface thoughts jetting about like nervous minnows, I’m contemplating what kind of hell my life is going to be like as we suffer through her nicotine withdrawals. How many arguments are going to arise due to misplaced objects or imaginary slights. It’s going to be a veritable war of attrition, and I’m going to need a massive influx of unironic thoughts and prayers from this column’s sporadic readers to see me through.
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
Considering my Polish heritage, this shouldn’t be too difficult for her to accept.
“You better start thinking about what I can do to pacify my urge to smoke.”
Shit. The anger and resentment has already begun seeping into our interactions, and she’s only been awake and nicotine-free for thirty minutes.
After a quick Google search on her (dickless, I presume) Android phone, she settles on a contraption guaranteed to quell her cigarette cravings. It’s a bullet-shaped object to be worn on a chain around the neck. When activated, it allegedly delivered a short blast of mentholated air to the back of the throat. I can’t see this doing anything other than pissing her off in the long run. And she’s dropping seventy bucks for the privilege of vexing herself.
My wife wants me to be more excited for her than I am.
“Think of all the money I’ll save,” she crows. “Which is important considering how the economy is going.”
Eleven bucks a pack. Because, of course, she smokes the Cadillac of cigarettes. It adds up. It doesn’t quite add up to the amount of money I freely spend on stupid shit, and this alarms me. The amount of money she torched smoking four or five packs of Virginia Slims a week was my only defense or justification when dropping three hundred dollars on a rare 1962 Mars Attacks card. #21 Prize Captive, in case you’re wondering. Without cigarettes, I’d be forced to shame her on the amount of money she wastes buying groceries to feed us. Are blueberries really necessary considering the current socio-economic climate?
And then it occurs to me; what am I getting so worked up about? It’s not like she’s really going to quit smoking. She’s beat this drum before, and I’ve anxiously danced to the rhythm. Her desire to refrain from smoking will carry her as far as the length of time it takes a member of management at work to piss her off, which should occur instantaneously with her setting foot in the doorway of Hydra Hydraulics. That’s not going to absolve me from blame, mind you. I’m going to leave a dinner dish unwashed, and that’s going to set her off chain-smoking. And that will be all right. The dirty plate will merely be a distraction to subvert her attention away from the two month’s salary I just dropped on a Cormac McCarthy signed volume of Blood Meridian.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
