Gold's smoke-a-thon: Night of 1,000 cigarettes

Last Thursday I sat in my room with a pen and a spiral notebook, writing whatever came to mind in an effort to arrive at a possible topic for this piece. In keeping with my previous essays, I wanted this one to cover some feature of campus life. My thoughts turned to USG President Matt Margolin's recent emails about a possible ban on smoking in dorm rooms, and then to the memory of a recent night during which guests had smoked cigarettes in my room. I decided to write a piece criticizing and otherwise jeering at the ban and its implications. However, I did not want to write some heartfelt but kvetchy pontification with an argument or comments on the state of this or that. Busta Rhymes has said, "Don't talk about it, be about it (shut up!)." The following, then, is an effort to enact in text a "protest smoke-a-thon". This smoke-a-thon never occurred outside of my imagination, but it invites emulation and, at the least, notice and consideration.

Any minute I expected the clank-clank of grappling hooks against the window ledge, the underly-nasal shoutings of Bay Area paternalists who would storm my room, declaring it clear for the entry of a smallish old janitor engineer who, climbing a foot stool, would install on the ceiling a new cigarette-sensitive smoke detector. Hustling out of the room, the Bay Area paternalists would advertently knock over furniture and somehow leave papers lying all over the place. From a distance, a bystander would see a confused hurry of forms among the rooms, and after it was all over, the brightly synchronized blinking of red lights.

It was while seized by this fit of paranoia that I decided to be uncomfortable about the possible smoking ban in our dorm rooms. I knew it was coming. The Sweep would descend on 427 Brownthat was a fact. With the fatalism of a Plains Indian, I decided to Ghost Dance until my feet gave out or until the cavalry arrived, whichever came first. I would buy a ton of cigarettes and smoke them like crazy until the last one was forcibly pried from my tannic hand and placed in the handheld incinerator carried by each hazmat-wearing narc.

I headed for the Palmer Square kiosk with a ragtag bunch of disaffected townie kids in tow. I paid the attendant at the kiosk $22,000 for every pack in the joint. After verifying my ID, the attendant began to pass me carton after carton of Parliament, Camel, Marlboro, Newport and on and on, in all their respective varieties. From me, the cartons were passed along the line of disaffected townie kids until the last one would toss the cartons from his smudged writing-covered hands into a big old rusty wagon pulled by a dog.

At my entryway I paid the townies in cigarettes and thanked them for their troubles. I tromped up and down the stairs carrying armfuls of cartons up to my room and then descending again to the conical carton heap just outside. When the last load had been brought in, I dropped onto my couch, short of breath, feeling the sweat on my brow and back. To unwind, I lit a cigarette and began to smoke. I pulled in deeply and after a broadchested moment slowly pushed the smoke back out. As the sluggish cloud dribbled into the air, I tugged it up again sharply through my flared nostrils.

I sat smoking in this way through two cigarettes. As I was working up a familiarity with the third, one of my roommates entered and switched on the television set. Through the third and fourth cigarettes, which were separated by one segment of drama and one commercial break, I slouched at angles along the cushions and took in the program.

Folks came to sit and smoke, passing in and out of the room in small or large crowds. The night went on and the air filled with haze. I began to share strange company. Bus station haggards, Thai gambling addicts, neon floozies wearing little else but chiffon, bygone stars and starlets. The open windows did little to drain the hanging smog, but people would lean before them with elbows propped on the sills to pause and take in some fresh air. "I think she's Catalan," I heard a friend say. "And what a tuchus," was the reply.

Through a thickening fog the night dragged on and all concerned began to feel the weighty lids of sleep. Stragglers and smoke emptied into the hall each time the door swung open, and eventually even the last straggler jerked and shuddered his way out. My roommates had long since retired to their gas masks and cozy quilts. I sat alone on the couch, just as I had done many hours before. Eely shelves of exhaust stood out against the weak blue of daybreak, the last thin swathes of smoke. There had been no bust, no hassle, no reprimand or arrest. For one night, at least, I had been spared the sweep. In dorm rooms across campus, scholars and sex fiends alike had safely lit up before, during and after their efforts. Each breath I drew closed with the faint rumble of bronchial mucus, and finally I, too, was tired. I shifted to lie down on the couch. Before dropping into sleep, I sank for a slow moment through a murky reminiscence of clapping and song, the smell of frying oil in the air. HAPPY HANNUKAH!