The Smoking Section

Before we get started and you make suppositions from the title of this book, allow me to quote editor Lizzy Miles—founder of the Death Café of central Ohio where any participant is welcome to come and discuss issues of mortality—from the introduction: “Despite any appearances to the contrary, this is not a pro-smoking book; neither is it an anti-smoking book. This is not a commentary on smoking in society: this book captures our personal love/hate relationships with cigarettes and the habit of smoking.”

Before we get started and you make suppositions from the title of this book, allow me to quote editor Lizzy Miles—founder of the Death Café of central Ohio where any participant is welcome to come and discuss issues of mortality—from the introduction: “Despite any appearances to the contrary, this is not a pro-smoking book; neither is it an anti-smoking book. This is not a commentary on smoking in society: this book captures our personal love/hate relationships with cigarettes and the habit of smoking.”

That being said, we may proceed. This volume contains a 13-year effort by Lizzy Miles to compile an array of experiences involving what we may call the smoking life. As a non-smoker myself, I found myself alternately wishing I had smoked and then glad I didn’t as I read the stories. These episodes range from wistful and funny, to sad and profound. Best of all, you may read the entire volume without the smell of smoke clinging to your garments. I found the stories addictive (requiring no patch to quit), anxious to see what the next debacle with nicotine would be.

These are experiences which make you feel closer to your fellow man as you realize how others have struggled, triumphed, failed, felt joy and sorrow. Nowhere, perhaps, can these feelings be more apparent than with a person’s relationship with his/her drug of choice. These can be intense relationships, and forsaking them can be as saddening as breaking any human bond. Of course in some cases, depending on the bond, the divide can be a joyful event. For those merely on the fringe, teasing the relationship can be a sobering experience. The impact of smoking, quitting, trying to quit, has left a mark on the 21 writers in this collection. All are cause for reflection.

Have you ever downed a “straggler” (a warm, half-empty, beer bottle used as an ash tray) by accident? Writer Kris Earle has and he recounts the horror for you:

Inside the five ounce filled, warm as piss, sea monkey laden Bud Light straggler was also a gigantic cigarette butt. The goddamn thing had to be at least twelve inches long and damn near two inches thick. It came out of the bottle with such ease as if it almost belonged in my throat and sailed into its harbor with only sea monkey bacteria as its lubrication.

Jenn Dlugos was the perfect student but she wanted to add some edge to her persona. She confesses that “only during the throes of teen angst does chain smoking as a fashion accessory make sense,” as she dons her “bad ass” look for the school dance.

Erica Deis adds her “Memoir in Menthol” and admits to such peculiarities as when “I leaned down to light my cigarette. I would be cool. My hair ignited. The spark spread through my hair like brush fire,” while writer Linda Siniard isn’t taking any guff. She writes “Right now, smoking is worth being considered a pariah. I smoke. Fuck you and your judgments.” She adds “I’m standing on the street, I light a cigarette, and I smoke to prove I’m alive. I watch the smoke emanating from my body and in that visible, noxious gas, I know I’m still on the planet.” Editor Lizzy Miles explains the benefit of networking during work place smoking breaks:

Even if you are on a smoke break with people you already know from your own department, there is something about the environment that leads to disclosure. If you smoke as well and happen to be out on the patio at the same time, you are going to be privy to some juicy information.

I wonder now what is to become of our nation of smokers. Times have changed, smokers have been cast out of the garden. If you are too young to remember the glory days of cigarette advertising, Google some commercials and you will be transported into another world. Everyone was smoking.

The Smoking Section could qualify as a historical document, providing verbal Polaroids of our relationship with tobacco as it continues to evolve. Miles has collected a great cross-section of fuming mishaps, coughs, and disgruntled addicts. There are also moments of love. Go look for them. You will find some in this thoughtfully assembled anthology of yellow-fingered scribes who recount—for better or worse—their own indoctrination into the smoking section.