Memory disappears like smoke puffed from a cigarette. No matter how I try to remember the first time I smoked, scenes from the past are now lost to oblivion. It was peer pressure, that I can be sure. Perhaps, in one of those booze nights with my college buddies, someone bought a pack of Marlboro Lights. Aspiring to be cool; wishing to earn that respect every kid wants, the stick made contact with my wet lips for the first time. One puff, and then cough, and then slowly the smoke goes deep down my throat and then rolls out of my mouth.
From mere curiosity and then desire to get accepted, I got hooked. In college, yosi served as my breakfast before going to school. I would also smoke across Saint Raymond's building, inside those little huts they call Pavillion. Smokers like me had already laid claim to those benches. Non-smokers call the place Pugon in reference to the bread made from such method of cooking. During breaks between classes, after sneaking out while the professor lectures in one of the subjects, while waiting for friends before the Saturday gimik at Glorietta, while watching those beautiful boys and girls enter and leave the building, smoking was the best way for us to be seen.
Soon, dependency on tobacco has become a problem, I could never think clearly without nicotine in my blood. It didn't help that I never got past my oral fixation. The drug stirs my creativity; worlds suddenly open after the smoke fills my lungs. It also became a way of reaching out without the necessary pretensions. "
May stick ka ba diyan, pahingi naman ng isa" I would often say.
Social contacts are then established.
I would like to think that I have not yet reached the point of addiction. Three sticks a day, five when out on parties. If there is a rule I stuck to the very end, it is to never buy an entire pack to save myself from becoming a chain smoker.
The intention to quit has never crossed my mind. It is not because I pay no heed to my health, but for convenience, since I am surrounded by people who can't live without tobacco. But there are rare moments, when situations call for an outright rejection. First is when Mister Throatie acts up. Second is when a 4-year old next door neighbor innocently asks you,
"Bakit ikaw nagsisigarilyo?"
Looking for answers, which is bloody impossible to explain to a kid, I threw the stick where he won't see it. Ignoring his inquiry, I answered casually,
"Wala na akong sigarilyo."