Suppository Writing #2

HER

Isn’t it amazing that we use fire in order to light a vegetable (tobacco’s a vegetable, isn’t it?) so we can turn it into a gas (smoke’s a gas, isn’t it?) and inhale into our bloodstream as a tiny chemical? All those natural mechanics at work to finally exhale as a steady stream of smoke formed into a donut that sails in the prevailing atmosphere to become an egg, and finally a halo. It all takes place in one breath in the life of a god. If that’s not a symphony of nature then neither is Niagara Falls.

I have two voices inside my craw. One is a female voice, my conscience. She is the mistress I keep hidden, to drag out and fondle once in a while, and speaks in small cap italics. There is URGENCY in her voice. Typically, I’ll hear her at the exact moment I go for a smoke, shortly before the ring hits the fan.

I try to explain to HER that smoking keeps me in my body. Without it, I have that much less to live for.

AND A LOT MORE MONEY… she adds.

And I say: Hey, it could be worse, bitch… That always shuts HER up.

YOU GOTTA STOP.

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” I reply to HER.

DON’T LIGHT THAT.

“How else am I going to write?” (Or is writing a crutch to smoking?)

YOU REALIZE I CAN HEAR YOUR STUPID, PARENTHETICAL COMMENTS? DON’T GIMME THAT SOPHIST BULLSHIT, YOU’VE DONE IT BEFORE.

Sure, I quit for seven years and managed to scrawl out three hundred pages of poorly crafted fantasy. I stop HER from reminding me that it wasn’t the non-smoking that ended up trashing that manuscript before it got into second gear. It sucked no matter what I wasn’t smoking. Perhaps I should have been smoking something strong when I wrote it. I wish I had been smoking something; it might have made it better.

(IF YOU HAD THOUGHT OF NOTHING ELSE…)

IT ALSO TURNS YOUR TEETH INTO A LOVELY SHADE OF DOG SHIT

“I know…”

…AND STINKS TO HIGH HELL…

“Shut up!”

DON’T LIGHT THAT.

“I’ll smoke the ‘ultra light.’”

HAVE A DANISH BUTTER COOKIE DUNKED IN GREEN TEA INSTEAD.

“Hmm, you’ve got a point there…” I do, and then another and another and another and another and another. Then one more. I’m teetering on the edge of having another. Yes, I think I will. I have another and another and another and another. Now I’m out of dunking tea.

“Now what?”

ANOTHER COOKIE!

Sounds good to me! So I have another and another and try to scrape the last dribble of tea out of the cup with my tongue but it detours at the last second on a dry spot and slips down my neck instead.

“I can’t do it!” I plead with HER. “I can’t eat another and another and another and another cookie.”

SURE YOU CAN, YOU JUST NEED MORE TEA.

“Augh! That’s it, I’m having one more smoke.”

WAIT! TRY MASTURBATING, IT’LL KEEP YOUR HAND BUSY.

“What? I don’t think I can pull the pud every time I want a smoke… And what’ll I do after meals? Or when I come out of a movie theatre? And after a long plane ride? What will I tell them at work? Jack break? Time to smoke the monkey? How can I type wuth 1 hnd..?”

YOU SMOKE WITH NO HANDS AND TYPE AT THE SAME TIME.

“By that logic, I can jack off and smoke at the same time if I want.”

DON’T FORGET TO FLOSS.

“Fuck-you-eat-shit.”

YOU’RE WELCOME.

Knock-knock. “It’s me, your male voice of reason, rationalization, perfectly misconstrued logic and King of the sleight-of-tongue—the Despair Killer. Can I ask you a question?”

“No.”