Smoke and Darkness / Gan Mao Day 3
Last night, I ended up not watching that movie. I got back, it was late, and the light in Peter's room was still on. I knocked three times on his door. I was going to ask him if he still wanted to watch that movie. Usually he was the one to knock on my door to say, "What's up." Maybe he hadn't heard me. Maybe he was on the phone with someone important.
Turning off the light into the middle room, I returned my blue slouching chair to its usual place and continued reading. After about an hour I removed myself to my bed. Then back to the chair. Then back to the bed. It was past two o'clock. I had drank a liter of cold tea while sitting there, so off to the bathroom via the outside hallway and the other entrance I went. And back.
It was past three o'clock. About one hundred eighty pages were left, I estimated. This was much more important than going to sleep, sick or not. I still believe it now. But I decided to go out. So I put down the book right before May Kasahara's third letter.
I put on my jacket. I did this often at night, if Peter was awake I would tell him I was going for a walk or just getting some fresh air. But it wasn't about walking or breathing, really. It was always about seeing and feeling the darkness.
Walking, I realized that I wanted to smoke. It was about the dumbest thing to want. I was sick and broke and it was the middle of night in Brooklyn. My lungs were probably full of phlegm. Although it didn't feel that bad, why would I want something that would inhibit my ability to breathe even more?
But, no I wasn't completely broke. There were about six dollars in my wallet, and several quarters in these pants (which I had worn for several days) the last of my remaining cash. I counted. It was just enough.
There are 24 hour delis where I live, a few blocks down along Broadway, but they are a little different from the ones in Manhattan I am used to. Late nights, they conduct business through windows with revolving doors: you tell the guy on the other side what you want, you put the money in the revolving door, he spins it, gets what you are asking for, and spins it back to you with any change.
I went to the deli on the corner of my street and Broadway. It is called Rainbow Deli. I have never been there during the day. I asked for a pack of Parliament Menthol Lights, dropped the cash, told him to count it just in case, but he didn't, he just spun the pack and a book of those cheap matches. I turned the corner, lit and left.
The smoke came out and I saw the stream sputter at the end of my breath, from the phlegm and the cold. Smoke continued to trail from my mouth in that iodine light even when I thought I had let it all out. My breath was weak. I did not cough at all, though. I had been coughing at regular intervals throughout the night, but then, breathing death, I did not cough at all.
I read the rest of the book. It was dawn when I finished. I did not go back to sleep. During the night it had seemed less important to sleep, than to keep reading, and I still believe that. Though now, having finished it...
It was almost seven. I took the Manhattan bound L-train. My stop, Wilson Avenue, is where it plunges from its elevated track, down into darkness below ground.
Stopped at a diner for breakfast. I have no cash, but I do have fifteen thousand dollars total in credit lines. I had poached eggs, some Canadian bacon, and hash potatoes. Poached eggs always remind me how young I still am. I knew they existed, but I never knew what they really were until I had breakfast at a diner at age twenty. Isn't that weird?
I started smoking regularly seven months ago. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. I never coughed. I never stood awkwardly. I did it all with style and relish. It has always seemed the only way to go about things. Maybe it has always been and always will be about the chemicals, without my knowing it. But there is something so appealing about the aesthetic for some reason. I enjoy it so much.
Jeff, my old roommate, is a chain smoker, though he was certainly not the one who got me started. He had been smoking since age thirteen, he told me later, and it was virtually impossible for him to ever quit. He would sneak out every once in a while, a little embarassed, to have his requisite smoke in the courtyard. He was shocked to find me in that courtyard one evening with my own pack of Parliaments, smoking like it was nothing unusual.
"I didn't know you smoked," he said rather nervously.
"I didn't know either," I remembered answering.
I have never really felt that bad about it, except for my own health and finances (cigarettes are quite expensive here). Maybe I should feel bad. Maybe I'm killing babies and innocent civilians and everyone I know really slowly. I guess it would cause problems if my family were to find out, (they sure wouldn't like it) but that doesn't matter all that much. I have darker, deadlier secrets that I need to hide from them anyway.
But this is all publically available information now. This is a big deal for some of you, a big overdramatization for others. I guess I just felt like writing about it. Why? Maybe in the end I do not like keeping secrets.
It is quite bright outside now. I am going to get my check today. It should clear in my account sometime in the next two weeks.
Since I am done with the book, later on I will begin my important work. As I said before while I was still little more than halfway through, it is one of the best books I have ever read. Perhaps I will be able to go into that in more detail someday. I'll be able to talk more about it once my work is well underway.
That, though, may take a while.
Turning off the light into the middle room, I returned my blue slouching chair to its usual place and continued reading. After about an hour I removed myself to my bed. Then back to the chair. Then back to the bed. It was past two o'clock. I had drank a liter of cold tea while sitting there, so off to the bathroom via the outside hallway and the other entrance I went. And back.
It was past three o'clock. About one hundred eighty pages were left, I estimated. This was much more important than going to sleep, sick or not. I still believe it now. But I decided to go out. So I put down the book right before May Kasahara's third letter.
I put on my jacket. I did this often at night, if Peter was awake I would tell him I was going for a walk or just getting some fresh air. But it wasn't about walking or breathing, really. It was always about seeing and feeling the darkness.
Walking, I realized that I wanted to smoke. It was about the dumbest thing to want. I was sick and broke and it was the middle of night in Brooklyn. My lungs were probably full of phlegm. Although it didn't feel that bad, why would I want something that would inhibit my ability to breathe even more?
But, no I wasn't completely broke. There were about six dollars in my wallet, and several quarters in these pants (which I had worn for several days) the last of my remaining cash. I counted. It was just enough.
There are 24 hour delis where I live, a few blocks down along Broadway, but they are a little different from the ones in Manhattan I am used to. Late nights, they conduct business through windows with revolving doors: you tell the guy on the other side what you want, you put the money in the revolving door, he spins it, gets what you are asking for, and spins it back to you with any change.
I went to the deli on the corner of my street and Broadway. It is called Rainbow Deli. I have never been there during the day. I asked for a pack of Parliament Menthol Lights, dropped the cash, told him to count it just in case, but he didn't, he just spun the pack and a book of those cheap matches. I turned the corner, lit and left.
The smoke came out and I saw the stream sputter at the end of my breath, from the phlegm and the cold. Smoke continued to trail from my mouth in that iodine light even when I thought I had let it all out. My breath was weak. I did not cough at all, though. I had been coughing at regular intervals throughout the night, but then, breathing death, I did not cough at all.
I read the rest of the book. It was dawn when I finished. I did not go back to sleep. During the night it had seemed less important to sleep, than to keep reading, and I still believe that. Though now, having finished it...
It was almost seven. I took the Manhattan bound L-train. My stop, Wilson Avenue, is where it plunges from its elevated track, down into darkness below ground.
Stopped at a diner for breakfast. I have no cash, but I do have fifteen thousand dollars total in credit lines. I had poached eggs, some Canadian bacon, and hash potatoes. Poached eggs always remind me how young I still am. I knew they existed, but I never knew what they really were until I had breakfast at a diner at age twenty. Isn't that weird?
I started smoking regularly seven months ago. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. I never coughed. I never stood awkwardly. I did it all with style and relish. It has always seemed the only way to go about things. Maybe it has always been and always will be about the chemicals, without my knowing it. But there is something so appealing about the aesthetic for some reason. I enjoy it so much.
Jeff, my old roommate, is a chain smoker, though he was certainly not the one who got me started. He had been smoking since age thirteen, he told me later, and it was virtually impossible for him to ever quit. He would sneak out every once in a while, a little embarassed, to have his requisite smoke in the courtyard. He was shocked to find me in that courtyard one evening with my own pack of Parliaments, smoking like it was nothing unusual.
"I didn't know you smoked," he said rather nervously.
"I didn't know either," I remembered answering.
I have never really felt that bad about it, except for my own health and finances (cigarettes are quite expensive here). Maybe I should feel bad. Maybe I'm killing babies and innocent civilians and everyone I know really slowly. I guess it would cause problems if my family were to find out, (they sure wouldn't like it) but that doesn't matter all that much. I have darker, deadlier secrets that I need to hide from them anyway.
But this is all publically available information now. This is a big deal for some of you, a big overdramatization for others. I guess I just felt like writing about it. Why? Maybe in the end I do not like keeping secrets.
It is quite bright outside now. I am going to get my check today. It should clear in my account sometime in the next two weeks.
Since I am done with the book, later on I will begin my important work. As I said before while I was still little more than halfway through, it is one of the best books I have ever read. Perhaps I will be able to go into that in more detail someday. I'll be able to talk more about it once my work is well underway.
That, though, may take a while.