3.11

[If you've noticed, I've taken a brief sabbatical from the blog. It was an unintentional side effect of taking a photography class and three upper-division English classes simultaneously. I have literally no creative desire. I have no ideas and no thoughts. I've been sucked dry for the very first time by my classes. So if you want to read something, may I suggest Ghosty Men. It's short, sweet, and ever so interesting. If that strikes your fancy, strike away at it.]

I light a cigarette and roll it slowly between my fingers. The soft, papery white muzzle dances lazily on my thumb and forefinger. I can't look away from it, but I am still aware. I can hear the silence of the hall, smell the lights, feel the fear of the crowd.
Rewind.
I have just walked onstage, and I float on the murmuring turns of the audience as they wait for something to amaze them. I am myself, but I am larger than life. The carton in my pocket burns a rectangle into my side, awkward and unfamiliar but eminently mine. It feels right. The tidal swell of a heartbeat crashes in my ears. Did you know that if you put a conch against your ear, you can hear the sea? Well, only if you're standing near the sea. In an auditorium, you can only hear the sound of
thump thump
thump thump
when you're standing in the spotlight on an old, creaky floor just a few feet from where the hoarde is waiting for you to fascinate.
I pull up just short of the microphone stand and taste the iron of blood on my tongue. I wasn't aware I had bitten myself. Nervous, or penitent. For the two seconds it takes for my tongue to explore my mouth, there is silence, and I stare off into the middle distance. A man (I think) says WELL with an impertinent uptic. People laugh. I smile, but nobody can see the blood on my teeth.
Well, I say, You've come a long way to see me, some of you. Let's hope it's worth it.
I pull the paper box from my suit jacket. As its form is fully lit, the hall goes roadkill silent. All that's left is the bluebottle whine of the electric lights. My mouth has gone dry and snaps as I move my tongue. I awkwardly peel at the paper seal until it gives way. I try to tap the box like the Woman in the movies, but all that comes out is laughter. I give it a go the old-fashioned way. When I get the thing out,
I light the cigarette and roll it slowly between my fingers. The soft, papery white muzzle dances lazily on my thumb and forefinger. The symbol of it has always scared me, for some reason, and now I hold it just so. The flames on the end crawl, infection, poison, the slow replay of a cannon snot spreading and expanding until the sound of it hits your ears and you can't see anything for all the sound.
I can't see anything because the hall is so silent.
Look at the Christians all afraid of what must come next.
I explain You know I'm excited by being a cigarette smoker. I'm unique in this age--a man who smokes despite it isn't cool anymore. Everybody knows it's bad bad bad. I can't smoke anywhere but outside, and that hardly. Cigs have a prohibitive cost--at least, the good ones. It's not a thing that draws people together anymore, like it was. Now that's coffee. Movies. Running in the park. Yesterday on the bus, I met a man wrinkled like the end of the earth and he smokes. He saw my box when I put it in my pocket and he sneered and pulled away like I was gonna breathe on him.
The cigarette is burning closer to my fingers, the ash on the end waiting to blow away at a touch like an orgasm: a nuclear bomb. I tap it with my thumb and the collected debris falls slow to the ground but nobody watches it.
I clear my throat We smokers aren't a popular breed anymore.
I drop the thing just as my fingers get hot, and it falls too slow to the floor, where I grind it out and look back up at the black and the spotlight and the blinding silence.
I smile. I continue Still, I've never smoked a cigarette. I just like the idea.
I walk off stage and the blindness dissipates behind me.
Clamor.
Fear.
Pity.
Loathing.

But I've beaten them all at their own metaphor.
Strange, but I can't taste the blood anymore.