columninches
I moved with a fast set when I was fourteen. God, we were crazy. We went to parties, we drank cider, some of us passed out in pools of vomit, while others danced provocatively and played Aerosmith at full volume on the stereo. And everyone smoked. Simply everyone. Well, darling, it was the thing: we were into trashy Americano chic, and a ten-pack of Marlboro Lights was just the status symbol. It said, 'I am in charge.' It said, 'I am cool.' It said, 'I know about sex. And not just the biology-lesson type, but the whole, sweaty, p.24-of-the-Karma-Sutra kind, because I am a woman, baby.'
It was a phase of course, like our parents always said. We got older, we ditched Strongbow for Bacardi Breezers and then in turn for Smirnoff. We got over ourselves a little and decided that stale tobacco smells and lung cancer were possibly not in themselves all that hip. From the age of sixteen, I was once more a smoke-free zone, and probably far better for it.
So how did it come about, then, that at the start of this term's Freshers' Week, I could be found in the JCR doorway, lurking strangely, welcoming the new kids with a half-smoked Benson hanging between my fingers? Why did I backslide? Where did my parents go wrong?
I blame the Glasgow Herald, to be honest. Two weeks' work experience this summer, spent entirely in the company of sharp, cynical men who chain-smoked through press-conferences and were to all extents and purposes functional alcoholics. It was fantastic. As I discovered within the first two days, all the paper's socialising went on in the smoking room: a tiny, brown-stained cell called, with gallows' humour, the 'Roy Castle Memorial Room'. That should have been sufficient warning, but it wasn't. The sports editor offered me a crumpled pack of B&H, and I was lost.
Okay, okay, I can't really blame anyone else for my rediscovered habit. Fundamentally, deep within me, I'm still fourteen and I still think smoking is great. It relaxes, it stimulates, it provides therapy for nervous hands, and most of all, to my impressionable eyes it's irresistibly sexy. The way the smoke curls dreamily about your wrist in the lamplight; the gorgeous blue plume of exhalation... To see my Obsession of the Moment (he of the tousled curls and bedroom eyes) lighting up in the bar with his friends is to know what Aristotle meant by pity and fear. Call me fickle, call me shallow, but the sex appeal that boy can put into the humble fag is quite off the scale.
That said, I'm not really sure if I now want to embrace the cancer-sticks as a full-on lifestyle choice. My overdraft may not be up to supporting a proper habit, for one thing, and the still-sane part of my mind knows that the whole process is fairly disgusting and antisocial. But it's Finals year, and I may need some artificial stimulants in order to get through. Plus I just discovered this week that I can blow quite fabulous smoke rings. What is a girl to do?
7th Oct 1999