Union Square Station
Malone
12/21

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

Smoking has taken a terrible beating in this country. Even here, in the most urbane of urban centers, you see only the tragic remains of the smokers' culture, with small grouplets of the disenfranchised forced to huddle outside of office buildings like cheesy Off-Track Betting addicts, sneaking in quick drags on the frustrating low-tar low-nicotine jobs to which the guilty have been forced to resort to assuage their shame.

This all came to mind just the other day when I was passed on the street by a woman, fiftyish, who still knew how to enjoy a cigarette. It was obvious that she had made her way up -- though not too far -- some corporate ladder, perhaps to an appreciated position in public relations, where she could easily have wielded a phone the way men and women of old wielded cigarettes. This woman had a precise way with her cigarette, neither dominated by it nor anxious to dominate it, but comfortable with it in a perfect harmony.

I think that she probably must know how to smoke a cigarette at virtually any time, for any occasion, without for a second giving in to the prevailing sentiments against this particular social sin. Not only could I picture her in perfect alignment with the après-boff cigarette, but perhaps even as someone capable of comfortably inhaling, without a break in concentration, during the sacred act itself.

Here in America most of the last great smokers disappeared during the 1960s with the dawn of health, fitness, and eternal youth. Sinatra knew how to wield the nicotine stick with some degree of class, and Bogart, who died of lung cancer in the 50s, probably handled his butts, individually and by the pack, better than anyone who has ever lived.

Of course, if the French are taken into account, I might be forced to reconsider that judgement. The French, after all, have cigarettes of genuine dimension, like Gauloises, which facilitate proper handling by their very nature. The French, with their particular cigarette skills, could easily take over the chores of someone like John Madden, renown for his American football commentary and his adept handling of the Telestrator, where the play just completed can be sketched out, as if in chalk, over the video still of the exact moment before the play began. The French, if my estimation of their cigarette skills are correct, could provide commentary entirely in French yet still make the action clear to Anglophones simply by waving the Telestrator pen the way they handle their cigarettes. It is, the cigarette and its proper handling, a universal language of sorts that has been banned and lost here in America and is not likely to be recovered any time soon.

During its glory days in America the cigarette was not just a debonair accessory, an indicator of sexual savoir faire, it was also quite an acceptable Christmas gift, with the various brands coming in special holiday cartons decorated with holly and tinsel graphics. It was not unusual at all, as late as the 60s and perhaps beyond, for a Winston or Camel smoker to find a carton of his brand among the gifts sitting under the tree. Such a gift didn't quite have the prestige of a Norelco shaver or a bottle of My Sin, but it filled the bill for a tight budget in line with the low expectations of the smoker whose needs it sought to satisfy.

My own career as a smoker was never good and far from classy. Within a month of taking up serious smoking, I was a chain smoker, and chain smoking is to true smoking skill what Los Angeles is to, well, New York.

An occasional cigarette for me is a grim reminder of my one-time capacity to run through a pack -- or two -- of Dunhills over the course of an evening in one of the watering holes on Seventh Street, where the only interruption that might prevent me from lighting the next cigarette off the dying butt of the last was the outbreak of a fight. I regret that I just wanted the nicotine without really learning to play the instrument itself. But, then, I was not what you would call a natural smoker, like Bogart.

The very antithesis of cigarette culture is not, as one might suspect, non-smoking culture, but rather cigar culture, which has all the subtlety of a dog with five legs. Cigar smokers, at best, emulate a ritual that just as easily could have seen its glory days during the era of open sewers, when something with a very strong smell was needed to accomplish a simple walk down the street. The cigar has nothing in common with the cigarette but tobacco, and that's just not enough. Its recent brief revival as a fad couldn't have passed faster than it did.

So now Americans are left with nothing to do in the empty spaces. Their hands are empty too, except, perhaps, for the cell phone, which is a blight on social life and human interaction, where the cigarette was a catalyst. No, I don't want to go back to the days where doctors and their patients in hospital could both enjoy a good smoke while discussing the latest chest X-rays. But for the sake of our declining social graces, it might not be the worst thing if men and women of good will would learn to wield the occasional cigarette with some grace and craft. This is Manhattan, after all.

© Union Square Journal 2000

Previously by Malone...

Union Square Station (12/11)

Union Square Station (12/3 back to 11/24)