I smoked maybe six cigarettes between the lawyer's office and home [the VOA halfway house]. I surprise many - not least myself - how little I now miss tobacco. But on this walk, it does taste good. I started smoking cigars - Macanudos, as I recall - when I was 17 or 18. I kept smoking cigars for years (when I stopped buying boxes of cigars is when I started hanging out with crack dealers), but I also stated smoking cigarettes when I was 21.
I started with Lucky Strikes, experimented with different brands, and finally stuck with Camels. The unfiltered kind - the only Camel that has no other words modifying the Camel. The kind you might walk a mile for. The only cigarette to be featured in a novel (Still Life with Woodpecker - go read it!)
Did I not know that tobacco would kill? Sure did.
Why did I start? Nerves.
Why did keep smoking? I never wanted to live as long as my mother's mother's family - well into their eighties.
Didn't work out the way I expected - COPD instead of cancer. The soon-to-be-ex never understood why I preferred cancer. Cancer will kill quickly. COPD will only make me more and more useless.
Not that I foresee much utility left in me. One problem came to mind while I am on my own recognizance but no way the federal government will care or pay attention. If once cannot be useful in life then why should they go on living?
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