I am going to dedicate the rest of my life

I just realized that this Friday will be 11 years of not smoking. ELEVEN. I have opinions about smoking and one of them is that it is awesome. I won’t bring up the others.

Maybe (hopefully) you read the piece by Jerry Saltz, My Appetites, published earlier this year in New York Magazine. It’s terrific through and through. I think about this particular passage a lot:

I haven’t had a pancake, waffle, or piece of French toast in decades — afraid I’d instantly become addicted the same way I know if I took one puff of a cigarette, I’d start smoking again. I did this once in 1986, a month after Roberta [@robertasmithnyt] and I met. I wanted to show her how cool I looked with a butt in my mouth. I took a drag, and as the smoke filled my lungs, I still remember thinking, I am going to dedicate the rest of my life to smoking. And so I did, for 18 months from that day, before going cold turkey. Do I sound like someone with food or possible substance-abuse issues? I do. But I’ve white-knuckled it this far.

I don’t give a fuck about pancakes or waffles or French toast, but oh, cigarettes.

I went cold turkey on New Years day 2010 in Texas—left my unfinished pack by the pool at Thunderbird Marfa before heading out of town.

This is a picture of me in 2006 sneaking a smoke in Austin. Man, that was a fun night.