Tell me what you think of this opening line:
In any case, I smoked all the time. I started before breakfast–I skipped breakfast, actually–and kept it up till bedtime, sometimes beyond. I wasn’t literally a “chain” smoker, because I didn’t light each new cigarette with the butt of the last one. I used matches. But the reasons for this were more aesthetic than practical. I allowed myself no appreciable pause between smokes. I was, after all, a three-pack-a-day man. And leaving aside all the time I spent eating meals, on trains, in elevators, brushing my teeth–well, there were only so many waking hours left.
It tastes good.
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OK. That’s good. I mean, pretty good. I mean it would be pretty good, if it were true. In fact, it’s just a figure of speech. If people took tobacco in suppository form, they would say that it “sat” good.
I know. I remember: the feeling of self-possession smoking gave me. Of–collectedness, if that’s a word. The way it marked time, enforced stillness, encouraged lingering contemplation. The many performance opportunities it afforded–to express kinship or detachment, to master paraphernalia, to set small fires. These things were good, and real. But you get something like them with any long habit, any familiar groove, any intimacy or skill with particular objects or routines. What makes smoking different from, say, carrying worry beads is not something in the cigarettes themselves, but in the mystique that surrounds them.
