The Lighter

On Mother’s Day I spoke to my mom. During our call, she noted that I have not posted anything on Substack for a while. Later that day, my mom’s sister made the same observation. My mom and her sister, being sisters, sometimes have divergent perspectives. Sometimes they disagree. That’s between them. But when they have aligning viewpoints directed at me, I have learned that it’s best to pay close attention.

So I need to clear this up.

For the past two months, I have not posted on Substack, but I have been writing. I’ve been writing every day, writing two different pieces that are not even thirty percent finished. I write the same few sentences over and again, edit them until they are meaningless gibberish, delete them, then start again. Each attempt feels more wooden, more contrived, more removed from what I think I want to say.

This is Writer’s Block. For those who don’t already know, it feels something like this: Imagine sitting down to smoke one cigarette. It might not be fancy—not Gauloises or Prince, not something carried in a monogrammed case that clicks pleasingly shut—but it’s a cigarette, the first one of the day, the dopamine might kick in, and if nothing else the gunk in your chest will break loose. You put the cigarette in your mouth and reach for your lighter, smelling the processed tobacco and pressing your lips around the filter. You hope to soon taste the smoke, even though you know that your lighter does not work. For reasons you can’t explain but know to be true, you can’t be bothered with matches. Your lighter has not worked for days, weeks, months. You can’t remember how long. You wish you’d saved the butt of the last cigarette you were able to light. You’d pin it to your lapel, perhaps. This information is not new, the nonfunctioning of your lighter. Still, it’s a lighter. It’s the lighter you use—that you’ve always used—and you have a cigarette ready to smoke, so you try. You flick your thumb to make the spark to light the flame, but nothing happens. There is no flame. You resolve that today will be the day you finally coax fire from the lighter. You tap it on a table; you knock it against a desk; you reason with it, make promises, make threats to dismantle it with a hammer and a screwdriver and scatter it over an abandoned gravel lot; you throw it across the room then, walking to get it, you pray some kind of Old Testament prayer, something David might have written for his private journal—not the Psalms—after his armies were defeated and his mistress left him and his favorite harp was ruined by rats.

You give up on the lighter. You remove the cigarette from your mouth and sniff at it, imagining how good it would be to light up. You still can’t remember the last time you were able to smoke. You should get a grip, get a life, just walk away and quit. You can’t.

I was twelve when I smoked my first cigarette. A classmate and I were out riding bikes, shooting baskets, throwing rocks, cursing excessively, spitting excessively, and engaging in other activities that appeal to certain twelve year old boys. The other kid said, “Hey, my sister’s not home. Wanna check out her apartment? It’s just down the block.”

I knew this kid was the youngest in his family, many years younger than his siblings. I’d never met his siblings, including the sister who supposedly lived in this apartment we were about to visit. I knew of their existence only in the abstract. I’d seen them two-dimensionally in family photos displayed on a wall. It never occurred to me that this kid’s older siblings were real people who led real lives.

This “real person” concept began to set in when we entered the sister’s apartment. I don’t recall how we got in. It was dark. I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be there. I doubt I thought about that. The space was humble, with a living room and a kitchen. There was a small sitting area with a table. I imagine there was a bedroom and a bathroom, but this kid’s older sister was 20, maybe 21. I was scared enough of 14 year old girls. I had no doubt that I’d spontaneously combust if I went near the bedroom or bathroom.

I stayed in the living room, ambling, looking around. This is a standard move for criminals, the leisurely wandering. I know this because later in life I worked with many convicted criminals, and a lot of them talked about leisurely wandering as a distinct phase of the overall criminal undertaking, being cool like Fonzie and not bugging out. Although at the time I viewed our entry into this kid’s sister’s apartment as something to do in lieu of throwing rocks and cursing, now I’m pretty sure our presence there was illegal in nature because, again, I’m pretty sure we were not supposed to be there.

In the living room there was a sofa and a small coffee table with an ashtray in the middle. I said, “There’s an ashtray.” The kid I was with said, “Lemme see if I can find her smokes.” He found them. He asked if I knew how to smoke. That was a stupid question. Of course I knew how to smoke.

That day the lighter worked, or maybe we used matches. Either way, the cigarettes lit. At first, I coughed and coughed and nearly threw up in my mouth. By the time mine was finished, I knew how to smoke. I also felt dizzy and sick to my stomach and didn’t feel like throwing rocks or riding my bike. I couldn’t understand why so many people seemed to enjoy smoking so much. I’d like to think that I promised myself that day that I’d never smoke again. I’d also like to think that, if I made such a promise, I secretly knew in the moment that it was a promise I’d absolutely break.

As I did.

It’s been 29 years since I last smoked a cigarette. And yet. Some mornings, when I go out with my dog, someone is smoking across the street from the bus stop outside my complex, smoking the day’s first cigarette. The smoke covers a large area. I can’t help but pass through. I think, “This is disgusting.” Then I think, “And I’d love to smoke one more cigarette, if I could be sure that would be it.”

It would not.

I walk the dog, head back inside, and sit down to write, hoping the lighter will work.