Monday night was my last night as a smoker, and it was one of the best nights of my life. I drank a bottle of Giesen, put on the new Radiohead album, and smoked fifteen cigarettes in the bathtub. I posted on Facebook that as of tomorrow I would be a non-smoker, and I got 38 posts of encouragement, and 13 ‘likes.’
At 12:30am I sat on my back step and smoked my last dart all the way to the butt. My cat sat beside me on the step, wisely swaying her little head as if to say, ‘well done you, well done.’ I threw my ashtray and lighters into the bin and stumbled off to bed, off my tits drunk and slightly nauseous. I passed out thinking smugly of seeing my boy crush the next day, and how great I would smell when I walked past him in the hallway.
The next morning I was hungover as hell. As I drove to work my hands were shaking and the sun was blinding my eyes. My car was going too fast, people were braking and switching lanes in front of me as if I was invisible and every driver passing looked like they wanted to kill me and everybody I cared about. I stumbled through the front doors and my boy crush was standing in the entranceway, smiling and saying ‘hi, how are you’ with his gravelly ‘let’s go to bed’ voice. I tripped up the stairs, shrieking something about how non-smokers can’t drive, and fell into my office chair, trying not to gag.
I put on my first Nicorette patch and smugly switched on my computer, thinking, ‘let’s do this thing.’ Five minutes later the office was filled with the smell of burning flesh. The patch had created a rash all the way down my arm, and the admin girls crowded around me, telling me to take it off because I was having an allergic reaction. I pulled it off and stuck it on my other arm, and five minutes later that arm swelled up too.
The girls made me go downstairs to get burn cream from the first aid kit. Unfortunately my boy crush was the person I had to ask for this. As I stood in the doorway, teary eyed and hung over, he smiled sweetly and asked if I wanted a coffee. What I really wanted was to have sex with him and then die but I kept that information to myself.
The patches were too strong, my heart was racing, I was sweating and shaking and every time the phone rung I flew out of my chair in surprise. I laughed too loud, I kicked the photocopier, my arms were burning, my make up was running. People peered at me from behind their computer screens like I was a hydrogen bomb, or Lindsay Lohan.
When I got home I put on two more patches and watched New Zealand’s next Top Model, trembling and sweating and wondering why that foul mouthed Dakota hadn’t been eliminated yet. I went to bed knowing full well I wouldn’t sleep a wink, and I fucking didn’t.
Day one: great success.
A
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