Читать книгу White Asparagus - D. R. Belz - Страница 22

I’m thinking of having a card made up to carry around in my wallet, somewhat like the medical emergency cards, which will read:

“I am a cigarette addict. If you give me a cigarette, I will smoke it. If you smoke a cigarette in front of me, I will watch you smoke it. As I would like to live to a ripe old age and have lots of great grandchildren, please don’t give me a cigarette or smoke nearby. Failing that, please blow some my way.”

Cigarettes in movies these days aren’t cool. In fact, I’m not sure they ever were. In the intrigue thriller “Winterset” made in 1936 (that was when you could still buy a $15 suit and H.L. Mencken still wrote for The Evening Sun) an evil character says with great aplomb, “Give me another coffin nail.” He means a cigarette, and everybody in the audience shivers at that point. In “Body Heat,” William Hurt jogs and smokes simultaneously, one of the best bits of character development in years. And look what happens to him.

The only people in movies who smoked and got any real respect were Garbo and Bogart, and we all know how their characters were movie paradoxes, heroes who never seemed quite wholesome or completely heroic.

Cigarettes, let’s face it, are naughty. We’re told that right from the beginning until we’re old enough to know better, and then we’re old enough to choose to be naughty. Cigarettes, unfortunately, and ironically, are a link most people have with their carefree and rebellious halcyon days. Fast cars, provocative clothes, late hours, and a pack of butts. Or, if a person never went through the rebellious stage, smoking later vicariously fulfills the need to be naughty.

I remember my first cigarette as other people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. In the woods, a bunch of friends and I smoked a cigarette, the kind with the mysterious chambered filter. We puffed and puffed and then waited for the police. When they didn’t come, we wandered off to play wiffleball, thinking we knew something we weren’t supposed to, but couldn’t quite figure out what.

We were warned, though. One of Perry Mason’s adversaries, Hamilton Berger, played by real-life smoker William Talman, did a TV spot for the American Cancer Society that stated, “I’m dying of lung cancer . . .” We shivered, sure it was because he never agreed with Perry.

The president of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is on record as having said that the tobacco industry doesn’t have much time left in this country. I believe this is probably because the decline in people’s smoking is linked to the realization that smoking past a certain age ceases to be a glamorous, rebellious lifestyle and begins to be a rebellion against life. If you can feel a chill lighting up, it may well be the icy hand of death upon your shoulder.

You will note the signals if you and your friends are getting ready to quit. You begin by using each other as scapegoats. “I only smoke around you.” “You’re corrupting me.” “I can’t believe you still smoke those things – give me one will you – and don’t tell.” Now, we’re naughty again, sneaking smokes on the back porch at parties. Trouble is, there are a lot of us on that porch. But we were warned.

They tell me that people stricken with catastrophic illness frequently ask the question “Why me?” If the TV and movie stimuli that induce people to smoke by example have been removed, and the link to heart disease and cancer is a strong one, why do people continue to smoke? Print the skull and crossbones on the pack with a big label in red stating “Poison!” and I’ll wager people will still light up.

Filmmakers don’t use cigarettes as a symbol of being cool or sexy or glamorous anymore. I’m not sure they ever did, really. But I can still see Rod Serling introducing the early episodes of “The Twilight Zone” ominously smoking a Chesterfield. We were warned. Why do we do it? There’s a signpost up ahead.

Next stop . . .