On Breathing and Timing (first published in Phenomenal Literature)
I’ve been sick for a week. One time in high school, I had a cold that lasted months. I thought I would never get over it. It became a permanent fixture of my everyday. Three and a half months, and then one day it was gone. Another time, I had a cold that just wouldn’t let go. It was taking me in its grip just after I had moved to this city to start a new life. I was taking cough drops, trying everything. The cough drops were filled with menthol. Eventually, the cold released me, but it took my sense of smell with it. I could no longer smell anything, unless it had a powerful odor. If a public toilet reeked, all I could smell was menthol. I would be out on the streets, exposed to the diesel fumes of ancient trucks, and the only smell I got was menthol. I figured it wasn’t so bad, losing your sense of smell. It did have its perks. You were no longer subjected to rancid odors from every corner of the world. I don’t know how long this lasted.
Eventually, I got my sense of smell back, allowing my connection to this world to be at five once again. I no longer smelled menthol, but a few years later, I got into cigarettes. I tried the menthol kind, but that was not for me. Smoking cigarettes was a social thing. I mean, I only got into it as a social smoker, which meant I only touched the stuff when I went out drinking. It was a way to curb costs. A beer was about the same price as a pack of cigarettes, but it only lasted you fifteen minutes at a bar, whereas each of the twenty cigarettes in a pack lasted you about ten.
Then one day, you couldn’t smoke indoors anymore! I was there when it happened, and it happened in San Francisco, where the new laws changed barroom dynamics overnight. Some of the bars were adamantly opposed to this new law that would not only affect our city but influence the rest of the world in time. There was one bar on Sutter Street where the owner was a tyrant. He did whatever he wanted in his bar, and he would not allow such a law to take reign at his place. It was his place, he would say. This meant he could throw you out because he didn’t like the look of your face. He didn’t like cocky bastards, and I’ve seen him threaten the college boys that almost got fresh with his bartender. We would go outside to smoke and he would corral us back in the bar informing us that such laws were not welcome in his place. I didn’t like this guy, but I got along with him.
I was with a large group of people from work one night, and we were in the neighborhood, and so I suggested we go to his bar. We all knew each other from the workplace, and they thought it was a good idea. At first, the tyrannical owner was surprised, and he looked a little guarded, but he finally warmed up to us. But then he didn’t like the Polish guy in our group, who was already looking the worse for wear, like an amateur drunk. The little tyrant was happy I was bringing him so many customers, but later he wanted to know why the hell I brought these people! He didn’t like them. And they didn’t like him. They were laughing at him when he turned around after asking us to keep it down. I was feeling uncomfortable. I at the very least wanted everyone to get along if they were not going to go and actually like each other. It was two worlds colliding. In those days, I lived in about seven worlds, and I didn’t want one of them to go through a mutual armageddon with another one.
Suddenly, everybody started sneezing. Twenty-something people were hacking and wheezing all at once. The tyrant was swinging around again to demand what the shit was going on. We were asking him what the hell did he put in the vents! He started coughing too. It was ridiculous, everybody looking at each other and almost laughing if we weren’t choking. Everyone piled out of there to get the cold air of the rolling fog back into our lungs. Was it mace in the vents? Was it tear gas? They were telling the owner that they could have the place condemned with one phone call. Tabs were paid, and we got the hell out of there. Who knows how much of that stuff got back out of our systems again?
That year, I would get into smoking cloves. It was nothing like menthol or regular cigarettes. You had to really suck to take a drag from one of those brown cigarettes. The tobacco was irregular in makeup, and it would crackle and snap when you pulled on it. Almost immediately, something in it would numb your lips, but what I liked best about it was the sweet flavor. People would warn me, saying that I didn’t have long to live. Those cigarettes are ten times worse than the regular ones. They slashed your lungs, one guy told me, like drowning in razor blades. I was smoking everyday now and not too concerned with tomorrow.
I was starting to see myself as one of those people that accidentally become life smokers, but I never wanted to identify myself with cigarettes. I was in fact not a smoker; I was nothing more than a cheap guy who allowed himself to fall into circumstances that weren’t going to last forever. I had gotten into cigarettes with the understanding that it was going to be a phase. But who really knew if I was going to be able to quit them or not?
I learned that people like me (the kind that supposedly don’t smoke everyday) were best off if they quit before they hit their late thirties. If I got off the train at the right time, I could have my cake and eat it too. That meant I could have the good times cigarettes can offer you without paying for it in the end.
But how much is enough time doing something? The knowledge of a bleak future tied to a machine in a hospital was not always enough to cease the habit. I kept going. And one day, I got into meditation. This was because I was teaching a kindergarten class in another country, and I couldn’t take it. The meditation was supposed to help me get past the rage I was getting when trying to control these brats. The thing is I couldn’t accomplish any sort of meditation, but I did succeed in executing deep breathing exercises. This helped a little. I would focus on my breathing in class and then count to ten. It usually worked; at a moment’s notice, I could get myself under control, which meant I would forego yelling at the kids.
There was a byproduct to my search for a calm mind. What I noticed is that my lungs were expanding. It felt like they were stronger than ever before. What a waste it would be if I didn’t let go of smoking already! By that time I was again only doing it at bars. I don’t know, but the timing was right. I swore off cigarettes and would only return now and again for a taste of memories.
This morning, I was coughing in the car, and my little girl asked me if I were okay. I was taking her to the daycare, and I explained to her that being sick is not all bad. My cold had changed into a coughing cold now, and so I was going to be coughing up phlegm that was going to take the bad stuff out. I explained to her that even when we are not sick, we are still breathing in bad things that a large city makes. Getting sick is an opportunity. It is the only natural way to get that filth out.
When she gets older, I’ll explain to her that like all things in life, the good and the bad come in cycles, which have to be accepted. I wish I weren’t sick, but at least I’m not smoking.
— Rey Armenteros