Fred Aiken Writing

“You need to stop smoking.”

That’s the reason I found myself doing the dumbest things I think I could ever do: taking up vaping.

I thought the doctor would give me some useful advice on how to quit, something that would finally stick.

But before the cancer diagnosis, I had assumed that I would smoke like my granddad, to the day I died and with very little consequences. That’s not to say that there was never anything wrong with Grandpop Joe. He certainly had his problems.

He was incredibly racist. A bit sexist. And he had an overabundance of tumors metastasizing all throughout his body. I think the nurses liked to call him the Polka Dot Man because of how his x-rays looked.

Either way, I never saw myself as a vaper. It sort of fell into place.

You see, I was incredibly down about the whole cancer diagnosis and facing my mortality. I wouldn’t say that I’d thought myself immortal. But I guess at forty-seven I hadn’t quite accepted death as all that imminent. Sure, accidents happened all the time, and some were even fatal. But I hoped against all hope that my accidents would continue to be benign, or at least not life-threatening.

But sitting in the parking lot, looking down at the half-consumed pack of cigarettes of a brand that I’d rather not mention just so I won’t get the cravings yet again, I broke down. I hope that no one saw me banging my limbs and head against the steering wheel, window, and seat of my car, but I doubt I was that lucky.

I wanted to rage quit.

I screamed as loud as possible.

I lit another cigarette. But I didn’t smoke it.

When I got home, I googled ways to try and stop smoking.

Most of the suggestions were things I had already done over the past twenty some odd years. The patch. Nicorette. Hypnotherapy. Actually, I hadn’t tried that last one, but out of principle I refused to ever see a therapist. I just don’t think I could ever support someone whose job title included ‘rapist’ in it. No, on a serious note, I just never thought therapy was for me, especially a type of therapy that entailed someone putting me to sleep and whispering manipulative suggestions into my subconscious brain. Even if it did work, it just seems too creepy.

But there were a lot of suggestions on the internet of fellow and former smokers saying vaping e-cigarettes helped.

Most suggested that it was the closest approximation to smoking that I would be able to wean myself off the nicotine steadily and at my own pace.

None of the internet articles or comments mentioned the culture behind vaping.

Despite being a relatively new phenomenon, vaping somehow had an entire cult of personality. A certain aurora that I would have to adopt.

No one explained that to me when I went into my first vape shop. It was called Tony’s Vape and Smoke Shop. I assumed Tony was the owner, but later learned there was no Tony. In fact, the owner always wanted a son named Anthony, but never met anyone special and so instead he opened up various businesses and named them after kids he wished he had.

The vape seller had way too many tattoos. I’m not sure what number of tattoos is officially too many, but looking at this guy behind the counter of the vape shop, twirling his moustache and occasionally blowing vape clouds around himself, I knew that it was too many tattoos. He looked like a caricature of a hipster. Flannel shirt, neon orange suspenders, wool fedora, and waxed facial hair.

I should have taken it as a warning sign.

Never buy anything from a hipster. Never buy into a fad.

Just smoke your cigarettes. Have the doctors tell you you’re going to die. And then when it’s your time, just die from one of many carcinogens that took root in your bones.

But I got married. I met someone that wanted to start a family. I met someone that wanted me to be a better person.

It’s probably the main reason why people start and stop smoking: relationships. They’re a tricky sort. Navigating around another person’s feelings and wants. I barely knew what I wanted half the time.

But Elizabeth, that’s her name, said I needed to take the doctor seriously. I was getting to that age. She wanted kids, but she didn’t want the kids to ever be exposed to cigarettes. Her father was a smoker, and she had bad memories associated with him. Though I think it was mostly his alcohol abuse that made her father especially intolerable. 

Needless to say, she was the only reason I would endure having an overly-tattooed hipster help me pick out flavored vape juice for me to suck from some mechanical penis to get some sort of nicotine satiation. 

I hated the doctor at the moment.

I hated the hipster vape salesperson.

I hated my wife.

I hated my theoretical child that I hadn’t yet conceived.

I hated myself mostly.

A small part of me wanted to walk out on principle when he mentioned a watermelon bubblegum flavor vape juice. I could muster not smoking.

I heard the first week was the hardest, but then it got easy. I could handle a week. 

That was a lie. I had already tried multiple times, multiple weeks, all of which failed with me breaking down and smoking mere hours before the final 168 hours were up.

I picked out the least conspicuous vape pen with the most innocuous flavored vape juice, vanilla, and jolted to my car in hopes that I could forget about the entire experience.

When I went to inhale on the vape pen, I accidentally noticed myself in the rearview mirror of my ten-year-old beige Honda Civic.

You’re doing great, you piece of shit. I regret nothing.