My Last Cigarette

Our Australian shepherd King, in the light of 8 a.m., in the bite of the cold and early burn of the sun, is absolutely regal. He lives up to his name, as hopefully will our future son, Cash Guthrie. If things go well, and I'm sure they will, Brock and I will die poor and a long time from now, with hopefully our names written down at least one spine. And our son will be able to afford a couple of lovely funerals.

As I rocked on the porch this morning King tilted his head high, looking east and not squinting a bit. The original buggy is always on guard for something approaching. Back in Baton Rouge this could be a mailman, or a kid selling candy, or the dozens of cars passing our Cloverdale home every day. Each approach not mine or Brock's was deemed The Enemy. And if you weren't us, or someone we loved, King could bark you back to where you came from. Strangers, King don't play that.

Maybe this morning as he balanced straight and firm on his hind legs King was thinking he's living so far into the woods he never sees strangers anymore, and this is worrisome. This possibly led to some profound questions: Who do I hate, Who do I love, Where are all of you...and maybe I was thinking these things too. Courtney's pack of Ultra Lights sat on the wicker table holding perhaps her last five cigarettes on this earth (she'll start her Chantix prescription tomorrow), so I lit one up. Seeing as I only smoke with Courtney, because it reminds me of our first semester teaching and how much I love her, I considered that this might be my last one on earth too. Isn't it pretty to think so? I thought.

Other pretty things: the way my friends take care of me in ways so overwhelming I can hardly appreciate them. Courtney, with books and music and beer and decor and food. Greg, with what's baked in his kitchen and what's on his mind. Generous ears from Jessica and Amy. My mom, the best, filling cards and emails that could be read as lessons to anyone on how to love well. They all do it so facilely, this loving me. And sometimes the most I can offer in return is the emotional equivalent of a handshake. I love you, don't touch me. Well, you can touch me, but not so much. If you don't mind I'm gonna stand over here and half-listen for awhile because to listen wholly means I'm really in for some pain. Your pain plus mine plus the pain of the unidentified suffering humans in far-off regions of the earth is too much for me to handle. I've got my husband. I've got my buggies. I love you, I do, but it's a good thing you're over there, where I can get away with only half-listening. Right here's plenty full.

* * * * *

For that first searing pain, though, I really listened: it was me and Brock inside my Toyota Echo after a trip to the casino in 2004, a date before we officially started counting dates. That night we won $250 on slots and drank $50 worth of free Beam. Brock said the win was inevitable because I was with him--my presence was that powerful--and the greatest beauty of it all was that I didn't know it. This was before casinos were scary and depressing, back when I could laugh while inside them. Back then, I only saw was Brock's face, the vagueness of light and his halo of cigarette smoke. A Camel Light first in his mouth, then in mine.

There was no sexy way to hold a cigarette, nor did I need to find one, I realized. All I wanted was to fold this person into me and protect and love him, and he loved that--though he was far from trusting it. You love me, he thought, but don't touch me. Well, you can touch me there, but not here.

Later that casino night I dropped him off at his apartment. I was not sleeping over, I was independent and had very important things to do the next day. Neither of us wanted him to get out of my car and go inside. The Toyota Echo's speakers whispered Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, and when "You're a Big Girl Now" began to play, Brock wept without tears. This, and many other things, he showed me was possible. I leaned over to the passenger's side, and held and stroked and held, and didn't say anything, not even after he told me, "It hurts." Back then I was dumb to it, but Bob Dylan knew, because on top of Brock's quiet sadness he sang another kind:

Bird on the horizon, sittin' on a fence,
He's singin' his song for me at his own expense.
And I'm just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin' just for you.
I hope that you can hear,
Hear me singin' through these tears.

Dangerous women in Ohio brought Brock to Louisiana, and I was so even and boring I could never be dangerous. Back then, that night in my car, this was my biggest fear. "You're the most dangerous kind," he told me later, "because you are caring and everyone can love you and you can love everyone back." Even King, too cool for most of Brock's folks, loved me a lot. With his paws on my shoulders he licked circles around my face every time I stepped in their door. Dangerous women bored him, and when they became enraged he balanced his hind legs in the corner of the room and slowly sunk down on his belly, paw over paw, a resting place for his chin.

That night at the casino was the last time I remember Brock and I smoking alone together, without the company of smoker-friends. We simply stopped buying packs. Who needs this? we thought. Whiskey is good without cigarettes, so long as you're listening to me.

Years later, and only after working my way through this blog, I'm not sure I completely listened to that first pain, or if I did, it was only halfway. The first pain Brock shared with me bore my first real one. Yes, I'd had boyfriends before, and some punched and spit and ignored and cursed me, but in retrospect they were funny because they were all so small. If they'd made me cry I couldn't remember it. Brock was as enormous as his sadness, and from here on out my tears would be infinite.

It's a price I have to pay
You're a big girl all the way.

There's guilt here, though, because my first reaction to loving the saddest man in the world was to consider my newly-born pain. I asked myself as I held and stroked and held: how do I get him out of this? What woman can I kill? What memories can I stab away with kisses? The proliferation of Is is only pronounced now in the white space I'm writing in. Only now I wonder where Brock resided in my insides as he rested his head on my shoulder. Did I let him in right here, or did I hold him away, just let him touch over there?

After Courtney and Greg leave this morning, Brock marvels over Courtney's gifts, and though he doesn't say it I know what we're both thinking: I'm not the best gift-giver in the world. He says we need to get her something really nice before we see her again, and I agree. Surely there's a CD, book, or movie with her name on it. She's easily inspired, for which we're grateful.

Brock's not thinking this but I am: years after that first hurt I'm not even so good at listening. I should be thinking of a present, really brainstorming it, but it's just the memory of Brock on my shoulder and a heart that was halfway empty. For a minute I consider my lack of concentration could be the lack of cigarettes. I can still bum from Amy. Maybe Courtney's Chantix won't work.