HOLY SMOKE

01.08.04

A friend of my father brought some small Cuban cigars at home. He brought them from the beloved America and handed them to us in the way that your uncle and aunt hand you a special Easter egg. For some strange reason, when I hear about cigars, my mouth is watering. You can say that I’m ‘wasted’ or ‘mister nowhere’ (mister nowhere, mister nowhere’s and so on) but I think that the cigar and all that stuff is not something you just smoke. It’s something you can have in your pocket for days. Untouched and carefully preserved. Like a rocket that will explode at the right time.

So I was waiting for the right time and told mom: ‘I’ll try one’. She thought I was joking and when I finally told her that I was serious she crossed her fingers, as if I told her that I have been shooting up with heroin for the last two years. Both my parents are smokers. My father smokes like a chimney. Nonetheless, when it has to do with me, smoking equals murder, robbery, and thus punishment. Is there any bigger punishment than listen to mom crying and trying to talk you out of smoking? When my friends come, they even offer them an ashtray. It doesn’t matter that they are 25 years old. I’m still a baby to my parents’ eyes. I’m asking: till when?

I KNOW THE ANSWER. THE REASON? DEPENDENCE

All right, yes, I knew the answer. They’ll never stop seeing me as a baby but I have to do something as well if I want to change things a bit. All right, some times I ask them to do things for me while I’m not supposed to do so and this encourages them to see me the way they do. This is another reason why I want to go far away from them, even if this simply means to move in the next block (I’ll be neither the one nor the only!). Dependence is mutual. So do you understand why I long so much for living in countries far away? Very far away, where the lunchbox will reach me only by post and if I don’t want it, I won’t even go pick it up. (I know that I will definitely want it no matter what I’m saying right now but that’s a whole other story.)Somebody has to help me break the chain that has bound my parents and me for Somebody has to help me break the chain that has bound my parents and me for good. Nobody will. I will do this on my own.