Quitting Smoking (and Nicotine in General)

A Decade Plus of Nicotine

I smoked my first cigarette in the summer after eighth grade. Actually, it was a swisher sweet cigar shared among friends who weren't really friends. We smoked in the trees near a lake whose name I've since forgotten. There was a small pig pen nearby – I'm still not sure why. One of the kids – he had one of those double Southern names – blew smoke in a pig's face. It squealed. I wanted to do the same after inhaling deeply and discovering why people smoked – it was like riding a roller coaster, except my head, throat, and chest were soaring. How had I not known that this existed?

“Is it over?” I asked as pigs squealed and adolescents chuckled.

I was 13 going on 14 then. Now, I'm 24 going on 25, and my first addiction still isn't over. After that eighth grade summer, I started riding my bike along Tennessee back roads with my head down, looking for unfinished cigarettes thrown from car windows. For the sake of oral hygiene, I'd tear off the filters. The rain used to be my enemy, spoiler of my spoils. By 15, I'd found a way around the elements by combining rolling papers and ashtrays with my bike foraging. I'd get up at 3 in the morning twice a week and ride down foggy streets to check on a number of hotspots, sheltered ashtrays. Those terribly loose and lumpy rolled cigarettes with five plus charred tobacco blends made my mornings.

As high school progressed, I grew better at getting cashiers to sell me nicotine. Most of my cigarettes were smoked in trees or abandoned farmhouses along back roads (I still feel strange smoking around other people, like masturbating in public). Biking five if not ten miles a day made me a faster high school cross country/track runner, and I took a perverse pride in my conflicting habits. I had a shot at state for the 800m, so I decided to stop smoking – I started dipping instead. This alternating pattern would continue for the next eight years.

I'm a flexible nicotine addict. When my chest and throat started to hurt from smoking, I'd switch to chewing tobacco. When sections of my gums started to recede, I'd switch to the other side (my favorite brand was Grizzly Wintergreen – it's a complete myth that dip contains fiberglass, but the way this one cut up my lip made me a temporary believer). Dipping was certainly a nastier, less romantic habit than smoking, but I thought that I'd stumbled onto something. I could just switch my nicotine delivery modes to minimize any unpleasant effects...

This kept up through college. I ran cross country and track for a little over a year and was humbled. The coach was a tough love kind of guy whose vans left at 6 AM sharp. Those vans would deposit us on mountain trails, and we'd run at least eight steep miles. I hadn't become any slower, but I was now somehow a third class runner and foolishly searched for ways to differentiate myself. How about a more reckless, carefree lifestyle? I started rolling my own cigarettes again and hacking up my lungs during every morning practice (Bali Shag blue was my brand – no other rollies can compare with that fine, moist, hair-like tobacco). I blew out my left knee the summer after freshman year. Rather than try to hold on to my running habit, I let go to better embrace my other lifestyle.

I'm 23 in Chicago. I alternate between Bali Shag and Grizzly Wintergreen (pouches this time, since they're cleaner, less abrasive and easier to tuck into my upper lip where the gums are more intact). I work a few part-time jobs and pursue my creative writing degree, but mostly I drink six pints of Special Export a day and sometimes a bottle of wine also and sometimes another six pints and sometimes I still get that rollercoaster nicotine buzz. I also get these red spots on my calves, which I attribute to drinking too much beer. I switch to liquor (vodka and rum mixed drinks, but bourbon always on its own). The rash goes away. I also start chewing nicotine gum because alternating tobaccos no longer does the trick. I will minimize all unpleasant effects!

“Yes, it's definitely a tumor,” the doctor said. I hadn't known that it was possible to be shocked but not surprised. I was an older 23 and bouncing between Chicago and Tennessee. I kept drinking and chewing my nicotine gum. My condition was very curable; I was able to get a couple of surgeries and avoid chemotherapy. The second surgery was my choice over other treatment options. I made a decision chart trying to weigh all the benefits and risks, but I chose the surgery because I wanted it to make me brave.

I made loose plans to travel for a month afterward, although it would take six weeks to recover. I was scared and didn't know what else to do, so I got this bike a few days before the surgery and promised myself that I'd be riding it a month after being cut open. I chose the bike, a laid-back black-and-white cruiser that looked like a killer whale to me, with care. Honestly, it wasn't my style, too slow and noisy (the wheel hubs rattled) for my tastes, but that killer whale bike was there a month later to help me keep my promise.

Well, this week I drank too much on Monday and misplaced my killer whale bike, so I decided to quit smoking (and nicotine in general) by mimicking the Fibonacci sequence.

The Great Big Fib (check on sequence vs. series)

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34.... see a pattern? Whether it's used to illustrate the growth of a bunny population, sunflower seed arrangements, or seashells, the sequence builds off itself. The next term is the sum of the two previous terms and there you have the Fibonacci sequence. Yes, it's beautiful and seen everywhere in life. However, there is a part that troubles me: those first two terms, 0 and 1. If you extend that sequence back, you'll find all zeroes: ….0, 0, 0, 0, 1.... The pattern holds (0 + 0 = 0) until you get to that first 1. It makes no sense! How can 0 + 0 = 1? How can so much nothing accumulate into something?

The irony is I recently picked smoking back up to wean myself off of nicotine gum. I was never serious about quitting, and the gum had less silly side effects than tobacco. I calculated that, at my gum chewing peak (no brand compares to CVS uncoated original flavor brand!), I was consuming a nicotine equivalent of about 1-3 packs of cigarettes a day (assuming that an average cigarette delivers 1-3mg with 20 per pack and comparing this to 15 pieces of 4mg nicotine gum chewed).

I decided to cross that great-big-fib-0-1 divide by smoking myself back to that first eighth grade summer cigarette. 8 + 5 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 20, or one pack of cigarettes. I bought a single pack on Tuesday after a sloppy Monday night so that I could taper down over the next six days.

My Strangely Rough Week

I decided to go to Film and a 40 night at the Eastern to celebrate having just payed the government about a month's paycheck in taxes. I rode my killer whale recovery bike there that night because, as mentioned in last week's post, the left pedal shaft broke free from my other bike. They were showing Back to the Future at 8 followed by Death Becomes Her (by the same director). 40s were only $3, so I drank 4 or 5 of them (my final bill was $16, but I can't remember how much of a tip I left). The movies were over, but the night was still young. Carefree, reckless, smoking but still cigarette-hungry, I decided to go next door to the White Horse for bourbon to get some fire in my belly.

My next moment of clarity came while trying to climb down a chain-link fence. I'd made it over the top but must have been trying to scale it like an insect because my head was pointed toward the earth. Once I realized that this wasn't possible, I slipped and fell. My forearms followed by my face verified the surface was soft grass. My glasses weren't on my face, so I combed the long grass for them. Nothing – no glasses, no idea where I was. A squat building nearby, a dugout, a baseball field... what? I blacked out again.

My mind and body returned to me in my apartment kitchen. I was frying frozen pork chops and boiling pasta. My shirt was missing all its buttons except for the top two. It was past 5 in the morning. I still had my cell phone and wallet, but, in addition to my glasses, my cigarettes and killer whale cruiser bike were gone.

My unbreakable quitting smoking (and nicotine in general) vow by mimicking the Fibonacci sequence began early Tuesday afternoon. I bought a pack of cigarettes and a giant blue Powerade from the Stop-N-Save next to my apartment. I started walking, looking for tall fences. This was not easy: nearby Montopolis park has about a dozen baseball fields surrounded by fences, and there are plenty of baseball fields/fences near the lake trail on the other side of the river. I shuffled around for a few hours in the heat scouring fence grass for my glasses. My search took me back to the Eastern, where I started looking for my killer whale bike, having given up on my glasses. I couldn't find the bike either.

From Tuesday to Friday, I walked everywhere, rationed my Fibonacci cigarettes, and tried to lose myself in work. After an unexpected text, I began to dwell on past romantic disappointments and failures. I hate it when people each excruciating detail of their relationship troubles lists, so I'm just going to say that my foolish impatience had turned to desperation by then to set the stage for Friday.

Friday the 20^th started out fine. I was in more forgiving clutches than those of my Monday mistress. My cigarette rationing was going as planned. I smoked a third of my second cigarette before stubbing it out for later and decided to go out for dinner. As I walked down Burton Drive past Emo's East (a music venue), I caught the eye of this tall white guy with tattoos on his face. He was standing at the edge of Emo's parking lot next to the sidewalk and absentmindedly holding a flip top cell phone to his left ear. I nodded and smiled. He took it as cue to walk alongside of me.

“You got a cigarette?” he asked, looking down on me with unblinking eyes.

“No, not on me, sorry,” I said as he kept walking with me.

“How about a dollar?”

“I don't have a dollar.”

“What about 50 cents?”

“Dude, I have no cash. I'm just out trying to get dinner.”

“I'll walk with you then. You could buy me a beer.” We'd gone about 100 feet and were near a liquor store. I stopped and turned to face him. He kept staring, and I wondered if he had no eyelids like a snake. I took in some of his facial tattoos: tribal spirals whorled across his jaw, dotted crescents climbed his cheekbones, and two red blades or badly drawn lightning bolts stood in for his eyebrows, which had been shaved just like his head. I went from apprehensive to intimidated.

“Listen, I'm just not in a kind mood,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“I don't care.”

“You don't care about what?”

“I just don't give a shit.”

“About what. What. What. You can say it man.”

“I don't give a shit about you,” I said. He nodded as if I'd affirmed his suspicions. I felt bad but started to turn away all the same. His right bicep and forearm flashed into view, but I didn't see the fist that connected with my lip. He leaned back and did a little shuffle dance in the liquor store parking lot. Thoughts zoomed past in the second that I decided I whether or not to hit him:

*You didn't get hit very hard

*You're tired, hungry and mellow – fighting will take a lot of effort

*He's bigger, meaner, and crazier than you are

*From the tattoos, he has no qualms about fucking up his face, so what will he do to yours if you lose?

I shook my head, backed up a few more steps, and walked away when he didn't try to come closer. I knew it was smart, sensible, but I felt instant, intense shame. At thought that hadn't flashed by in that decisive second sauntered into consciousness: you're scared, paralyzed, too timid to ever stick up for yourself.

“Hey – don't call the Police,” the crazy man called out.

“I'm not going to – I am a peaceful man!” I said. He smirked and trotted through traffic to the other side of the street before being swallowed up by another parking lot. It hadn't even occurred to me to call the police, and I was too embarrassed to anyway. I walked to the Wendy's that sometimes lets me take my bike through their late night drive-thru and inspected my face in the bathroom. Nothing was swollen. My mouth was bleeding but the was only because I had a sharp tooth that cut my lip. For all intents and purposes, I was fine, except that I felt like a complete coward. I hadn't run away or called the police, but I'd been too scared to hit back. I left the bathroom and ordered a bunch of sandwiches off the value meal to go plus a small frosty for my lip.

When I came out of Wendy's and stepped on to the sidewalk, he was there. The man with the tattooed face stood in the center of Riverside road. He stood on the slightly elevated median scanning the sidewalks. He caught sight of me, waved, a ran in front of a few cars toward me. I stood and waited, wondering if I could work up the nerve to give back what I got. Well, I'd have to deal either way.

“Hey man, I felt bad about before,” he said. Like his punch, those words caught me off guard.

“What? What do you want?” I asked.

“You didn't call the police, right?” he asked. Oh, that was what he wanted.

“Nope,” I said and started walking again.

“I got kicked out of Emo's. I was angry,” he said, keeping pace.

“That's not my fault.”

“Hey! I said my bad. What, you're going tell me I didn't say my bad?”

“Are you trying to put me in a word trap so you can hit me in the face again?”

“You didn't call the police, right?”

“No. You just disrespected me. I can swallow my pride.”

“I appreciate it” he said and trotted back across the street. I wasn't sure if he didn't care about cars or just had really good timing, but I was a little impressed. He was already back near the spot where he'd punched me, asking other passerby for beer and cigarettes by time I waited for the walk signal and approached. I knew that would probably be my last chance to hit him. Instead, I clutched my frosty and burgers and glared at him while walking past. He stared back with his unreadable, unblinking snake eyes and gave me a slow, lazy salute.

I tried not to dwell, but I was still fuming that I hadn't stuck up for myself when I got home. I had no appetite for food. I smoked my last three cigarettes, Fibonacci sequence be damned. As I stared at the bloody filter of that last cigarette, feeling like much less than a man, I knew I needed a resolution. I left my apartment to track down and confront that guy, except I went armed with a few of my burgers from Wendy's. That sociopath had asked me for something earlier and show him that I wasn't scared. The sun had already set, and, without my glasses that I'd lost on Monday, I had to prowl around and squint at people in the distance. I walked up and down the sidewalk a few times, but, just like my glasses and killer whale recovery bike, he was gone.

Back at my apartment, I saw that I'd gotten a text from this girl that I'd been trying to meet in person for a while. The text said: “hey, want to just fuck?” Yes, I did! Except that night, after an entire demoralizing week, I wasn't sure if I'd even literally be up for it. We called, talked, and agreed to meet up after the bars closed. I tried to stop my mouth from bleeding and build up my confidence over the next few hours. It was close to 2 when I found out that she had just gotten rejected by some other guy and drank too much – a parting insult, some shit sprinkles for my crap cupcake.

My first nicotine craving hit on Saturday morning – I could walk a few hundred feet to the Stop-N-Save (not to be confused with the Shop-N-Save across the intersection) and pick up a pack of Natural American Spirits (that was the brand the I bought blacked out a few weeks ago, so I kept with it for the sake of continuity – warning: No Additives does not mean a Safer Cigarette). I could also buy an Olde English HG 800 (8% ABV) 40 and finish it first to make that first cigarette all the sweeter. Yeah, I'd just retrace my Fibonacci steps and cross that 0-1 divide next week. It'd been a rough week, and I deserved it.

Not out of breath but still gasping pacing my apartment wanting rollercoaster nicotine buzz somehow outside the Stop-N-Save now tasting blood biting my swollen lip for a moment of clarity. I know what it is to be defeated, humiliated without ever sticking up for myself. When did I allow myself to become downtrodden, crushed by the predictable machinations of everyday life? When did giving up become my first resort?

Not that Saturday.

I kept walking with no destination in mind. Maybe I'd find my glasses, bike, and self-respect waiting in a hidden baseball field.

It's now been almost a week without nicotine. It still doesn't make sense. I don't know how, but people cross that great-big-fib-0-1 divide every day.

Week 5: Budget

I write about this thrilling fifth week for the sake of continuity. I made a vow to live on a tighter budget. My excessive indulgence at six bars last Tuesday and a partially-completed tax return convinced me that this would be a good idea if not a necessary one. Who knew that being a self-employed sometimes drunk could be so expensive? So, I visited my ATM outpost and withdrew $100 for the week.

Grocery shopping was my budget climax. While bags of oranges, cabbage, and pasta were somewhat exciting, they couldn't compare to my meat bundle. I scoured the aisles for a killer deal and discovered these $20-and-up assorted meat packs. I chose one with ground beef, hot dogs, skirt steak, pork chops, and a whole chicken. The entire grocery bill came to about $35, but it was the walk home that convinced me that food would not be a concern this week.

Shifting my value meat bundle from arm to arm, I realized that I had 14 pounds of meat. I could eat 2 pounds of meat a day! Or I could eat 1 pound of meat every day for two weeks! I felt secure, powerful, validated, like a prehistoric man hauling away a mammoth haunch after a successful hunt.

Most of my meals consisted of this boiled-cabbage-pasta fusion that never turned out the same way twice with assorted meats on top. Yes, this was the highlight of an otherwise overwhelmingly normal week.

I did go out: running, people-watching, and conversations are free. Plus, $2 Lonestar pints seem to be the standard most places. Weird Wednesday movies at the Alamo Drafthouse are a $1. I also found a bar that showed free movies on Monday with 40s for $3, but that had already happened and would have to wait until next week. My primary bike, whose pedal shaft broke off while crossing the interstate, would also have to wait that long for repairs.

Looking back, I spent most of my budget on 40s and cigarettes – I hadn't stopped smoking since picking up that random pack last Tuesday; instead of buying more nicotine gum, which I actually prefer, I kept buying cigarettes, which are cheaper on a cigarette:piece of gum scale. Staying within a $100 budget was easy - I just found cheaper ways to pursue the same vices while still spending as much time indulging in them.

So, approaching a budget from a pure dollars-and-cents perspective didn't evoke that new way of life for which I'm still looking. Money is just a thing used to measure other things. Just like my 14 pounds of meat, it's a way to feel secure, powerful, validated. Except I've spent mine is such a way as to let dead things, like 40s and cigarettes, rule me. If I don't budget accordingly, this will only grow worse.

Week 4: Flowers

The Reason Behind My Illustrious Quest to Become a Flower

“grow Grow GROW Goddammit! You can thrive, and you're calling it quits? Not on my watch – no more amnesty. Only animosity and adversity from here on out. Grow ingrates.”

That's what I said to my succubi on Wednesday. They live on my patio. Other people call them succulents, as in plants. Either way, I used to speak to them gently before spraying them in the face...

I first met my succubi in San Diego. I'd been going to this one local bar called the Blue Parrot and was invited by some New Age types to their place for more drinks. While there, I met a gardener who gave me a seashell that looked like a cutlass handle, one aged pepper, and two succubi – tiny creatures budding free from their mother plant.

My San Diego succubi stayed tucked away in that cutlass seashell in a dark corner of my backpack for nine days. These plants survived a nearly sleepless 55+ hour greyhound bus ride to Austin last year. They didn't complain when I couldn't find a place to stay that first night in Austin because of some stupid sports game crowding out all the hotels. I tried to hang out with people living in Zilker Park (having been introduced to them by a fellow greyhound traveler), but I left after they started snorting speed. My succubi didn't bat an eye when I went to west 5^th and 6^th street; my general plan was to make friends with someone in a bar and ask to spend the night on their couch. Instead I drank too much and woke up on a baseball field near Lamar and the fright train tracks. I stumbled back to this bridge at Lamar and Riverside and slept there.

The finer details of that time are for another story, another blog. The important part to know is my succubi made it through all that, and they started to grow once I got back to Tennessee. I took them with me on the move back to Austin, and lately, they haven't been doing so hot. Here I thought that my succubi were tried and true, that they'd seen the last of their tribulations, yet they started to wilt on my patio. I tried bringing them inside, watering them more, watering them less, and transporting them to a another pot filled with parched brown Chicagoan moss that hadn't been watered in years, yet I seemed unable to halt their decline.

Thus, this week I decided to go undercover as a plant. Due to their high visibility, I would observe Texas flowers. If I could learn their ways, then I just might be able to save my faithful succubi.

Initial Research

I noticed the Texas wildflowers while biking to the post office – blue, red, yellow – primary colors morphed and combined along a stretch of highway. A deluxe Crayola box of 128 shades would've paled in comparison. At first I thought this arrangement was professionally done, but I started to notice these patterns everywhere. I decided to follow the prettiest ones and found myself biking through a college campus that spit me out onto Congress.

I knew that I should be web writing to pay my bills and looked for a cafe. The first one I found was at the edge of a giant garden store known as the Great Outdoors. The cafe didn't have wifi, so I opted out of web writing and went to explore the several acres of plants behind me instead. The store had an upstairs and downstairs section for succubi – people milled about the plants like exceedingly indifferent, grossly inefficient pollinators. I approached a man looming over the upstairs succubi. He was not obese but had next to no neck; rather, his jaw seemed to merge with his collarbone. He reminded me of a caterpillar, so I figured he knew about plants.

“Excuse me, can I ask you a question about succubi – succulents?”

“Sure, what's up dude?” he asked. I told him the succubi story, leaving out the bus ride and sleeping under a bridge parts, only conveying the necessary details to let him know that I wanted to save these plants and their history with them.

“Um, I don't work here,” he said.

“That's okay. So, how about these,” I assured him and pointed out some succubi that looked to be a similar species as my own.

“You know, sometimes you just have to leave them alone, let them sort themselves out. They don't need much.” He wobbled his chin for emphasis. I nodded sagely while he launched into a story about how he'd bought a heart-shaped succubi for Valentine's day. We wished each other good ones, and I went downstairs. I decided that not only would I let my succubi have their space, but I'd bring another succubus home to fan their jealous fires. Witness the Living Stone – its success depends on me never over watering it.

I also purchased an iron flying pig. At the checkout, I reached into my backpack and showed the cashier flowers that I'd picked along the way. She was able to identify the Blue Bonnet, Texas' state flower, and a Black-eyed Susan. She also warned of an invasive species spreading throughout the land but could give me no name, saying only that it was a yellow, weed-like flower.

The Usurpers

I pondered whether I should find a book listing all the Texas wildflowers but eventually decided against that. Instead, I met a new friend for a picnic, combining my flower quest, a peacock earring I found under a cafe booth, and part of some broken headphones in hopes of making a good first impression.

After the picnic (which included a bottle of wine) and we parted ways, I was restless, hungry for sensation and more conversation. I texted four of my Austin friends to see if any of them wanted to get drinks. Everyone had prior engagements, so I decided to drink solo. I started at the Eastern with Bulleit bourbon. When it started raining, I got a Lonestar tall boy too. When the downpour lessened, I bought an Imperial and a shot of Jameson to celebrate while contemplating flowers.

Flowers, and plants in general, don't experience time the same way we do. Their movements are very slow and precise, and above all, they are patient – if you've ever seen tree roots that have split pavement or clinging vines that have eaten away at brick walls, you already know this. Knowing this made more restless, so I went to another bar and another and another and another, faster than flowers.

Wanting to get laid also drove me, thinking that enough alcohol would make me suave while drastically decreasing my chances with each drink. (In fact, the closest I came to any action that night was after biking up to the Wendy's drive-thru. A gentleman cut me off to give me a double burger that I'd forgotten and offered me a blow job. I politely declined, saying that I was too tired.)When it comes to sex, plants are way kinkier than us. They rarely embrace. Instead, they use pollinators, insects in many cases - the equivalent of having a flying sex toy that might pass among hundreds if not thousands of partners. Knowing deep down that I could never compete with that, I finally passed out at the White Horse bar, having come nearly full-circle, since it's right next door to the Eastern.

I think the bartenders let me sleep for a few hours, because it was 2am when one of them helped me out. Something was wrong with my bike; it kept wobbling and bucking, trying to shake me off, so I walked it the several miles to Riverside instead. That night, I reached an understanding of the invasive yellow flowers that are trying to blot out the Texas wildflowers in two words: one more. One more what? Exactly. What's being taken starts not to matter so much as the power of taking. Since I hadn't consulted a flower guidebook, I began to think of these invasive yellow flowers as the Usurpers.

The Station Agent

My shirt was ripped at the bottom and had chocolate frosty stains around the collar. What I felt wasn't a hangover so much as a heavy brain fog after a nasty downpour. I didn't follow flowers that day. I didn't do much of anything except mentally retrace my steps, making sure everything was in my wallet and apologizing to people to whom I'd sent gibberish texts last night. I'd also somehow acquired a pack of cigarettes with eight missing.

Shades drawn, my apartment became my recovery cave. I retreated to bed with water and my laptop. I also checked my OkCupid profile to make sure I hadn't been stupid. As I looked through my messaging history, I did come across an old, odd message from Chinese_Dentist. It read:

“HEY what's up, how are you liking austin so far? yeah, it's pretty good. where are you living? the east side, of course. okay nice chat.”

It seemed a rather one-sided conversation, but perhaps it was a message within a message. Perhaps someone had heard of my multi-week quest to beat the fright train at its own game, and they were making first contact! During an earlier search for sites connected to the fright train, I'd seen a trainhopping question posted on Yahoo! answers. The reply voted as best answer didn't make sense to my untrained eye, so it must've been a code. I sent it to Chinese_Dentist, hoping she'd know the cipher:

“espinil elkie yu tu mosieri. Thanks!”

On that sluggish, brain-foggy morning, she'd still given no reply. To distract myself from that disappointment, I watched The Station Agent, since I'm a fan of the very talented Peter Dinklage. The movie had fright trains as a central theme. Dinklage plays the character Finn, who leaves the city for rural New Jersey after his mentor dies. Finn just wants to be left alone to watch trains but finds himself getting more involved in the lives of a few townfolk. I won't give away the plot, but it reminded me that having friends to drink a beer and do nothing with is a blessing. As a species, we have that in common with flowers (not that flowers drink beer, but if you discover such a flower, please tell me. I'll murder you and claim the discovery as my own). No, what I mean is that we keep each other company.

The next few days were not enjoyable. Tuesday night was a sledgehammer that shattered my already flimsy weekly schedule, so I had to play catch-up. I started my tax return (was appalled by the results) and tried to stick to work but felt vaguely cheated spending most of time on tasks that I didn't particularly like. Yes, well that's life. Most people do that day in and day out, you might say. No thank you.

The highlight of that several-day period was smoking cigarettes from the mystery Tuesday pack on my patio and berating my succubi (I ran out of nicotine gum and decided not to get more). By then, my San Diego succubi had gone from wilted to withered, their stalks collapsing and leaving only three lonely leaves. I flicked ash into their pot and freaked out that I was smoking cigarettes once more, having already experienced some of their risks before. After a few puffs, I'd spray each unfinished cigarette with my spray bottle and deposit their soggy remains into the pot.

Chicagoan Moss

Saturday morning, I was expecting to spend my time in much the same fashion as the last few days. I found myself looking at this piece of art that I have yet to hang in my apartment. It was given to me by Mr. Bailey, who had been my brother's next door neighbor in New Orleans. He was giving me a tour of his yard and outside artwork. When I saw the piece, I told him that it looked like a satellite image of another planet. That made him happy, so he gave me the painting. When I look at it, I see the yellow parts as fields of alien daisies thousands of miles wide.

The is because Mr. Bailey also told me a story about how, as a kid, he'd give his dates daisies because he couldn't afford roses. A girl scoffed at that, but her mom saw it for what it was and put the daisies in her best vase. Mr. Bailey also showed me several paintings inspired by that time. One was a close-up shot of these daisies; one black flower was coiled around a daisy, red and black seeping from it into the wholesome yellow. When I asked him about that, he said: “the deadly daisy will make you feel beautiful for a day.”

I decided to keep to my flower vow for at least one more day. I went to the Lady Bird Lake trail and headed east. Once you get past Pleasant Valley road, there's an invisible net; it filters out people and lets in more flowers. I saw ravines on fire and the tiniest of yellow jewels. I saw shapes that I wish I could make and poses that I wish I could take. The best part is that that beauty isn't necessarily for us. While flowers appear pretty on the surface, many of their true colors aren't in our visible spectrum, designed instead to attract their pollinators who see through different eyes.

I kept wanting to collect specimens and make up names for them (like tutupenis for a set of flowers that didn't look like anything else). However, I started to feel greedy. Plus, I wasn't sure if some of these wildflowers were protected by law. “You can only have just one,” I told myself, but some flowers were so magnificently huge that I had to leave them be. All that day, I did my best to avoid the Usurpers and their one mores.

When I got home, I picked the damp cigarettes out of that succubi patio pot. “grow Grow GROW God... please, just grow.”

I wish I could say that my succubi did make a miraculous recovery, but that wouldn't be true. I put them, along with a pinch of dirt, back in their cutlass seashell to keep my other memories company. Why not?

As for the patio pot to which I'd transported my succubi as a last-ditch effort – well, it's served many functions, but it was originally used to house this moss that I dug up from a parking lot crack behind my first Chicago apartment two years ago. That was back when day drinking was a way of life and flowers weren't all that exciting. I hadn't watered that parched-brown surface until I tried to save the succubi. I don't know if it was all the soggy cigarettes, but somehow a tiny patch of that Chicagoan moss is now a faint shade of green.

Week 3: A Real Writer?

"You go out there with a good backpack, good clothing and good food, and these hardcore types don't mind meeting up with you," said detective Quackenbush, whose pursuit of hobo gangs led to the arrest of a trainhopping serial killer. "If you're out in a freight car in the middle of nowhere where there's one of you and five of them, they'll work you over like piranha and throw you out the boxcar. And who's gonna know?"

This excerpt came from a trainhopping article, now over a decade old. Except to my mind, the detective's name was Quackenworth. His stepfather was a conductor, but this minor coincidence had no bearing on Quackenworth's life path as a private eye of the fright train. No, Quackenworth shaped his destiny from an early age by counting every boxcar at train crossings, knowing the evil onslaught must pass after he'd reached the right number. If only he could compile the optimal amount of clues, justice would once again ride high along the train tracks.

That's how I feel about words, but whatever the day of the week, I'm dying a slow death by disorganization. I'm working a web writing job that requires me to fact check, cross reference, be creative, give constructive feedback and edit for a range of lessons and subjects as quickly as possible. I also somehow agreed to take on the role of fiction genre editor for a new magazine that involves creating a reputable first issue from scratch while coordinating and assigning submissions to seven co-editors, all of whom are older if not twice my age and seem way more experienced. These are excellent opportunities and outstanding people have my back in both cases, but I have to ask: when did I become an editor instead of a writer?

Add to this navigating adulthood, that strange world of contracts, taxes, bills, and more bills, and I'm like Detective Quackenworth counting boxcars, knowing that there has to be a cutoff, a safe crossing point, right? So, this week I vowed to transform back into a writer by sending out as many submissions as possible.

Since graduating from my MFA program, I've only sent out five submissions, which is, well, pathetic. I decided that if I could get just one publication anywhere, then I could call myself a real writer. I looked through a lot of my past work and finally decided on three short stories that would be the foundation of my getting published arsenal. I'd originally planned to send these three stories to as many places as possible, knowing that, in all probability, I'd have a better chance of getting accepted at least somewhere.

Again, there had to be a cutoff point, some magical number of submissions that would result in my first publication and being able to call myself a real writer. Except as I compiled unfamiliar websites and revised my all too familiar stories, I realized that only one of the stories in my arsenal (I liked it the least) was well-written. After losing a day, I finally ended up sending just that one story to a journal that I knew and respected. I want my first publication to mean something, and I think my other approach would have been the same as fucking anything with a hole and claiming I'd found true love.

Instead, I decided to spend this week writing the best damn page that I could. I also wanted it to be a complete story...

I first heard the story about a goldfish named Adolph about three years ago in Chicago. This goldfish wasn't always named Adolph. The fish's owner traveled out of state and left the goldfish alone in his apartment. The owner's landlord illegally moved all the stuff, including the goldfish, into storage. A month later, the owner returned, recovered his belongings, and found the goldfish still alive, somehow surviving in water only a few inches high and muddy with feces – not only this, but the goldfish had grown considerably.

The owner marveled at the amazing survival ability of his fish and then forgot it about it again, this time in the bottom of a cooler. The owner remembered the fish after moving apartments and found it squirming in water that now looked like chocolate milk filled with raisins... the fish was even bigger. The owner finally put the goldfish in a nice, new tank with clean water - all seemed well until he started adding other fish. This monstrous fish murdered all newcomers by ramming them in the gills. So, the goldfish spent the rest of its days in solitude, sometime thrashing around in the fake plants or nibbling its own poop. Somewhere along the way, the owner decided to name it Adolph. Personally, I would've named the goldfish Genghis, Stalin, or Rasputin, but it wasn't my fish.

I first wrote the goldfish story down after missing a flight and having to wait four hours for the next plane while contemplating Purgatory. It was really more of a blog post that anything.

A few months ago, I reworked it into a shorter story, about 1500 words long. This time it was a story within a story being told to a stubborn prisoner by an interrogator. The interrogator tells this admittedly juvenile story and comes off as stupid to the prisoner, who is with holding an important molecular formula. The prisoner begins to point out flaws, plot holes, becoming more invested in the story as the interrogator plods along. When he finishes the story, the interrogator leaves the holding chamber for a few seconds and comes back in with a cooler. Instead of containing a huge, forgotten goldfish, it's loaded with rations. The interrogator drops the stupid act and only taps an imaginary glass wall before leaving the prisoner to wait out his own forgotten goldfish story.

Writer friends gave me feedback – one suggested that I have the story take place after the goldfish story has been told and while the prisoner is stuck living it out. I limited myself to one notebook page while trying to recapture this story. This time I put it in second person.

The prisoner doesn't care about the goldfish's name – he's too busy trying to remember the name of the interrogator (a prim, proper, merciless woman) who told him the story, hoping to hasten her return and willing to say what needs to be said to leave his tank. He doesn't hate her; he blames the goldfish. Each day the fluid (some of it his own filth and some pumped in from outside) in his tank rises a little more. He worries that he's shrinking as the fluid rises, since the fish in the story grows as its water levels fall. Oh yeah, he's also been trying to keep afloat on this styrofoam cooler that's bigger than a coffin – some guards dragged it into his tank while the woman told him the story. Like the previous version, the cooler came filled with rations – now another piece of it crumbles away as he wonders if a goldfish can really survive on its own filth. Mostly though, he just wants her to make sense oh so many names ago.

The current goldfish story is actually shorter than the above summary. It's still not ready, but as I've come to memorize the lines to work and rework, everything else began to seem, well, less shitty if not downright enjoyable. I've been noticing Texas wildflowers everywhere I go and can't say for how long they've been there to behold. I also can't say when a story takes shape, but if I'm not yet a real writer, then at least I'm not a goldfish.

This week, I've also been working on follow-up questions as part of an interview with a real writer. We've talked about how society might be more a collection of tendencies than permanent selves. As we unearth these tendencies, abandon some and realign others, we just might be able to change how we think.

One of my follow-ups is along these lines:

Say you wake up tomorrow with a one-time super power, a minor wish. Your writing will connect so fully with one reader's mind and soul that his or her way of thinking will be irrevocably changed. Whose mind do you change?

I began to ask this question of myself. Whose mind would I change: the president of Iran, the Pope, an Alpha Centauri Warlord? There were too many options, so I'd like to change my own mind first. I'd like to stare down paralyzing doubt, challenge it with imagination before taking one step and then another. “Begone Fright Train, for I have another story to tell,” I'd like to shout while charging forth and trusting in each syllable.