When You Are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris

  The book I was given used all of these terms and more. I read the first hundred pages and then offered Hugh the following summary: “The guy says that choking down lung busters is a filthy, disgusting habit.”

  “No it’s not,” he said.

  After years of throwing open the windows and telling me I smelled like a casino, it seemed that Hugh didn’t want me to quit. “You just need to cut back a little,” he told me.

  Not being a smoker himself, he didn’t understand how agonizing that would be. It had been the same with alcohol; easier to stop altogether than to test myself every day. As far as getting wasted was concerned, I was definitely minor league. All I know is that I drank to get drunk, and I succeeded every night for over twenty years. For the most part, I was very predictable and bourgeois about it. I always waited until 8:00 p.m. to start drinking, and I almost always did it at home, most often at the typewriter. What began at age twenty-two as one beer per night eventually became five, followed by two tall Scotches, all on an empty stomach and within a period of ninety minutes. Dinner would sober me up a little and, after eating, I’d start smoking pot.

  Worse than anything was the dullness of it, night after night the exact same story. Hugh didn’t smoke pot, and though he might have a cocktail, and maybe some wine with dinner, he’s never seemed dependent on it. At 11:00 you could talk to him on the phone, and he’d sound no different from the way he would at noon. Call me at 11:00, and after a minute or so I’d forget who I was talking to. Then I’d remember, and celebrate by taking another bong hit. Even worse was when I placed the call. “Yes,” I’d say. “May I please speak to . . . oh, you know. He has brownish hair? He drives a van with his name written on it?”

  “Is this David?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to speak to your brother, Paul?”

  “That’s it. Could you put him on, please?”

  Most often I’d stay up until 3:00, rocking back and forth in my chair and thinking of the things I could do if I weren’t so fucked up. Hugh would go to bed at around midnight, and after he’d fallen asleep I would have dinner all over again. Physically I couldn’t have been hungry. It was just the pot talking. “Fry me an egg,” it would demand. “Make me a sandwich.” “Cut a piece of cheese and smear it with whatever’s on that shelf there.” We couldn’t keep a condiment for longer than a week, no matter how horrid or ridiculous it was.

  “Where’s that Nigerian tica-tica sauce Oomafata brought us from Lagos last Tuesday?” Hugh would ask, and I’d say, “Tica-tica sauce? Never saw it.”

  In New York I got my marijuana through a service. You called a number, recited your code name, and twenty minutes later an apple-cheeked NYU student would show up at your door. In his knapsack would be eight varieties of pot, each with its own clever name and distinctive flavor. Getting high on Thompson Street was the easiest thing in the world, but in Paris, I had no idea where to find such a college student. I knew a part of town where people lurked in the shadows. The way they whispered and beckoned was familiar, but as a foreigner I didn’t dare risk getting arrested. Then too, they were most likely selling moss, or the innards of horsehair sofas. The things I’ve bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.

  You don’t withdraw from marijuana the way you do from speed or cocaine. The body doesn’t miss it, but the rest of you sure does. “I wonder what this would look like stoned.” I said this to myself twenty times a day, referring to everything from Notre Dame to the high-beamed ceiling in our new apartment. Pot made the normal look ten times better, so I could only imagine what it did to the extra-ordinary.

  If I survived in Paris without getting high, it was only because I still had drinking to look forward to. The bottles in France are smaller than they are in the States, but the alcohol content is much higher. I’m no good at math but figured that five American beers equaled nine French ones. This meant I had to be vigilant about the recycling. Skip a day, and it would look like I’d had Belgium over.

  In time I knew that my quota would increase, and then increase again. I wanted to quit before that happened, but practical concerns kept getting in the way. When drinking and working went hand in hand, it was easy to sit at your desk every night. Without it, though, how could a person write? What would be the incentive? Then there was the mess of quitting: the treatment center with the chatterbox roommate, the AA meetings where you’d have to hold hands.

  In the end, I stopped on my own. One night without a drink became two nights, and so on and so on. The first few weeks were kind of shaky, but a lot of it was just me being dramatic. As for the writing, I simply changed my schedule and worked in the daytime rather than in the evening. When other people drank, I tried to be happy for them, and when they got drunk and fell down, I found that I didn’t have to try. My happiness was genuine and unforced. Look at what I’m missing, I’d think.

  Turn down a drink in the United States, and people get the message without your having to explain. “Oh,” they say, ashamed of themselves for presuming otherwise. “Right. I should probably . . . quit too.” In Europe, though, you’re not an alcoholic unless you’re living half-naked on the street, drinking antifreeze from a cast-off shoe. Anything shy of this is just “fun-loving” or “rascally.” Cover your glass in France or Germany — even worse, in England — and in the voice of someone who has been personally affronted, your host will ask why you’re not drinking.

  “Oh, I just don’t feel like it this morning.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess I’m not in the mood?”

  “Well, this’ll put you in the mood. Here. Drink up.”

  “No, really, I’m OK.”

  “Just taste it.”

  “Actually, I’m sort of . . . well, I sort of have a problem with it.”

  “Then how about half a glass?”

  I was at a French wedding a few years back, and when it came time to toast the couple, the bride’s mother approached me with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

  “That’s all right,” I told her, “I’m happy with my water.”

  “But you have to have champagne!”

  “Really,” I said, “I’m fine the way I am.”

  “But . . .”

  Just then the toast was delivered. I raised my glass into the air, and as I was bringing it to my lips someone jabbed a champagne-soaked finger into my mouth. It was the bride’s mother. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but those are the rules. You’re not supposed to toast with Perrier.”

  In America I’m pretty sure you could sue somebody for this. But the woman had meant well, and at least her nails had been short. In the years since the wedding, I’ve learned to accept the glass of champagne. It’s easier to take it, then quietly pass it to Hugh, than it is to make a big deal about it. Other than that, I don’t give much thought to alcohol anymore. I don’t think about drugs, either, not unless something new comes along, something I never got a chance to try. The point, I guess, is that I was able to quit. And if I was able to quit drinking and taking drugs, perhaps I’d be able to quit smoking as well. The trick was not to get all sensitive about it, lest you give abstinence a worse name that it already has.

  Twelve

  My last cigarette was smoked in a bar at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was January 3, a Wednesday morning, and though we would be changing planes in London and would have a layover of close to two hours, I thought it best to quit while I was still ahead.

  “All right,” I said to Hugh. “This is it, my final one.” Six minutes later I pulled out my pack and said the same thing. Then I did it one more time. “This is it. I mean it.” All around me, people were enjoying cigarettes: the ruddy Irish couple, the Spaniards with their glasses of beer. There were the Russians, the Italians, even some Chinese. Together we formed a foul little congress: the United Tarnations, the Fellowship of the Smoke Ring. These were my people, and now I would be betraying them, turning my back just when they needed me most. Though I wish it were otherwise, I
’m actually a very intolerant person. When I see a drunk or a drug addict begging for money, I don’t think, There but for the grace of God go I, but, I quit, and so can you. Now get that cup of nickels out of my face.

  It’s one thing to give up smoking, and another to become a former smoker. That’s what I would be the moment I left the bar, and so I lingered awhile, looking at my garish disposable lighter, and the crudded-up aluminum ashtray. When I eventually got up to leave, Hugh pointed out that I still had five cigarettes left in my pack.

  “Are you just going to leave them there on the table?”

  I answered with a line I’d gotten years ago from a German woman. Her name was Tini Haffmans, and though she often apologized for the state of her English, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be any better. When it came to verb conjugation she was beyond reproach, but every so often she’d get a word wrong. The effect was not a loss of meaning, but a heightening of it. I once asked if her neighbor smoked, and she thought for a moment before saying, “Karl has . . . finished with his smoking.”

  She meant, of course, that he had quit, but I much preferred her mistaken version. “Finished” made it sound as if he’d been allotted a certain number of cigarettes, three hundred thousand, say, delivered at the time of his birth. If he’d started a year later or smoked more slowly, he might still be at it, but as it stood he had worked his way to the last one, and then moved on with his life. This, I thought, was how I would look at it. Yes, there were five more Kool Milds in that particular pack, and twenty-six cartons stashed away at home, but those were extras, an accounting mistake. In terms of my smoking, I had just finished with it.

  Part II (Japan)

  January 5

  The first time we flew to Tokyo, I ran outside immediately after clearing customs. I had just gone half a day without a cigarette, and the one I would light out on the curb would leave me so woozy I’d come close to toppling over. To most people, this sounds unpleasant, but to a smoker it’s about as good as it gets — the first cigarette in the morning times ten. This was always my reward for traveling, and without it I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. After clearing customs on this most recent flight, I set down my suitcase and turned to Hugh. “What happens next?” I asked. And with no fanfare, he led us toward the train.

  That was yesterday morning, which seems like months ago. It’s been thirty-eight hours since my last cigarette, and I have to say that while it hasn’t been completely painless, neither is it as ghastly as I thought it would be. I expected a complete meltdown, but strangely it’s Hugh who’s become moody and irritable. If I’m no different than ever, it might have something to do with the patch I applied three hours into our flight. I hadn’t planned on buying any, but a few days ago, while passing a pharmacy, I changed my mind and got eighty of them. If I’d never used one in the past, it’s because I’d thought of smoking as just that — an activity that produces smoke. Patches don’t satisfy the urge to stick something in your mouth and set it on fire, but they are oddly calming. While I was at it, I also bought five boxes of nicotine lozenges. I haven’t opened them yet, but knowing they’re available — perhaps that calms me as well.

  More than my products, I think it helps that everything is so new and different: our electric toilet, for instance. There’s a control panel attached to the seat, and on it are a dozen buttons. Each is labeled in Japanese and marked with a simple illustration. What looks like a lowercase w is a bottom. A capital Y is a vagina. If you have both, you can occupy yourself for hours, but even for guys there’s a lot to have done. “May I wash that for you?” the toilet silently asks. “Regarding the water, would you prefer the steady stream or the staccato burst? What temperature? Might I offer my blow-dry service as well?” On and on.

  Along with everything else in the apartment, the electric toilet was pointed out by the building manager. Super-san, I call him. The man is a few inches shorter than me and seems to speak no English other than “hello.” Two months of instructional CDs allowed me to confidently introduce both myself and Hugh, and to comment on the pleasant weather as we boarded the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor.

  ME: Ii o tenki desu ne?

  HIM: So desu ne!

  Just inside our door, Super-san pulled off his loafers. Hugh did the same and then he kicked me with his stockinged foot. “No shoes allowed.”

  “But it’s our apartment,” I whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  At the end of the short entryway, just where the carpet begins, there’s a low metal tree with slippers hanging off it. They’re brand-new, a mix of men’s and women’s, and all of them still have price tags on the soles. Super-san stepped into the smallest pair and then gave us a tour of what will be our home for the next three months.

  I knew how to say that the apartment was big, and good, but not that it smelled new and reminded me of one of those midlevel residence hotels. In the living room are two framed pictures. They look like the color samples you get at the paint store, nameless, though, and matted in white. These hang above an empty console that faces an empty bookshelf. There’s an empty, glass-doored cabinet as well, along with two sofas, a table and chairs, and a complicated-looking TV. While the apartment itself is unremarkable, outside it’s a wonderland. Off the living room there’s a shallow balcony, and from it we can see the Tokyo Tower. There’s a balcony in the bedroom as well, and it overlooks a network of canals, some with little boats in them. Then there’s a train yard and, beyond that, a sewage treatment plant. I said to Super-san, “Good. Good. Our place is good.” When he smiled, we smiled. When he bowed, we bowed. When he left, we took his slippers and hung them on the low metal tree.

  January 6

  Our high-rise is on a busy but not unpleasant street lined with similar tall buildings, some business and others residential. There’s a post office on one side of us, and a chain restaurant on the other. Outside our front door there are trees decorated with festive lights, and across the street there’s a convenience store called Lawson. When writing a foreign word, the Japanese use the katakana alphabet, but this sign, just like the one at the 7-Eleven, is in English. They sell my brand of cigarettes at Lawson, but if I wanted them even quicker I could get them at the Peacock, a good-sized supermarket located in the basement of our building. Their sign is also in English, but I don’t know why. If you’re catering to Westerners, the first thing you need are the Westerners. There are Hugh and me, but other than us, I haven’t seen a single one, not on the streets, and certainly not at the Peacock. We went there twice yesterday and found ourselves completely lost. The milk I recognized by the red carton and by the little silhouette of the cow, but how do you find soy sauce when everything on the shelves looks like soy sauce? How do you differentiate between sugar and salt, between regular coffee and decaf?

  In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren’t enough euros to go around. “The entire EU is short on coins.”

  And I say, “Really?” because there are plenty of them in Germany. I’m never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian cashiers, who are, in a word, lazy. Here in Tokyo they’re not just hardworking but almost violently cheerful. Down at the Peacock, the change flows like tap water. The women behind the registers bow to you, and I don’t mean that they lower their heads a little, the way you might if passing someone on the street. These cashiers press their hands together and bend from the waist. Then they say what sounds to me like “We, the people of this store, worship you as we might a god.”

  January 7

  A Japanese woman we’d met in Paris came to the apartment yesterday and spent several hours explaining our appliances. The microwave, the water kettle, the electric bathtub: everything blinks and bleeps and calls out in the middle of the night. I’d wondered what the rice maker was carrying on about, and Reiko told us that it wa
s on a timer and simply wanted us to know that it was present and ready for duty. That was the kettle’s story as well, while the tub was just being an asshole and waking us up for no reason.

  January 8

  I peeled away my patch last night and was disgusted by the cruddy shadow it left. It feels like I’ve been wearing a bumper sticker, so instead of replacing the one I took off, I think I’ll just go without and see what happens. As for my three hundred dollars’ worth of lozenges, I still haven’t opened them, and don’t think I’m going to. What I’ve been doing instead is rolling index cards into little tubes. I put one in my mouth when I sit down to write, and then I slowly chew it to a paste and swallow it. I’m now up to six a day and am wondering if I should switch to a lighter, unlined brand.

  January 9

  In the grocery section of Seibu department store, I saw a whole chicken priced at the equivalent of forty-four dollars. This seemed excessive until I went to another department store and saw fourteen strawberries for forty-two dollars. They were pretty big, but still. Forty-two dollars — you could almost buy a chicken for that.

  January 10

  I dropped by a Japanese-language school to ask about classes, and the woman at the front desk suggested that as long as I was there, I might as well take the placement exam. “Why not?” she said. “This a good a time as any!” I hadn’t planned on staying that long, but I liked how fun and easy she made it sound. A test! In Japanese! I was just thinking the exact same thing!