Graffiti on the Walls of Valhalla

I had my first cigarette when I was nineteen years old. I was living in London at the time, in a flat just off Bayswater Station. Like many other college students at the time, my hobbies included listening to alternative bands, yapping with friends, and drinking copious and damaging amounts of alcohol. That night we were knocking back Jack Daniels straight from the bottle, and I’d had the lion’s share. My friend sitting to my left asked my friend sitting to my right for a fag. My friend to the right lit a fag and passed it to me to pass on. I asked if I might have a drag. Sure, said my friend to the left. I took a good-sized gulp of smoke straight down my lungs without a cough or wince, then passed the fag on. Oh, said my friend to the right, I didn’t know you smoked. I don’t, I answered. Then you’ve had more than enough of this, remarked my friend to the left, taking the bottle away.

The next day, in addition to a wicked hangover, I had an exquisitely painful need for a cigarette. I could feel the ghost of one in my fingers. I could taste the smoke on the back of my tongue. I could feel the nicotine buzz echoing faintly just beyond the reach of memory. I Wanted a Smoke.

And so, naturally, I made myself not have one.

The jones left me the next day and has never returned. I now smoke perhaps half a dozen cigarettes per year, mostly when drunk, usually when drinking with smokers, and I never feel that need to have another. I chalk it up to my perverse need for self-denial. Mind you, the ones I do smoke are mighty, mighty fine, like smoking for the first time all over again.

It’s now thirteen years later, and I find myself wanting something very different from a smoke. I want to browse and post on the Warren Ellis Forum, a webforum ostensibly designed to be a meeting place for people in the comics industry but in fact just a really cool place to hang out with really cool people. Also known as a Timesink.

I have enough Timesinks.

So now I’m limiting myself to an hour of WEF per day. I’ll never make the postaholic list this way, but that’s a small price to pay for a bit more control. Hopefully that hour per day will all the more exquisite for its scarcity.