When I was a kid most people older than me smoked –
including my mum and dad. Mum smoked cigarettes until into her late sixties and
dad smoked a pipe until he was diagnosed with kidney trouble that required
dialysis. Some nurses, as mum was, could smoke with the best of them. But
journalists and writers, such as my dad, well they needed to smoke because it apparently
helped them with their work.
The natural connection between the great outdoors and
reflection could only be fully realised with the assistance of a pipe for it undoubtedly
enhanced the writer’s creative process. If you don’t agree, have a look at this
photo of my dad walking along a Melbourne beach in the 1950’s, taken for a newspaper
article promoting one of his books.
I distinctly remember the aromatic smell of pipe tobacco. It
was pleasant and alluring and it meant I was around dad, so comforting too.
Curiously no under-age smokers appeared to smoke a pipe.
Maybe smoking cigarettes was an apprenticeship for the pipe.
I was about ten or eleven when I considered it time to start
my apprenticeship. I had observed lots of people smoking and all the smoke it
produced. It just looked so stupid. Yet, it was clearly the thing to do because
my neighbour, Bruce Shorland, had started. He would have been about a year or
two older than me while his brother, Alan, was a year younger. We hung out together.
There were also lots of guys on the TV smoking. Mostly they
were good at doing men things like lassoing cattle, driving trucks, using tools
and talking to women. The last had the least appeal to me. I had two older
sisters and I avoided speaking to them unless strictly necessary. The Marlboro Man
was definitely the coolest of all despite the women thing.
Bruce knew stuff. If I followed his lead my pursuit of knowing
stuff would come quicker. He was even prepared to risk the consequences of telling
an uncomfortable truth. I realised this a few years earlier when the three of
us were playing under my house when he suddenly challenged the sacred cow of
the Christian child’s universe. ‘Guess what?’ he blurted. ‘Santa’s not true.
It’s your parents.’ Alan and I stared at him and each other in amazement, shock
and disbelief. Bruce may have known stuff but this was a preposterous claim and
Alan and I held tight. Later Alan, holding back tears, told his mother what
Bruce had said. Marjory was outraged so big brother received a hiding and was
sent to bed without any dinner.
This served only to enhance his appetite for being a rebel. Bruce
arranged for us to go with him to meet a group of other kids under the bridge by
the creek near Warrigal Road. On arrival there were six or seven boys, some
older, some my age or younger and they were all smoking. There was not a lot of
talking. One of the older boys blew a smoke ring. How amazing was that. ‘Do
youse guys smoke?’ came the question from someone. This appeared a challenge of
sorts, like ‘prove it’. Bruce had already told us to tell the others we smoked.
Maybe by doing so he would accrue brownie points in front of his new mates.
So some cigarettes were offered around and Bruce, Alan and I
all took one each. Bruce lit his first (from someone handing their lit cig) and
then lit ours. He could do the draw-back which meant he could really smoke and
was possibly on the way to being able to do smoke rings. Alan looked nervous. I
drew on the filter and coughed. In the same breath I said, ‘must have gone down
the wrong way’. The other guys could see through me and laughed, but accepted
my feigned bravado with tolerable grace.
The part of my brain tuned in to good and bad sensations
clearly registered this as non-pleasurable. Sucking smoke into my gob – why? I
masked it and said, through my coughing ‘yeah, I like to smoke’. This was my
first big venture into being one of the boys and I was seriously conflicted.
Sometime later I ended up paying for a packet of Escort
10’s. I guess Bruce got them from somewhere. I realised they were a badge of
honour. I also knew that I would be much happier giving them to others than
smoking them myself.
I had been able to avoid a return to the creek since the earlier
episode. This was mainly because, though unspoken between us, Alan was on the
same wavelength and we found excuses not to go. This turned out to be fortunate
for it led to my first epiphany.
For Bruce had then introduced us to another taboo – ‘naughty
magazines’. We soon had heaps of these stashed in our various cubby houses. There
was something about them that was exciting and adult. Looking at them entranced
me in ways I had not previously known. The sense of anticipation and awe at flipping
through the pages because it was ‘wrong’ made this secret pleasure even more
tantalising and addictive.
I still had my Escort 10’s tucked into a hidey spot of the
cubby. One day a friend of Bruce’s visited. A few minutes later I was offered
an incredible deal - to swap the cigarettes for a stack of these mysterious and
exciting magazines. From that moment on I learned a couple of perplexing truths
which throughout my life would require attention and good management.
The first: Marlboro Man was onto something after all by
talking to those women. They clearly liked him because of his cigarettes and
even smoked themselves. I hated the cigarettes but began to like women (girls)
as I grew up. My conundrum was that I would not smoke another cigarette. I
therefore had to spend a lot of time thinking about how to overcome this
distinct disadvantage in attracting female company as clearly smoking was a
magnet. Secondly, could I be liked for who I was and not some false image I projected?
Then, in what was appalling timing, I became a teenager.
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