So the thing I’ve been working on all summer has to do with smoking cessation. Now I want to smoke.

I smoked for awhile in my teens while I was working in kitchens. Not a ton, maybe a pack a week, always Marlboro reds. Then I mostly quit around 19 or so and smoked recreationally. About a pack a year of Fancy Cigarettes from the Fancy Tobacco Store, plus one or two cigars. By the time I got to the end of the pack they were stale, stale, stale. At 22 or so, I just lost interest in the whole thing. I’ve smoked maybe five cigarettes since then, and none since moving in with Mister Husband three years ago. It just wasn’t something I thought much about.

But since I’ve been working on this thing and thinking about smoking cessation every day, I want to smoke. (I’m always amazed at how inherently rebellious I can be. This is one of those times.) We watched Coffee and Cigarettes a few weeks ago, and by the time we got to my favorite scene, the one with Iggy and Tom Waits, I was dying for a pack to lovingly unwrap and open, a heavy lighter to fiddle with. For me, it’s always been more about the ritual of smoking rather than the smoke itself. I want the flick of the lighter, the draw, the soft weight of in my hand and the posture it brings. Staying up all night with the night people, talking and smoking and drinking and smoking and talking.

Last week, my coworker sent me a link to a tobacco emporium somewhere in the Twin Cities. More of a restaurant, really. All dark, shiny wood with velvet and leather couches where one could sit and smoke in a variety of ways — cigarettes, cigars, hookahs, what have you. There are also a lovely selection of liquors and desserts. A little temple of sin right in the middle of smoke-free, health-concious, bike-lanes-everywhere Minneapolis. She sent the link to me as a know our enemies sort of gesture, horrified that such a thing existed. I thought it sounded wonderful and that we should go investigate it in person.

But I’m not smoking, mostly because I don’t want to tempt the husband. I like having a smoke-free house. I like that I don’t smell stale all the time. I like being able to breathe, and I like both of us being able to hike up from the base of the Falls without any problems. I like not having to deal with the cost or the jones or the sheer inconvenience of smoking. And I know that once I finish this gig and don’t have the daily topic to rebel against anymore, I won’t even want it at all.

But right now I do. Oh, I do.