It was an all-Kanye night. August. The club was underground but had these high ceilings. Lower East Side. Hot. No emergency exits. I was there with my roommates.
Every time this one friend of theirs would come to town, this is where she would want to go. I usually hated it. There were always too many people; it was always too loud. But I was drunk, knew the words to almost every song, and there was room to dance, so I let myself go.
I left the dance floor to get a drink. Dished out like $24 for a weak cocktail in a porcelain mug. I turned from the bar to come back, squinted through the strobe lights toward where the group was, and saw one of my roommates waving me over. His hand flickered in the patterned darkness. I elbowed through the crowd, phalanx-like, and asked him what’s up.
“Look,” he said, and pointed to the floor.
Something yellow and rectangular. Handheld. Glimmering unromantically under a bench against the wall. Banal. All alone. Abandoned.
A vape, he said.
An Air Bar. I’d never tried one of these. Heard each one was the equivalent of a pack of like 20 cigarettes in mgs of nicotine. I was used to the 6 mg per Zyn pouch (pure nicotine salt, tobaccoless) that you put under your lip or, before that, the 15 mg in a tin of Copenhagen long cut (so many bottles filled with black saliva sludge in the college dumpsters must’ve been). A pack of cigarettes usually has around 30 mg of nicotine. I picked it up and asked him if I should take a hit. He said that was gross but you do you, man. I said fuck it.
The buzz was like kissing someone you have really good chemistry with. A soft, safe vibrating deep in your bones. An assurance of connection that feels like the chill which melts away as your blanketed body moves nearer to the fire. A slight shiver.
He laughed, I put it in my pocket, and we went back to dancing.
I got a text from the girl I was dating that summer. She was at a party. It was fun, she said. I replied and told her about my find.
“dance on a table 4 me,” she wrote.
“I almost did.”
We met when she came to the city in June. She told me on our first date that she might stay in the city after the summer, but she also might go back to Cambridge. By the third or fourth date, I wanted her to stay so bad that I literally forgot she said she might not. I figured I would show her such a good time that she wouldn’t want to leave. She was caring, charming, creative, funny, optimistic, worldly, and curious. We were from the same area of Massachusetts and we liked to spend our days doing similar things.
She was good. Better than me. Someone to look up to. It came through in her care with word choice, a self-censorship that influenced my own speech. I had this feeling that I trusted she knew right from wrong. Trust not in the way you trust that someone won’t cheat on you, but rather trust in the way that you are sure any path someone might lead you down will be the right path, and that any doubts you have about that path must just come from your own ignorance or fear. Higher ground. How to love. This was someone who could teach me. A moral arbiter. A keeper of the keys to commandments. A Moses.
That whole summer, I always felt like she knew more about me than I knew about her. Sometimes I told her this and she would respond by saying she’s a private person and shy, but I could ask anything and she would tell me. But I did, and she didn’t. She would rarely volunteer information about herself. At first, it was cute. Then it started to bother me.
“Tell me a secret,” she used to say as we lay in bed about to sleep. I told her silly secrets and serious ones. I told her about fantasies and experiments that no one else knew. Things in my past. Some secrets I told with the intention of putting her off, convincing her that I was compromised, that I wasn’t as good as her. It was a test. Maybe I could tell her something so embarrassing or shameful that she would be embarrassed and ashamed to be with me. She’d crack. And then my point would be proven, that she was in fact better than me.
I wanted her to stay and I wanted her to run away. But no matter what I told her, she was empathetic and supportive. Which always felt surprising.
Every time we finished discussing my secret, I said, “Now you tell me a secret.” She never did.
I expected an equal and opposite confidence. I assumed that was normal. Maybe she just knows better. But I felt like this refusal trivialized my secrets. It was a big deal for me to tell her these things. Her silence seemed to make my willingness to be truthful into an amusement. We always went to sleep without her having told me a secret.
I snapped out of my hope that she might stay when on a walk to the bar one night she mentioned decorating her Cambridge apartment. She thought I knew she wasn’t planning to stay.
Days before she left, we spent an evening walking along the West Side Highway. We agreed that we didn’t think it was a good idea to continue seeing each other long-distance. As we stared out at the Hudson River, she said, “This reminds me of being on the Charles River.”
“Do you think we’ll ever stand on the Charles River together?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said, without looking at me.
“Maybe we can imagine we’re there right now.”
The night before she left, I tried to mute my crying as I lay with her in bed. When she realized, she held me and didn’t cry.
In the morning, she said she got me something. It was seeds for a Bonsai tree. I burst into tears at 9:00AM on a weekday. I looked in vain for a glassiness in her eyes. As I dragged myself out of her apartment for the last time, we said goodbye and she started to cry as she shut the door.
We shared a few cigarettes that summer. After I drained the Air Bar I found at the club, I started buying more and using them alone in bed.
September came and I missed her. Called her up one night. She was surprised. No one cold calls anymore. I told her I was going up to Boston to visit my dad and maybe we could see each other. She thought that would be nice so we made plans to get dinner. I stayed over and the next day I met her sister, whose phone I fixed. That made her sister like me. She told her that she should date me. We laughed about this in bed.
“Tell me a secret,” she said before we went to sleep.
I turned from her to look at the ceiling, thinking about whether to say it. Fiddling with my hair line. Smugly grinning in anticipation. I turned back to her.
“I love you.”
Nothing back, although her smile belied her silence.
“Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you.”
Two words added to that three-word phrase. Felt even better than just the three. What I expected to hear turned into a revelation. Any doubt I ever had about who she was or how she felt about me was instantly wiped away. It was like everything I wanted to know about her during the summer, I came to know through those five words. It was like she finally told me a secret back.
We knew it was risky, but we decided to be exclusive and see each other long distance.
When I visited her those first couple months, I didn’t bring the vape. When she came to visit me, I hid the vape in the outside pocket of my backpack and stowed it on the floor of my closet. None of the secrets I ever told her were about my nicotine habit (I’m still not sure whether to call it a dependency or an addiction or what). I’d sometimes spend an entire weekly therapy session weighing the pros and cons of telling her. And what it meant that I hadn’t told her. Fears of commitment and abandonment, of course. It wasn’t even a big deal, but I was sure she’d view it as a moral aberration if she knew. She was perfect and that meant I had to be perfect for her. Perfect people don’t depend on anything.
After a while, I started to bring the vape to Cambridge. She would go to the bathroom and I would scurry to her bedroom, where my luggage was, take it out of my backpack pocket, and hit it a few times to get a buzz. I’d listen carefully to make sure she hadn’t flushed or opened the door yet. Now and then, it hit too hard and I’d leave her bedroom dizzy and have to pretend I wasn’t when she came out of the bathroom.
One night in January, we had just eaten dinner and she was sitting on my lap facing me and we were kissing at the kitchen table. We loved cooking together and always felt closer after eating what we made. Candles were lit and I could see the lights of Somerville through her window. We were talking about nothing in particular.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” she said.
“Um, I don’t think so. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just, I want you to know that you can tell me anything.”
I thought I knew this already.
“Yeah I know, I just don’t think I have any.”
I started getting hot. My heart was beating faster. I might have been blushing. How did she know? We looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds and were quiet.
“Well, okay, so there is one thing,” I said.
I told her that I had been using nicotine in various forms for almost seven years and that I was hiding it from her. Hid it from everyone. Except my two high school friends who got me into it. But that’s because they knew me back then, when I was a different person. I wasn’t that person anymore. And only they were still allowed to remember that person. I told her I brought vapes to her place and would hit them when she wasn’t around.
She looked stunned but quickly switched to genuine concern, which she expressed with all the appropriate caresses.
“Thank you for telling me.”
My terror dissipated.
“So are you, like, addicted?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, I can stop and be fine, it’s just hard.”
“Oh. So if you can stop, then you can just stop.”
“Um, yeah, but it’s not really that simple.”
“I know, but you just said you don’t need it. So why don’t you just stop?”
At the time, her logic was sound. It had to be. I already lost most control in the relationship in other ways and the only way to do things these days was to make moves that would avoid conflict. I felt she often had disproportionate reactions to things I said and got upset when I told her certain things about myself.
“I guess you’re right. I mean I really want to stop.” A lie to keep the peace.
I paused. She looked down, scrunching the bottom of my shirt, brow furrowed.
“Do you not like that I do it?”
“No, babe, I’m going to be supportive of you no matter what and I want to help you with this.”
“I know, but do you wish I didn’t do it?”
Her eyes wandered for a second and her head rubbernecked. She looked back at me and shrugged her shoulders.
“I mean yeah ideally.”
It was done. I would stop that day. No more nicotine. Throw out the vape. Time to get serious. We didn’t speak about it again. Months went by and I didn’t use any nicotine in private. I’d have a cigarette out drinking with friends now and then. And I would tell her about it. It felt good to be done, I guess.
It was June and she was finally moving to New York. While she was in Cambridge, I apartment hunted for her in Brooklyn, Facetiming her in to speak with brokers and landlords, taking comprehensive videos of cramped studios. I felt like I was living for her. Not taking enough time for myself. I started vaping again and didn’t tell her.
Moving here. Bigger commitment on her part. Not sure if I want it that bad. Escape plan. Emergency exit. One foot out the door. She told me that’s what her ex said it felt like to date her. Can’t tell secrets with one foot out the door.
One Friday night, I just got done with a radio broadcast I did in Bushwick with my friend Zachary. We had a couple beers on air and exchanged the vape. It died as we were walking back from the studio to the subway. We passed a smoke shop and I said I really wanted to buy one. I told Zachary that she was under the impression I quit and I was feeling guilty about it. She never met Zachary, but never liked him from what I told her. Moral defects. He said we’ll do whatever I want but that I really should think about being so deceptive with her. I dismissed his concern and we bought one.
She moved to the city in September. It was rocky. We fought. Scary fights. Often on the precipice of breaking up. She started regretting the move. Her regret made her want to see me more often, the one person from her former life who was near. My loss of freedom made me want to be alone. I started going to concerts and writing about them so I could be by myself and use my vape. Nicotine spurns creativity. Four nights a week too many concerts. Prioritize me.
One night, a weeknight, she said she wanted to go to this wine bar in Gowanus. It was a half-hour walk away. Late evening. The route was desolate. But she loved long walks, so we went. My guilt around deceiving her was growing and this was a night when it felt particularly difficult to hide. I always felt like blurting it out.
We sat down, the waiter gave us menus, and we were left with nothing to talk about. I couldn’t think of what to say about the wines, about myself, about life. I couldn’t think of what to ask her. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to run.
She sensed that something was off and asked what was wrong. I said nothing was wrong and she told me that it was frustrating to be out with me when I’m not in a good mood.
I told her I was hungry and tired and I’ll be better when I eat something. She said we talked about my eating before I see her so I’m not in a bad mood. Somehow, the conversation veered toward smoking. Someone outside, maybe. It’s weird I can’t remember how it came up.
“How are you doing with the nicotine stuff anyway?”
She said it with the remainder of a smile leftover from something I had just said. A smile like she knew what the answer was going to be. She was unworried, curious, my favorite thing about her.
My chest tightened. My appetite disappeared. I sobered up. The room seemed to fall away. It was just the two of us and my memories. Some memories were real, others I created in the moment. I created them to keep from telling her the full truth. I knew the full truth would hurt her too much. The real memory was buying a new vape myself on a random day when I was stressed. The false memory was one I concocted to displace the blame from myself to someone else. This was, after all, a blameworthy offense, and thus punishable.
I held the neck of my glass and looked down at the table, ashamed.
“Well, actually I have vaped a couple times.”
As she swallowed a sip of wine, she looked like I told her I had killed someone. She frowned, confused, disappointed, shocked. Her face tightened, all its soft features aimed toward me like gun barrels.
“What?” she said.
“Only like once or twice with Zachary. We were out one night and he wanted to buy one so he kinda pressured me into it.” False memory.
“So you lied to me?”
“It’s hard, I told you.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know, just a couple, like three or four.” False memory.
“You just said once or twice. What was it?”
“I don’t remember exactly but it hasn’t been a lot.” Another.
She was speechless. I started apologizing.
“We have to go.”
She started to panic. Her voice was trembling. She tossed her napkin onto the table, stood up and bolted to the bathroom. I paid the bill. I couldn’t think. It felt like the nerves in my body were riddled with vibrating parasites that wouldn’t stay still unless I had a heart attack or killed myself.
What was she doing in there? Crying? Staring at herself in the mirror telling her to keep her cool? Sitting on the toilet with her head in her hands? She came back, said nothing, I got up, we left. She walked ahead of me.
Under the Hamilton Avenue Bridge. A huge structure, otherworldly. Seems to hover, suspended from the sky. Shadows an industrial wasteland. The putrid Gowanus Canal. A dusk like from Mars. No one around.
Someone help. She wouldn’t talk to me. She wouldn’t touch me. She wouldn’t walk next to me. I pleaded with her, I started sobbing, I continued apologizing. Her face was stolid, almost ambivalent, like a soldier going to fight at the front.
“You’re a liar. I can’t date a liar. You lie when you’re scared.”
“I know, I know I lied but can we please talk about this, please.”
“I can’t, Ben. I really can’t. I think you should go home.”
Back at her apartment, for the next three hours we repeated the cycle. She emphasized that this was just the worst example of me not telling her the truth unless she specifically asked me. On the couch, I curled up my body in frustrated, clenched, childlike poses. My stomach felt atrophied. My throat constricted. Like in a dream when you try to scream and nothing comes out. I promised to stop for good, to check in with her periodically to let her know I wasn’t using nicotine. She’d be a fool to believe me now.
A few days later, we lay in bed at my place talking about it again. She asked if Zachary knew that she thought I had quit. Yes, I said. That made her hate him more, that my supposed best friend would encourage me to do something that his girlfriend thought he had given up forever. She leaped up from bed, threw her clothes on, slammed the apartment door, and ran out into the street.
I called one of my roommates and told him she had just run out on me. They were at a bar nearby and told me to meet them there. On my way to the bar, I found her on the corner, waiting, phone in hand.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I’m going to meet my roommates at the bar.”
“You called them first? You didn’t even care where I went?”
“I thought you wanted some space so I thought I should leave you alone.”
“But you didn’t even come out to look for me, you just came to go to the bar with them?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was scared about what was going on and what you were doing and I wanted to be with my friends.”
I convinced her to come back home and texted my roommates that I wouldn’t be joining after all. Later she would ask me, hypothetically, if I would stop being friends with Zachary if she decided she couldn’t handle the betrayal. If I would choose her over him. I said never.
I remember the first pack of cigarettes I bought after we broke up. Coming home alone from a jazz club down the street. Drunk and free. Smiling to myself. I’m back. I am back.
The longer our relationship was over, the more I realized that my inability to quit was symbolic of my fear of leaving who I used to be behind. To abandon nicotine in any form would be to abandon who I was when I started using it. An eighteen-year-old country boy from Massachusetts. Parents newly divorced. Family life dissolves, along with it much of my memory of our life together and my identity before it happened. A budding redneck kid who would use Zyn or Copenhagen long cut. Who would grow up to be a raging rural racist and misogynist who shoots animals with his buddies on the weekends, gets drunk and ignores his wife on the weekdays, and drives the freeways spitting black goop into countless Poland Spring bottles until they cover the floor of the passenger seat while Sean Hannity shouts on the radio. For a while it was looking like there was a good chance that could be me. But how can I forget?
Nicotine preserves the memory of me. My friends who introduced it to me, they knew who I was when my parents were together. They even knew who I was when I was a Republican and went to a few Trump rallies in New Hampshire in high school. Seems like another life. But it’s not. That is also me. But it’s hard to accept. And if it’s hard for me to accept, then it must be impossible for someone else to, right? Evidently, in one case.
My longest romantic relationship has been with nicotine. Bed. Lips. Spit. Head rush. Secret. My chemical companion. But it’s not a healthy relationship. It’s about control.
Addiction isn’t a loss of control, it’s a discovery of one thing you can control, whether that’s a needle going into your arm, a regimen of pills, or the amount of tobacco you pinch and stuff in your lip. It’s also about power. I’ll always have the power to quit, but the power of the substance always comes first. I am in the hands of something greater than me. Something that controls me as much as I control it. It will always be there. It won’t abandon me. I’m protected. It feels so nice.
I remember reading Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse, Eugene Onegin, for the first time with a bunch of tobacco in my lower lip. I wept at the end when the narrator bids farewell to his protagonist. “My true ideal” is how he refers to Onegin. I always think about that line. The final scene came at just the right time when my head buzz was at its highest intensity. It felt like champagne fizzing in my head, just as it was in the mouths of aristocrats who drank it at the St. Petersburg ball on Pushkin’s page.
I am not who I imagined I’d be when I was a boy. I am not my ideal. How much uncertainty it’s caused. How much pain. But how wonderful. The possibilities. Farewell to an idea.
Ben Gambuzza is a writer and book editor living in Brooklyn. He writes for The Village Voice and The Brooklyn Rail, and on his Substack, Evenings With The Orchestra. He is also the host of The Best Is Noise, a live classical music show on Radio Free Brooklyn.