DOPPLEMAN DUPLO: WHAT WENT WRONG?

Of course I knew not to start smoking. I was brought up with an eye toward caution there by my mother, father and chronic bronchitis. I spent the first two weeks of every spring lying on the sofa behind a bank of humidifiers, perpetually gasping. Through August, I was physically unable to run. It was the opinion of the medical community that I was allergic to all things that could grow or float. Each week I was administered special shots; syringes packed with Essence Of Dog Hair or the pollen du jour. Vividly I remember by chief allergist, Dr. Calson, telling me as gravely as he could muster, with absolute conviction, that were I ever to take up smoking, I would be dead before age thirty.

His words stuck me as obvious and condescending, like a plaintive warning of the dangers of sleeping with one's face on a hotplate. What could possibly be the temptation? While admittedly prone to mesmerization by the logos on the packs, the actual product was strictly for my grandma's wizened bridge club.

As it turns out, the reason most kids can't fathom smoking can be attributed to lack of life experience. Kids have yet to experience the soul crushing despairs and existantial tableaus that dog every post-adolescent from first wanting-to-get-laid-but-can't night onward, and the desperate measures to which we'll stoop to dodge them. To this day I consider the non-smoker somehow immature.

Flash forward ten years. My buddy and I just moved to the big city sans adequate preparation, and hence are saddled with horrible, horrible jobs. Such ennui, so little to satiate me in any aspect of my life. I was all bunched up. We used to come back to the empty apartment (empty, save for a rickety futon, her People magazines and my tattered Mr. Bungle poster) where I searched in vain for escape. I came to settle on pacing. Topaz, however, had smoking. She could light up a Benson & Hedges menthol and somehow go away, to say nothing for five minuts except "Ahhhh..." with all the muscles in her face relaxing, all the tension in her psyche dissipating into a caramel colored stain on the ceiling. Meanwhile, I'd be too worked up to enjoy music, TV or phone calls and I could only masturbate so much and I really neede to get over my anxiety riddled paralysis if I was ever going to make it in the city, so it was either drill a hole in my head or finally bum a smoke. Who could conceive of life past thirty anyway? I was eager to trade away sixty years or neurosis plagued brain freeze for that "Ahhhh..." business.

Now im thirtyfour, and need to get in touch with Dr. Calson. Since I started smoking, I haven't had a single case of bronchitis. In my thesis, burning off all the cilia was the key. By hardening my lungs into blackened husks, I have reduced them to their very essences. They've got enough to worry about just handling simple inhale/exhale without getting all uppity about dust. Admittedly, I still can't run, but am seldom chased.

Given the state I was in back then, I would go so far as to say that smokes are the reason I'm still alive. Without that release, I might have simply shattered to pieces. Below the drinking age and having yet to establish a reliable drug dealer, I neede that crutch. For over a decade now, in this unstable, ever-shifting world, I can depend on having at least twenty things to look forward to in a day. It's like a meditation for the self-destructive. And it really does make me look cooler; I've got the photos to prove it. The anti-smoking laws are more than okay by me, as I've always had a spooky habit of standing on sidewalks and staring blankly into space. The addition of this one simple prop lends me weight and purpose.

And I appreciate anti-smokers; once apolitical (or at least not particularly demonstrative), I have aloyal opposition. Many are those who use smoker shunning as an excuse for aggressive behavior. Taking note of who takes advantage of this society sanctioned platform-- the rude gestures, the loud resentment of having to share the dank alley with me-- it's invaluable. It's like a litmus test for assholes. Their insistence that my hobby divides us into warring factions finally gives me a faction I can call my own. Huddled under canopes, we have something to bond over in every social situation. It's particularly functional at parties; often times my fellow smokers are very attractive, and having been given some build in quiet time right there on the outskirts, shunned by all, we're like Romeo and Juliet. For the record it's nothing like kissing a dirty ashtray.

If I seem to have romanticized my affair with smoking, it's only bacause I know it's getting to be time to break up. I need to cut out before the cancer and whatnot. Meeting the challenge of quitting is inconceivable to me. Those who have rank as the most impressive folks I know, from an addict's perspaective. The very thought of it sends me chain smoking. Until I muster the unfathomable strength, I reside in limbo; every cigarette's got a little taste of death in it, and that tastes good and that scares me.

I've been feeling wistful all day without really knowing why. Then I remembered. As it turns out, last night I dreamed I was best friends with Jimmy Fallon. And now I miss him.

You know, I've been doing a lot of self-improvement sorts of things with my recent days, but none of them are worth a tinker's cuss if I'm going to spend my nights dreaming about Jimmy Fallon. Any more of this dreaming of Jimmy Fallon business and I just plain give up.

I mean, Jimmy Fallon! Honestly! I don't feel one way or another about Jimmy Fallon. It's not him I'm disappointed in. I just feel like my brain should have better things to do at night than puzzle over than its unresolved feelings for Jimmy Fallon. And I don't care if Jimmy Fallon does symbolize something else entirely, Dr. Freud; no matter what that something is, I should be able to think of a better symbol for that something than Jimmy Fallon. That is not too much to ask.

I sleep for rest only, not so I can go palling around with this Jimmy Fallon. Any more Jimmy Fallon and I am jerking my head right off the pillow and we're just going to have to come up with a new plan. Because gentlemen, this simply won't do.

I work at a "digital warehouse". Pretty highfalutin sounding, especially considering that I just spent most of the week editing wedding videos. With that in mind, I decided the time was right to take on a second job. Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem.

"There seems to be a problem", said the manager (see?). He then explained that a criminal background check had revealed information about me, and that I was "unsafe for hire". I've lived with a vague, inexplicable feeling of guilt my whole life, and as a result when I'm accused of something, I just reflexively accept it. So I got flushed and kind of froze. I might as well have said "Oh, is this about the bodies in my crawlspace? I figured as much."

But I made a reasonably dignified exit from the office and was halfway back to my car before I realized I should have said something. Especially considering that I have no criminal record. Well, that's not true. While driving I was once cited for a "wet reckless" (not as titillating as it sounds; just a traffic ticket). And various crimes of fashion, yes. I did participate in a lot of community theater in the 90's, yes, and I've had just about enough insults from YOU; the point is that by and large, I'm law abiding. Due to laziness mostly, but still, clean is clean.

So that happened yesterday. Today I called back and found out that the company has been "a lot tighter security wise since 9-11". Yes. Of course. Because Al Qaeda would be plotting to blow up a suburban Kinko's, but first they'd need a man inside. Also, he was not authorized to divulge any information contained in my background check. Grr. Grr, I say!

Not sure how to handle this, so I'm trying to Google my way out. In doing so, I've learned that because of background checks, it's extremely difficult for ex-cons to find work. Is that the best idea? I submit that perhaps denying convicted felons any means to an honest day's work might not be the best idea for society, on the whole.

Meanwhile, if anyone has any information linking me to a crime, I'm anxious to hear from you. Until then, I'll take comfort in the fact that this is just the kind of thing that would happen to Cary Grant. It's not easy living on the lam. Now if you don't mind, I've got bar mitzvahs to edit.

My greatest achievement in life thus far? Oh gosh. Well, if we're talking about contributions to society, I'd have to say it was that time I caught chicken pox while riding the Green Turtle bus to spend a week in the dorms at Evergreen University.

Granted, passing on a virus isn't exactly an achievement, or even much of a trick. And I always felt bad about all those hippies I no doubt infected, especially given the close quarters; the Green Turtle was a late eighties experiment in mass transportation, an attempt to combine the squalor of flower-power style communal living with the squalor of riding the Greyhound.

This was just another regrettable episode in my past, a fleeting brush with counterculture only recently brought to mind by the presence of a bongo drum circle outside my local cafe. (POINT OF ORDER: If there's one thing I hate-- and there's way more than one, but please try to focus-- it's a fucking bongo drum circle. Did you know the ninth circle of hell is a bongo drum circle? They're forever popping up in otherwise peaceful locations; there I am reflecting, when suddenly primal beats are thrust upon me and suddenly we're all trapped in a Joseph Conrad novel.) Anyway, bongo drum circles always reminds me about the chicken pox and how contagious it is. I found out years later that I had inadveretently given it to virtually all of those people. Then that made me think about how one of the commoner side effects of chicken pox is permanent sterility, and then it suddenly hit me: I probably prevented the birth of hundreds and hundreds of hippies!

Now, normally I'm against genocide. Ask anyone. And my brushes with hippies may have been to few to make any kind of sweeping judgements. All I know is that I've embarked on creative projects with more than one hippie in the past, and inevitably what happens is, you turn you back for one second and suddenly they've melted down whatever you've been working on into a crude bong. That's just my experience. And it wasn't really the hippies' fault that in college I tried LSD for the first time at a Grateful Dead concert, but you haven't experienced terror until you've questioned whether a Jerry Garcia guitar solo might actually go on forever. Still and all, something in my gut tells me I made the world a better place by thinning out the hippie ranks a little. And that, however unintentional, has been my greatest achievement to date.

What's that? You say you didn't ask? Sorry, I'm new.

EXTRA FOR EXPERTS: $20,000 is an estimate of how much revenue the jam bandPhish lost in ticket and ancillary sales thanks to me. Get it? Maybe I could have done a better job tying that in. It's not you, it's me. Holy shit, am I still typing? Jesus.

My gift is my blog and this one's for you.