My First Cigarette

I was pretty nervous. Billy, Michael and I walked down the High
Street towards the park, walking in that strutting, mock-confident
stride that fourteen year old boys hope will fool our friends into
thinking that we're not uneasy. Billy, pacing with the gait of a boy
who thinks himself a man, about to impart some of the knowledge of
manhood to two unripe children. He was cocky, but I knew that his heart
was palpitating as much as mine. What Michael, womanish, high-pitched
and obscenely sheltered, was feeling I shudder to think. The
newly-purchased packet of ten Malboro lights was secreted in Billy's
smart school trouser pockets waiting for our nervous fingers to rip
through the cellophane and foil to uncover the deadly, cancerous and
dangerously alluring grown-up sticks. I wanted to smoke them, yet I was
terrified. Not of the fags themselves, I hasten to add, but of
coughing, spluttering in front of one friend I admired and one fool
that I must, must, appear superior to. We reached the park: beautiful,
late spring afternoon, tourists and locals sunning themselves on the
grass of this o-so-perfect Hampshire cathedral town with its
o-so-quaint public school. The tourists paid good money to tour the
school, marvelling at the scholars in their gowns, the buildings over
half a millennium old. If only they understood one iota of the cruelty,
the two-faced nastiness that went on behind those handsome red
bricks.
There was a little clump of bushes in one far corner of the park. Why
we felt the need to hide ourselves, far from the boarding house, far
from spineless but omnipotent authority I don't know. Billy took ten
from his pocket, fumbling with thick, clumsy fingers he tore at the
wrapping. How did I feel? In all honesty I can't really remember, it
all blurred into one great melange of nervousness, excitement,
anticipation, fear. And yet, outwardly, I must appear calm, I must look
grown-up.
Yeah, man, I smoke fags all the time, me. No worries. Nothing out of
the ordinary. I felt anything other than adult. I took the proferred
cigarette between my fingers, the action of holding it between first
and middle fingers seeming so fake and unnatural, yet that was how I'd
seen parents and TV actors holding theirs.
We sparked up. I dared not pull the acrid smoke deep into my lungs,
fearing that my virgin organs would reject the tar-laden fumes. Michael
timidly sucked the smoke into his mouth, then spat it out without
breathing it in. Well, at least I was doing better than him. Billy was
puffing away as if he'd been born to smoke. The bastard looked
completely at ease in this awkward situation, pulling on his cigarette
with poise and confidence. He admonished me for not taking the smoke
deep inside my lungs, I was mortified to have exposed my inexperience
and sucked deep. Suddenly, almost instantaneously I felt a surge of
heinous energy coursing up my body into my head. Disoriented, confused,
sick, tired and elated at the same time, I had to sit down on the dry
earth below me. Billy, bastard and best friend, grinned a shit-eating
smile at me. He's always seen himself as my teacher, helping me learn
the important skills in life: honesty, thievery, drugs and friendship.
Michael's doing even worse, coughing and retching in a little stream
that trickles through our secret copse. I'd like to laugh, but even
these 0.6 mg tar, 0.5 ug. Nicotine cigarettes are making me feel sick,
unusual, and it's all I can do to appear normal.
I managed to smoke most of the Malboro Light. My first of many. The
first step on the road to pot, ecstasy, mushrooms, acid, solvents,
ketamine, cocaine, speed, all those insidious chemicals that have
helped to push an already unbalanced mind close to the brink. And I owe
it all to Billy, my dear best friend. That first cigarette. Can you
remember yours?