I haven’t wanted a cigarette since 2013. It was long past midnight and my friend Ilaria and I had ended up at a moving out party in an art studio in Hoxton for a person both of us vaguely knew through current and past boyfriends. People were chatting in a labyrinth of small rooms. A projector lit up an impromptu dance floor in the middle of the maze. I was tipsy. I took a photograph of a spider on a window. We left the party wobbly-legged and defiant and stopped outside one of the brightly lit Vietnamese restaurants on Kingsland. I had a cigarette. And as I smoked it (I was an occasional party smoker) I thought “why am I doing this, it’s stupid and it tastes really, really bad”. My friend knew the badness of it. She’s a neuroscientist who works with cancer. I smoked and I said to myself, this will be the last cigarette I will ever smoke.
On dead parrots and smoking
On dead parrots and smoking
On dead parrots and smoking
I haven’t wanted a cigarette since 2013. It was long past midnight and my friend Ilaria and I had ended up at a moving out party in an art studio in Hoxton for a person both of us vaguely knew through current and past boyfriends. People were chatting in a labyrinth of small rooms. A projector lit up an impromptu dance floor in the middle of the maze. I was tipsy. I took a photograph of a spider on a window. We left the party wobbly-legged and defiant and stopped outside one of the brightly lit Vietnamese restaurants on Kingsland. I had a cigarette. And as I smoked it (I was an occasional party smoker) I thought “why am I doing this, it’s stupid and it tastes really, really bad”. My friend knew the badness of it. She’s a neuroscientist who works with cancer. I smoked and I said to myself, this will be the last cigarette I will ever smoke.