A quitters diary: day 3

It’s a day and a day, and perhaps there is too much oxygen, and perhaps there is too much nicotine floating in the air around the great Manuel’s Tavern, Highland Avenue, and tonight (and today for that matter) has proven to be, so far, the hardest of the days so far, and I wanted a cigarette after teaching that class, even though I am “great” and “the guru,” and even now as I type this I cannot believe that I cannot step onto the porch and have a cigarette. I rub very hard, with fingernails, on the nicotine transdermal patch on on my left shoulder. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on and I think I may need one, and I may need one just because I am not in bed yet, and before I read that book, and that movie is on which I left G at home for last year and she called me back from and told me she was leaving this house and R told me it was better that I didn’t see it (worst moment in cinematic history), that it was better that she called me home to tell me she was leaving here and me. Can I have a cigarette? Should I suffer this movie in the two ways that I will suffer it? I think I should cash it in for the night – pillow turned long – a prayer and a page and lights out and a new tomorrow where I will not want to pay the retainer to RJ Reynolds.