Quitting Under Pressure

My blood pressure was 182/122 at the doctor's office on Friday, so I've been under double doses of medication since and alternately fatigued and addled. I quit caffeine yesterday until the headache dictated otherwise. I didn't eat anything with salt. I thought I might need to quit smoking. It's not as easy as it sounds. Smoking is not only an addiction, it's also all wrapped up in a lot of memories.

Yes, I smoke. I've smoked - off and on - since I was 22 years old. I started when I was teaching Junior High and High School. Back then, in 1986, the teacher's lounge had a plexiglassed cave where the teachers could indulge before resuming the day's duties. And I'd met my first smoking friend, Ruth.

Ruthie and I met while she was doing my hair and makeup for A Midsummer Night's Dream. I played Oberon, King of the Fairies. Hold the laughter. That's not the punchline it seems to be. I was fresh out of college and still had designs on the ministry. I was not dating boys. I was sort of dating Ruthie.

We bickered like 12 year-olds while she would apply my highly stylized makeup and weave leaves into the long wig I would wear. I would bark when I felt I'd been in the chair too long and she would let fly with a string of curse words that was impressive by volume, if not by content. Now this was a girl I could like. Every conversation with Ruthie was a charged experience. I was enraptured, if not in love. Everything about her appealed to me. Except the sex thing. That bell was going to ring a few short months later. But our entanglement was going to be set by then. She would get the short end of the stick. I would really, really hurt somebody for the first time.

We never really dated, but we spent every spare hour together. We had the theatre in common - she was a major, I was a dabbler. We did several shows together. She was the first one to pass me a joint. OK...she was the first one since I'd been in elementary school and our junior high babysitter had passed me one in the football field behind the school when I was supposed to be with her at an International Festival. Her friends became mine. They smoked and drank and cursed and acted. I couldn't drink. I couldn't get past the smell and the taste. But the others I took up slowly but surely. The ministry was fading fast.

Ruthie's father was a pastor. We had a lot in common, it seemed. She had fled that life and I was edging close to doing the same. One of the Obviously Gay Men in our first show together kept mentioning to me that there was a gay bar just 20 miles up the road from where we lived. I found that curious, but a short while later it dawned on me that he was hinting at something. He visited my home and mentioned it again so I confronted him, nicely. I got his inference, I told him. And while I was flattered by his interest in broadening my social outlets, I was not what he thought me to be. Besides, as a first-year teacher in a small town, the very last thing I needed to be was gay. I was already the French Teacher. Being gay would push the bounds of redundancy.

A few months later, I swear, out of sheer curiosity, I went in search of The Bar. I put on a pair of black slacks that were popular in the 80's. They came up high in the back, really showing off the tush. They ballooned at the hips and tapered at the ankles. I put on black dress shoes that were so minimalist in design, they resembled dance shoes. I had a white shirt with puffy sleeves and attached a huge broach at the throat. But none of my socks seemed to complete the look. I called Ruthie. We went to the local Five And Dime and bought a pair of white, sparkly socks that put the exclamation point on the all too obvious.

I was on my way to find The Bar. I started the car but left the headlights off as I drove down the alley to the street, as though the lights would have given away my destination. John Mark had mentioned the name and location of the bar so many times, I didn't even need directions. I found it straight away, right where he said it would be. I sat in the car and explained to myself that I was not gay, I just wanted to see a gay bar. Besides, I told myself, I don't even drink. I only prayed that no one would recognize me and jeopardize my job. It only briefly occurred to me that if THEY were there and I was there, we would be in a state of Mutually Assured Destruction, as the Reagans put it.

I sat in a corner with two walls guarding my back as my nerves subsided and I took note of how remarkably ordinary These People seemed. They weren't what I had imagined. They were just ordinary people. Oh, sure...there were a couple of makeout scenes that would have stood out in church, but other than that, they weren't at all different from anybody else. This is what passed for revelation back then. I loosened up enough to make my way to the bar and order a Coke, even though my hands shook as I raced back to my corner refuge. I took a sip and looked up to see one of the most beautiful men I've ever met headed straight for me.

He was blonde, blue-eyed, baby-faced, and had a cocky swagger and sly smile that would have rendered armies helpless. I was stunned. And I was stunned that I was stunned. I wasn't gay. I needed to get a grip on myself. He strode right up to my elevated perch and said the only sentence in the entire language that I'd hoped I wouldn't hear that night, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" I almost threw up on the spot. I didn't think so, I told him, and looked away. He persisted. Where did I grow up? Which high school? Which college? Where do I live now? Ever been to....? He decided we'd debated in college and he remembered me from that experience. I was flattered - mostly because I hadn't debated in college and recognized the effort he was making to connect with me. Yes, I told him, you can sit down.

He was mesmerizing - a god among men. Smart, funny, good-looking, conversant in current events. He suggested that we go somewhere a little quieter to talk at length but I knew what that meant. I let him in on my secret: I didn't belong here. I'm just an observer, I said. He didn't blanch. He suggested the restaurant across the street where we could have coffee and a nosh and get to know each other. We did. He entertained my fascination at how he was gay, yet seemed so "normal"...and I was "not gay" yet really comfortable with him. We would be friends, we said. No harm in that. He'd be at the bar next Friday night if I wanted to meet some of his friends. His name was Jerry. We would become Tom and Jerry.

I went home and called Ruthie at 6 a.m. - that's when I'd gotten home from the restaurant. I'd had this experience and she was perhaps the only human on the planet who wouldn't jump to conclusions about what it meant. She wouldn't because to do so would mean that everything she envisioned would be kaput. I had reeled her in unwittingly and then sprung this on her. Every bit of unfolding that followed must have seemed like a cruel joke to her. But she was right there for everything - with a front row seat - as the Grace to my Will, long before anyone believed there would ever be a Will & Grace.

That was autumn. I quit my teaching job in the spring to pursue graduate school, but mostly to shake loose the bonds of responsibility that came with a sensitive career and a growing interest in Jerry. Graduate school was in the town where The Bar was. That spring, Jerry asked if I would play on their all-gay softball team in the all-gay league in The City. "Would that even be legal?" I asked him. "You know I'm not gay." Oh, he knew, he said. But it would be OK. We just wouldn't tell anybody that I was straight. (Mostly to avoid the chuckles, I know now.) I fell in love with this group of campy, witty, bitchy and surprisingly athletic men. One of them started calling me Mary. I didn't understand. "VIRGIN Mary", more than one of them elaborated. I know I blushed. They laughed. They let me figure the rest of it out on my own.

The inevitable transpired when Jerry pinned me against the wall in my apartment and planted my first grown-up man-to-man kiss on me. The world changed in an instant. I was in love. He was in heat. I saw white picket fences. He saw a conquest. I got hurt. He moved on. And I asked Ruthie to marry me. Don't ask. I don't know why, except that I wanted not to be gay and hurt. If I got married, I wouldn't be gay, even if I was still hurt. Besides, I loved Ruthie in every way except for THAT. It could work. Right? We held out hope for a few months and finally the pull was too great to jump back in and find a man of my own. So we called a spade a spade and remained friends.

We did that again a few years later. We couldn't get each other out of our systems. I moved away after the second time, thinking maybe that distance would do what our judgment couldn't. She followed me. We toyed with a third go-round concurrent with a religious revival in both of us. Could I be Not Gay again? No. I wanted to be in love. And she loved me more than the moon. I loved her back in every way but one. I figured out, like we all do, that it's always the one that makes the difference. I wanted to want her worse than anything. I did. And I seared a part of her soul every time I had to back away from it. It wasn't malicious. But it clearly hurt. I moved farther away. She never followed again.

She got married, had a couple of children and built the life she wanted. Very often when I'd smoke, I'd think of her and how she taught me to hold it just so and how to master ashing out the window of a moving car. I'd think of her when I'd flick the ashes in my amateurish way and how I couldn't ever master that nail-flick she used to do. We've exchanged a handful of emails over the last 10 years. I think we're both acutely aware of the dynamic that develops between us, so we don't talk a lot, even though we have each other's numbers. Giving up smoking is a whole lot tied to giving up Ruthie.

I miss her. And I'll miss them. She quit me under pressure. She had to, I think, or she'd have gone crazy from pain. It's my turn to quit under pressure - the cigarettes, that is. It's that or have a stroke. That's a decent incentive. But it won't make it any easier. That's OK.

I've never done anything easy in my life.