Page 413 - WhyAsInY

no sMoKe, But fire
chest breathing. As a further defense, because I was deeply embedded in my religious phase, as the needles were being put through or into my ears, forehead, wrists, and ankles, I found myself reciting, reciting, and reciting, silently I hope, the Amidah, which, for the uninitiated, is the core of the Jewish liturgy; it consists of nineteen Hebrew prayers but, for reasons that I can’t recall, is referred to as the Shmoneh Esrey, which actually means “The Eighteen.” Perhaps there’s some sort of bonus or discount at work. But, as you may have noticed (if you’re still reading this interminable story), I digress.
At this point—and I have no idea how it occurred—the hands of the clock moved a full thirty minutes in an instant, and I heard the doc- tor mumble that, if I ever I felt the urge to smoke during the next week before my booster, I should put pressure on one of the two metal thumb- tack-like buttons that I learned that the assistant had stuck into my earlobes. All of the needles were removed, again no alcohol was applied, and Peter and I made our booster appointments and left, thumbtack buttons and all.
On exiting, Nadel and I ritually threw our hidden cigarette packs into the first available trash basket in the litter-strewn alley. He drove us to the office (I don’t know that I could have), and we entered: I, feeling lobotomized or at any rate not at all A-type for the first time in memory; he, chewing whatever came within reach; and both of us purporting to practice law, though totally in a fog, incessantly pressing the metal thumbtacks in our earlobes as the day drifted by.
I did a lot of chewing but did not, as Nadel did, buy and make use of a teething ring. It was not easy, but somehow, having started down the path, I held on. I had one major crisis of confidence during the week that followed, resisted doing bodily harm to Danny after he lovingly fol- lowed my orders, got in the car to drive into town to buy another carton, had a major moment of rationality and resolve, gritted my teeth, and then did a U-turn.
I never had another cigarette! Which is not to say that it was easy; the next six months or so were full of tests. Somehow, through exercise, chewing plastic straws and sunflower seeds, and other stratagems, I
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