[ Sublime Desire Multimedia Archive ]
Posted by Vesperae
on July 7, 2009, 3:07 am, in reply to ""Risk. Acceptance. Assertion. Surrender. Desire." by Matt Landry"
Board Administrator
Excerpt from my reply to "Risk. Acceptance. Assertion. Surrender. Desire."
"The story of my first cigarette is pretty widely known in the community."
It is a *Great* story, and I'd love to have you post it again here, not only because I'm sure that we would enjoy it immensely (and I'm also sure that there are those who haven't read it before!), but because I believe that it fits more perfectly here than any other forum that I am aware of, other than yours or Raucher's old forum. It would be excellent context for us to have here! 
You will also note that I have amended and made the underage content restrictions for the forum more explicitly defined, because I honestly never intended to exclude the type of developmental story that yours is.
"...the powerful act of will it usually takes for someone who's never inhaled cigarette smoke before to force her lungs to accomodate it. But the flip side of this force of will is an abject surrender of that same will. By not merely smoking, but becoming a smoker, she is, at the same time she's exerting her will upon her lungs, surrendering it in her brain. Surrendering to the addictive powers of nicotine. From the moment she makes that fateful decision, her very identity ceases to be fully under her control."
While I think that you have said this beautifully, I believe that you are describing two different steps in the process of becoming a smoker that I tend to conceptualize as being separate and sequential.
"Step 1" is about what it is that causes and creates this Sublime Desire in the Mind to Dominate the Body into forcing it to do something that it clearly does not want to do.
"Step 2" is about becoming addicted, and the process of discovering the pleasure of the Dance of Addiction. But unless the new smoker is already addicted to something else, I suspect that this comes as something of a surprise to most, and because it is a surprise, enhances the Dark Pleasure of "Step 1" dramatically.
What I am saying is that I think that most prospective smokers decide that they want to smoke, and that the initial (and fundamental) psychological reward of smoking comes from The Mind divorcing itself from The Body and treating it as It's Servant, and by imposing It's Will on The Body, achieves a sense of Mastery and Dominance over The Flesh that it resides in. And it is this self-contained act of what essentially amounts to S&M (with The Mind in the role of Sadist, and The Body in the role of Masochist) that first makes smoking so exciting and compelling.
The pharmacological changes (and pleasures) of repeated exposure to nicotine can only be understood by those who smoke, but everyone - smokers and non-smokers alike - can grasp the fundamental Dangers of smoking, and hence understand that it not only takes a certain type of person, but also a certain type of premeditated and deliberate act of Will to want to embrace that Danger.
"...once you become a smoker it defines you. You may retain the freedom to live a basically normal life, but that life is circumscribed in any aspect where being a smoker would interfere. In a sense, you've sold a portion of your free will -- and therefore, your soul -- to the tobacco industry."
Those who answer the Siren Song are forever lost to returning to their lives before they answered it...
"And, thanks to the physical mechanics of the act of smoking, you've elected to take your friends and family along with you. Become a smoker, and the world is your ashtray. [...] And so we have the interplay of the force of will and the abject submission, playing out in the external theatre as well as the internal. On the one hand, the act of smoking imposes the smoker's mark on the world around her, and declares her superior to the base elements and her fellow (but nonsmoking) humans, in a very Randian way. 'Look what I can do, she says. 'I can cause the very world around me to be altered purely by smoking these cigarettes!' On the other, the social consequences of this fact make the smoker occasionally a virtual prisoner of her own habit."
The objectivism of smoking goes right to the heart of it's Darker appeal. But even in the moments of indignity that lead a smoker to have her assignation with her cigarette in some unpleasant cold/rainy/snowy outdoor place, she still has the internal reward of knowing that she is imposing Her Will on her environment in some way, even if it involves frustrating the co-workers who stop by her office when she out taking time away from them to do her Dirty Thing.
"Perhaps folks Vesperae's age and older didn't have the data to see the extent of this mandatory surrender coming, if they started smoking as teenagers. But anyone of any age who becomes a smoker today (or hell...who started smoking when I was a teenager in the early 90s) can definitely see what it means to do so."
As a child of the mid-60s, I was routinely exposed to AS messages from the time that I was six or seven, since the Public Health TV PSA campaigns started in the U.S. around 1970.
But even before this time, and before the first Surgeon General's Report in the early 60s, there was always the instinctual awareness that inhaling cigarette smoke can't possibly be good for you. And consider that cigarettes made before this time were even stronger, and even harder to force your body to inhale for the first time. So I have to believe that the subconscious awareness of the Risks of smoking has been with society for as long as there have been cigarettes.
"They not only risk their health (which, let's face it, most teenagers don't pay that much attention to anyway), but they surrender a big part of their free will, and foreclose options in a wide array of life choices. And while they may not see the whole width, your average teenager can definitely see at least some of those doors ahead of them before they close, and decide to close them.
"And yet they decide it's worth it. Becoming smokers is so important to them that they'll not only risk long-term consequences (that they know about but don't consciously believe in) and endure short-term pain associated with those first few attempts at sucking poison into their lungs, but accept that being a smoker will define them for the rest of their lives."
I think that there is definitely a sense of wanting to belong to an "outsider/underground" group, especially in this day and age. But I also think that smoking has been a badge of something fundamentally Noir for a very long time - again, for as long as there has been cigarettes.
And of course, it all goes back to the idea that "This is revolting, so I want to do it."
I would imagine that most prospective/new smokers don't get to the recognition of "closing doors" that you describe until a few years into their smoking careers. But I do agree that the vast majority probably do get to this point consciously, and it is a very compelling idea that they do keep smoking anyway, despite the fact that their addictions are still relatively light.
"That's DESIRE. That's desire so powerful it can be contagious. And for me, anyway, it is contagious."
You can only completely understand the fullest blossom of the Sublime Desire if you smoke, but you can never go back to being the way that you were before you understood it once you do understand it. Which, I believe, is precisely why the psychological addiction of smoking is so profound and powerful.
"Yeah, it gave me a good excuse to hang out around smokers...not only is that a nice practical rationalization, it's even true. But if you really want to know why I started smoking...it's that contagious desire.
"This knowledge has been in my mind for quite a while. [...] ...but until very recently I haven't been able to explain it to anyone else. Indeed, this post I'm typing right now is my first serious attempt to do so. It was always there, but it spent most of my history being subconscious, and most of the rest of my history being nonverbalizable."
That is the thing that is so fascinating to me about exploring the Darker aspects of our perpetual societal love affair with cigarettes - the idea that these paradoxical subconscious underpinnings have probably been there all along for most of us in one way or another.
The Sublime Desire of Smoking is almost too obvious, and for those who smoke, it is also perhaps immediately repressed by the conscious mind once she has achieved the ability to inhale. And so we tend to overlook it because it can be either too seemingly irrational or frightening for many to stop and consciously think about.
Which is why we are here...
