Fumer ou Ne Fumer Pas...

Mierd! Maintenant nous ne peux pas fumons dans Paris?

One of the most dramatic World News headlines I've scanned lately came from USA Today this morning: "Some Fear Smoking Ban Slices Soul of French Cafe" jumped out at me, waving it's beret desparately. Forget Pakistan's democracy panic. Forget the children of Iraq. Semding out an S.O.S., a smoke signal even, from the chimneys of every legendary haunt of aritsts, philosophers and visionaries in Parisian history. The very souls of the Cafe de Flore (mentioned in the article,) Les Deux Magots, Le Cafe de la Paix-- are being sliced by the knife of puritanical, judgemental, paranoid American bullshit policy! Vraiment?? Ah, le cigarette... Je sais, I know too well. It is a sad day when one must say goodbye to an old friend.

From the moment I shyly sniffed the paper, and gently set the filter on my bottom lip, I fell in love with cigarettes. Smoking was simply my favorite thing for years. My first taste was at the hands of two bosom girlfriends, who should know not to feel any guilt by now. I can see us at our half-moon shaped booth at the old Denny's, the one that now stands empty with niccotine stained upholstry and ceilings, so dark inside. But the light was hazy and comforting on summer nights with the three of us leaning into our coffee, laughing and chatting for hours, talking about sex like professionals, three 100 length cigarettes poised. I was a Marlboro Ultra-Lite smoker, for almost seven years.

Marlboro Ultra-Lights accompanied me to University in Iowa City, where I would skip class and brood in the dark, literary corners of The Tobacco Bowl, and underline fiercely throughout my signed copy of Alice Notley's Small Houses. With tears of frustration, I smoked madly outside the Foreign Language building after French exams. With my niccotine stained fingers trembling, I would silently translate fragments of my inner monologue into Francais, "Mierd, mierd, je suis tres stupide. Le monde est stupide," my inner frenchwoman dragging long and hard. It's true, I wanted to own that cigarette like I imagined the French owned their cigarettes, in some way simultaneously casual and passionate. Fumer comes along very early in verb conjugation, as every Elementary French student knows. I suppose I entertained the thought of being in one the great cafes one day, with perfect French and the perfect French cigarette.

But my smoking habit wasn't all romance and deep thought and pensive brow. I vivdly recall scrounging change in my dorm room late at night, searching all over my apartment for discarded butts in the ashtray, cigarettes I had foolishly gien up on mid-smoke and now- NOW needed just one drag from immediately. I would spend my last penny a pack of Basic Lights that cost less than $3 at the time, walking out in cool Spring school night to the Shell station for my fix. A pack a day: when I woke, after breakfast, before work, during work, after work, with a drink in hand-- many with a drink in hand.

So the smoking ban has reached the Parisian cafe. France's officials are joining in on the healtyh living brigade, a mission considered very much "American" in Europe, and met with healthy resistance. France's multitude of surviving smokers are outraged to lose what is practically a birthright. The French invented the modern smoking habit, after all, and it's as much a part of their culture as le vin or le fromage! But it's Fin for smokers in cafes, brasseries and restaurants in all of France, including Paris. One of the cafe crouchers interviewed is a young musician who fumes, "It's unbelievable! Having a coffee in a cafe and not smoking? It is not even thinkable!" This is just the perfect quote. I have to assume this is the standard reaction, and I can hear it under thick accent and deep, angry drags. Wonderful. This reminds me of the year before I quit smoking.

The year before I quit smoking, I was slouched and brooding in a new smoke shop that had opened up called Marshall McGearty. While I knew this place had buzz surrounding it, and that there was a chance the young, pretentious Chicago indie scene might be swarming the place, I did not know that this Parisian-style salon that made it's own Artisan cigarettes and hung a sign in the door that read, "Smokers ALWAYS welcome," was opening just days after the Smoking Ban hit Chicago's reknown restaurants and vintage, cult diners. I also wasn't aware that McGearty's was owned by a giant tobacco company, and had been getting an eyebrow raise from the media. So, when I was a pproached by a Washington Post reporter, I didn't imagine I would soon be a voice for the Smoking Party in news syndication all over the country. The article, "Tobacco Lounge Blows Smoke in The Face of Chicago's New Ban," quotes me sounding like a clueless DePaul Freshman that had accidentally stumbled into

the campsite of the Indie elite, holding meetings on how to proceed in some culture war. I might as well have said, "Oh, I thought this was Starbucks," withsome journalistic description of a giggle. She made me sound like a food in two half sentences. But, still, I was a young musician in a salon, fighting for my right to smoke cigarettes, just like the man in Le Cafe de Flore. For the world to see. Maybe my coolest, hippest, most visible moment. But soon after, I acquired asthma, and had to give up entirely what was once my most favorite, favorite thing.

I've been a nonpracticing smoker since March of 2007. And I miss it. And I hate that I will never smoke in a Parisian cafe. But they can't ban me from the smoky, dimly lit rooms of my memory. And they ban me from the luminous, celebrity studded smoking section of my dreams.