Oral Cravings
When I was in group therapy
(back in my twenties)
one teenage girl was sad
because she was plump.
She thought no man
would ever want her.
‘Don’t worry, Tammy,’
a young chap said. ‘Some men
say they love fat women.’
The therapist concurred.
(I wasn’t concerned. I was
a smoker, which kept me thin.)
‘Be careful,’ said the man
who ran the Smokenders course.
‘Ex-smokers often turn into
secret sweet-eaters.’ Too damn bad,
I thought. I was already 48
(I quit on my birthday).
‘If you don't stop
by the time you’re 50,’
a doctor told me years before,
‘you WILL get lung cancer.’
So I did, and I didn’t. Luckier,
perhaps, than I deserve.
A few years ago, they thought I had
emphysema. Turned out not.
It was the mould in my unit – now
thoroughly cleared. My breathing
is very much better. I got away
with all those years of smoking!
32 years in fact. But I’ve not become
entirely pure. ‘I’m a poet. Smoking
helped the creative process,’
I told the Smokenders man.
He didn’t scoff. ‘Oh yes,’ he said,
and explained the brain chemistry.
‘Suck glucose instead,’ he advised me.
I took the advice. Also I didn’t (until
years later) stop writing my poems
with a pen dipped in wine – as I
used, so wittily, to say. There are
consequences. You can see them.
‘What happened?’ asked a friend,
comparing the me in front of her
with slim, glamorous younger photos.
‘I stopped smoking,’ I said, ‘at just
the same time I hit menopause.’
(Didn’t mention glucose ... or chocolates….)
I’ve been lucky, though.
No lung cancer, no emphysema.
I do have arthritis now, and so
I need to get slimmer for that. I’m trying!
But I do attest that there are indeed men
who will happily embrace a fat woman.
For Friday Writings #1 at Poets and Storytellers United, Magaly invites us to write about food. But we don't have to. Perhaps that's just as well, as this addresses the subject somewhat indirectly.
Lovely. Wow, a friend asking that? Men loving fat women, or women loving fat men, for that matter, reminds me of a "friend" who asked many years ago if my husband didn't mind my hair getting grey. I was getting grey quite young. Of course not, why should he? Do we stop loving men when they go bald? Or get fat? Or thin and wrinkled? Maybe she did, she was very shallow then, I can only imagine years later.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on stopping smoking. My brother never has. He's started at age 15, and still does at 74. He always swears he'll quit "when" this or that occurs, but those "whens" pass by.
I'm glad your brother has lasted so well despite the smoking.
DeleteI drowned in my wife's brown eyes and nothing else matters, except that she be healthy, of course.
ReplyDeleteI celebrate your luck in staying away from the nastier consequences and wish you good health going forward!
“I drowned in my wife's brown eyes”
Delete<3
Ah, that's true love!
DeleteJoel, I love that even your comment begins like a poem.
DeleteKeep on keeping on as they say. There is always something that we want too much of. Sometimes we don't even know what it is.
ReplyDeleteI guess that what matters is how far we indulge the cravings.
DeleteOh this is quite priceless! You have the most marvelous way of telling stories on yourself. Happy ex-smokers are the best.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Helen. I can hear you smiling!
DeleteOur journeys through food and fuel (aka, cigarettes) are so varied. At least yours is ending happily. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteYes, I really have been very lucky, all things considered.
DeleteI am very glad that the lung cancer monster never visited you. When it comes to being chunkalicious, I've never believed that how much we weight truly affects love. Not even lust. Tate and desire come in all sorts of shapes. Besides, what sort of love will really be worth giving up chocolate?
ReplyDeleteIn a recent conversatiion with a cousin, who's approaching 97, we were commiserating about our shortness of breath, and I said we had cigarettes to thank and I was glad I'd quit 30 years ago when, to my surprise, she said "I still smoke"! So much for dire predictions! Loved your poem, Rosemary.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the dire predictions don't always come true, and also very glad I stopped smoking when I did. Apart from health considerations, how ever do people afford it nowadays?
DeleteThis poem made me think about vices and brain chemistry and about people and perceptions and about chocolates and love!!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad – I think! – to have given you food for thought.
DeleteOh my goodness, you are the flipping cutest thing ever. I love that photo. You look so good in yellow!
ReplyDeleteI loved the “suck glucose” part and also the pen dipped in wine. <3
Thank you for all these kind sentiments!
DeleteSometimes people i have not seen fir a lknv time meet me in the street and say. "You got fat" and i reply "yes". What else can i say. I used to be a waif. Now i'm not.
ReplyDeleteHappy Friday Rosemary
Much💛love
Ah well!
DeleteThat's rude that they would say that! I like your answer, though. :) LOL
Deletei started smoking when i was 13 or 14, and quit when i was 44. and like you i am very lucky, no cancer. i was diagnosed with emphysema, i can see in my x-rays and m.r.i. but i don't feel it, and love fishing and camping and whatnot, and i'm walking up and down mountains all the time, no problem, but then i was born here colorado at high elevation, and i have what we call "mountain lungs" (at sea level, i can actually feel the air going in and out of my lungs, and it freaks me out, it's like breathing water) and i don't mind a girl with a little meat on the bones, so long as she healthy and active. enjoyed your poem rosemary, so nice to learn more about you
ReplyDeleteGlad you're not feeling the emphysema and can still be active – and also, of course, that you too missed cancer. (I started smoking at 16, and as the poem says stopped when I turned 48. I still say that stopping was the best thing I ever did.)
DeleteNice dissertation on the wiles of a cigarette smoker. I quite smoking at age 35 or so and switched to a pipe. That was much better for me as I didn't inhale so much smoke. But I grew a perpetual sore on my lower lip so I quit the pipe for chewing and dipping. The only problem was that there weren't very many places to spit inside our classroom buildings. So since I weaned off nicotine somewhat quitting was easier for me which finally culminated at age 43.
ReplyDeleteI will keep in mind your line, ‘I’m a poet. Smoking helped the creative process,’ as perhaps I could write better "poetry" had I not given up? :)
..
Please don't make it a reason to start again!
Deletefatty food, alcohol, cigarettes, being through all. :)
ReplyDeletequit smoking after about 40 years, just like that. Friends were all surprised, like, how did you do that? Now just a bit beer & wine now and then, and the fatty food not so much. The part about "Smoking helped the creative process", i tend to agree, though now it's more about a walk in the park or a round of music listening.
Music and a walk in the park are definitely better options. (My late ex-husband Bill Nissen wrote fiction, and found that listening to classical music helped to get the inspiration happening. My late husband Andrew Wade, who wrote both fiction and non-fiction, found that sitting under a tree and meditating did it for him.)
Deletei listen to rock music. strange for someone writing poetry, isn't it? perhaps that's why my works tend towards the 'gritty'. :)
Deleteand i think meditating certainly helps.
Not at all strange! I like rock (including heavy metal), jazz, blues and folk much more than classical. One son took after me, the other after Bill. When they were doing homework, they'd be in their separate bedrooms, one playing classical the other rock, both switched as loud as possible to drown out the other. An interesting experience for their parents!
DeleteI smiled at the way your younger self was so confident in defending her oral cravings and the Smokenders man buying into it: "‘I’m a poet. Smoking / helped the creative process,’ /" And yes we all have our cravings that need to be satisfied in order to get creative juices flowing. :) As for weight, too damn bad if a man or anyone for that matter cannot see beyond the physical. I enjoyed reading your poem, Rosemary. It's a wonderful response to the prompt.
ReplyDeleteNo, apparently there is something real happens with the brain chemistry that can be triggered by either nicotine or sugar ... unless of course he was making it up so I'd use the substitute instead of going back to the fags.
DeleteThis was fun to read, Rosemary. You are a great storyteller!
ReplyDeleteMany thanks.
DeleteLove the story-telling in this. And I like how you used the dialogue and characters here. I feel like dialogue in poetry is so underrated.
ReplyDeleteThank you for saying so. I was worried it was perhaps too prosey, but apparently not.
Delete