The Misadventures of Mrs. Taen

The Second Story: Give It Up For Me, Babe

Claire:

I love my husband. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for him. Not one single thing in the world. But, with that being said. There is something I haven't quite been able to manage to do yet. Quit smoking. Yes, I admit it. I'm a smoker. I've tried everything. The patches, the gum, the pills, quitting cold turkey, hypnosis, those little e-cigarette thingies, all of it, and nothing works. The truth of it is. At the tender age of sixteen I lit up my first cigarette on a dare and I've been smoking ever since.

I love smoking. To me, there is nothing better than lighting up in celebration of the end of another long, tedious day. Hell, who am I kidding? Even before my morning coffee, I'm puffing on a cigarette and impatiently waiting for my Keurig to spew out the first cup of the day. I could blame my smoking habit on big tobacco, stress, my job, on my parents, or hell, even on Foster himself, but I don't. I'm a smoker. It's my fault and my problem, and I know it.

Some people view smoking as a character flaw. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I do everything a civically minded, loving wife of nineteen years, and life long member of the community should do. I bake cookies for the annual little league fund-raiser. I volunteer at the humane society. I pay my taxes, go to work everyday, and as for Foster. He has clean clothes in the dresser, a tidy well-kept house, and in my humble opinion, the best wife in the whole damn universe, or at least I would be, if it weren't for one thing, one teeny-tiny thing, I am a smoker.

At forty-two years old, I've worked at the same job since I graduated from Bradley's Beauty Academy the year after high school. I've made love to one man in my entire life. And I live in the same house that I've lived in since the day I said, "I do." I guess that makes me pretty consistent in all things. There's only been one promise I've made to my husband that I've ever broken. And well, I'm even consistent about that. Everyday I promise him today is going to be the day that I'll quit smoking and it never is.

Foster isn't one of those people who is an ex-smoker turned smoking Nazi. He takes my habit in stride. Of course, I've gotten banned to smoker's exile when I light up. But, even at that he wasn't mean about kicking me out of the house to indulge my habit. I've made myself a nice little smoking niche on our enclosed back porch. Even with all the deluxe accommodations of the smoking section of Woodley Avenue, that doesn't mean I don't sneak a few puffs now and then in the luxury of central heating and air conditioning when he isn't around. Foster doesn't join me in the paradise that is smoker's exile and he scowls at me when he smells it in the house, but I don't blame him. If I had suffered the hell that is quitting smoking, I wouldn't want to be around someone smoking a cigarette and thoroughly enjoying it either.

Foster is two years older than me. I figure that gives me two years grace until I finally have to kick the habit. After all, he started smoking at the same age as I did and he didn't quit until last year. I can rationalize that our age difference does, anyway. The truth is that I have been planning to put the smokes down for good and to never pick them back up. Exactly the same way that he did when he came home from work one day, took the cigarette I was smoking at the kitchen table out of my fingers, crunched it out in the ashtray, and declared the house a smoke-free zone.

I feel a little guilty that I don't have my husband's convictions or ironclad strength of will. The spirit is willing, especially at almost sixty dollars a carton, but the flesh is weak. I still wonder how he did it. Just put the damn things down and never picked them back up again.

Oh, I've tried putting down the cigarettes about five million times. I do great at the putting them down thing. I just haven't done so well at the never picking them up again aspect of quitting. Someday though, I will quit for good and Foster agrees. It's one of the biggest guilt trips he has in his anti-smoking arsenal. One way or another, eventually, everyone quits smoking. And let's face it. The odds for a smoker to live a very, very long life are not exactly in their favor.

My husband isn't a control freak, but I think that end eventuality to all smokers is why he quit. He wanted the choice of how and when. I hate the old ball and chain and no, I don't mean my husband. I mean cigarettes. I despise smelling like an ashtray and I hate the looks. Anyone who smokes knows the look I'm talking about. The glare non-smokers and ex-smokers give smokers. The look of horror and disgust, as if just because you've got a Marlboro red clutched between your fingers and you're puffing away like a dragon, that you're public enemy number one.

I have about a bazillion reasons for wanting to quit smoking, but only one with enough power behind the punch to actually get me to do it. I love my husband. I love him enough to do anything for him and that includes quitting smoking and maybe tomorrow, I will.

Foster

My wife is the greatest. She is all that and a bag of chips, except for one small flaw. She is a smoker. Sure, I'm not one to cast stones. I lit my first cigarette as a teenager and up until last year, never looked back. Young, dumb, and full of come like all teenage boys, I operated under the mistaken belief that I was immortal. Then, I turned the big four-o, as in forty. After that, it became apparent that not only was I mortal, but that I was going to die someday. In the Never Land of equal days behind and, hopefully, ahead that is middle age, reality hit home. I was potbellied with the beginnings of a middle-aged spread and a little less hair on my head than I'd had in the glory days of my youth. I was settled down and happily married and in the rut of routine. I was getting old.

Forty came and went, and then forty-one and forty-two. Life was busy then. Hell, it still is. I had been listening to the guys in the shop yuck it up all day about the joys of prostate checks and I figured maybe, I was due the gloved finger routine or something.

The last time I had actually been in a doctor's office was, well, I couldn't remember how long ago it had been. Needless to say though, it had been a damn long time ago. I was never sick, so I never went. Claire is my wife, not my mom. I didn't ask her to make the appointment for me.

I don't like doctors. Never have and never will. Good old Doctor Adams took one whiff of me, smelled the lingering traces of cigarette smoke on my clothes, and the lectures began. Was I a smoker? Yes. How long had I smoked? Since I was seventeen. How many packs a day did I smoke? Like every smoker, I glossed over the truth on that answer. I answered one pack a day, but it was probably more like a pack and a half or maybe, two.

Then he started throwing out the facts. Did I know smoking causes cancer? You'd have to live under a rock not to know smoking causes lung cancer. Did I know smoking causes heart disease? Well, yeah, I did. But, that wasn't going to happen to me. Then he went into all the other things smoking cigarettes can cause. He ticked off a list as long as my arm, but out of that mile long list and thirty-minute, though well-meant lecture. One thing he mentioned caught my attention. Did I know smoking could cause impotence? Uh, no, I did not.

I blamed my lack of stamina in the bedroom on middle age. I could get it up. Not with the same eager voracity that I had at seventeen, but wasn't that just a case of nature playing hell with me? I could keep it up once I got it going and as for long as was required, provided we didn't go at it too long. But, just like my hair, I missed the glory days of my youth in regards to my cock. I had eight inches of thick, hard as steel, one hundred percent American cock, or at least I had, back in the day. Smoking versus my pride and joy? Well, that really wasn't a contest. I pitched the damn cigarettes out of the window on the drive home and I haven't smoked one since.

Claire was supportive. "Oh no, I want you to keep smoking because it's good for you," said nobody ever. I had a clean bill of health from the doctor and the determination to never smoke another cigarette as long as I lived. And without the cigarettes I was going to live a hell of a lot longer. I didn't guilt my wife into jumping on the bandwagon. I figured once I quit she'd kind of do it on her own. It hasn't quite worked out that way though.

The early days weren't easy. I didn't bother with the patches and whatnot. I knew if I was going to do it and make it stick. It had to be me versus the cigarettes and I was going to win. The entire house smelled like cigarette smoke. My truck smelled like cigarette smoke. Claire smelled like cigarette smoke. If those three things combined aren't enough to make a man on the non-smoking wagon twitchy, I don't know what is. It took every bit of will I possessed not to stop off at the gas station and buy a pack. I wasn't going to do it and I didn't. I didn't give in.

Instead, I did the only thing a person determined to quit smoking could. I banned Claire from the house when she lit up. She complied, begrudgingly. I tried not to be too hard on her. After all, she was a smoker and I knew exactly what that was like. I have a medicine chest full of patches and nicotine gum. The junk drawer in the kitchen has every conceivable piece and part for every e-cigarette ever made. The bank account was a hundred dollars emptier to pay for the hypnosis sessions Claire swore would break the habit. So far, nothing has worked. I love my wife. I don't hound Claire about her smoking. I just wish she would quit. I want us to grow old together and sometimes, I don't think, unless she quits smoking, it will happen.

I feel better than I've felt in years. I'm proud of myself. I even took up jogging again and I've dusted off the old weight set in the garage. I'm still a little soft around the middle, but I'm getting there. I'll be the first to admit, I still, even a year later, want a cigarette. Sometimes, the urge to smoke just blindsides me. But, I have the strength and a good reason to say no. I love my wife.

Maybe, it's harder for Claire than it was for me. My parents didn't smoke. Hers did. Maybe, it was because it was one hundred percent my decision to quit that made it easier for me. After all, let's be honest. I had a hell of a lot to gain by quitting smoking.

Maybe, Claire simply hasn't found a good enough reason to quit yet. I know she loves me. I'd like to say that in itself is reason enough for her to drop the habit, but maybe, it isn't. I don't want her to quit smoking because she's doing it for me anyway. I want her to quit smoking because she's doing it for herself.

I don't badger. I don't beg. I don't threaten or complain because Claire hasn't quit yet. I do give her the hairy eyeball when she sneaks a puff or two in the house. I spent months repainting the walls and ceilings, and fumigating every square inch of the place so that it didn't smell like a huge ashtray. I don't want my work to be for nothing. And the truth of it is. Cigarettes reek. I don't tell her how bad she smells or how awful she tastes after smoking. I figure she already knows.

I want us to do things together. She tried, once, to jog with me. She made it down to the end of the road before she was hacking and wheezing. We tried taking a trip to Wisconsin. She was twitchy and grouchy the entire time because the hotel room was non-smoking and I wasn't about to let her smoke in my truck. We don't have kids and that gives us a little wiggle room with the family budget. I took all the money I had saved by not smoking and used it to buy her a leather coat for Christmas. Within a week, the coat stank like cigarettes.

I want to help my wife, not hurt her feelings. I keep my thoughts about her smoking to myself for the most part. Lately, I've been doing a little research though. How can I get my wife to quit smoking? I want her to quit for her, but I also, well, I need her to quit for my own selfish reasons. I want to keep her around for a very long time and I think I've come up with a plan to help her do it.

Give It Up For Me, Babe

Claire:

I've thought for years about opening my own hair salon. Today was one of those days when I'm glad the idea was just a thought and not something I never actually did. Mondays are slow. Actually, the whole week crawls by at a snail's pace until Friday afternoon and then it's like everyone who put of getting a haircut, perm, color job, or brow wax decides to come into the shop at the same damn time.

Today, business was slower than slow, even for a Monday. I hadn't done a thing, except for polishing my nails, all day. I had already swept, mopped, and scrubbed every inch of the shop and I had three hours to go until quitting time.

I don't mind making money for my boss. In fact, my boss is great. Some days, I don't even see her at all. But, I'm worried. She is retiring soon and I don't know what is going to happen to the shop or to me when she does. I don't blame her for thinking about hanging it up. She has been styling hair since the Carol Brady shag haircut was all the rave. She has frosted more hair than a bakery has cakes and maybe, it's time for her to relax and enjoy life.

This is a small town. Except for the barbershop down the road, the salon is the only place where a guy can get a high and tight for the bargain price of seven dollars plus tip within a twenty-mile radius. We have a well-established clientele. I've been styling the same people's hair for the last twenty years and let's face it. None of us are getting any younger. Sometimes, I do a little business on walk in customers, but for the most part I see the same people week after week for the same damn thing.

Our customer base is gradually dwindling down to a trickle and that's just depressing. Some of my weekly shampoo and sets I don't see in the shop. I have to go to the nursing home to do the usual weekly routine or what's worse, the funeral parlor for one final hairdo.

I hate those calls. Hate them. I suppose, it is an honor to be requested to perform such a service. But, it's just damn creepy to slip into the backroom of Jackson's funeral parlor with my tackle box of beauty to give someone one last updo for the trip into the great beyond.

Then, of course, there's Mr. Jackson. He's creepier than the idea of hot rolling a corpse's hair by a long shot. He usually weasels a free trim out of me while I'm in his backroom and doesn't bother offering a tip. Not only that, but the way he smiles and says "I'll see you soon" has me wondering in what context he means it. Is he meaning me? That he'll see me soon on that metal table in his workroom or is he just being nice and it's something he says to everybody?

I told Foster under no uncertain terms to spark me up like a Texas barbecue when I die. There is no way in hell I'm letting that creepy Mr. Jackson or his even creepier son lay a finger on me. Over my dead body, and yeah, it probably will be. Considering if I want anybody besides Foster to show up for my funeral. Jackson's is the only place in town to hold such an auspicious occasion. Of course, I'll be dead, so it probably really won't matter which creepy undertaker fondles my shriveled up goods. I don't imagine I'll care.

We inherited some money about a year ago and what better thing to do with an unexpected inheritance from a great aunt Foster didn't even know he had than to preplan our funerals. The whole thing is paid for right down to the last chrysanthemum. I won't be cremated. Foster couldn't stand the idea of it. But, it is kind of ironic. I can go out to the cemetery and visit my own grave, hell even tap dance on it, anytime I feel like it.

I'm not afraid of death, just of creepy undertakers. It's funny that as a kid nobody ever gives a thought to death. At twenty, you're simply too busy to care, but by forty, something changes within you and you start to realize that someday, yes, you're going to die. I don't know if it'll be better to go first or if it'd be better to be left behind. I hate the idea of leaving Foster, but I hate the idea of being alone even worse. If I had a choice, I'd rather we both die at the same time, but really, who gets that lucky?

The sad truth of it is that we were both born in this little town and we're going to die here. We could have left for the bright lights of the big city, like so many other people have. But, there was always something keeping us rooted to the spot. Our families. Our jobs. Money or lack of. Perhaps it was just that as much as we dreamed of leaving, neither one of us actually had the heart to pack our bags and go.

We have a history here in this little nowhere town in the middle of God's country.

Foster and I weren't one of those legendary 'love at first sight' couples. He was a senior and I, a sophomore when we first met. I mean, really met, in high school. Of course, we had been going to school together our entire lives, but our paths didn't cross until that one summer.

I was a cute little thing and I mean cute. I had big brown eyes and strawberry blonde curls and my God, my waist was so tiny. These days, I couldn't fit my big toe into my color guard skirt. Believe me, I pulled my old marching band uniform out of the box of high school mementos stashed in the basement and tried. I bawled like a baby and swore off bonbons for the rest of my natural life. At the time, not really realizing how much my body had changed. I thought it would be fun to pull my old band uniform out of the mothballs and wear it to my twentieth high school reunion. It wasn't happening. There was no way my size sixteen butt was going to squeeze into a size six skirt. I tried. I really tried, but spanx could only do so much to hold the bounty that is me in place.

I tried not to get too depressed about it. Foster sure as hell wasn't squeezing his thirty-eight inch waist into his size twenty-nine, thirty-four marching band pants either. Foster was a sight in the day though. Back then everyone called him Foster Grant. You know, like the sunglasses. Damn, did the boy have the sunglasses back then or what? Foster never went anywhere without a pair of shades. Even at night, he would wear a pair of those huge gold-framed sunglasses with the super dark lenses tucked into the open top buttonhole of his polo shirt.

I hated him. All the girls hated him. Well, we didn't hate him. We all wanted to be his one and only and therefore, out of a sense of spurned teenaged girl loyalty we had to rally up and hate him on a united front. Foster was one of those aloof guys with plenty of attitude and way too cool to consider dating a high school girl, let alone a meager sophomore like me. I don't know how I finally caught his eye. Well, I do know, but the story is too humiliating. Even now, twenty-two years later, it still embarrasses me.

It was the summer before his senior year. I'd like to say by then he had mellowed out a bit, but he hadn't. He was still just as cocky and arrogant as ever, maybe more so since he was graduating that year. God, he was so beautiful though. Tall, lanky, and lean with his feathered brown hair faded a soft golden blond from the sun. He was one of the boys that actually had to shave and that summer he had sprouted the beginnings of a scraggily goatee. All I had to do was look at him and my mouth would get dry and my knees started to knock.

Foster, like all the other boys, had gotten a summer job detasseling corn. Corn detasseling is an awful job just this side of hell consisting of spending all day roasting in the heat in the middle of a cornfield cutting tassels off corn stalks. And the only way a boy in a rural town could earn a little extra spending money. Not even the host of the show Dirty Jobs would be crazy enough to spend just one afternoon detassling corn in the middle of an Indiana summer.