Tommy C's Blog

Cigarette Simon turns eighteen the same day his government bans smoking. Banned in the pubs and the bars and the night-clubs, banned banned banned. And boy, is he not happy about it. Suddenly Simon's old enough to stand looking moody and manly, shrouded amidst wispy plumes of blue, there on the edge of dancefloors, or lounge aloofly in the shadowed mysterious smoke of corner tables, and he can't.

Eighteen. A man now. Cigarette Simon decides to start a pro-smoking campaign. Protest against this outrage. Stick up a finger at authority. A finger flicking ash in their moralising eye. Where better than the internet? Screw health warnings. He's young and free and his rights just got taken away.

So, a blog. In Praise of Cigarettes, he wonders, In Celebration? The Ciggy Connoisseur? Smoker's Paradise? Settling on a name, he describes his first pack as if it was a glass of wine; the feel, the fragrance, the effect on the nose, the tongue. One brand down, all the rest to go, he writes in his mission statement, boasting how he'll never be an addict, he has the will-power of a man, and how he's young, he'll be fine. He's going to review with appreciation every cigarette the world has to offer.

Swapping with a drunk girl in a university corridor at 3am a cigarette for a snog, bonding with the aloof Professor in a break behind the lecture theatre, asking for a light a table of lovelies: the cigarette stories come too. Heh, have a cigarette, he comments on depressed blogs, that'll cheer you up, and Heh, it wasn't the cigarette to blame, but your mother's choices for her heart disease, on another. Charismatic and witty, irreverent and fun, his audience grows. As does the protestors. Anti-Smoking Groups. Give-Up-Guru's. A Coalition of Canadian Moms, along with the usual speculation about a spoof.

Cigarette Simon hits 21 with thousands of hits a day. Dunhill, he declares, are the most delectable of cigarettes; so smooth, so tasty. But, he's going to give up. Not because he wants to, but to prove he can; to prove that thousands of pounds and hours spent and three years of smoking don't matter one jot. So of course smoking should be legal everywhere, right? Just look at me. No problemo. By rights it should be all up to us, Big Brother.

Should we give up to? Are you serious? Can we trust you? ask some of his fans. You'll find it hard, impossible, you'll lie, you'll cheat, you'll think of suicide during withdrawal, warns one vehement critic who had her throat tore out two years back.

Well, just watch, says Simon. You all do and say what you like, and I'll do the same. And of course, he finds it easy. When 50-a-day desperados, whose New Year's Resolutions to quit have been broken each January 1 for decades now, say, but what about the head-fuzz, the tongue-fur, the hallucination? He says: uhh? It's all psychological. Grow up! It's easy.

Quit he does, just like that. Or only so he says, nag the doubters. And still he encourages people to smoke, describes the pleasure of the blood rush, the relief and the release, all in fond memory. And he carries a Zippo round to strike up a conversation when helping out a light-up. He's got a career, still that charisma, that cool calm character, is lucky in lust, spends cash on exotic holidays and big city night out. He's fans worship him still. His enemies are defeated in their doubts.

Then, disaster. On the same day he's sacked, he starts to cough. It's just a little cough, nothing to worry about, he writes. But, he splutters out of a job interview a month later, losing his chance, and starts to worry.

Nothing, says the Doctor.

Still unemployed. A fortune teller at a circus - he went in because his date dared him, expecting to hear back some great story about their future - says his halo lacks air, is dark, dark with dark spots of dark. What does it mean? Phone call, there and then: the Doctor. We made a mistake, mixed up your results. We can hardly believe it, you're so young, so fit, but please, you must come back in. Now? Right now.

Cancer is everywhere in Cigarette Simon. "One in a million like this, and your age too..." muses his Doctor. Not even worth treatment. He posts his first deep-down genuine post on his blog: he details his diagnosis, details his despair. Don't smoke. He's sorry, so sorry. He made it sound like fun, but really it's not worth it. Who was he kidding. So much beauty in the world, and to go out of it like this? His outburst ends suddenly: too many tears on the keyboard to go on, he writes. Back later. I hope. I at least have months, maybe a year.

He's linked to like never before, and the comments come in their thousands. Make every day special now. Mend bridges. Find love. Let's meet, I think you should make me pregnant. May as well start smoking again, eh loser? Told you so. And of course comments full of corresponding crying too. Some say they'll quit now, others say, heh, remember what you told that poor daughter about her mother? You were right, man! I aint quitting. His forum - he has a forum, strictly supposedly only for the celebration of cigarettes - is over-run too. He fires all the admins. No-one should do this kind of thing, he explains, and wishes them well. Advises them to quit, along with everyone else.

Then, a comment like no other. It sounds crazy at first, but the links are all there. A biomedical firm in the States has found a leaf used by a tribe, famous for longevity in the Amazon, that maybe holds amazing restorative properties for the lung. The drug they are developing is experimental and there are no guarantees, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here.

His blog gets a PayPal box, and he begs. Begs, begs, begs. He's almost broke. His family can't help. He does work for anti-smoker groups. He writes letters of apology, sometimes in person. He visits one lady he mocked in her hospice, breaks down crying. He holds her hand; as he leaves, he realises she's left a fifty in his. A publisher offers to publish his blog as a book - provided he reflects on each post afresh, saying how wrong he was and why. It tears him apart, he blogs, to even look at this stuff now. But...

But, he wants to live.

He'll do it.

The will to live, to survive. He's a young man. And gradually, the money builds up. Gets closer to the target as the book starts to sell. Then, his blog posts start to drop-off; once every two days, once every three, five, a week; shorter, too... It's been almost a year since his diagnosis. I can barely breathe enough to get out of bed each day, his final post reads, and now I find I've just reached my target. I don't know if I'll get there in time, or if it'll work.

Wish me luck, his last line reads. And everyone wishes him luck; those he hurt, those who hated him, those who loved him, cocky smokers and angry ex-smokers, the sanguine and the bereaved. The Health Minister even sends him an open letter: wishing him well, hoping he understands now why they banned smoking in so many places. "If the worst comes to the worst," the letter concludes, "then at least take this as a consolation: from a foolish child emerged a fine man, who through his honest, anti-smoking writing, helped to make the world a little better a place."

And? And nothing. No more posts. No family or friends saying he died, and shutting things down, or leaving them as a monument, or donating the remaining money to charity. No Cigarette Simon bouncing back, saying it worked, or bought him some more time at least. And who has actually met him, seen a photograph? the people in the comments start to ask. That poor lovely lady in the Hospice? But she'd be dead by now anyhow. Is a writer somewhere very rich? Or, a smoker somewhere dead, the family paralyzed in grief - or just ignorant about the internet?