I woke up very early this morning and reflexively grabbed my phone not to check the time, but to see what else had gone wrong in the six hours I’d slept. I’m pretty sure most of us do this in our own way, waiting to have the bad news verified so we can figure out how much of it we can ignore or whether we should prepare to enter some clumsy street battle or not. We’ll be fine in some small way, then not fine in a thousand others. You get it.

On that ominously low note, what perfect time for a new Luke O’Neil essay to appear on The Small Bow. 

Luke, as you may know, runs Welcome to Hell World which feels like ever since he launched it the world’s become more and more hellish each passing year. But he does keep us informed and entertained, both through his own essays and the ones he commissions from others, which are often devastating but also hopeful if you allow yourself a moment to think that way. Anyway, thank him for the work he puts out into the world with by purchasing a paid subscription to help fund his entire operation. He’s one of the good ones. — AJD

New Year’s Day

by Luke O’Neil

I’ve talked about drinking and smoking with a number of doctors and nurses and therapists and so forth over the years and they all seem to be less concerned about the smoking than the drinking. Smoking will kill you surely we’ve all heard of that. Somebody told all of us that. But not as quickly as the drinking apparently. Although maybe the bargain they are making is that a person will likely not be their patient anymore by the time the smoking genre of death kicks in. 

*****

Comes a time when the ashtray wants emptying. No one has as of yet codified what number of cigarettes constitutes a full ashtray mind you. It is a matter of art not science. Of individual taste. But after a certain point it is undeniable by any reasonable standard. It’s no coincidence an overflowing ashtray on a coffee table in a film is shorthand for a person who has given up. 

So too the countertop filthy with empties. Dead soldiers lined up on the table as the song goes. 

I maintain a modicum of order. The bottles are placed in the bin and the bin is taken outside to the larger bin and the larger bin is wheeled out to the curb to await its deliverance. One of another series of lies we tell ourselves. 

And so the ashtray must be emptied. Which is what I’ve done just now with the one that stays on my porch. On an incongruously temperate January morning in Massachusetts. A large ceramic bowl whose provenance is unknown to me. I hope it wasn’t a present from someone that loves me because I should remember that. I should remember so many more things than I do. 

Now it is empty. A blank canvas. Ready to be filled anew. Excuse me for a moment I have to get started on that. 

*****

Last year my wife suggested we should write down our wishes for the new year on folded up pieces of paper and then burn them. To manifest them into the universe or some such. We used the ashtray in question. I asked her if she had heard about this on TikTok in a shitty tone which is something I have done too many times and I am ashamed about. It’s not as if I get my information from anywhere especially reputable. I was trying to think of an example of a reputable source to write down here but I couldn’t do it. It’s all just some guy or lady telling us things. Then we become the guy or lady and tell someone else.

Of course the paper burning thing is a tradition that is so much older than computers and phones and most everything. Something almost everyone everywhere has done around the world. I honestly do not remember what I asked for. For the pain to go away most likely. I wouldn’t have revealed that to you but it’s been over a year now and it didn’t come to pass so I think the warranty on the wish has since expired. 

*****

I thought for the first time in many years just now of bartending in the early 2000s in Boston. Going up and down the bar and from table to table performing a task that is rarely part of the job description anymore. I would take the new ashtray fresh out of the scorching dishwasher and place it atop the one that needed removing as I lifted it away from the drinkers. So as to not spread the ashes around I suppose? Some guy taught me to do that. I can almost picture him. 

*****

Now I’m thinking of a different kind of ashes. A plastic sack of them. Do you want to hold it? Passing it back and forth. I don’t want this. I can almost picture him too. 

*****

We watched a game show the other night and there was a question about things children might make in shop class. One answer was Christmas ornaments. Nailed that. We couldn’t get the last one though. It was an ashtray obviously. In real life but also necessarily for the piece I’m writing here. I don’t think they still do that though. My wife is a teacher and she would know. I should ask her. 

A video on my feed just now of some Danish foreign ministers and diplomats smoking cigarettes next to a car. After a meeting with our worst guys. Having tried to convince them not to invade Greenland. People are having fun with it. I’d need a cigarette after talking to JD Vance too haha. You know how people sound. Sometimes we all find smoking a cigarette very funny for some reason. Like how getting wasted is often funny until it isn’t anymore. 

Do a lot of people still smoke in Scandinavia? I would have thought it was the opposite. What with how healthy we hear they are all the time over there. Healthy and happy. It is impossible for a person who smokes too many cigarettes to ever be happy though. A person who can smoke every now and again on the other hand? God what a gift that must be. A super power. Better in my estimation than having never smoked at all.   

I only ask about Scandinavia because I’ve been watching a Swedish crime show and the brooding youngish detectives in it all smoke. Poorly and counterfeitly however. Pretending to smoke is a surprisingly difficult thing to do I’ve noticed. Even for actors who probably also smoke in their actual lives. Perhaps it’s something like a sex scene. The awkward vulnerability of it. No one wants to be perceived pantomiming baseness. Or how any act you are accustomed to doing over and over becomes pointed and fraught when you are aware you are being watched. The moment before a picture is taken and your hands are wooden and your arms are foreign to you. 

How does a person behave? 

*****

Do a lot of people still smoke in the States? It seems like Smoking Is Back from what I can gather from the youngish celebrities whose names I am no longer capable of retaining. I’m not sure if they show them doing that on TikTok or not. I should ask my wife about that. Nicely. With curiosity. 

I think about Being Cool a lot of late. One becomes acutely aware of the gas in the tank as it is running low. You cannot talk about how you used to be cool is the thing. You can talk about how you are no longer cool though. It’s a small but important distinction.  

Was smoking ever actually cool or did we just see so many examples of youngish beautiful people doing it that we misfired the application of our desire? Hanging the signifier on the wrong sign? 

*****

I saw the doctor who shoots steroids into my spine yesterday. I like him and he seems to give at least half of a shit about me but he is such a stereotype of a jock surgeon that the transactions become uncanny to me. I would not like to know what podcasts he listens to. He’s around my age and decently fit and handsome and he sympathizes with me about not being able to lift or to run or whatever version of suffering I’m going through at any given time and says we can try another injection if I like. To buy myself a respite. It used to be nine months and then it was six and this time it was two. And I’m probably going to do it. Hell I’ll take any relief I can get. Even if it’s just three minutes outside on my porch. A mitigation. A brief palliative pocket before the inevitable emptying.

*****

Luke O’Neil’s latest book is We Had It Coming.

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