TheSmokingMage

You catch up with your neighbor Bob - the Parliament 100s smoker and heart attack survivor from one of my earlier posts- a few months after that encounter with him.

You had noticed Bob coughing a lot and clutching his chest that night. Nothing happened to him that night, but a few days later Tammy drove Bob to the hospital because his chest pains were not going away and getting worse.

Turns out Bob didn’t have a heart attack, but an angina attack- a serious symptom of his congestive heart failure, which shows that disease is getting worse. The ER doctor referred him to his cardiologist, who ordered a full workup on Bob in light of this new symptom.

The good news as far as Bob’s heart is concerned is the doctor saw this as the natural progression of the disease, and adjusted Bob’s meds accordingly. As far as his lungs, though, that was a different matter- the scan his doctor ordered showed clear symptoms of COPD Stage 2. A pulmonologist confirmed this and Bob has an inhaler for flareups, an instruction to lose weight, and an order to quit smoking.

Tammy and Bob are fine with Bob’s meds and the inhaler. They’ve also both made plans to lose weight and become more active. On quitting smoking, though: the doctor’s orders are falling on pretty deaf ears. Tammy and Bob know they can’t and won’t quit for good. But Tammy is trying to cut down to a pack a day. She’s pretty clearly ordered Bob to cut down on his Parliaments, occasionally using guilt. Bob hears “Another pack? Bob, think about your heart,” if he opens a fresh box of his little white slavers after he’s been smoking heavily throughout the day.

Now, at the annual tropical-themed barbecue Tammy and Bob always throw for the neighborhood, you notice both of them have cut back a bit on their smoking. But then you notice Bob stepping from the backyard into the house every so often. Eventually, you follow him into the house and you realize he hasn’t cut down at all - he’s sneaking off and hauling away on a Parliament out of Tammy’s sight. So much for cutting back on cigarettes together!

You make an excuse about getting another beer while you watch an evidently hooked smoker, facing serious smoking-related diseases and who can barely breathe, suck away on his cigarette.

I'm not even sure if Kyle knew what his name was. He first met him outside his college waiting for a bus. The man in the leather jacket stopped and asked Kyle if he was local and if he could give directions.

Somehow, Kyle ended up walking with the man to show him. Whatever happened on the 10 minute walk, Kyle met the men the following evening.

It turned out that the man was also living locally, and hadn't actually needed directions, but it was a way of making a connection. Over the following week, Kyle was going round to the man's apartment each evening after college. He'd been targeted. Chosen and gathered up by the man as one of his current projects. Each visit, Kyle fell deeper and deeper under the man's influence. What was going on in Kyle's head can't be explained, but each evening Kyle would turn up and follow the same routine, kneeling on the floor before where the man sat, and would receive the first Marlboro Red between his lips as the man gazed into Kyle's eyes.

Kyle told his parents that he was studying in the evenings with one of his mates from college, without saying who it was. Instead, he was kneeling on the floor of a stranger's apartment as the man fed him cigarettes and spoke to him... speaking in a low and hypnotic voice about Marlboro.

Kyle would spend his day looking at the time, yearning for the moment he would step out of the college grounds and rush to his new mentor who'd be waiting for him, knowing Kyle would push the door, unlocked ready for Kyle to enter for that evening's hour long indoctrination.

It had begun with a fascination with the man's gaze and an inexplicable feeling of trust and reassurance. Within 10 days, the man's gaze and voice had become just the channel for what Kyle had come to focus on... Marlboro. From being the 'respectable' and polite young man who first walked into the man's apartment, he had transformed into a writhing jelly at the man's feet; the fetishization of Marlboro building as Kyle eagerly and desperately repeated the phrases the man instructed as Kyle smoked deep and hungrily, as if nothing else mattered in this state of overwhelming pleasure. "Marlboro is everything to me". "I live for Marlboro." "I belong to Marlboro". I worship Marlboro"... All Kyle's barriers had been broken down.

Within a month, the man had fully processed Kyle; Marlboro really was all that mattered to him. Kyle was ready to be passed on to the next level of being assimilated into the Cult.

We don't know what happened to Kyle, other than that he finished his studies and moved out of his family home to share with a new friend he'd been introduced to at the Marlboro Youth Club. That will have been his own decision. But his decisions were now fundamentally influenced by his new family.