It was a really ordinary night, and I didn't have any plans to go to the beach, especially since it was February and pretty darn cold out, but nonetheless I did end up driving down Route 18 to the ocean. I had been at dinner with friends and was on my way home, when I saw the moon. It was a full moon, and I thought, "this is not a night to be inside, this is surely a night to watch the moon," and I drove south, keeping an eye on the moon getting higher in the sky just outside the driver's side window.
Well, I got thirsty, so I stopped for a coke at a 7-11, and while I was in there I got looking at the cigarette display, and I bought a pack, and a small fuscia disposable butane cigarette lighter. Now, you've got to understand, I had never bought a pack of cigarettes in my life before. As a matter of fact, I don't smoke, and what possessed me to buy a pack that night at the 7-11 along with my coke I do not know. But I got back in the car, popped the flip-top on the coke, unwrapped that little tabby-thing around the cellophane on my brand-new first-ever pack of Benson & Hedges Ultra-light Menthol 100s, cracked the window to let the smoke escape, and lit up with my perky little butane lighter. Out of the 7-11, on down south, gonna find a beach.
Now, by this time new wave music is playing on the radio. I'm lighting new cigarettes as soon as the old one is done, I'm taking huge swigs of my coca-cola classic (it would have been beer except that, for one thing, you can't get beer at a 7-11 in New Jersey like you can back home, and, for another thing, I am not the type to go up in flames in an alcohol-related highway accident of my own creation). And this is when I realize I am not myself anymore. A strange feeling creeps over me and I realize that I have, indeed, become someone else. Well, of course, you say, that's obvious. You don't smoke, therefore this woman driving your car and listening to new wave music and moving pretty darn quickly through that pack of Benson & Hedges without actually inhaling is not you. "Y'know," I say out loud to no one in particular, "the combination of menthol and coke in one's mouth is really quite pleasant." And I realize, hey, this woman I have become, or who has taken me over, likes to smoke, just like the Benson & Hedges ads say: for people who like to smoke. I practice laughing loudly with my head thrown back and my mouth open, just like the women in the ads, but this causes me to inhale by mistake and only an emergency swig on my can of coke keeps me from going up in flames in a coughing-fit induced highway accident. And it's a good thing, too, because I have finally managed to find the boardwalk in Asbury Park.
So there I am, and this is what the whole evening has been about, standing all melancholy on the boardwalk in midwinter in my wool socks and longjohns, watching the full moon and the ocean, smoking cigarettes and grinding them out under my heel, lighting a new one in the cup of my hand. It feels good, it feels cool, this woman ''m being for an evening is definitely the type to grind cigarettes out under her heel on a deserted boardwalk late at night in midwinter. She's tough. She doesn't give a fuck about litter-she's tossing her butts-she doesn't give a fuck about the eerily deserted carnival rides at her back, all she cares about is the moon and the white breaking waves and the feeling of the menthol in her mouth.
She may be a little crazy, though, she keeps seeing things in the water, things about to come out. It's just the waves breaking, but every single one of them seems about to land a woman, or a dolphin, or a mermaid, on the beach right there in front of her. This, I and she agree, means it's time to leave, before one really does come out, or before we go in to meet them.
So, I'm about half of the way up Route 18 back to New Brunswick, and the signal on the new wave radio station gives out. I fiddle with the dial, move it down to Country 103.5, and for a moment right then I see myself, like from the outside, looking down from where the moon is, and I gotta tell ya I'm looking just a bit foolish with about 3/4 of a 100mm cigarette still in my hand, smoking it without inhaling, while Tanya Tucker sings some twangy dippy song, and I gring the cigarette out in the ashtray even though it's a waste to throw out almost a whole cigarette. And, bam! just like sliding into your old familiar bed after a long trip, I'm myself again, only a little bit less depressed and confused than I was when I left my friends back at Friendly's four hours ago after grilled cheese and ice cream, and, of course, I am the proud new owner of a fuscia butane disposable cigarette lighter and the two remaining Benson & Hedges Ultra-light Menthol 100s.
Well, this is the tricky part, because as I come back to myself I am thinking, Su, you are no Political Scientist. Let me explain the best I can how smoking 18 cigarettes and looking at the moon made this decision for me: because I thought, or didn't really think, but just knew, that if I could be somebody other than Susan M. Penn, future Ph.D. for four hours, I could be somebody other than Susan M. Penn, future Ph.D. forever. It was as if cool-beach nicotine woman whispered smokily in my ear, choices, Susan Marie, are real things and not just for thinking about before you go to sleep at night. Choices, Susan Marie, are things to be lived.
© 1988 Su Penn
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