My 18th Secret

          I was the only car on the road and luckily hitting every green light. I couldn’t go to bed because my mind was operating faster and more reckless than my driving. I needed to stop somewhere to collect my thoughts. I pulled into a CVS and parked next to the handicap spot- no one seemed to be out that night. I rolled down my window to take in fresh air. I did this for a couple of minutes, like how one would before a breath holding contest. I was opening my lungs and mind for what seemed needed…

            I’d always been very healthy, considering my asthma. Asthma strains my breath. It makes my chest pump. It’s like getting the wind knocked out of you right after you got the wind knocked out of you. I can run long distances, just not swim them. I can lift a lot of weight, just not explosively. I’m a stallion with stilletos for horse shoes; so much potential, but inhibited by such a silly quality.
            Just before I had parked at CVS, a lover's quarrel was holding me back from my full potential, from happiness and content. Fortunately for me, a new avenue was opened up that night, an avenue that offers relief to many people. Going to the gym or listening to cathartic songs as remedies were becoming weak. So... the obvious choice for me at the time was to try something new.

Hi. I’m Alex Lessard. Can I have a pack of Camel 99s please?

Hi Alex Lessard, can I have your ID?

Oh yeah, sure.

I handed her my license. When she said happy birthday, I couldn’t help beaming. I wasn't innocent. I was buying cigarettes: 20 grown up pixie sticks. I also got a lighter; it was red and gray with a rubber grip. BIC made it… I’m doing my adult back to school shopping, I thought to myself.
I walked out and back into my car. I tore off the plastic to the pack, and held it to my nose. It smelled like raisins. I love raisins.
The foil inside made it even more exciting, almost as if it were the golden ticket found in only select Wonka bars. Pulling that golden tab off, I revealed my candy delights, all lined up, pristine and white. So clean, how can people say this is a dirty habit? I took the lower right hand corner one out. I put the orange tipped end to my mouth and held it there with my lips, which were dry for some reason. I broke open the lighter packaging, held the ligher up close, and ground its wheel to the end of my cigarette. It sparked at first, then on the second it flamed. I breathed in a little and saw smoke coming from the end of the cigarette. I rolled down all the windows and held my steering wheel. Another inhale and my lungs captured all the smoke, later pumping it back up through my nose. I took the cig away from my mouth and held it outside my window. I could see it glowing orange, and I thought it was beautiful. My own campfire. I watched it there for a few seconds with my arm outstretched. I swirled it around quickly. It sucks that my name isn’t JD; Alex is hard to spell out with sparklers. I’m done with kid stuff, up to my mouth again. I watched this time looking down the bridge of my nose. The tip of the cigarette was flaking away, moving the line of decay closer to me, leaving a wake of smoldering ash behind it. It was very cool. What I’m doing is very cool.
After nursing that one, I tried a second. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth. An oral fixation developing. My fingers clamped it, lips grasped it, and my lungs used it. They used all of it. My asthma seemed to have taken a break.
After I had finished, I put the key back to the ignition and started my car. Holding the stub of my cig out over the pavement, I tossed it down.
My adult life started with one of its many privileges being used to its fullest. My conflicting thoughts had been soothed with the mellowing of a good cigarette. One of many 18th clichés, marked off. Self-therapy by way of drug, check.

A History of Conviction

    At the age of five, after my parents had put me to bed and they themselves retired to their room downstairs, my nighttime ritual began. I’d crawl out of bed and walk towards the window across the room, making sure to avoid the parts of the floor that creaked. Pushing aside the drapes, my quarters instantly flooded with light from the street lamps and traffic of Manchester. We lived atop a hill located just outside the city, offering a wide view that was the industrial equivalent to a picturesque mountain landscape. It also offered a strategic location for giant spotting.

    My paranoia began when my parents sat me down to watch the live-action movie Beanstalk, a 1994 adaptation of the famous childhood storybook, Jack and the Beanstalk. I had told them of the cartoon version I had seen in Kindergarten, and they thought a more recent, Hollywood-budgeted version would delight me.

    As I watched from the couch seated between mom and dad on either side, I grew immensely excited, for this movie was far superior to that of choppy 2-D animation. I hadn’t seen many movies yet except for fantasy, so by nature I favored the genre over others. But from my praise for real actors and awesome CGI during the growing of the beanstalk, there also grew a concern. Sprouting deep from within my young and easily frightened self was the idea that they would use a real giant. At the time, Santa was still the greatest person alive, the Easter Bunny was elusive yet rewarding, and Big Foot was always walking through my grandfather’s wooded property up in northern New Hampshire. I’ve heard of giants before, and assumed they played a tangible part in reality just like the others.

    “No”, I thought to myself, “they always cop out on quality by throwing in a cartoon monster”.  I was trying to rationalize it. I was talking myself out of peeing my pants. I was not prepared to see a being so widely feared and detested, for at age five, everything scared me, and I had the imagination that went straight to creating the most terrifying of scenarios. I watched on while leaning on my dad, his arm perfectly positioned, covering half of my vision. It helped little, for the knot in my stomach tightened as Jack climbed the beanstalk. This movie was not fiction, it was real. The once appreciated live-action aspect soon played with my head, and I began to realize that this was what actually happened, what the books and cartoons were inspired by. I was watching this perceived snuff film casually in my living room on a Friday night with my parents. I literally did not have the balls yet to deal with this crazy shit!

    I was five. The giant appeared and I screamed, for seeing him confirmed their existence. For the next two hours my parents consoled me, telling me that what I saw was not real and that giants did not exist. I knew what I saw, and concluded that my parents were in on the global cover-up of the existence of giants.

    Fortunately, I had watched and heard enough prior versions to know that giants could come down to earth. They were like crocodiles or mudskippers. These things could live in multiple environments! That, in addition to their obvious size advantage made them the greatest foe of all, and I knew that if I were not on my guard, I would be susceptible to a giant attack at any moment.

    After that fateful, informing night, I pledged to myself to not be a victim. So as my parents lay asleep under the perceived notion that they were immune to being eaten, or crushed, or thrown hundreds of miles to a certain death, I stayed up as long as I could by my bedroom window. I set my eyes beyond the city lights, scanning the peaks in the distance; I had visited my grandfather’s house up north in the White Mountains, and so I knew that the sky-piercing pikes could offer easy transportation down to earth.

    First, I would set up my station comprised of binoculars, my father’s old toy rifle, pretzel sticks (really any snack that was laying around the kitchen that afternoon), Poke’mon cards for viewing and appreciation, and a pillow in case I needed rest. So in front of my bedroom window at night I stood, diligent and ready to meet my fear head-on. My confidence and aptitude to face death was not unaided I must admit. There were two things that assured my survival. If at any moment a giant rampaged through Manchester, making a B-line towards my house, I knew the toy rifle would turn real. And in case my aim was not precise; my bicycle (with training wheels for stability during quick escapes) was always right against the garage door, prepped and ready.

    This was how I lived for about six months, give or take. It started in the summer I recall, and ended when I found out during Christmas that Santa was not real. Once Santa was dead to me, the Easter Bunny was engulfed in flames and giants became fictionalized almost instantly. My faith in Big Foot persisted for a few more years to come however...

    To this day, I don’t see myself as having been naïve. Giants were as true to me then as the oceans are blue today. We’re constantly learning and constantly revealing to ourselves a different perspective, a different world that is just as true as the last. So if you’re religious, or have a cause, or think you’re in love with the most beautiful person in the world, I won’t try to disprove you, because there’s always a chance I could be saying the equivalent of, “the world is flat”.