Sick Boy[s] Paddle Club↓

Chewing Cigarettes

edoacae

Translated by: Yumeng Zhao

I lean on the street lamp, waiting for the traffic light to turn green. I bent slightly, hiding my expression behind my hair without wearing a bra.

As if the expression is a fluid,  unconstrained by gravity, floating to the tip of my mouth. So I purse my lips to suck it dry.

Dusk, too, is a fluid. The little left at the bottom of the cup either stays, dumped into the sink with the cup, or is inhaled—with the sound of the air, rustling, splashing.

I take my time,  deciding which shop to enter. And I take my time to stick a finger onto the shop window.  A pack of this and a lighter. The $1 kind. Then tuck them inside the pocket of the tight jean shorts.

There are a lot of winding paths, paved with irregular bricks. No light disturbs this area. One foot on the path, the other in the grass—the grass, dull green, can shelter mosquitoes but not hold the weight of anybody.

I sat on a body-height railing, legs hanging eventually, with my entire weight centered on the crotch.

Upon clicking the lighter, the flame flares up and, like the sticky tongue of a lover, twists in the wind. A grey hole is burned into the side of the cigarette without lighting it. It suddenly occurs to me that that’s not the way to light a cigarette. Following my memory: place the cigarette between my middle and index finger, hold the filter, light, and inhale.

And I hear the cracking sound of burning.

That is the tiniest burning, an internal flame, as if the smoke has sucked the flame in, letting the flame devour itself. And the flame becomes a little gnat swarm. Parasitises; consumes the hanging timber at the fastest pace. Parasitises me through my trachea. Reproduces. And consumes me just a bit slower than I grow, until one day I no longer grow, leaving me only with breath and perishment.

I look at the skin of the cigarette peeling rapidly—like an act of metamorphosis of an insect. Rod is left, a dripping stalactite, conical, cascading stackings, dropping down at a subtle pace.

On my scale, a cigarette grows, erodes, and is hollowed out in a few minutes, just enough for a couple of sentences, while it coils, spirals, and dilapidates in front of the other. On the scale of the cigarette…it is without doubt its whole life.

I let it tilt, index finger tapping its side, the ash the shell of weathering. The cigarette slowly burns down , until my finger burns. I fling it away like flicking off a bug.

I often say: burnt. Burnt by piercing words, by unfounded thoughts, by accusations, by accident or certainty. But when I am literally burnt, I describe my sensation with other words. The description is like my bra. Of course I can live without it. It's just my bare breasts and an unconsciously bent back to avoid gazes sticking to my nipples. As soon as my two eyes match my two nipples, the most random movement will tug at my skin.

I light up a second one after putting out the first, listening to its crackling sound, as if I am not sucking but chewing, chewing the flame, chewing the rising smoke, chewing the dusk that will dissipate with a gentle wave. After the second one, the darkness almost fully creeps in, as if I have inhaled all the light bit by bit.

I should go home now, or else mom will come and fetch me. I smiled bitterly upon the thought of her—not a smile precisely, more like a pursing, the pressing together of upper and lower lips, bitter saliva. I did not smoke in my teens, even hated it. I hated the smell. The smell that sticks to fingers, hair, and clothes. The smell that cannot be shaken off, that cannot be washed away. But I would bury myself in the internet cafe at the time, staring at the color screen for hours, letting the smoke soak into my body through my sight.

And I run and swirl. Run and swirl ceaselessly as if smoke is a ghost biting on my heels.

My mom’s curses slapped under my feet the moment I stepped into the door. Her anger burnt fast, and furiously. She was breathing like she was sucking something—sucking on one end, burning on another. Her weathered outer shell rustled off my head, breaking my skin not yet fastened. She snatched off my clothes and beat them up violently, as if they were burning.

She chased me into the shower.

She was angry like Medea.

I was a child burnt to death. Also Heracles ripped away his clothes along with flesh and blood.

But she is not angry anymore. She is so old that she is only willing to spare me a glance with her ashen eyes, quiet like an animal. Before I know it , something has burnt away, burnt down to ash, bleak and murky, that I can pinch and rub gently between my fingers like pinching a bug. Slight pity and harmless cruelty. I still retain the habit of provoking her unconsciously. That is an inertia of the body. Smoking, drinking, all-night-out —rather than enjoyment, they are a zoning-out in life. A drift-away. A flee.

Flee and imagine mom mumbling, muttering, her complaints like a spit out of her dry mouth. Many times our eyes meet. Our lips both pressed. My silence tells her that she has completely lost control of me; her silence tells me that she knows, and that she accepts. She no longer burns but she is still dry. She is still piled there dangerously, next to a sign with wet paint: Flammable Materials, No Open Flames.

But I am not burning her, more like visiting: approaching with a match, its flame slowly tracing every corner of her soul, and pretending to accidentally drop the match on her. The match is too small so nothing burns. She frowns but does not curse out loud, only showing a look of disgust.

This is exactly what frightens me. She no longer criticizes me for smoking, but walks away when I approach her soaked in the smoke. Instinctive and clear hatred. As if I am a ruined page and she does not hesitate to crumple everything about me into a ball and throw it away. I am afraid that she no longer likes me, like a scared animal withdrawing its affection, leaving a disliking unshaken by my efforts to please– in fact, I am not going to please her. This is her protest, the most subtle, most threatening protest.

I wouldn't even call it threatening. Why would you interpret the expression of love and hatred as threatening?

The night has fully fallen. The impenetrable darkness pressed on me, damply. I return home along the path. Inside, lights are not yet lit. She is probably out buying stuff. The cigarette box and lighter pressed against my thighlike razor tips and sharp edges. I want to cast them away. Into the bullseye. When I walked past the square, middle-aged men crowded the benches on both sides. I immediately shrank my chest and lowered my head, refusing to look at any face. I walked very, very quickly through them, like squeezing between two walls. People’s gaze penetrates and drifts, weaving an ill-fitting turtleneck.

Open the door. Walk back in. I do not turn on the light but slip right into my bedroom, and hide the cigarette and lighter in the cabinet in the deepest corner of the room. The cabinet is filled with socks of all colors, each pair curled into a tight knot, like infants’ fists clenched in their dreams.

edoacae

Writing under the name “edoacae” and rooted in the WeChat Public Account “The Duality of Words,” she is a serious writer on the Chinese internet, striving through creation to grasp the forms and substance of things; deeply drawn to Tokarczuk, Tarkovsky, and 8½—an autistic person still arduously searching for her place in the world.