Like every other Gen Xer, I learned to smoke because a neighborhood girl named Tammy had a grandmother who was dying of cancer and therefore didn’t have time to notice that Tammy was stealing her Benson & Hedges 100s.
和所有的“X一代”（指婴儿潮过后，在20世纪60年代中期至70年代末出生的美国人——译注）一样，我学会抽烟是因为一个名叫塔米(Tammy)的邻家女孩。塔米的祖母身患癌症，奄奄一息，没注意到塔米在偷她的本森100s(Benson & Hedges 100s)香烟。
It was a heavenly time. In the mid-to-late-’80s, non-chain liquor stores would sell to my baby face. Evanston Township High School even had a luxurious smoking courtyard for us teenagers. So easy to be goth all winter!
那是个无比美好的年代。在80年代中末期，就算我长着一张娃娃脸，也能在非连锁贩酒店买到酒。埃文斯顿镇高中(Evanston Township High School)甚至给我们这些青少年提供了一个奢侈的吸烟庭院。整个冬天都走哥特派(goth)路线太容易了！

After school we could sit for hours in the brick-walled rooms of Cafe Express, smoking indoors like an infestation. Suburban summer nighttime was Night Train time, for drinking 40s of Olde E on your bike, smoking into the wind, followed by vomiting into anything.
放学后，我们在快捷咖啡馆(Cafe Express)的砖墙房间里一坐就是几个小时，像一群害虫，在室内抽烟。郊区的夏夜是骑夜行火车摩托车(Night Train)的好时候，我们骑着车喝着40s of Olde E啤酒，在风中抽烟，然后对着任何东西呕吐。
When I see teenagers like the one I was, I want to make a senior citizen’s arrest.
如今，当我看到像我当年那样的青少年时，我想像老年人那样去制止他们。
I strode through the end of my high school years in a smoke bubble, insulated from the horrors of emotion and exertion. Smoking is one of the perfect solutions to being a teenager, right up there with Manic Panic hair dye and murder. Teachers and counselors must have felt like the Hubble telescope, peering across a vast gulf at a gaseous planet. My exterior was an opaque blue-gray swirl of carbon monoxide. No one could even glimpse the human trash can within.
整个高中，我都在烟圈中度过，把自己隔绝起来，免受情绪和努力的折磨。对十几岁的青少年来说，吸烟是最佳排忧途径之一，仅次于Manic Panic牌染发剂和谋杀。老师们和辅导员们的感觉应该像哈勃望远镜，隔着一个巨大的漩涡，遥望一个气态星球。我的周围是一圈不透明的蓝灰色一氧化碳漩涡。甚至没人能看见里面的人形垃圾桶。
Somehow I forgot to apply to college. I happily became a teenage bartender instead. Finally, a job where you could smoke all day.
不知怎么的，我忘了申请大学。我愉快地成了一位青少年酒保，终于得到一份可以全天吸烟的工作。
My friend John remembers the first time he saw me: I was 18, sitting in the back seat of the Market Street bus in San Francisco, smoking out the window. He was disturbed. That was precisely what I wanted. I wanted to be off-putting, a cascade of macho and feminine, a vibrating range of all extremes. Cigarettes were just another middle finger.
我的朋友约翰(John)还记得第一次见我时的情形：当时我18岁，坐在旧金山市场街巴士的后排座位上，对着窗外抽烟。我让他觉得不快。那正是我想要的。我想令人不快，我想接连不断地表现出男子汉气概和女性阴柔气质，我想走各种极端，让人震惊。香烟只是我伸起的另一根中指。
At night I’d sit with my roommate Philo at our little yellow Formica kitchen table, listening to records, and we’d smoke endlessly, until it was time to worry about the sun coming up.
晚上，我和室友菲洛(Philo)坐在福米卡(Formica)黄色小餐桌边，听着唱片，没完没了地抽烟，直到太阳即将升起、忧心的时刻到来。
Doesn’t that sound dreamy still? You could do that then in San Francisco; a bedroom in a Castro Victorian was $300 a month. (Couldn’t you die, Silicon Valley bros? Please do.)
那听起来是不是仍然很梦幻？在当时的旧金山，你可以那样做。当时，卡斯特罗·维多利亚一间卧室的月租金才300美元（硅谷的伙计们，你们就不能去死吗？请去死吧）。
I went from Marlboros to Camels to Camel Wides to Parliaments to my delicious mainstay, Winston Lights. They were so macho. They made me a hotter dude. Winstons are aggressively rural, a Camaro dashboard cigarette, a soft pack from the dusty trailer park. Even I wanted to have sex with me, and I hated myself!
我抽过的香烟品牌从万宝路(Marlboros)换成骆驼(Camels)、肥仔骆驼(Camel Wides)、百乐门(Parliaments)，一直到我最喜欢的温斯顿(Winston Lights)。它们都很有男人味。它们让我更性感。温斯顿具有浓郁的乡村气息，它是放在科迈罗汽车(Camaro)仪表板上的香烟，是来自尘土飞扬的活动房停车场的香烟。连我都想跟自己做爱，但是我讨厌自己！
But I was just a horny lovesick brand slave, like any Lanvin enthusiast or Coca-Cola chugger. Every devotion to a brand is eventually revealed to be a lie.
我只是一个害相思病的淫荡的品牌奴隶，和朗万(Lanvin)或可口可乐的狂热爱好者没什么两样。对品牌的热爱最终都证明是谎言。
I never left a spinning class without smoking. I never left the subway without smoking. I went exactly one day without a cigarette: April 25, 1995, when I spent the night in jail, courtesy of a protest against Rudy Giuliani. I got out of jail and immediately bought some cigarettes. It was just like a scene they forgot to put in “Rent,” only boring and also kind of sad.
每次上完动感单车课，我都要抽根烟；每次从地铁出来，我都要抽根烟。只有一天我没抽烟：那是1995年4月25日，因为参加抗议鲁迪·朱利亚尼(Rudy Giuliani)的活动，我在监狱里呆了一晚。我从监狱里一出来就买了包烟。就像《吉屋出租》(Rent)里漏掉的场景，只是有点无聊和悲伤。
I smoldered on. I smoked on my East Village roof while watching the World Trade Center burn. But I was fine. I could still easily and enthusiastically practice cardio-intensive activities such as terror sex. I could run up three flights of stairs in the event of a subway station panic attack or during that whole year that I refused to use elevators.
我继续借烟消愁。我在东村的屋顶一边看着世贸中心燃烧一边吸烟。不过当时我的身体状态还挺好。我仍能轻松热情地进行对心脏强度要求很高的活动，比如恐怖性爱。在地铁站恐慌事件中或者在我拒绝使用电梯的那一整年里，我能迅速跑完三段楼梯。
Where were the consequences from doing the worst thing on earth? My T-zone never dried into a baseball mitt. I burned only one article of clothing — though it was a pair of jeans from that perfect moment between boot cut and superskinny, and now I’ll never have jeans that fit my calves properly again. I refused to keel over (uh, so far).
我一直在做世界上最糟糕的事情，也没什么不好的结果啊？我的T区从未干成棒球手套那样。我只烧破过一条牛仔裤，不过它产自喇叭裤和铅笔裤之间的那个完美时代，如今我再也找不到那么贴合我小腿的牛仔裤了。我拒绝倒下（呃，至少到目前为止）。
Humans quickly accustom themselves to terror looming. A plane crash would probably be scary only for like the first hour. After that, we’d start wondering when the snack cart is coming by.
人类很快就能适应隐隐可见的恐怖。飞机失事大多只在头一个小时让人恐惧。之后，我们就开始思考乘务员何时开始送餐。
But they call it a life expectancy, not a life certainty, and a daily question became: Was everyone just going to let me keep smoking? Didn’t anyone care?
不过，他们说的可是预期寿命，而不是确定的寿命。我每天都在想一个问题：每个人都打算让我接着抽下去吗？谁都不在乎我吗？
My doctor told me I’d be fine if I quit before I was 40. I don’t actually know if he was a very good doctor.
医生告诉我，只要我在40岁前戒烟就没问题。我不确定他够不够称职。
Then 40 came speeding past like an express train, leaving me stranded and panting on the local track. The Daily Mail ran a surely totally accurate summary of research that said I’d be fine if I just quit by 44. That specificity made it sound like a final deadline. My exceedingly handsome and patient husband was now starting to lose patience, but I was losing my denial faster. The smoking party had ended and I was huddled out in the rain alone. “Smoker, party of one!” — something Carrie Bradshaw typed and deleted, probably.
40岁像快速列车一样飞驰而过，我却被孤零零地困在慢车道上气喘吁吁。《每日邮报》(Daily Mail)进行了一项肯定完全准确的调查总结，称44岁前戒烟就没问题。这个数字如此具体，听起来像是最后期限。我异常英俊、耐心的丈夫开始失去耐心，而我更快地失去了拒绝的动力。吸烟派对已经结束，只剩我一个人在雨中缩成一团。“吸烟者，一个人的派对！”卡丽·布拉德肖（Carrie Bradshaw——电视剧《欲望都市》[Sex and the City]女主角——译注）肯定在电脑上打过这行字，然后又删除了。
And so shortly after midnight this New Year’s Eve, I left my 10 cigarettes on the lobby radiator on my way out of Max and Ari’s party, lit the 11th for good luck and smoked it out into the night. I tossed my lighter into a garbage can on the way home. It was not a moment of hope.
所以，在今年新年前夜午夜后不久，我从马克斯(Max)和阿里(Ari)的派对上出来，把十根香烟留在大堂的暖气片上。为了祈求好运，我点燃第11根烟，吸着它走进夜色里。在回家的路上，我把打火机丢进了垃圾桶。那并不是一个充满希望的时刻。
After a week, my eyeballs stopped sweating. After the first two months, my feelings tsunami subsided. Honestly, what had I been waiting for? Quitting smoking was simple. The secret, you see, is hidden in the phrase itself. You stop putting cigarettes in your mouth.
一周后，我的眼球不再有分泌物。两个月后，我不再有剧烈的情绪起伏。说真的，之前我一直在等什么？戒烟很容易。你知道的，戒烟的秘诀就藏在戒烟这个词里——就是不再把香烟放进嘴里。
It’s like KonMari, except easy, because the only things you throw out are your cigarettes and your entire sense of self.
它就像近藤麻里绘(KonMari)的整理魔法。只不过戒烟更容易，因为你丢掉的只是香烟以及你整个的自我意识。
My friend Emily said she was happy for me, but wistful, too. The last smoker quitting seemed like another kind of gentrification. Now I’m gone, too, along with the gas stations and all the stores that aren’t 7-Eleven. But the emotional rent was just too high.
我的朋友埃米莉(Emily)说，她为我高兴，不过也有点惋惜。最后一个吸烟者也戒烟了，感觉像另一种士绅化。加油站消失了；所有不是7-Eleven的商店消失了；现在连我也从吸烟者的队伍中消失了。但是，吸烟的情绪代价太高了。
Quitting smoking is the khakis of existence. Quitting smoking is the Chipotle on St. Marks Place. I am totally not cool. I may as well be someone’s stupid Brooklyn dad. My hair is its natural color. Most days I’m just wearing whatever. I do yoga endlessly. What am I now?
戒烟之后，我就像朴实的卡其裤，就像圣马克斯市场(St. Marks Place)的墨西哥快餐。现在的我一点都不酷。我可能看起来像个无趣的布鲁克林老爸。我的头发是它本来的颜色。大部分时间，我穿得很随便。我没完没了地做瑜伽。我现在是怎么了？
But also? I feel like anything could happen. Unencumbered, naked and glassy, I feel perilously close to a dozen superfun midlife crises. I could move to anywhere before I even knew I had done so. Someone told me Belgrade is amazing right now, you guys.
而且现在，我感觉任何事情都可能发生。现在的我没有阻碍，毫无防备，坚定平静，我警惕地察觉到十几种超级有趣的中年危机离我更近了。我可能会搬到任何地方，自己却浑然不觉。兄弟们，有人告诉我贝尔格莱德现在很有趣。
Someday, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to smoke again. For now, all I have is the chip on my shoulder. At Equinox every day, surrounded by millennials sweating on their mats, I think about the old joke about Ginger Rogers. Just as she did everything that Fred Astaire did, except backward and in heels, I’m doing everything the young people are doing — except with lungs that smoked for 30 years. I’d like to see these pink-lunged kiddos try it.
如果幸运的话，将来有一天，我会再次吸烟。但是目前，我心里只有忌妒。每天，在Equinox健身房，我被千禧一代包围，他们在运动垫上挥汗如雨。我想起了关于金杰·罗杰斯(Ginger Rogers)的一个老笑话。她做着和弗雷德·阿斯泰尔(Fred Astaire)一样的动作，只不过是穿着高跟鞋向后退；而我也在做着年轻人做的一切，只不过我的肺已经被烟熏了30年。我很想看到这些有着粉色嫩肺的孩子们也尝试抽烟。
Thing is, if I live long enough, my lungs may end up as conch-pink as theirs. Meanwhile, they should use caution when I’m around. Underneath all that smoke, it turns out, I’m a little jagged. Someone could easily get cut.
如果我活得足够长，我的肺最后可能跟他们的一样如海螺般粉嫩。在那之前，我在周围时，他们要当心。结果证明，烟雾之下的我像参差不齐的锯齿。很容易伤到人。