September/October 2007

I Quit

My 15 minutes of smokingfame has lasted way too long.

By Michael Jon Khandelwal

It's hard to quit smoking.

And it's even harder when, every time I watch Survivor, I see myself during the commercial breaks puffing away on news promos.

Last December, I was sitting inside Norfolk's Colley Cantina, minding my own business, when a television crew from WTKR-TV 3 came inside to ask "the smokers" what we thought of Norfolk's proposed ban on lighting up in restaurants. It's often my goal, when on camera, to say the nuttiest thing possible, just to see if the editors can piece something worthwhile together from my ranting. I formed this habit because I have many friends in the local television biz, and it's my way of saying "Hello" to them back at the studio.

So, I turned on my jerky television persona (which is, of course, much different than my ordinary jerky persona) and rambled on for at least 5 minutes.

At one point the reporter asked: "Would you leave Norfolk to go to bars in Virginia Beach, just so you could smoke there?"

"What?" I replied. "Are you saying that the city of Norfolk wants me to drive drunk?" I told you I get a little out of control when I'm being interviewed.

NewsChannel 3's talented tape editors ended up splicing together the dozen or so coherent words I uttered, and the station began running video of me smoking on its newscasts and promos. After a few months, I became routine stock footage. Occasionally, I appear in just video with no sound: b-roll of a "local smoker." Other times, I am ranting as well, making me "local smoker speaks out."

At the time I as deemed a video smoker, I had just given up on quitting for the seventh or eighth time. It seemed that whenever I tried to quit, something happened—something like a break-up or the death of a close friend.

In March, my urge to kick the habit returned. I was not dating anyone, and all of my friends were healthy, so I decided to give it another try. This time I bought the program Final Smoke, which claims that it has a 92 percent success rate. It involved a mish-mash of pretty much every quit-smoking technique in one package. Certainly one or more of them would work on me.

They did.

Following the instructions, a week before my quit date, I announced to everyone I knew that I was quitting on Saturday, April 7. I practiced my quitting techniques in earnest: creative visualization, self-hypnosis, cattle ranching, flash cards, ritual sacrifice, list-making—lots of grass skirts and chicken bones flying through the air. On my quit day, I started taking the herbal pills designed to help with the physical cravings. I set up a reward system for reaching milestones. Day one: dinner with a friend. Week one: a massage and then dinner. Month one: dinner, a massage and some camels. I really like the zoo.

I am writing this around month three, and you're reading it around month five. My reward for month three is to get back into the dating scene. (My reward for moth five is to write about quitting smoking and get paid for it by Hampton Roads Magazine. That way, I can pay for the dates!)

This being the Singles issue, before I decided to quit, this column was going to be about my take on finding love locally. Perhaps some self-deprecating humor about being dateless followed by a thinly-veiled appeal to my female readers. I planned to embed my phone number within the editorial, using some kind of substitution cipher. What can I say? Smart women turn me on.

But what's the purpose of dating, anyway? Generally, healthy people need others in their lives to be happy. This comes from making friends, spending time with family and seeking out romantic relationships. Being healthy means being social and trying to form connections with others.

Smoking is unhealthy, it corrupts our bodies, and for me, was a way to distract myself.

Of course, smoking is also social, and I just said that being social is healthy, so this creates a slight problem. Is this why I'm not getting any dates?

No. It turns out I feel better not smoking, and, although smoking seems social, it actually made it harder for me to be myself, socially, because the cigarettes were a crutch.

What does all this mean for my dating life?

Now, women I meet think that I am a liar because I tell them I am a non-smoker, and they go home and turn on the television, and there I am, larger than life, acting like a jerk while smoking a cigarette on their flat screen.

Really, I only have one thing to say: Step off, NewsChannel 3! Stop broadcasting video of me smoking. I quit, and you're killing my mojo!