Note From The President, Cerebus 97, April 1987

Copyright 1987 Dave Sim

I quit smoking January 23.

See, Gerhard quit just after Christmas and I told him if he still wasn't smoking after a month that I would quit as well. It really wasn't all that difficult -- basically, I just substituted exercising for smoking. Whenever I wanted a cigarette I would do about thirty sit-ups or so. Everyone who knows me at all well has a great deal of trouble believing that I actually quit. I mean a good day for me was two packs --- a bad day anywhere up to four or five. A lot of people smoke before a meal. Every smoker smokes after a meal. I used to smoke during a meal. A spoonful of soup, a drag on the cig, a spoonful of soup, a drag on the cig.

I have a message for all the smokers out there. Ready?

Enjoy it. Smoke'em in the morning, smoke 'em at night. Chain smoke them when you feel you have to. Smoke in "no smoking" sections. If someone objects, blow smoke in their face. Smoke in bed. If you like smoking it is unquestionably one of the great pleasures of your life. A little event that's just for you. Out of eight years that I smoked between fifty and a hundred cigarettes a day there were maybe a dozen cigarettes that I didn't enjoy. I was one of the coolest smokers you ever saw. I extracted them from the pack with flare. I lit them with panache. I could blow smoke rings. Big ones, little ones, I could exhale a thin stream of smoke; a series of small clouds; I could blow it out my nose; blow it out my mouth; I could blow it out my nose and then out my mouth; I could exhale out of my mouth; inhale it through my nose and exhale it out my mouth again. At conventions nonsmokers like Valentino, P. Craig Russel or Matt Wagner would bum cigarettes off of me. I had so much fun smoking people who never even thought of smoking wanted to try one.

So what's the message?

If you smoke; enjoy it. Don't torture yourself that you should quit. If you're ready to quit, you will. If not having a cigarette for ten minutes makes you break out in a cold sweat, gives you stomach cramps makes you cranky and short-tempered, you are not ready to quit. My heart is with you guys. Almost all of my close friends are hardcore smokers. You are, as a group, more interesting and more fun than non-smokers. As for anti-smokers...

You people are among the rudest, most sanctimonious, anal-retentive, strait-laced, shrill, obnoxious, irritating, unimaginative, intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded, loudmouthed and just plain despicable and vile creatures that ever crawled out from some place dark and slimy. You should all get a loathesome disease someplace that shows and die a thousand excrutiating deaths.

You know it was worth quitting just to be able to say that? And I mean especially for the bitch from Now Comics who kept reporting Ger and I for smoking at the San Diego Con but who still had the nerve to crash our party.

Oh, and the lady I'm dating now doesn't smoke either, so, I finally have an answer to the question; 'What do non-smokers do after sex?'

Why, they do it again.


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