‘Tommy Daddy’ Doesn’t Smoke Anymore - Prologue

It’s been three days since Tommy closed, and I still haven’t had a cigarette.

Eleven years ago, although together for 13 years, Rolf and I still went separate ways for the major holidays. For Thanksgiving, he was at his folks place, I at mine. His sister-in-law, Chrissy, needed to get to Ocean City, MD and had asked him to drive her there. Begrudgingly, he said yes. When he told me that he was going to Ocean City after Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn’t have been more excited and insisted that I go with him. That came as a surprise to him, because he had forgotten how long it had been since I had seen the ocean.

The three hour trip turned into a 5 hour trip, because Chrissy needed to go to Baltimore first to put a cash down payment on new furniture she was buying. It was not “a stop on the way!” It’s amazing how much we let people take advantage of us. It’s also amazing that I made the 5 hour trip without a cigarette.

We got to Chrissy’s mother’s apartment at about 9:30 in the evening, Thanksgiving 1993. Starving, all of us bundled up in borrowed hats and gloves, and headed out to find food. It was much colder near the beach than it had been at home. We found an Italian restaurant that was open, and had the best lasagna ever.

There was still time to ride Ocean City's boardwalk trains through the Winterfest of Lights. It was open air, and so cold that Rolf and I could snuggle together without seeming gay. (Rolf hadn’t had those talks with his family yet.) There were twinkle light images that combined Ocean City life with Christmas: Surfing Santas, Santa hooking a Marlin from a charter boat, animated Sharks, Santa playing softball . . . dozens of them! And they were big! I laughed until I cried. That night, I was so in love with Rolf.

We warmed up for a minute in the apartment, and then set off for the three hour drive home. Rolf forgot my main reason for spending Thanksgiving this way. I needed to see the ocean. Nineteen ninety-three was the only year I hadn’t seen the ocean. If I didn’t get to see it, I thought my heart would break and I would die. .

My sweet sweet man looked at me, possibly getting ready to say that it was way too cold and way too late to go the beach, but his expression just turned into pure love instead. “Oh my God,” he said “I forgot you didn't see the Ocean this year!” And he turned off Route 1, and drove around a corner. The light poles were all wrapped up like candy canes as we got closer to the beach, and occasionally there other smaller light display decorations, that became more numerous and bigger as we got closer to the water where we found a whole new display of Winterfest on the beach.

Here they were nautical themed lights. There was a 30 foot tall light house scene that we walked right up too. We could see a forest of Christmas Trees, a family of whales playing in the water, King Neptune, looking like a Mer-man Santa in a shell-sleigh, being hauled by Seahorses. And it was cold. We were without hats and gloves, and I think Rolf had less of a coat than I did, so he was ready to go home as soon as we got out of the car.

You know what he did?

“Let’s go sing Christmas Carols to the fish!” I said. “I’ve just got to stand by the water, even if only for a moment.”

And he smiled and walked down to the water’s edge with me, and we sang “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells” and “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel ... hmm mmmstumble. . la la Israel.” We kissed. And I had my first cigarette since I had gotten to his parents house, 9 hours earlier. As I walked back to the car, I looked down the beach at all the pretty lights.

I don’t smoke around Rolf, much. Never in the house, never if we’re in the same car. Since it had turned cold at home too, and it was so late when we got home that we went right to bed.

My Mom called me the next morning, mostly to reflect on how nice it had been for us all to be together. Of course, as you would expect, she said it was a shame that I left so early. She mentioned that my cousin’s father-in-law had died of emphysema on Thanksgiving Day.

We didn’t go anywhere on Friday. It was snowing very hard. We spent most of the day cuddling next to the fireplace and watching old movies in pajamas and sweatshirts. It was almost evening when the need for a cigarette became overwhelming enough that I was willing to go outside to smoke. Soon, I was searching through everything I had worn the previous day looking for my cigarettes. This is a chore that I knew better than to ask for help with.

Exacerbated, I said “I wonder what I did with my cigarettes?” And Rolf pounced.

Man he was mad. Purple in the face mad, yelling: “You’re cousin’s father-in-law died of emphysema," and I knew he had torn my cigerettes up and thrown them in the fire. He kept yelling, "and my grandfather died of emphysema, and your grandfather died of emphysema, and your brother-in-law’s father died of emphysema. Your niece and nephew and your cousin’s children will never have a relationship with their grandfathers! There’s no way in hell that I am going to watch you die the way that I watched my grandfather die.”

He yelled that, but I heard something else. I heard “I love you so much that I can’t imagine life without you or going through the pain of losing you to cancer or emphysema. So, please, you’ve just got to quit. Because if you don’t, I can’t be here to watch you die.”

Stunned, “Ok,” I said.

“Ok. Yes! Then my last cigarette can be the one I smoked while freezing on the beach in Ocean City while singing Christmas Carols to the fish.”

And so it was.