Temptation

Last night I picked up a half-smoked cigarette in the street and walked along twirling it in my fingers, trying to think where I could get a light. Then I threw the butt into the bushes. It was a triumph.

This is my life: I feel triumphant when I don’t bring home cigarette butts I’ve found by the curb. I feel triumphant every time I drive a car without smoking. I am no longer a person. I am a nonsmoker. Every ounce of my energy — physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual — is devoted to not smoking. My thoughts all lead to the fact that I can’t smoke. People talk to me, and their words become little cigarettes in my head. I can’t concentrate long enough to study or even to make a pot of coffee. So I dance around, pick up dog hair, sing, check my e-mail.

I bore myself with this whole nonsmoking bit. I can only imagine the effect I must have on others: How are you? I am not smoking. How’s your work? I am not smoking. What are you doing for the holidays? What the fuck do you think I’m doing? I am not fucking smoking. Merry Christmas.

My head is foggy, but my lungs are clear. I am determined to prevail. In the meantime, best keep your distance.

Deirdre Mahoney
Oakland, California

I have a good life. My partner is loving, thoughtful, and earns enough as a business executive that I can stay home with our two children. We live in an upscale neighborhood with hundred-yearold trees and superb schools.

But every time I’m running errands and driving a northbound freeway, I think about continuing on to San Francisco. There I could write full time. I could come and go as I pleased. I could sleep. I could sit in a coffeehouse and talk about the future, possibilities, ideas. The grown-ups in my life now talk only about interest rates, remodeling, and investment portfolios. I dream about driving north until I’m on the doorstep of City Lights bookstore. I probably could never actually do it. But I am tempted.

P.L.
South Pasadena, California

I didn't steal as a child, even though I was poor and hungry and had reason to. No, the temptation arose only after I had plenty of money. Then I began to pocket lipstick, earrings, inexpensive drugstore items. I even tried to get away with not paying for subways or tram tickets.

I was unhappily married and desperately lonely. Our two children fought constantly. My mother lived next door, and I resented her emotional dependency. But it wasn’t my marriage that caused my crimes, because after I was divorced, I continued to steal. Did I secretly want to be caught? Was it a rebellion of sorts? Was it because my father had raised me to question whether I really needed something before buying it, and I unconsciously believed I didn’t need anything as frivolous as lipstick?

During a stay in Germany, I visited a psychic in Munich who told me I was a rosebud about to bloom, and that something soon would happen to reorient my life significantly.

The next day, as I entered the subway, I intentionally punched only one space on my strip of tickets instead of three. They rarely checked the tickets, but as soon as the train started moving, a conductor headed right toward me. I apologized and said it had been a mistake; I was from the U.S. and didn’t know the fares. He took me off the train at the next stop and let me go.

I got on a tram, and, thinking that surely I wouldn’t be randomly checked again, I stamped my ticket in a space that previously had been stamped. Again, a conductor discovered what I’d done. I explained that it had been an accident. I was leaving the country soon to return to the U.S. and didn’t even need the extra tickets. It truly made no sense for me to try to cheat the system. He told me to get off the tram and fined me sixty deutsche marks. If I didn’t want to pay, he said, I could go to the main office and plead my case there.

At the main office the punitive fee was waived, and I was allowed to pay the correct fare. But my inability to overcome my compulsion left me shaken. I swore to myself that I would never cheat or steal again. I still don’t understand what caused me to do it, but I have kept my word.

Name Withheld

In the seventies my husband and I built a house in the northern Maine woods, giving up electricity, running water, and other creature comforts in exchange for what we considered to be a more pure life. Several years later, we rejoined society, got jobs, and started driving our kids to band and soccer practice, but we kept our property in the woods and returned there every summer. Our kids called it the “free world.” We swam in the river, gathered raspberries, cooked over a campfire, hiked in the forest, and watched for moose and bears. The only sounds were the wind in the tall pines and coyotes howling.

The children grew up and scattered. When the marriage ended after twenty-six years, I retreated to the cabin for an entire summer and drew strength from hard work and endless hiking. Alone in that silent place, I realized I could manage this new single life. I ended up spending time there every summer.

One August I arrived to find that someone had bought the land on either side of our property. Within sight of our cabin, they built a bunkhouse and other buildings for their new summer bear-hunting business. A loud generator ran, chain saws ripped into trees, and pickup trucks and all-terrain vehicles roared about. Men cursed and yelled and tossed beer cans on the ground. To attract bears, they dumped rotting garbage and barrels of “bear mash” — a fetid-smelling, doughy brew. After training the bears to come to these spots, the “hunters” waited for the first day of bear season, then hid behind a blind and killed the unsuspecting animals.

Paradise lost. I fumed. I wrote bitter letters to my ex-husband and kids saying that we should sell the property. I had bad dreams about intruders trying to break into my house. I hiked farther and farther from the cabin in search of silence. And then came the idea: burn their buildings down. A friend told me he knew a couple of guys who, in the middle of winter when the snow was deep, would snowshoe in, splash around some gas, and light a match.

It went against everything I stood for. I was a pacifist, a student of Buddhism, a healthcare practitioner whose first aim was always to do no harm. But burning down their camp would solve everything. No one would be hurt, and my paradise would be restored.

I kept my friend’s phone number and thought often about calling to tell him to have it done. I knew it was terrible even to consider it, but the vision of the hunting camp going up in flames gave me comfort. Each time I went there and saw their compound and the mess they’d made of that beautiful spot, I thought, I will do it!

But I ended up moving across the country, and I stopped spending time at the cabin. Two years ago I heard that the bear hunters had sold their land to a family with six children who planned to live there year-round. Recently I phoned the wife, who turned out to be a kindred spirit — a Taoist and environmentalist. They are restoring the buildings and the land, installing solar panels and a composting toilet, and opening up their clearing with a handsaw. The serenity of that spot suits them, as it always did me. I will go back there soon.

I’m relieved I didn’t give in to the temptation to destroy what I didn’t like.

Nancy Moore
Bellingham, Washington

When I was twenty, my friend Jack and I traveled cross-country on a shoestring budget. We stayed with relatives or slept in our car, except for one night when we splurged and got a room at the YMCA in San Francisco. The clerk told us we would be sharing the room with a man who’d been there several weeks. Though we never saw our roommate, I immediately noticed his milk crate full of gay porn magazines. I wanted badly to look at them, but Jack was straight and didn’t know I was attracted to men. I’d told no one, and barely admitted it to myself.

In the morning, as we headed downstairs to check out, I told Jack I’d forgotten something, and I dashed up to the room to steal one of the magazines. I knelt in front of the crate, but I was suddenly too scared to take one. I couldn’t bring myself even to turn a single page.

Nathan Long
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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