The Chairs Are Where the People Go Read online

  I think it was there that I really decided that I needed to quit soon. Soon in this case meant three years later.

  Up until then, I was always starting a new job or ending a job, or starting a relationship or ending a relationship, or any of a million other reasons for which it was an inconvenient time to quit, but in the spring of 2000 I ran out of excuses. I decided I’d approach quitting smoking with the same passion and enthusiasm as I had approached smoking.

  So I read lots of books on the subject. I went to a 12-step-style smoking-cessation group. I found a psychotherapist who specialized in smoking-cessation programs. It was a months-long project. I did all kinds of things. I switched to a brand I didn’t like—from du Maurier to Player’s—ever switching to lighter and lighter cigarettes.

  Mostly, the books say that cutting down isn’t especially effective. So I did cut down, but what I really tried to do was train myself out of all the individual habits related to smoking. I was afraid that once I quit smoking, I wouldn’t be able to work anymore, so, long before I quit, I made it a rule for myself that I couldn’t smoke while I was working, so I could learn how to work without smoking. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to not smoke while drinking, so, before I quit, I practiced drinking and not smoking. I practiced talking to girls at parties. That was a big one. I think a big breakthrough for me was when a girl left a party with me and I hadn’t been smoking.

  Through all of this, I didn’t actually stop smoking. For instance, in the middle of my work, I would go outside and have a cigarette, then return to my smoke-free working. I think, in the same way, I probably excused myself while I was talking to that girl to go leave the party and have a cigarette.

  Let me make it clear that I understand all of this is completely crazy.

  I’ll give you what really is useful advice for anyone who wants to quit and doesn’t want to be or isn’t necessarily crazy. The big secret for quitting smoking, compared with a lot of other things, is that it’s pretty simple. To quit smoking, all you need to do is make the decision that you will never smoke again.

  Now, this isn’t true about losing weight and it isn’t true about a million other decisions one might make in one’s life that require nuance or are questions of degree or are complicated tasks. But with smoking it’s really simple. If you make the decision never to inhale tobacco smoke again as long as you live, you’ll be okay.

  That means a few things. Mostly, it means you make no exceptions. You can’t smoke once in a while. You can’t, as I did, smoke as a reward for not smoking. You can’t act as if it’s a big surprise when things in your life get difficult. You have to decide that you will not start smoking when there are crises in your life. People say, I’m going to quit, but then there’s some crisis—they get fired from their job, their relationship ends, there’s a death in their family—and they start smoking again. But there are always crises. In my case, the crisis that triggered my starting again in university was the exam period—a crisis which you might think I could have seen coming.

  If your strategy for quitting smoking is, I’m not going to smoke again unless something bad happens in my life, it’s a pretty safe bet that in ten years you’ll be smoking again. It’s pretty easy to quit for a year, but the goal really is to not start again ever.

  The one thing that the smoking-cessation therapist said to me that stuck with me was that terrible things happen in one’s life. That’s normal. So, she pointed out, for instance, that in a sort of best-case, normal, happy life, both one’s parents will die. For most people this is a terrible, sad, stressful thing. And while day-to-day that occurrence is certainly out of the ordinary, in the scheme of a full life, it’s about the most normal thing that can happen. She specifically said, You have to think about your parents dying and not starting smoking again when that happens. I thought that was nice.

  * * *

  I had my quit date planned out months in advance. Finally that day came, and I smoked my very last cigarette outside in my backyard, because that was the only part of my house that I allowed myself to smoke in anymore.

  My friend Chris had promised to buy me lunch at Mr. Greenjeans at the Eaton Centre that day, so I was on my way to meet Chris, and I figured, This is a special day. I think I’ll wear a suit. So I put on a suit that I bought for a cousin’s wedding and I went out to meet Chris.

  To be honest, I always kind of liked wearing a suit, but there were few occasions when it was really appropriate for me. But I figured this was a special day, so what the hell. I went to Mr. Greenjeans with Chris, and it was okay, this not smoking. I felt a little dizzy, I had a little bit of a headache, but it wasn’t too bad. It was nice to have that day with Chris.

  The next day I woke up.

  I put so much time into thinking about my first day quitting smoking, but I hadn’t thought that much about my second day. So I figured, Well, wearing that suit yesterday seemed to work out for me. Maybe I’ll wear it again. I mean, it seems sort of inappropriate, but what the hell. I’m quitting smoking.

  The books often tell you that when you’re quitting smoking, you should give yourself little rewards. My little reward was to let myself wear a suit. So I wore a suit on the second day, and again on the third day. For my first month quitting smoking, I pretty much wore a suit all the time, even at home. The same suit.

  It was kind of great. I’d run into people on the street and they’d say, Hey, why are you wearing that suit? And I’d say, I’m quitting smoking—as if that explained it. But it was good having this quitting-smoking suit. Like it gave me powers or something.

  I also bought a really expensive yo-yo, which I carried around with me for a while, until my twelve-year-old cousin told me to stop. I think he was right. The yo-yo went too far. We were walking around Kensington Market and I was in my suit, in which I should say I looked somewhat ridiculous with my then long, greasy hair. I didn’t look like a normal guy in a suit. I looked like someone in a costume, walking through Kensington Market, doing yo-yo tricks. My cousin said, Why don’t you just get a monocle and start walking a tiny dog or something? And I understood he had a point, so I started leaving the yo-yo at home.

  I think what most made me nervous about the prospect of quitting smoking was that it was a project that was completely occupied by negative space. I mean, I know how to take on a project if it consists of doing something, but here this whole project consisted of not doing something. It’s hard to know how much time to allot for a project that consists entirely of not doing something.

  * * *

  Now I’m sort of known for wearing suits. I’ll always wear a suit if I’m performing, and I usually wear a suit if I’m going to a party or something like that, and I’ll often be the only person wearing a suit. These aren’t suit parties I go to. But it’s funny, because you sort of grow into wearing a suit, which is nice. It makes getting older a little easier.

  The suit is often described in the press as “wrinkled,” and I’m frequently described as “a man in a wrinkled suit.” I’m not sure why this is. I have the suit dry-cleaned and pressed pretty often, and it’s rarely wrinkled. I’m not sure why people would think my freshly pressed suit is in fact wrinkled. It must just be something about me.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Mitzi Angel, Chantal Clarke, Kathy Daneman, Susan and Sholom Glouberman, Dave Meslin, Darren O’Donnell, Lucas Rebick, Patrick Roscoe, Erik Rutherford, Leanne Shapton, Lorin Stein, Duane Wall, Margaux Williamson, Carl Wilson, and Jacob Wren.

  MISHA GLOUBERMAN WITH SHEILA HETI

  THE CHAIRS ARE WHERE THE PEOPLE GO

  MISHA GLOUBERMAN is a performer, facilitator, and artist who lives in Toronto.

  SHEILA HETI is the author of three books of fiction: The Middle Stories, Ticknor, and How Should a Person Be?. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, n + 1, and The Guardian. She regularly conducts interviews for The Believer.

  Faber and Faber, Inc.

  An affiliate of Farrar, Straus an
d Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2011 by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 2011

  An excerpt from The Chairs Are Where the People Go originally appeared in The Believer.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Glouberman, Misha, [date].

  The chairs are where the people go : how to live, work, and play in the city / Misha Glouberman, with Sheila Heti.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-86547-945-6 (alk. paper)

  1. Group problem solving. 2. Group relations training. 3. Happiness. 4. Group games. 5. Improvisation (Acting). I. Heti, Sheila, [date]. II. Title.

  HD30.29.G585 2011

  650.1—dc22

  2010047600

  Frontispiece illustrations by Leanne Shapton

  www.fsgbooks.com

  The names and circumstances of some people have been changed, and some people are composites.

  The authors would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for the grant they received to work on the book. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

  eISBN 978-1-4299-6864-5

  First Faber and Faber eBook Edition: July 2011