My astonishment at this comment was so palpable that he felt obliged to explain. “Haven’t you noticed,” he asked with surprise, “all these young women standing furtively in doorways? You never used to see that when I was here.”
I couldn’t resist my laughter. “They’re not prostitutes,” I clarified. “They’re smokers.”
For indeed they are. Most American office buildings no longer allow smoking on the premises, driving those who can’t resist the urge onto the streets. The sight of them, lounging on “coffee breaks” near the entrances to their workplace, puffing away, has become ubiquitous. Since most new smokers apparently are women, my friend’s confusion was understandable. And there are more than ever since September 11.
Stress is probably better measured anecdotally than statistically. I’m not aware of surveys on this matter, but anyone living in New York these days has stories of friends who, amid the scares of 9-11 and its aftermath, have sought solace in cigarettes. I used to go to a gym in the MetLife Building over Grand Central Terminal. Some days so many people stood outside, tensely smoking, that I assumed an evacuation had just been ordered. At least three friends who’d given up tobacco have lapsed back into the habit, claiming they couldn’t calm their nerves any other way. Others have increased their previously reduced intakes. Some, in their quest for a crutch, have begun smoking for the first time. In modern Manhattan the frantic puff has become the preferred alternative to the silent scream. (If you can’t reach your therapist, you know where to find her.)
New Yorkers, of course, are coping in more imaginative ways, as well. A friend swears he knows someone who has stashed a canoe in his closet in case he needs to escape Manhattan by river. Another says he has moved a heavy objet d’art into his office so that he can smash the window if a firebomb makes the elevator or the stairs impassable. A woman working on one of the lower floors of her office building has acquired a rope long enough to lower herself to the ground; one who works at the top of a skyscraper tells me she’s looking into the purchase of a parachute. Still others have stocked up on such items of antiterrorist chic as flame-retardant ponchos, anthrax-antidote antibiotics and heavy-duty gas masks.
Crackpot friends of friends, but surely not your own? Hardly. One close acquaintance, concerned about my welfare as an international civil servant, tells me I should not be going to work at the United Nations without ensuring that I have, in my desk drawer, a flashlight, spare batteries, a clean cloth and water to dampen it with, all to facilitate an efficient exit through smoke and darkness. Though touched by her solicitude, I have not yet taken her advice. But I believe her when she tells me that many others have, especially her female friends.
Recent polls indicate that American women are, in fact, more stressed out than men. Over 50 percent in one national survey of 1,000 adults admitted to being “very” or “somewhat” worried in the wake of the terrorist assaults, according to the Pew Research Center. The anthrax scare may have receded. But recent incidents, from the airplane crash in the New York borough of Queens to the arrest of the London “shoe-bomber” to rumors of suitcase nukes, seem to have had permanently unsettling effects. Take food. A surprising number of people are apparently unable to touch their plates. (Some happily, discovering that fear is the best diet.) Others are eating too much, seeking reassurance in “comfort food.” (Dessert sales are up, up, up, according to waiters at New York’s famous Serendipity, home of the frozen hot chocolate and other high-calorie nutrients, where waiting lines for a table extend into the street.) Given the alternatives, smoking seems a reasonable refuge; after all, the long-term threat of cancer seems far more remote these days than the prospect of explosive incineration.
And let us not forget other obsessive coping behaviors. A surge in compulsive shopping, redecorating, drinking and self-medicating has been reported, along with exercising, buying music and movie going. I haven’t checked the stock prices for Philip Morris recently, but I’m told it’s doing better than expected. As people deal with their fears, the newspapers tell us the economy is bouncing back. Could ordinary people’s coping mechanisms be helping spur a national recovery that, in the first weeks after September 11, had seemed a distant prospect? Few things could be more American than giving in to your weaknesses–and finding that makes the country stronger.
