On Old Men And Cigars

After my tobacco growing experiments yielded a smokable harvest, I decided to find out if my tobacco was any good by taking up pipe smoking. I'd never smoked prior to that and even now, I smoke about twice a month. I recently decided to see what cigars were like.

Recalling that Roger Moore was partial to Monte Cristo cigars, and Roger being my favorite James Bond, I stopped at our local Total Wine and More and picked up one. It was utterly sublime.

At 62, I took up cigar smoking with about the same regularity as my pipe smoking. Monte Cristos are quite expensive, about $25 apiece, so I tried to find similar cigars that were less expensive. A bit of searching both here in San Diego and in Mobile, Alabama yielded a string of smokes that tasted like I was licking the asphalt out in the street. Horrible.

The last one I tried, highly recommended by the cigar guy at the Tinder Box in Mobile, was a Perdomo Lot 23 Nicaraguan. Again, sublime.

My cigar exploration has produced very few hits, so I think I'm done with that and I'll stick to the Perdomos and the Monte Cristos. Combined with a good Old Fashioned, and I make a good one, the experience is exquisite.

The problem with being a novice at cigar smoking when you're 63 is that you didn't make your truly hideous mistakes at 16 and there are lessons you still need to learn the hard way.

About a week ago, wife kitteh went on a retreat with a friend and, naturally, I threw a stag party. Southern food and Confederate Railroad music was had in great quantities and two of my guests proved to be excellent mixologists. It was a lot of fun until the very end when we brought out smokes.

You are not supposed to inhale cigars. I had heard that, but while smoking my previous cigars, I played with that advice and inhaled a few times. Nothing happened.

I inhaled a complete Perdomo Lot 23 Nicaraguan Churchill. That is one seriously big cigar.

Vomito de gato.

Cigars have a lot more nicotine than cigarettes which is why you only puff them. You get plenty of the stuff through your mouth. No need to take it into your lungs and poison yourself, which is what I did. Blargh.

I don't get a nicotine high. I still don't understand why people smoke cigarettes. I smoke pipes and cigars for the flavor and the experience. Like I said, they go real well with mixed drinks. And so I ended up crawling around on the floor all day Sunday as my body irritably processed the idiotic amount of nicotine I had consumed while not actually enjoying any kind of buzz from it.

I sure wish I had learned that when I was 16.

A happier moment when I'm puffing, not inhaling.