Is a Cigar Just a Cigar?
Today I told my Humanities Core students my secret to idea-generating success: smoking cheap cigars. What I didn’t tell them is that it’s been long time since I’ve smoked a cigar, and I take this lengthy hiatus from stench and social rejection to be symptomatic of a deeper loss of spirit.

This would strike my Plymouth Brethren forbearers as quite odd. Smoking was the second worst thing they could imagine a person doing. Drinking, of course, would be the worst. Having sex would, of course, be the third worst. To smoke a cigarette would be tantamount to admitting that you were not one of God’s elect; i.e., that you were going straight to hell. (You can see this attitude in the story about Bob Jones, founder of Bob Jones University, who, after returning from a trip to England where he had met with C.S. Lewis, supposedly quipped, “well, he drinks and smokes, but I guess he’s a Christian.) So how did those foul things find their way to my lips, the same lips that praised Jesus and kissed my mother?

I was introduced to cigars while a student at Northern Arizona University. No, my fraternity brothers did not get me started on the brown-wrappered chimneys. I went to college in the 80’s when cocaine and casual sex were the rage in all the fraternities and there was no time for cigars, what with all the cocaine-snorting Tri-Delts running around.

I was introduced to cigars by my Campus Crusade for Christ brothers. “Garship,” they called it: a term formed by combining elements of “cigar” and “fellowship.” Apparently, all the Campus Crusade guys in the southwestern states regularly smoked cigars when they got together. This was revealed to me only in my senior year when I was rooming with Dave, our single Campus Crusade staff guy who happened to be from Colorado, home of Garship. Dave and I were living in a “mobile home” by the railroad tracks and we decided to host a “Men’s Night” for the guys in our local Campus Crusade group. This night would feature poker, played for beans, literally, and Garship. NO GIRLS ALLOWED.

I’ll have to admit this really tested my limits. I was now breaking two of the most important rules of my religion. Want to know what was fourth on the list of horrible, terrible, soul-damning sins in my family? You guessed it: card-playing. The worst whipping of my childhood was savagely delivered to me after I agreed to play Old Maid with some kids from school.

It was brutal, but that whipping saved my soul, at least until I got to college and got involved with those Campus Crusade “liberals” and started smoking and playing cards. But I couldn’t resist them. No, I don’t mean the cards and the cigars. I couldn’t resist those guys. They were change-the-world-go-hard-or-go-home-fun-loving-but-Bible-thumping-men. They still believed in God above, the Devil below, Heaven waiting for us and Hell waiting for them--you know, all the important stuff--but they also embraced life.

That was just the transition I needed. And you know what? I liked cigars. I liked them. The sharp, but somehow sweet taste, the smoke stinging your nose, throat, and eyes, and that subtle little buzz, all combine to make it an experience like no other. I was smoking cigars way before it was hip. I was doing it when it was disgusting—i.e., before the Governor of California had special cigar-smoking area on the patio outside his office—and I’ll still do it after the fashion fades (completely).

And I think Brecht was right: smoking does improve concentration. But cigars, because you can’t, or at least shouldn’t, chain smoke them, and because they don’t have the same addictive properties as cigarettes, seem a little safer, at least if you only smoke a ten or so a year. (You can mock me when I get throat cancer.) Smoking cigars helped me relax and think those thoughts you usually can’t think because you’re running around, or the radio is on, or the project has to be done yesterday.

Even after I got married, and my wife told me she would not kiss me if she could taste any tobacco in my mouth, I would still smoke at least two cigars a year: one the day before my birthday and the other when visiting my friend, Dave Stephens (not the Campus Crusade guy). I would smoke one on my birthday as a kind of reflective ritual. I would go off by myself and smoke a stogy, and think about where the last year has taken me. (I gave this up five years ago because my life has become so thoroughly depressing that I can’t bear to think about it. Socrates, with his unexamined life thing, was full of shit. I’m guessing he never had to examine a life as crappy as mine.)

My friend Dave and I, whom I would meet in Phoenix every year around Christmastime, would go off and smoke a cigar together as a kind of bonding ritual—probably an-at-some-level-at-least-misogynistic ritual. But this came to an end when his wife, an otherwise charming woman, but kibosh on it (for religious, not feminist reasons).

So now I’m on my own and I haven’t been smoking cigars much at all. It’s been two years since I’ve smoked one, but I bought a pack of cheap--and I do mean cheap and nasty--Swisher Sweets Perfectos a few days ago. Why now?

Well, first of all, I think I’ve reached that point in my marriage where I realize most of the good sex is behind me. Oh, my wife still loves me, but we’ve got four kids, two of which are in diapers, and one of those is nursing, and, well, there is not a lot of energy for Daddy right now. Plus, let’s face it, I’m not the sexy guy she married. I’m balding, a bit swollen, and, well, a loser. I’m not conquering any worlds. I will not be famous, or get an endowed chair, or change the world. My confidence has been replaced by self-loathing, and, apparently, that’s not sexy. So why not smoke a cigar? At least I can enjoy some rich symbolic (phallic) displacement . . . you know, make myself feel like a man again.

But I don’t plan on letting myself go completely, do I? I don’t think so. I’ll still try to dress decently . . . most of the time. And I’m not going to get fat. I couldn’t stand that. I can’t stand the way all my neighbors just let those bellies of theirs grow and grow. I mean they don’t even seem to care that they can rest their beers on their stomachs. I don’t think that’s why they’re called beer-bellies.

No, the Perfectos in my dresser are not a sign of my further deterioration. No, but their long absence from my life may be a symptom of the shallow state of my soul. I’ve been working so hard these last five years. I work all the time. All the poetry, song, and silence have been forced out of my life. (Do you know how hard it is to make $90,000 every year when you have no talent, skills, or abilities? No? Well take my word for it: it’s pretty fucking hard.) I need to find my groove. I need to find my soul again, and I think a cigar might help.

Here’s my plan. In about ten minutes I will go in and watch an episode of “Sex and the City” with my wife. (We love that show.) When it’s over, I will kiss her “goodnight” with my clean, tobacco-free mouth, and I’ll go outside with my nasty stogy in one hand, and a beer, an ultra-light beer (a Michelob, apparently the “Queen of Carbs” to Budweiser), in the other, and Sylvia Plath under my arm, and I with each puff I will try to draw in a bit of my soul back inside my body.