Blue Sparks

Sparks. Blue sparks. Maybe, the sparks were green. The sparks could have been blue and green. It has been years since I’ve read Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, but those sparks made smoking cigars seem like magic. Cigars that had been soaked in rum or brandy. The secret to not getting sick, at least according to the narrator Leonard Neeble (or was it the eponymous character himself who advanced the claim), was chewing bubble gum while smoking the cigar.

I never got to test the theory. Apart from an abortive attempt with ragweed when I was thirteen, I didn’t experiment with smoking until I was in university. I can’t remember my first cigarette, but I can remember my first cigar. Living north of the border at the time, I was able to purchase a Cuban – I believe it was a Romeo Y Julieta – for my inaugural experience with that noxious weed.

It was awful, but not in the way one would have expected. My Dad is the worst kind of non-smoker – an ex-smoker – so I didn’t want him to find out what I’d been up to. I tried to smoke it out on the patio, but that cold prairie wind made lighting the thing difficult, if not impossible. I don’t know if I ever got it properly lit. It was dry, and relatively flavorless, and after a few puffs I was bored and cold. So I stubbed it out, went back inside, and brushed my teeth very carefully. I might as well have rolled up the five dollar bill I used to purchase the cigar itself and smoked that instead, for all the good it did.

I’ve smoked cigarettes, but they’ve never held the same iconic fascination that cigars hold for me. Leonard Neeble, Allie Fox, Howard the Duck, P.J. O’Rourke, H.L. Mencken, Groucho Marx, George Burns, Bill Cosby, George Peppard, Dirk Benedict, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, James Gandolfini, and Wendell Pierce – the cigar has a full nelson on my imagination that a cigarette will never have. A cigar is more than just a cultural statement though, and while I’ve smoked my share of cigarettes, they’ve never really become a habit for me.

A cigarette is kind of like a potato chip. You can’t have just one, and chips are a snack, not a meal. Any cravings that I have might have been placated, but they will return shortly, and with a vengeance. A cigar is a lot like the steaks that get served at Mortons. I can order the baked potato with the steak if I want to, but there really isn’t any point. Once I’ve finished that steak, I’m done. And I feel fine.

It isn’t just the cigar itself that makes smoking so much fun. The accessories help enhance the experience. Humidors are probably the most important thing to own, next to the actual cigar itself. Nothing brings out the flavor of a cigar quite like a humidor. I’ve smoked my share of Cuban cigars in Canada and Japan, but they’ve never been quite as memorable or enjoyable (albeit very satisfactory, as most cigars are) as the every-country-except-Cuba cigars that I’ve stashed for a week or two or three in a humidor here.

The other missing part of the accessories equation is the means by which the cigar is lit. I know that some connoisseurs would frown on the practice, but for me, I like the retro charm of firing up a stogie with a Zippo. However, with someone who smokes as infrequently as I do, there is just one catch: the Zippo doesn’t hold a charge.

Nic and I were out on the balcony, and I had just broken out the cigars that I had been saving in the humidor for the last three weeks. But I couldn’t light the cigar because all the fuel in this masterpiece, this classic of American design and engineering had…evaporated. If I were a regular smoker, I don’t think this design flaw in the Zippo would ever have become apparent, but it was cruelly driven home to me that evening.

All was not lost. Nic had the foresight to bring a torch with him, and we puffed away on the Tabak Especial Balada Coffee infusion cigars he had purchased in Texas. After all, regardless of how the cigar is stored, or lit, or for that matter where it was grown, or how much it cost, as Freud once noted, a good cigar is a smoke.