Confessions of a Cuban Cigar Smoker, Volume I

By Addiction

Forty years of living can teach you a lot. And four years of cigar smoking can give you a lot of time to reflect on that knowledge. This is a series of essays about the meaning of life: the lessons learned, the details you catch along the way, and of course the smoking of some damn good cigars in the process. Confessions Of A Cuban Cigar Smoker, Volume I offers a comedic view on present-day life (think Chris Rock and The Original Kings of Comedy), injected with an academic approach to the cigar lifestyle

The lessons of this book are illustrated with examples from the author's life, and it's those life lessons that forge the book's character. This is a book for people who enjoy living and people who can appreciate and consider all points of view and are willing to indulge in the comedy that surrounds every human experience. This is certainly a book for people interested in Cuban cigars—whether you're just breaking into the world of cigars, transitioning to Cubans, or even if you're a seasoned veteran of the treasures that hail from that small island south of Miami. However, this is also a great book to reach for when you just need something to smile about; no desire for cigars is required to enjoy it.

This book provides serious cigar knowledge, hilarious real-life insights, reviews of some rare Cubans, and a whole lot of laughs. The humor will keep you thinking and laughing a long time after you've put the book down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Addiction
• Release date: Dec 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466175068

Addiction

So what can I say about myself that wasn't covered in the arrest warrant.... Seriously, I'm a 40-something Black man with a family in Northern Virginia. I have a wife and five kids: three grown men and two small children. I'm self employed in technology, I help people with big problems turn them into manageable problems. If you've been online, chances are you've used technology from one of my clients that I helped implement. I grew up in the city of broad shoulders, Chicago. I still have great affection for the city, so much so that I never visit it and only call the people I know there infrequently. For me it's like that great love of your life that gave you crabs. Technically you are not super sure it was her, and she swears it was you, so when you see each other you half smile, kind of wave, and don't look each other in the eye. You then head in separate directions as quickly as you can. That, in a nutshell, is Chicago and I. I have lot of education, most of it has been somewhere between impressive and useless (yes Columbia, I mean you) and just plain useless. Pursuing a degree in technology after you are working in the field is mostly the same as putting on the condom after she gets out of bed, it typically isn't going to do you the amount of good you think it is. It's fair to say that I like cigars from a certain island nation south of Miami. I won't expand on that topic because as you go through more and more of my writing that topic becomes less and less prominent. None of that is important. What's important is I have a surly disposition, an eye for detail, and a talent for combining the two into a story. Most of these stories, these essays on the condition known as life, are totally streamed from my consciousness and driven by the love of a great cigar and a mind that sees the more colorful illustrations existence brings our way. These stories are, in my humble opinion, both profane and profound. I'd have to admit that unless you live in a culture where fuck, shit, and terms of culturally-pointed humor are in everyday use then these stories might be, by today's tight definitions which are gagged and bound in political correctness, slightly inappropriate. Actually they are probably exceptionally inappropriate. As an example, I make jokes about the fact that a lot of men of Latino descent push lawn mowers for a living. But let's be honest, if you have ever seen a white man pushing a lawn...

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Confessions Of A Cuban Cigar Smoker, Volume I

Addiction

Published by Addiction at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Addiction

Look for future titles by Addiction at Smashwords.com:

Confessions Of A Cuban Cigar Smoker, Volume II (Coming in 2012)

All rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work. Any cigars portrayed in this book that appear to be Cuban in origin are most likely completely fictional in nature. Any resemblance between these sham cigars and actual Cuban cigars is unintentional and purely coincidental.

Dedications from Addiction

MMJW the best thing that ever happened to me. I wish I were the same for you. I ask the heavens that in the future I will be.

CA and CD you guys are the tiny lights along my path. Little people make you believe in wonder again.

Byrd thanks for giving me a chance to spread my wings under your roof. I'm not going to blame you if I crash to Earth, but if it all works I'll raise you up!

Jennie thanks for being the first encouraging person I didn't actually know. Hope you like how it turns out and PLEASE stop taking rides from History of Science majors.

Jeremy you, sir, are the man. Jennie told me I could, but you showed me HOW!

Jason, Jason, Brian, Mark, Dan, and Nick it would be insanely hard to find people as good as you guys with whom to share cigars. Luckily I don't have to.

Phil I can't believe you got me to do this.

Mike and Tori thanks for helping even when you didn’t know you were.

Jason and Angela people might think I can form a coherent sentence because of you guys. I made it comedy, but without you guys it wouldn't be a book! THANKS!

Antonia Do what you do, girl. We're selling a million copies next time!

Jay-Z, Michael Jordan, and Stephen King thanks for giving a brother something to shoot for.

To the rest of the world: I believe that you need to laugh at yourself, and if you can do that then you should be able to laugh at everyone else. After that things get considerably easier. I don't hate any ethnic or religious group. I don't dislike any sexual orientation that involves willing participants. Except maybe furries, but come on! My mind sees each of us as funny—separately and in groups. So don’t get your knickers in a twist if you don't like it. Just stop reading.

Table Of Contents

Chapter One: In The Beginning

Chapter Two: 99(%) Problems

Chapter Three: Where To Start

Chapter Four: Lake Anna, Ballapalooza

Chapter Five: You'll Get By With A Little Help From Your Friends

Chapter Six: Wanted Gently Used Ferrari

Chapter Seven: The Worst Words

Chapter Eight: Finding Our Way Back

Chapter Nine: DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!

Chapter Ten: Is It Worth It (Parts I and II)

Chapter Eleven: You Gotta Fight For Your Right

Chapter Twelve: Let's Review Shall We

Chapter Thirteen: It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

Chapter One

In The Beginning

OK, some things are obvious. It's pretty obvious that I've written a book. And it’s a fair guess that I want you to buy it. I'd bet that if you pick up a book that's titled Confessions of a Cuban Cigar Smoker you expected it to be one kind of thing. And it's certainly that kind of thing, but it's also another completely different kind of thing. You will definitely learn something about Cubans in this book, but hopefully you'll also learn just a little bit about life.

This tome speaks to Cuban cigars in particular and all cigars in general; at least, that was the intent. Once I started writing, nothing came out about non-Cuban cigars, so you won't read very much about them here. This book also serves as a record of my observations of the strangely delicious absurdities life presents every day. I sometimes use my general observations on life to drive home a point about cigars and I sometimes use the teeny bit of cigar knowledge I have to drive home a point about life. It's all the same thing, really; I’d never let a cigar get in the way of spinning a good yarn. The fact is I've only been smoking since 2007 and only found Cubans in 2008. I'm not a real expert in the field but I do have some knowledge that you might find useful.

Sure it's only been four years, but I've bought over 400 boxes in that time, maybe over 500. I've sold quite a few, too. I've been through it with fakes, gougers, and brotherhood. I've managed to sneak out the other side of the abyss with a little bit of knowledge and a slight sense of humor. I'm here to give you the benefit of that knowledge and humor.

For background, I'm a black man coming up on the midlife crisis milestone pretty quickly. I won't lie, I felt like I had to throw that out there right away, otherwise in about three paragraphs you were going to be calling Al Sharpton with my actual home address so he could organize the protest. Anyway, I've driven convertibles for the last 10 years, so that wasn't going to scratch my itch. I've also traveled a good portion of the world and I have a wife who is both beautiful AND a lawyer, which dissuades me from most other pursuits sought out by men who are getting old enough to finally realize they are no longer young.

I thought about maybe doing some stand up. In a past life I did a little stand up, once in front of a full house of 8,000 people. I think I rocked it and I loved being up there. The euphoria of the stage makes you completely understand why people pursue that life, but the aftereffects are a real bitch. People want to take your picture. They want to talk about shit and have you make jokes. It seems I don't have the stomach to be famous; maybe I'm the only one in America who doesn't want that. I'd love the money, mind you, but I don't want it enough to live in a gilded cage and let you watch me fling my poo for your amusement.

Then it occurred to me that I could write a book. If you believe the hype, most Americans can barely read; they damn sure can't identify the people that write. So if I can pump out enough pages of my thoughts and then sell 194,986 copies at $2.99 a piece, then I can pay off all the property I own in this life. That would be pretty fucking sweet. That probably means I'm going to have to write about 70 different books to accomplish that goal, so I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

But before I can get to that point, you and I need to get better acquainted. After all, I need you to tell 194,985 of your closest friends that spending this $2.99 is a pretty good goddamn idea. So I just think we should take some time and lay some ground rules. Every successful relationship is based on a series of understandable rules of engagement. I guess every reality show and news broadcast proves that several unsuccessful relationships are as well.

I’m pretty sure Elliot Spitzer had several rules. One rule had to say that you don’t actually tell people Elliot was spending $5,000 a night to get laid. I'd guess there was also a rule about not saving his number under Governor. There definitely had to be a rule about not writing any of that shit down.

Think about it: if you are spending five grand a throw to fuck, then $50 is for pussy and the remaining $4,950 is for discretion. If you’re famous and you pay a bitch $20 and an eight ball, then hell yeah, you should expect to see your shit in the paper. How the fuck do you even pull up to buy an eight ball driving an S-Class and think it’s going to remain a private transaction? Hell, TMZ is staking out anyone selling more than a rock just because they can. With one SD card holding thousands of digital pictures they will just start snapping and hope for the best. Ninety percent of those pictures are going to be of Tom Sizemore, Courtney Love, and/or Lindsay Lohan, but the other 10% will make them some pocket change.

However, when you man up and cover a $5,000 price tag, it should come with a no names in the paper guarantee. I understand what they mean when they say it ain't tricking if you got it, but that level of pussy bribery should be full fucking service; you should get a free excuse phone call from an established voice talent and everything. Morgan Fucking Freeman could call your wife and use his full-on God voice and say you just helped him deliver a baby dolphin in a rain storm and now you guys are going bowling and grabbing a beer. Hell, you spent $5,000—that should cover some special effects, shouldn't it? I ain't saying a monsoon, but you can scare up a shower for $3,800, right? That's still $1,200 to cover the cost of a basic bodily function; I think a college student can get by with that. But Governor Spitzer didn't get any of that. If the pussy and head fee is $50, then somebody owes that guy a hell of a lot of blow jobs, that's all I'm saying.

Where the fuck was I? That happens, by the way; I wander. I write whatever comes into my head. I often plan to write something, and something else comes out. That’s the curse; I just take it and run with it. Oh yeah, I was on ground rules. I believe we need to start with ground rules. It’s only fair that you have an understanding of who is talking to you. I need to give you that sneak peek into my persona that lets you know that you can either identify with me or you can identify with what I’m writing about, because there ain’t no refunds! So let’s just go with some off-the-cuff, freeform thoughts of the moment (like that's not what I was doing anyway).

So I was in the airport yesterday and these geniuses were hypothesizing about how they knew the recession/depression was coming. You know how I knew it was coming? Rick Fox. I mean five or six years ago, Rick Fox had acting parts, he had commercials and shit, he did some sports broadcasting; things were happening for that dude. With how regularly he was appearing on TV, you might have thought he had been somebody other than Mr. Vanessa Williams and the Lakers’ .6 points per game water boy who sometimes got into the action. He’d already left Vanessa Williams and the last big shot Rick Fox took had dead flu viruses in it, that’s all I'm saying. Even when he was playing for the Lakers, Rick Fox was so far down the bench they had to send a telegram to get his ass in the game. I'm pretty sure his seat on the bench was on the other side of the fucking International Date Line; you had to set your watch back to fucking call him in. Then one day I looked up and there was no Rick Fox. Nigga just gone, poof, disappeared. And that’s a fucking sign of trouble friends, like if pretty Ricky yellow-skinned niggas with naturally curly hair can’t find work, the rest of us are screwed.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a test: try to think of the last time you saw a high yellow homeless person.

Naw, don't give up that easy. Go ahead, I'll wait.

......

Can’t do it, can you? It’s not that there are no bright-skinned homeless people; that would be a numerical impossibility. If there are white people homeless, then everyone else is allowed to be, too; that’s one of the things they didn’t decide to keep for themselves. Except maybe the Chinese; if some dude was out there kung fuing other homeless cats, that shit would be on the news or, at the very least, you would have seen a YouTube of it. And by Chinese, I mean any Asians; there are 1.6 billion of them so, as far as I'm concerned, God made that call already, China won. If the rest of you 'eses and 'eans want to be counted, you better start fucking.

Let's get back to the perceived lack of high yellow homeless. As I said, it's not that there is a dearth of high yellow homeless people; it’s just that regular homeless people look, well, homeless. They got a shopping cart with three hefty bags in it, two of them have holes in them and one of them actually contains garbage. That shopping cart has 90% of a fucking Cuisinart in it and they ain’t got no goddamn electricity; clearly, they ain’t right in the head. Their socks are made from yesterday’s sports section (and Rick Fox ain't fucking in there). Their breath just smells like lungs because there’s no bothersome food odor to get in the way.

Before I forget, am I the only person who cracks up a little inside when you see a homeless person with a shopping cart but he asks you for money to buy food? That’s some advanced fucking planning right there; his broke ass is probably already deeply considering if he wants his shit in paper or plastic. I always look at the shopping cart and think they’re as optimistic as a motherfucker about how this panhandling is going to turn out. C’mon, you have got to love the irony of that!

Also, if a dude comes up to you smelling like a distillery that was built inside a crack house and asks you for money and you oblige, then your cost for this book is $2,300. Because your Mr. Softee ass ain't got the sense God gave a grapefruit. You would probably be better served by setting your money on fire because I'm pretty sure he couldn't have been that damn hungry if his breath smelled like Wild Irish Rose.

Anyway, light-skinned homeless people still got two matching shoes and shit; they are still together enough to dress with the season and coordinate an outfit. Seriously now, if you ain't wearing a Nike on your left foot and a wing tip on your right, you ain't really homeless. That level of coordination and togetherness implies a lack of morbid desperation; your ass is simply place to stay inconvenienced. Regular homeless people are wearing everything they own no matter what time of year it is; that’s what’s up. Yeah it's 90 degrees outside but they can't afford to lose their good pants, the ones with only two holes and a missing zipper. And while regular homeless people smell like a goat on a three-day bender, yellow homeless people just smell slightly European, which is to say uneducated in the proper use of soap and deodorant. Let’s face it; a regular homeless guy looks like he’s living through the apocalypse and light-skinned homeless people look like they’re backpacking across Spain.

Back on task, there is a hierarchy of how black entertainers can find work. Like the top of that pyramid is occupied by Will Smith. I would say a Will Smith type but Will Smith himself snatches up about 95% of those jobs. White people LOVE Will Smith, and I can’t much say that I blame them. I’m pretty sure white people look at Will Smith and they see an American flag caught in the wind above amber waves of grain and shit. There's probably an apple pie and a baby in there somewhere, too.

Now, the Will Smith spot used to officially be the Bill Cosby spot but then Bill ingested a bad pudding pop or some shit and got all political. When the magic negro starts to uplift people with common sense instead of hopes and dreams, he becomes a regular negro pretty damn quickly. Anyway, if Will Smith ain't picking up $20,000,000 for pretending to be the coolest guy in the room every five to six months, then the world has gone askew. Either Will ate a bad pudding pop and started telling niggas to read (only 194,984 to go now!!!) or they’re bringing slavery back. And even if they brought slavery back, I'm pretty sure Will would get a pass. The rest of us black folks better start learning negro spirituals and studying the fucking cotton growing season.

As an aside, I was talking to a friend of mine who was theorizing what slavery would be like today. He believes that there wouldn't be a lot of cotton farming, that it would be more fruits and veggies. Like that makes a difference; I'm fairly certain that if a white man is standing over you with a whip, and last week that same white man had sold your wife to a farm three counties over to pick strawberries, that you’re thinking to yourself I'm sure glad these are cucumbers I'm picking and not cotton. When he mentioned us picking fruit, before I could even catch myself, I said What, they brought back slavery and all the Mexicans died? Yeah I know, not my finest hour there. Anyway...

Under Will Smith, you have red-boned black people, someone like Rick Fox or Alicia Keys. Most of these people are only marginally talented to begin with but they are pretty and nonthreatening and white people look at them and can’t help but think what their babies would look like if they hooked up with them. Say what you will, but I'm pretty sure even David Duke has thought about a tryst with Halle Berry because Gabrielle Union's black ass is going to be out working his fields. That's why they kind of get a pass.

Before you fucking start in on me, let’s keep it real. Of course there are some talented light-skinned people. Alicia Keys is DEFINITELY a great musician. But that's the exception, not the rule. Remember pop phenom Al B. Sure? He was a singer-dancer in the ‘90s who could neither sing nor dance. Like seriously, YouTube one of his videos if you don't know him; that dude dances like he's a car whose fucking engine is seizing. And when he opens his mouth to sing, vultures gather because they assume nothing can sound like that if it isn't dying. You would wonder how he had a top 10 hit except his complexion reminds you of tapioca pudding and his hair is naturally (S)curly...

All the white people are like what's that S for...

But seriously, think about it. If you turn on the TV and see a dude so black you think he might have a birthmark that spells Oreo, with hair so nappy Medusa would kick in $20 to find him a barber, you expect that he’s either talented as shit or President of some dirt ass poor country where $1,000 of whatever the fuck they call their money might buy you a happy meal…if you didn’t supersize. But if you turn on the TV and see Lisa Raye, you know the only acting you’re going to see is she is going to act like she loves this rich dude until the prenup expires, and then she’s going to act like she just lost her damn mind. That's just real talk.

Lisa Raye is to gold digging what fucking Jordan was to basketball. I have to believe at some point they will retire her jersey.

Moving on, I guess the talented dark skin exception would be Wesley Snipes, because that dude ain’t been in a good movie since the federal prison showed Shawshank Redemption on movie night. How the fuck do you go from making $20M a year to being in prison for tax evasion? That's like buying an 80-inch LCD 3D TV but shoplifting the $6.00 cloth to clean it with; it just makes no damn sense. Shut the fuck up, pay the 30%, and keep it fucking moving already. You don't want to tell White Power or the Latin Mafia to always bet on black, that shit won't fly. Then the next thing you know, there you are lying on the shower floor with blood leaking out your anus. Clearly, white men can jump…dead up in your ass.

If I ever needed to pay a million dollar tax bill you would never hear me bitch about it, because that’s a good indicator I got to keep at least two fucking million dollars. I suspect that I wouldn't like said tax bill, but once I went out and bought me a new vacation house and some kind of outrageously priced item covered in bald eagle feathers and luxuriously furred in baby sealskin I would get over that little disappointment. That’s kind of like complaining about how your girlfriend always has to go fix you a sandwich after she blows you; why is she such a busybody?

As an aside, some people would tell you there is no racism in the world anymore, but if I recall the facts, Willie Nelson owed $40,000,000 in back taxes and he got a payment plan that allowed him to tour and smoke weed. Wesley Snipes owed about $9,000,000, which he offered to pay right away, but his black ass will be spending 36 months washing Big Mike's boxers. For emphasis I will say it again: Willie owed four times as much and got to tour and smoke weed to pay it off. Wesley owed a quarter of what Willie did and he got to do time and smoke pole to pay it off. I guess that is what passes for totally fair and impartial justice in America.

I don't actually think this had anything to do with racism, I think some judge just got tired of Wesley Snipes being free to create shitty action movies and overcrowd the local Blockbuster shelves. At some point after releasing Art of War 18: No, I'm Still Not Paying Taxes the global karma has to back up on you like rancid meatloaf. Someone had to stop Wesley before he filmed again.

Anyway, at the bottom of that pyramid it's just niggas like you and me. We all get lumped together; that’s the fact. If you ain’t Will Smith or light-skinned, until they get to know you, white people think the same thing every time they see you: fried chicken, watermelon, welfare fraud, grape soda, and did I remember to lock my car? I feel like every time I pull into a parking lot, I just ruined every auto thief’s chances at a witness-free crime. When I walk across a parking lot, I hear so many door locks pop it sounds like fucking applause, and I'm wearing Armani and driving a Lexus. They also seem to hear the fucking Good Times theme song. I swear to God, I’m going to flip the fuck out if I hear one more motherfucker in the grocery