You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Cigar Buzz.
I feel a little rough today. My brain feels like it’s wearing a wet sweater.
I feel like the inside of a stale beer beer left on the counter after a party.
I’m full of ashes and someone’s old chewing gum.
I bought the cigar on a whim. I was driving by the smoke shop and suddenly my brain said “pull over.”
I walk into the humidor and the memories flood my mind. Cigars in jars. Cigars on little stands. They are propped up like bikini models, showing off, enticing me, beckoning me to take them home.
I see multiple brands I remember and countless more I do not know.
I inhale the aroma of the moment and let the smells I forgot I love, fill my nostrils.
I’m not a cigar aficionado. When it comes to cigar purchasing I am outmatched, like a child flying a fighter plane.
After a few minutes of window shopping, I grab two cigars and a cutter and check out.
They put my purchase in a sealed plastic bag.
One cigar is in cellophane. The other cigar, an Ashton, is in a protective sheath. It is white and metallic like a Knight in shining armor.
After a hard day of work, I come home.
I grab the cigar and feel it’s smooth texture.
Hand Made in the Dominican, it says.
I cut the tip and admire the finely wound leaves from a tropical island far far away.
I light a match and hold it near the end. I warm the leaf, letting the flames dance over the tobacco which has been grown, cultivated, cured, cut, rolled and shipped to a humidor in Tennessee, USA.
I inhale, drawing the fire toward the cigar. I feel the end burn, turn red. I see a plume of smoke.
My mouth fills with electric heat.
I remember in a single breath the reason I like this.
It reminds me of relaxation. It reminds me of an island, tropical calm, a place I’d rather be.
I exhale the Dominican blend and watch the white puffy smoke float into the Tennessee night sky.
I think about the molecules of Dominican Sweat that toiled to roll this cigar now being exhaled back into the universe.
I inhale another puff, drawing the smoke into my mouth. I swish it around, taste the smooth flavor, the tropical elegance and south of the border passion.
And so it goes.
Inhale. Puff. Exhale. Inhale. Reminisce and dream.
I’m in Tennessee, alone on my patio. I’m surrounded by fire flies, seated in an old deck chair with no cushion. My existence is illuminated by a single light bulb hanging on my house. Moths are collecting and there’s a drizzle in the air.
But I am content. With each breath, I see a happy place, feel a puff of relaxation, dream a deep, dark, happy dream rich with possibilities and profound delight.
With each puff of smoke, there is a steel drum playing, an alluring breeze in a palm tree, a sun washed beach.
To accentuate this moment, I sip a Corona with lime. The golden nectar is cool and refreshing, washing the tropical residue of Dominican vapor down my throat.
I put on my iPhone and listen to classic rock and roll from the 80’s (the only decade that mattered)
I take another drag, then another, and another.
The cigar is smoking well, flowing freely like a Cuban refugee paddling from the Coast Guard.
Then it hits me like a wave of green nauseousness. I feel like someone has sprung out of the darkness and thrown a bucket of slimy mustard on me.
I am suddenly wearing a coat of sickness, a layer of garbage stink for a neck tie.
I put my beer down. I inhale deeply trying to exercise the demons stirring in the pit of my belly.
I look at the cigar. It is calling me like a half naked native.
Smoke me gringo. What are you waiting for?
I’m 80 percent done. I’ve enjoyed 80%.
But now I’m staring into the belly of the beast. 20% of a cigar left. It’s growling at me like a red hot pit bull.
Suddenly I wonder if the stogie is laced with barf tainted seaweed from a third world cess pool.
I feel bad. Whatever this moment is, it’s enveloping me like a soiled baby wipe.
My stomach feels like the inside of a dumpster behind a Korean restaurant.
I feel queasy and suddenly wonder if I am going to jump up and vomit Dominican bits of death into the grass.
I feel sea sick and my deck is a 1,000 miles from the nearest body of water with a tide.
I feel moisture beading on my forehead.
Is it hot out here?, I wonder.
I remember thinking it was cool when I first sat down.
And where is that spitting drizzle now?
I need something to splash me in the face, revive me.
Instead, I feel like warmed over vomit.
It reminds me of the 1st time I dipped Coppenhagen.
I remember putting a pinch between my cheek and gum and feeling a merry go round spin in my head.
I remember the nasty tobacco juices slinking down the back of my throat.
I remember trying to stand and the gravity of Jupiter’s moon exerting psychadellic forces on my cerebral cortex.
I never chewed tobacco again.
Now I’m wondering why I didn’t modulate my cigar inhalation more astutely.
I was downing this Dominican like it was oxygen attached to a scuba tank under water.
Back to the patio. I know I cannot stand. I feel queasy and unsure. My mind is saturated with third world density.
I put the cigar on the ground and start hyperventilating the cool night air.
I am attempting to flush my system with oxygen, but the Dominican Devil is in me, flowing in my capillaries, filling my neural net with ambiguous rationale and superfluous incantations of witch craft.
I don’t even know what this means, unless I’m high on cigars, then it probably means, “come to the islands, mon.”
I will eventually crawl into bed and stare at the ceiling.
Is that my bed spinning or the ceiling fan.
I close my eyes and let the Dominican Howler Monkeys throw poison spears at my brain.
Soon I am off shore, floating in an ocean of REM.
I will fall asleep in a heavy mind bog, but my dreams will not be good.
I am capsized in a rip tide, adrift near the rocks. Suddenly I am berated by screeching natives coming at me on a smoky vapor trail of tropical thunder clouds accentuated by hallucinatory toucans.
They call to me.
“Wanna smoke Mister? Wanna Smoke?”
I am unsure how to respond to the brilliant colored bird riding on the thunder cloud of smoke.
I think the answer is yes, someday, but now?
Now I must vomit in my dreams and get off this planetoid spinning on a counter clockwise axis.
Smoking Dominican Rope?
Life’s Crazy™