You, Me, and a Smelly Cigar

There I was: arm-in-arm with my wife and making my way across a busy intersection in the center of Rome. Suddenly out of nowhere -- almost as if someone grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and yanked my head back-- I was overcome by one the most nauseating smells I've ever come across: cigar smoke. I don't know why -- maybe it's because I don't smoke or maybe because I don't smoke I have a heightened sense of smell - but whatever the reason, I feel like I can smell a cigar a block a way. I slowed my gait and let cigar-man pass me by -- lingering curls of smoke hanging in the air as he proceeded to get lost in the ensuing crowds of the Eternal City.

If someone wants to put what is basically a burning tube in their mouth and suck on it all day that's their choice. But as a non-smoker I really don't want to put up with it. The bigger question is, can't the cigar smoker tell that the smell of a cigar isn't too much different from - heck I don't know -- the bare ass of a pit bull (for lack of a better example)?

Regardless of whether or not you smoke cigars, you may or may not know that (according to www.thescooponsmoking.com), cigar smoking can cause cancer of the mouth, throat, lung and esophagus - pretty much in the same way that cigarettes do. In fact, smoking three or four cigars daily can increase an individual's risk of oral (mouth) cancers to more than eight times the risk of a nonsmoker and increase the smoker's chance of getting esophageal cancer to four times that of a nonsmoker.

Geez that's enough damage to make me quit cold turkey. But I guess a cigar smoker doesn't see it that way.

It's no secret that smoking can damage your sense of taste, but what about sense of smell? According to quitsmoking.about.com, a smoker's sense of smell is the one thing that incurs the least amount of damage. Which tells me that either the cigar smoker is either helplessly addicted to the cigar and knows that the cigar smells like ass (but can't do anything about it because they are addicted to it) or the cigar smoker actually likes the smell emitted from a lit cigar. I gotta tell ya -- I would rather be trapped in an elevator for 2 days with my mother-in-law than have to put up with the smell of a cigar.

Which reminds me -- a year or so ago my family and I were in Edinburgh, Scotland and one evening a friend of mine took me to what he referred to as the "Brandy Room". The Brandy Room was just what the name implied -- a bunch of men and women who think they are really important, sit around and sip expensive Brandy and I guess to add to their self-inflated sense of importance -- they all smoked cigars as well. I wonder if these folks would feel just as important if the house rules stated that you can sip Brandy all night long, but you must occasionally snick your nose in the ass of a Fox Terrier. Because again -- in my mind, simple though it may be -- there isn't much difference between the two.

But I digress. It's just that I can't find a lot of positive, glass-half-full reasons for someone to smoke a cigar, much less for me to have to smell that darned things. Women aren't excluded from this joy ride, because -- you know -- plenty of women smoke cigars as well. Why I don't know. A women smoking a cigar is not sexy. Heck, a women smoking a cigarette is not very sexy come to think of it. And speaking of sexy -- or things that have to do with sex -- according to www.ciggyfree.com, both cigarettes and cigars can contribute to erectile dysfunction in men. Which would be yet another reason to make me quit cold turkey if I smoked.

I will admit that some tobacco manufacturer somewhere must have known that the smell of a cigar is less than pleasurable. And for that reason you can purchase scented cigars. So instead of smoking a cigar that smells like a professional wrestler who hasn't bathed in 6 weeks, you can smoke one that smells like a feminine hygiene product. I guess if I'm gonna slowly die because of second hand smoke inhalation I might as well do it inhaling something that resembles morning dew or whatever it is that scented cigars are supposed to smell like.

If I'd had the chance I would have discussed this with the large cigar-smoking man I bumped into in the center of Rome. But like me -- he was in a hurry: there were probably a lot more people for him to annoy with that darn cigar of his.