I have a strange love/ hate relationship with cigar smokers. I love to sketch them...but to be honest, I want them all to die slow, lingering deaths like Freud, with their throats corroding and shrivelling with black, cancerous lesions. But I love to draw them.
I understand the hypocrisy, I just don't understand my attraction.
I think it's the phallic nature of the cigar. Maybe it's the primal clutching of the penis-like extension of the self or it's the orgasmic looks on their faces as they take their first, oh-so satisfying puffs.
When I draw them, I think I'm attracted to the intimate quietness of the fingers and the thumbs on the cigar. It's a very dainty and loving and tender gesture. As is the licking and the sucking in of the white smoke, which, incidentally, for me, smells like a dead skunk decaying on a quiet country road. It sickens me...one of the few things that triggers my gag reflex. Thus, my internal war with the cigar smokers continues to vex me.
Okay, I'll admit that they have taken over my favorite outdoor cafe where I like to sketch. I hate to think it's a male territorial imperative to protect my personal space. But there are other regulars around me, equally annoying, like the mentally-challenged giant with the too-tiny stripped shirt who whistle screams as he bites his fist with one hand and thumps his barrel chest with lowland gorilla-like force in a continuous monotone that can only be compared to a beached manatee pounded by whiffle bats. The noise is stunning and ominous. But still, I can tune him out. What I can't tune out it the wafting stench of cigar smoke under my nose.
I've tried everything to get them to stop. I've pleaded. I've threatened them with going to the Board of Health. But their arrogance and their senses of entitlement have made them cluster together in tight, self-righteous groups of smoke-spewing smugness. They won't budge and the owner is too afraid to drop kick his regular paying customers from enjoying their outdoor smoker's lounge. Our latest attempt at peace accord, is to let them smoke at the furthest tables, away from the front awning. Still, the smoke travels, and I swear that it finds my nostrils every time.
So, I have to grin and bear it. Suck it up and tune out the stink if I want to sit at my table, sketching and sipping at my bottomless iced tea. I don't have to like it. My only just revenge is to post my sketches and give them humorous subtitles that remind me of the time I suffered with my discomfort to get the money shots.
