Spur-of-the-moment actions make living a joy!

I just ordered the new book by fashion icon, André Leon Talley.  It’s a tell-all memoir of a “poor Black boy (sic) in the segregated South . . . ” writes Nicola Shulman in the September 25th issue of “The Times Literary Supplement’s” book review of The Chiffon Trenches.

For those unfamiliar with Leon Talley, he “cast his lot in with fashion from the start.  He immersed himself in fashion magazines and sucked up their details like a sponge: the clothes, the designers; the names, homes, and precepts of the New York (sic) fabulosity, and all the lovely things they owned that placed them in this class.”

The spontaneity of the purchases was what caused chills to run down my spine and I couldn’t pass up the deal.  With my credit, the book cost me a paltry $2.22.  I was in a blissful mood that reminded me of the cigar I  smoked not too long ago by the late Augusto Reyes Jr., The Signature Lancero.

According to Cigar Encyclopedia, Reyes was “A highly-respected blender and producer of cigars in his Dominican factory, he made a name for himself by creating lines for others such as Fittipaldi, but finally came out with his own brand in 2006, in five styles called Criollo, Epicur, Grand Cru, Nativo and Maduro. His U.S. distribution deal did not pan out as he hoped and the lines briefly left the market while Reyes plotted his comeback.” He came back in 2010 at the IPCPR in New Orleans where he introduced the Signature Series.

The spontaneity of lighting up a ten-year-old cigar that is no longer in production also caused me to realize that it is this type of moment in time that allows a cigar smoker to experience a memory that will last forever.

The cigar was beyond splendid.  The Dominican tobacco had aged to perfection and I think I was more surprised that such a magnificent blend was not on the market today.  

The excitement and bedazzlement of discovery are what make both the publishing and the cigar industries such a draw to me (excuse the pun – pen, cigar . . . GET IT?)

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ,ha ha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Finding My Way in the world of cigars.

Giorgio Armani’s new feminine fragrance – My Way – is a delicate blend of sweet-smelling oil essences that when spritzed onto the warm wrist or the smooth nape of a woman’s neck will literally grasp your senses and whisk them away into a blush of heavenly aromas.  

The first time I was able to breathe in the luscious mingling of the specially chosen essential oils of My Way was on one of those strips of paper found in fashion magazines.  I knew even before I pulled the glued edge completely to the left that something tantalizing was beginning to reveal itself to my overly keen sense of eroticism.  I absolutely realized that I had found a dazzlingly delightful perfume that would soon be a part of my wife’s current collection of exotic fragrances that I seek out regularly to let her know that our romantic life is far from over.

My consciousness is often tweaked when I think that I have found a cigar that will have the same effect on me as My Way did.  The variations in blends of premium cigars are limitless, and I can say without hesitation that I have yet to find that one cigar that, figuratively speaking, will drop me to my knees and raise my testosterone levels back to a time when I couldn’t even spell the word.  

Admittedly, a few cigars have come thisclose to producing the aforementioned reaction, but to be perfectly blunt none have hit the right spot to bring me to this point of sensory dilation – should such a phenomenon exist. The challenge is to find a cigar as I discovered My Way – by chance.  How will I know?  I just will. 

Perhaps a gifted agronomist will come across a tobacco leaf that has yet to be discovered, and then a true master blender will gently marry these new varieties of leaves; age them in a natural way that when the process is complete by producing a new cigar blend.  It will be the end result that will place me in the awkward position of how, in 1923, archeologist Howard Carter felt when he peered into the innermost burial chamber of King Tut and was asked: “Do you see (taste) anything?”  And he gasped, “Yes, wonderful things.” 

Indeed, a unique discovery that will forever be combined with the emotion of dedication, fascination, and sensorial ecstasy thus creating a bond that can never be broken. Alas, if the cigar takes me as close to perfection as possible but ends up in a pile of scattered ashes of burnt leaves gently drifting into the wind – I will continue my quixotic search for –  My Cigar.