Sometimes A Good Cigar is Just A Smoke
In our guise—or is that “disguise,” as professionals---we do quite a lot of work in tourism. Much of it is focused on cultural and heritage tourism, the perspective embracing the lived, human experience. But naturally the field involves a large orbit and one does what is necessary to feed the hungry and clothe the naked (especially if they be one’s self and since I’ve seen myself in the mirror). In any event, recently my life and business partner (in Donlon & Donlon Consultants – I’m Donlon and she’s Donlon – not our wittiest prose work) and I flew round-the-world. This was largely a professional gig. But we also “hooked up” a few spiritual and private nodes. The undertaking took two months, a wheel-barrow of cash, & its own roll-on of specialized guide books. But then, it left us with 10 years of notes spread over 3 illlustrated bound journals, and a Seagate packed with images for future use.
I was curious how far we travelled in total but it beats me. The furthest around the globe is something like 25,000 miles. But we bounced from Tokyo to Beijing to Lhasa back to Beijing and on to Moscow and London then rattled around England hither and yon before larking on for Boston, Cape Cod, and New Orleans. Because of the merchandizing of air routes, we got to Baton Rouge via Dallas, and again to Orlando by first going west to Dallas, then north for Chicago and back South for some research in New Orleans (we have to deliver research in Thailand in a few months). Tokyo did involve generally going toward Japan, thank God.
Years ago, I recorded a narrative of other travellers in New Orleans. Our own “crooked” route puts me in mind of them and that fast and loose sort of life which once, and may in the future, give the Crescent City its attractive colour.
Bob still looked worn out. He slouched in his metal twisted-bar outdoor chair on the terrace at Cafe Du Monde, between New Orleans’s French Quarter and the mighty, muddy Mississippi. His face was deeply tanned, but his nose was splotched with red and white, bits of sun burnt skin still sloughing off. His sweaty Red Stripe t-shirt was liberal with confectioner's sugar in a wide white band down the front, the trio of beignets gone from his plate.
"Even a half dozen boxes," Mike, his friend (also a false name), was explaining, "and you can make do; if not a profit you get a free trip out of the thing. Some guys go down every two months just to have the trouser snake looked after properly and keep the tan in condition." Bob, Mike, and absent Steve were smugglers--smuggling, they claimed, Havana cigars through Can Cun.
"Oh, man!" Mike, the loud one, was whining, "there's like nothing in the pharmacies--if you need sunscreen," he said without irony, "you gotta bring it in. But the honeys! Two more cafe' au lait" he waved his cup around in the air for emphasis, attracting the Viet Namese waitress. "Nineteen, 20 year old babes for $25 US a night. They do it all, man, they do it all." Mike was a bigger man though still young, wearing a gaudy new Party Gras t-shirt and black Wayfarer Ray Ban sunglasses.
Bob and Mike claimed to be from Chicago, and Bob certainly had the tinny, flat Mid-west accent. They met Steve, who apparently also hailed from the Windy City, in Mexico and, confreres, had "partied-hearty!" in Havana for several days.
Both trade with and travel to Cuba are heavily restricted for American citizens. So, of course, many Americans busy themselves with methods of finessing travel, and with profiteering from the ridiculous embargo.
"Oh, yeah," Sal D'Amotto, buyer for Caesar's, a premier cigar emporium said, "a good Cuban is a great cigar. But there just aren't that many good Cuban cigars. It's like them frogs. Now, with the Nazis dead, every one of them was a member of the underground resistance. Fuck me! Most cigars you'll run into from Cuba are ok to just bad; made for the jerks who don't know better. You think Juan is gonna cut frat-boy on holiday a break? They may be Havanas, but they're way too young, no slow curing, way, way too much ammonia."
Sal was smoking a "Fighting Cock" cigar from the Caribbean: a short, blunt, dark stogey girded by a wildly exuberant band displaying a pair of cockerels rampant. Not a Cuban. "Now this," he took it out to admire it, "is a hell of a decent smoke for five and a half bucks."
The harried Vietnamese waitress brought more beignets piled sky-high with powdered sugar, more coffee, and more pony glasses of chilled water.
"Steve was crazy, you know? I mean, you can do just about anything there in Havana, long as you do it out of sight. Don't rub their noses in it. But that guy, he'd pick up a sweet little babe, and have his hands all over her walking down the street."
"He liked `em young —- 18, 19. So," Bob looked sincerely worried though it might just have been hangover, "I don't know if he's polishing some teenager's tonsils about now or is all bruised in some cell, belly down, taking Spanish with a couple more hombres waiting in line to give him their ‘lessons’."
If someone has to get rich Chicago lawyers bad Cuban cigars full of too much ammonia, it might as well be Bob and Mike, I thought. Mike said, "we'd go down once a year, three times in two years--I first went when I was in school downstate--you know? [Presumably downstate Illinois, meaning not in Chicago] We could party for a week, stay in a hotel, screw if we wanted to, surf, eat like pigs, and then give away all our t-shirts and pack the spare duffle with boxes."
"It's not like drugs," Bob lied, "we don't make money. But it can be kinda exciting, and Havana, even run down and with everything the hell broken, is a great city. And the women are fantastic, cheap, and very accommodating. The saying about sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch aint just a saying with the pros down there. But last time, it freaked me out. First, we lose Steve, gone without a trace. Then, I begin to get paranoid that our supplier was a cop plant, setting us up. He had so many boxes, I was sure it was bogus."
Fortunately for the pair, it apparently wasn't.
"We get 12 or 15 or 16 boxes each. That's a lot of money to put out," Bob continues, "and it's a lot to walk around Havana with, to say nothing of going into a decrepit building with some no-neck greaser with a lump at the waist of his grimy, counterfeit Tommy Hillfiger."
"But," in the end, "it was all fine. The guy is twice as honest as we are, and just as worried that w’gonna bop him on the bean." Sort of. "Got the merchandise, hit the bricks for the airport--got a ride there in a huge classic Buick with those jet ports on the side. But Christ's trousers if the little Mexican shitheels don't simply take both the duffels! ‘Contraband?’ the guy says, then Paco tosses `em behind the counter. Meanwhile I'm shittin' like a goose in gravy. It’s not even against the law, I don’t think, in Mexico, but they saw we were Americans, I guess.”
He pointed out that sometimes a good cigar is a smoke, and sometimes it’s a great way to get into a ton of hassle.
"I'm a lot happier a little light in the back pocket than in some lousy Mexican jail. No cafe au lait there, you can bet your sweet ass," Mike opined with gusto.
Part of New Orleans’ charm has been the frisson of perceived naughtiness wafting from its humid odours, carried along on its sultry breezes. I don’t know if these goofs – but then, who can say? – would be discoursing with the same élan amongst the Miros at the coffee bar at the Chicago Art Institute.
XXX XXX XXX
I was curious how far we travelled in total but it beats me. The furthest around the globe is something like 25,000 miles. But we bounced from Tokyo to Beijing to Lhasa back to Beijing and on to Moscow and London then rattled around England hither and yon before larking on for Boston, Cape Cod, and New Orleans. Because of the merchandizing of air routes, we got to Baton Rouge via Dallas, and again to Orlando by first going west to Dallas, then north for Chicago and back South for some research in New Orleans (we have to deliver research in Thailand in a few months). Tokyo did involve generally going toward Japan, thank God.
Years ago, I recorded a narrative of other travellers in New Orleans. Our own “crooked” route puts me in mind of them and that fast and loose sort of life which once, and may in the future, give the Crescent City its attractive colour.
Bob still looked worn out. He slouched in his metal twisted-bar outdoor chair on the terrace at Cafe Du Monde, between New Orleans’s French Quarter and the mighty, muddy Mississippi. His face was deeply tanned, but his nose was splotched with red and white, bits of sun burnt skin still sloughing off. His sweaty Red Stripe t-shirt was liberal with confectioner's sugar in a wide white band down the front, the trio of beignets gone from his plate.
"Even a half dozen boxes," Mike, his friend (also a false name), was explaining, "and you can make do; if not a profit you get a free trip out of the thing. Some guys go down every two months just to have the trouser snake looked after properly and keep the tan in condition." Bob, Mike, and absent Steve were smugglers--smuggling, they claimed, Havana cigars through Can Cun.
"Oh, man!" Mike, the loud one, was whining, "there's like nothing in the pharmacies--if you need sunscreen," he said without irony, "you gotta bring it in. But the honeys! Two more cafe' au lait" he waved his cup around in the air for emphasis, attracting the Viet Namese waitress. "Nineteen, 20 year old babes for $25 US a night. They do it all, man, they do it all." Mike was a bigger man though still young, wearing a gaudy new Party Gras t-shirt and black Wayfarer Ray Ban sunglasses.
Bob and Mike claimed to be from Chicago, and Bob certainly had the tinny, flat Mid-west accent. They met Steve, who apparently also hailed from the Windy City, in Mexico and, confreres, had "partied-hearty!" in Havana for several days.
Both trade with and travel to Cuba are heavily restricted for American citizens. So, of course, many Americans busy themselves with methods of finessing travel, and with profiteering from the ridiculous embargo.
"Oh, yeah," Sal D'Amotto, buyer for Caesar's, a premier cigar emporium said, "a good Cuban is a great cigar. But there just aren't that many good Cuban cigars. It's like them frogs. Now, with the Nazis dead, every one of them was a member of the underground resistance. Fuck me! Most cigars you'll run into from Cuba are ok to just bad; made for the jerks who don't know better. You think Juan is gonna cut frat-boy on holiday a break? They may be Havanas, but they're way too young, no slow curing, way, way too much ammonia."
Sal was smoking a "Fighting Cock" cigar from the Caribbean: a short, blunt, dark stogey girded by a wildly exuberant band displaying a pair of cockerels rampant. Not a Cuban. "Now this," he took it out to admire it, "is a hell of a decent smoke for five and a half bucks."
The harried Vietnamese waitress brought more beignets piled sky-high with powdered sugar, more coffee, and more pony glasses of chilled water.
"Steve was crazy, you know? I mean, you can do just about anything there in Havana, long as you do it out of sight. Don't rub their noses in it. But that guy, he'd pick up a sweet little babe, and have his hands all over her walking down the street."
"He liked `em young —- 18, 19. So," Bob looked sincerely worried though it might just have been hangover, "I don't know if he's polishing some teenager's tonsils about now or is all bruised in some cell, belly down, taking Spanish with a couple more hombres waiting in line to give him their ‘lessons’."
If someone has to get rich Chicago lawyers bad Cuban cigars full of too much ammonia, it might as well be Bob and Mike, I thought. Mike said, "we'd go down once a year, three times in two years--I first went when I was in school downstate--you know? [Presumably downstate Illinois, meaning not in Chicago] We could party for a week, stay in a hotel, screw if we wanted to, surf, eat like pigs, and then give away all our t-shirts and pack the spare duffle with boxes."
"It's not like drugs," Bob lied, "we don't make money. But it can be kinda exciting, and Havana, even run down and with everything the hell broken, is a great city. And the women are fantastic, cheap, and very accommodating. The saying about sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch aint just a saying with the pros down there. But last time, it freaked me out. First, we lose Steve, gone without a trace. Then, I begin to get paranoid that our supplier was a cop plant, setting us up. He had so many boxes, I was sure it was bogus."
Fortunately for the pair, it apparently wasn't.
"We get 12 or 15 or 16 boxes each. That's a lot of money to put out," Bob continues, "and it's a lot to walk around Havana with, to say nothing of going into a decrepit building with some no-neck greaser with a lump at the waist of his grimy, counterfeit Tommy Hillfiger."
"But," in the end, "it was all fine. The guy is twice as honest as we are, and just as worried that w’gonna bop him on the bean." Sort of. "Got the merchandise, hit the bricks for the airport--got a ride there in a huge classic Buick with those jet ports on the side. But Christ's trousers if the little Mexican shitheels don't simply take both the duffels! ‘Contraband?’ the guy says, then Paco tosses `em behind the counter. Meanwhile I'm shittin' like a goose in gravy. It’s not even against the law, I don’t think, in Mexico, but they saw we were Americans, I guess.”
He pointed out that sometimes a good cigar is a smoke, and sometimes it’s a great way to get into a ton of hassle.
"I'm a lot happier a little light in the back pocket than in some lousy Mexican jail. No cafe au lait there, you can bet your sweet ass," Mike opined with gusto.
Part of New Orleans’ charm has been the frisson of perceived naughtiness wafting from its humid odours, carried along on its sultry breezes. I don’t know if these goofs – but then, who can say? – would be discoursing with the same élan amongst the Miros at the coffee bar at the Chicago Art Institute.
XXX XXX XXX
posted by Donlon at 10:39 PM
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