Over the course of my life I have taken nicotine into my body in about every way it’s possible to do so. Actually, that's not entirely true—it would be more accurate to say I’ve taken it in all the ways that are likely to kill me at some point. For some reason smoking only holds its tantalizing forbidden allure if I have a cloud of smoke to entertain myself as I while away the evening hours, watching the cigar slowly burn off the seconds of my life it represented before I lit it.
Cigarettes hold almost no interest for me. While cigarettes are a relatively harmless if smoked very infrequently, the actual enjoyment value is pretty low. I will have a cigarette on extremely rare occasions, like a friend is in the middle of a bad breakup who can’t quite handle sitting on the porch and smoking alone for the first time in six months, but I’m not going to have a cigarette for for fun. They are basically useless to me unless other people are around, and unlike all other forms of smoking, cigarettes are the one product that aren’t a hobby. Either you smoke cigarettes or you don’t.
The same cannot be said of cigars. I’ve had my share of cigars, and as far as I'm concerned the only value they have is reminding you why you hated the last one. Every time I’ve ever seen someone smoke a cigar in public it is invariably a man who’s trying to look like he’s having more fun than he really is. Every goddamn time. They also have an odd property when smoked in public of making the individual smoking the cigar speak and laugh ten times louder than normal. I’m out of my depth to explain the science behind the phenomenon, but from a psychological point of view it appears to serve the purpose of drawing everybody’s attention to the orifice in which the ridiculous object is about to be reinserted. If you’ve ever seen this, you’ve already repurposed the words “orifice” and “reinserted” into a spiteful thought about where you’d like that cigar to go.
This ideation and preceding commentary actually sum up the flavor of a lit cigar: ass. The cigar is the only object I know of where a person can find pleasure in every aspect of its use except its intended one. Many great ideas have been stated while smoking cigars, but in the intervening moments when actually smoking, well, remember all those complex flavor notes the tobacconist was waxing on about? Yeah. He neglected to mention that those subtleties are flowing into your mouth on a greasy oil slick current of tires and asphalt melting together during a car fire.
Perhaps it is in our nature that enlightenment cannot occur in the absence of the unpleasant.
Now to the pipe.
The pipe is probably one of the most intriguing objects of vice ever produced by the hands of man. They are made of otherwise unknown products like briarwood, meerschaum—the German word for “sea foam”, as it often washed up on the shore of the Black Sea—and even the dried and cured calabash gourds so many cultures have used for thousands of years to make jars and drinking vessels. These are all commodities whose use is of ancient provenance and come from strange foreign lands. The pipe in its high form is a work of art as well as a tool, and many great men such as Einstein, Hemmingway, Twain and Forester are as much iconic for pipes as they are for ideas.
Einstein was a pipe apologist in that he believed that, despite the health issues, its use was conducive to calm introspection, and he’s right. It is smoked slowly, and the smoke actually smells good although what’s coming out through the stem, while better tasting than any other delivery system, is still pretty unpleasant as far as I'm concerned. Still, the fragrance of pure tobacco comes through when smoked properly and comfortably, filling the mouth with some of its original essence without burning the tongue. Frankly, the most important part of the experience is the selection of a pipe that matches one’s inner sophisticate. True, the Hipster pipe trend is very unfortunate and, in my opinion, a crass pop-culturization that is the hypocritical core of the movement. If you want to try it, I recommend affording it the nobility of smoking in your backyard alone or with a friend rather than finding a Starbucks-esque smoking lounge where all the Macs have been replaced with pipes, paste waxed mustaches, and odd hats.
The most interesting aspect of smoking a pipe under the stars is that there is without doubt a revelation to be had and a question answered as the wonderful tobacco lamp slowly yields its genie in the plume of smoke seductively dancing before you like a Turkish princess in an exotic land. Somehow the ancient materials of our ancestors from which the pipe is made still resonate with their spirit, and tease from within us the residual fingerprints of our forebearers.
As progressive a society as we are, there are unalienable genetic realities to our respective natures. Darwin may be comparatively recent, but even the 100,000 years homo sapiens sapiens has walked the earth is a blink of the evolutionary eye. Perhaps our own eyesight has dimmed since humans progressively seized natural selection from nature, but for all practical purposes our insignificant physical differences such as skin color and facial structure amount to no more than different breeds of the human scavenger. We are still hunter-gatherers despite the suits and dresses, and it’s stamped all over us. Women, for instance have a greater ability to distinguish color than men, likely because when we were still on the savannah they were doing the bulk of the gathering. Like all herbivorous and omnivorous primates, color vision evolved so the best and ripest fruits could be identified. On the other hand, men’s vision is more motion sensitive than women. If you hunt, color vision is nice, but an ability to spot a rustling leaf could mean the difference between a feast and twig meal for dinner again.
It is these early roots that tell the story of the pipe. Whereas taking care of babies and gathering food takes a large amount of time and low-impact physical labor, hunting affords leisure. Men were highly stressed both mentally and physically for the comparatively short duration of the hunt, and after it was all said and done there was a need for rest, relaxation and quiet time to drain the adrenaline from the blood and soothe weary limbs. Whereas alcohol was more of a party thing, smoking was generally reserved for rituals, relaxation, and reflection. The three “R’s” that often cause fathers to forget to pick their kids up from school.
Not a damn thing has changed. Smoking is by nature a ritual, and offers the relaxation of quiet time alone with one’s thoughts pondering the questions hidden within the intriguing plumes of smoke. This is an important spiritual need innate to the nature of the man. For those purposes the pipe is the king of kings. Pipes are and have always been cherished objects that are handed down from father to son. They must be given special care, and that first smoke is often a rite of passage. The elders must pass on the mystical wisdom of how to pack a pipe, properly light it, and keep it smoldering at just the right temperature to get the best smoke. It is also a sort of miniature fire ritual, hearkening back to one of humankind’s earliest and most important transformative achievements. Finally, there is the commiseration of sitting around for a while with a friend, a father or a grandfather, and passing away the evening hours talking about life and the mysteries of the universe that germinated into the flowers of myth and legend.
I myself must say that I will not be taking up the pipe again, but even my brief experience gave me a peek into the treasure chest of “why’s” that make life worth living.