Queer as a Good Five Cent Cigar

Doug Giles:

Also, girls, if you want to celebrate your “freedom” from misogynist’s constructs by smoking a cigar, don’t smoke a .62 ring gauge maduro 8” Churchill. Stay somewhere south of .36. I know you’re not supposed to trust men; but trust me—you’ll look better.

In the 80s I knew a guy who'd been a working cowboy for most of his life, whose trek north and eastward had unfortunately coincided with the inexplicable Urban Cowboy craze, a circumstance which forced him to rid himself of his entire wardrobe. The same thing happened to me when cigars became trendy in the 90s.

So just a word of expert testimony here. In addition to everything else he is, Pastor Giles is one of those full-of-shit, over-ripe frat boys emeritus whose trendoid cigar smoking drove Arturo Fuente prices to roughly that of a tulip bulb in the mid-17th century, whose I-just-read-a-magazine-article connoisseurship and public boorishness with one of the supreme gifts given by nature, handcrafted by man--like using Veuve Cliquot to fill water balloons--cost me a bad and satisfying habit and I'm not forgetting it.

Just to let everyone in on this:

a .62 ring gauge: ring gauge is a measure of a cigar's girth expressed in 1/64ths of an inch. So nobody smokes a .62 ring cigar, which would be, roughly, 1/100 of an inch thick; they smoke a 62 ring. A slip, perhaps; or perhaps Dougie can't keep his ammo distinct from his oral pleasures.

There's another tell here: a 62 ring is a colossal cigar, something that belonged in a freak show in my day, but has become increasingly trendy. There's actually something to be said for a larger ring gauge: a bigger cigar permits more blending of tobacco, resulting in a theoretically more complex smoke. Whether a cigar that's nearly an inch in diameter is an improvement or an affectation, well, opinions vary, but if it tells you anything the Cubans don't make 'em. Anyway, leave it to Giles to be up on the latest male fashions in girth.

maduro: refers to the wrapper color. Maduro is very dark brown, the darkest wrapper generally seen. Dark wrappers are sweeter and stronger. What they have to do with the looks of a cigar, beyond the suggestion of Negritude, is something you'll have to ask the pastor.

8" Churchill. Well, Dougie may be lying about size here again. Cigar names (Corona, Gran Corona, Lonsdale) aren't exactly legal terms, but they're fairly consistent. A classic Churchill is 7" long and a 47-48 ring. I'd suggest that Townhall forbids trade names and he was caught out searching for something propriatary like "Magnum" or "Jeroboam", but then I'm sure he's used "Cohiba" before. So I think the throbbing, piston-like excitement got to him and he closed his eyes and thought of England.

Stay somewhere south of .36. Apparently there's good reason not to trust men, or certainly not men who pass out cigar advice based on how you'll look in the mirror. The area around 36-38 is right about where you see the benefits of a larger ring size. Only a member of the He Man Woman Hater's Club would suggest letting style triumph over substance that way. It's like sayin' Ladies, if you gotta drink straight rye, at least put a little umbrella in the glass.