Cigar Lounge Quotes

The club—really a poolside lounge at one of Dallas’s fanciest hotels—is full of blondes dripping with diamonds, their faces glowing with the flawless, glossy finish that can only be achieved by an hour-long sit-down with a professional makeup artist, their breasts sculpted into tanned teardrops by the best surgeons oil money can buy. One particularly stunning specimen—standing at least six feet tall, her perfectly proportioned legs, hips, and breasts accentuating the tailor cut of her red blazer and skirt suit—strides across the open courtyard in sling-back stilettos, puffing on a cigar with bee-stung red lips.

I have confessed sin over cigars, asked for prayer over cigars, celebrated personal and professional victories over cigars, and mourned personal and professional defeats over cigars. I’ve laughed with those who have laughed, over cigars, and wept with those who have wept. That’s not to elevate the cigar to some kind of exalted religious or cultural level. Here’s what a cigar is, in plain-speak: An excuse to sit down and talk with another guy for an hour. Think about it . . . when does this ever happen outside a cigar lounge? When guys are “hunting together” they’re sitting in a tree stand being quiet. When guys are “watching a ballgame together” they’re sitting in a living room or a sports bar staring slack-jawed at a television. When guys are “shopping for antiques together”[3] they’re walking through a junky antique store making fun of all the ridiculous stuff inside and not really talking about the stuff of life. The cigar lounge removes the awkward stiltedness of the Church Lobby (“How are YOU doing Bob?”), and it’s not as formal and intimidating as a counselor’s office, yet it still works as a place to talk.

Iwas always worried about my dad dying. Sometimes I’d see him and he was out of it. Sometimes I would find him passed out. I wrote a poem with the line, “I hope my daddy doesn’t die.” He had a TV and a chair set up in my room, so he would often come by and lounge in the chair and smoke his cigars. I could wake up at any time and he’d be sitting there. Once, I was with a friend in my room and when he came to my bedroom door, he started to fall. I could tell that he was moving too far to the right, starting to lean, and I yelled, “Go get him!” Me and my friend managed to get underneath him and hold him up until he grabbed hold of something and regained his composure, and then he just went back to his room. That happened a few times—happy to see me, then the swaying. And it happened a lot toward the end. I was sitting next to him in my room watching TV and I said, “Daddy, please don’t go anywhere. Please don’t die.” He said, “I’m not going anywhere.” Then he smiled at me.

When Harry Truman, who lacked a college degree, succeeded FDR, Alsop wrote to his cousin Eleanor that the White House had been cheapened to “the lounge of the Lions Club in Independence … where one is conscious chiefly of the odor of ten-cent cigars and the easy laughter evoked by the new smoking-room story.