Perhaps I should've stopped there.
As i walked past a mag shop that also happens to sell cigars, I pushed out my luck boat a bit too far and thought i'd get a little one to accompany some laptop work later in the morning.
I just wanted one of those tiny cohiba clubs - but they only sold them in packets of 20 for $110. Ha ha (you can get them for US$30 or so overseas). So I got a Jose Piedra, very cheap cubans, must've been just smaller than a petit corona, for $14 (goes for about $3 duty free). In my haste I forgot that these ones have notoriously poor construction, and that unlike our carefully selected club boxes on average a third of them are not actually smokeable.
So later that morning, went down the hill to pick up a shlong (halfway between short and long black, that's what the local cafes call it unfortunately, how quaint) and head down road to the church park for a puff... St Mary of the Angels, soaring above our all-too-common humanity, but closed for seismic strengthening. How grounding.
The park too was covered by a pall, the gloomy shadow of the skyscraper towering above them, astronomically aligned so as to deny warmth to every nook and cranny - but only at that precise conjunction of time and season. I grumbled and sat down, resigned to my fate, and slurped on my shlong as I imagined a thousand office workers jeering down at me from the myriad lidless compartments of their monstrous glass panopticon. When faced with a thousand mirrors, the resentment of the mind's eye can be projected both ways, you see... But only a real obstacle can physically cast a shadow: perception is not everything. Fortunately, I was saved from the oppressive serenity of this foucauldian faceoff when the local groundsman fired up his lawn mower. At least here in the roaring 40s the fumes never have time to hang around.
I lit up my little friend JP to compete. Correction: I sucked and I sucked and I sucked ... and just managed to stir the flame into action. !Vamos Jose! No joy... Jose did not put out easily...what a drag. Having massaged my way round to find a rock hard hernia almost half way up from the band, I reluctantly proceeded with emergency surgery of the roughest kind. Using only my teeth. Off with his head! (and half of his torso). His intestines hung ragged and limp from the remainder, which i reluctantly placed between my lips. A true tobacco connaisseur should always chew on the bowels of his cigar, and develop a feel for its terroir... *cough* (it is perhaps worth noting that most chewing tobacco was historically made from cigar clippings). Unfortunately, el pequenito Jose, now drawn, quartered and complemented by 2-stroke oil fumes, was still reluctant to put out. I soldiered on for a few painful powder-puffs and gave up. No work done, no cigar-centred jouissance, nothing gained.
Sometimes it's best to quit while you're behind.
