Robusto

[Robusto]

Good for you Bry, took me a while, mainly because none of my friends smoked cigars, this forum helped me come to terms with the fact i am a cigar smoker and proud of it

ABSOLUTELY, Alex.

It's nuts!

It's a bit Gay Pride, all this dramatic torture, denial and guilt LMFAO.

I do agree that this forum has been a massive boost to my Cigar Smoker Confidence.

All the people who matter now know, and I'm well into the outer circles.

I now chat about cigars and loving them really easily with friends I would never have mentioned it to before, and they ask great questions.

To be honest, I thought they were taking the piss at first - but they're not.

LIFE IS VERY, VERY GOOD AND BOUNCES ALONG FAR BETTER WITH GREAT CIGARS IN THE MIX.

[Stogiedog]

Bryan......................Much

[Robusto]

Spot on, Paul!
I hadn't thought of that!

[Alex]

Sorry if this seems over the top to you, but I think I am FINALLY a Free Smoking Man.

Good for you Bry, took me a while, mainly because none of my friends smoked cigars, this forum helped me come to terms with the fact i am a cigar smoker and proud of it

[Stogiedog]

Robusto nice one mate. I hope you did not mention the fact thet the USA do a nice line in cigars LOL. Celebration days birthday, fathers day, christmas day, 4th July, easter, british bank holidays, thanks giving day all of these occasions may well warrant a simple and easy gift for yourself... LMFAO mate.

[Robusto]

I'm listening to loads of glorious Country tunes here so am in EPIC mode!
Apologies.

[Robusto]

POSTSCRIPT

Phoned my sister who is a US citizen for the first time in a year for a catch-up the other day. She was knocked out that me and the family are off to Cuba. She was seriously envious.

She followed up with an email in which she asked me if I would be trying a Cuban cigar when we go out there.

LMFAO!

This was my chance to come out.

I emailed her back and told her - deep breath - that I've smoked Havanas for years.

I sent a decent snap as an attachment and wondered how she'd react. She's twelve years older than me. She's been a US citizen for 30 years.

She thinks of me as a her little brother "goody-goody".



I wasn't exactly shitting myself about what she would write. She doesn't live round the corner, after all. However, this declaration to my (rare) blood was one of my personal final taboos.

Her response was swift - and fine.

"You look like a South American Dictator in that picture!".

Nothing judgemental. Just one line.
And then she was off swooning about Cuba again.

My very final taboo is to light up in the lights when we are doing some busy outdoor gigs later this Summer. My bandmates whip out their cigarettes without a thought, and I'm going to join them. I know there will be people there who know me but who don't know this aspect of me - including pupils I teach - but I've FINALLY finally decided...

This is me.
This is my pleasure.
Go to hell if you disapprove.

Sorry if this seems over the top to you, but I think I am FINALLY a Free Smoking Man.

[Stevieboy]

ROBUSTO, aka Bryan

Bandmembers will often have their own personalised smoking habits, anyway!

LOL

[Robusto]

ROBUSTO, aka Bryan

CONCERNING ME
I?m a 50 year old schoolteacher from Kent, UK. I?m happily married with a great wife, two great sons and a soppy Labrador. Life is sweet.

MY CIGARS
I love every aspect of them! I prefer Havanas, particularly Partagas, Cohiba, Punch, Montecristo, Bolivar, Ramon Allones and Hoyo de Monterrey. I usually smoke Robustos. I keep a small stock of favourites in a 50 stick desktop humidor. I smoke once or twice a week during term time, and significantly more during school holidays. I am definitely a Havana man, rather than a cigar man. I've blissed out on a few NC cigars, such as the glorious Padron 1926, and I remain very open-minded and am constantly hungry for new cigar experiences!

THE LEAF AND ME
My cigar story is curious and quite neurotic.

I stole one of my Dad?s Havanas at 13. I was already dazzled by the smell whenever he lit one and fell in love immediately on my first smoke. It's weird, but in retrospect I feel I was predisposed to cigar smoking because I was instantly hooked. I spent hours smoking them secretly in the garden and in the empty house in school holidays. I had to be cautious when sent back to my very strict English boarding school where dirty old men - often ex-Colonels and the like - would cane us for ANY reason ? and smoking was THE biggest sin. To be caught smoking, therefore, became linked to naming, shaming and sinning. And the catching might be in the full dormitory glare of an ex-Colonel turned Boarding Housemaster's wobbling torchlight...

Some of these men were patently interested in underhand activities beyond catching adolescent boys smoking. I managed not to become a pervert despite all that. Nevertheless, I kept hiding my cigar habit into my 20s to the extent that my wife woke up one day a few years into our marriage to find me enjoying a Havana and was pretty shocked!

I took up reading Cigar Aficionado in the 90?s but still did 80 mile round trips to pubs three towns away so that friends and colleagues would not find out.

Eventually I decided that this was insane. I felt incredibly nervous - but I had to change!

One day, when playing with a Pink Floyd tribute band, I lit up a delicious stogie in the car park during a break between sets and walked inside with a fat Big Smoke Havana. My bandmates were shocked, but I had made a significant coming out step and realised the guys were initially very curious ? but not really bothered at all. Bandmembers will often have their own personalised smoking habits, anyway!

So a little while later, when playing for a teacher friend at his wedding ? I lit up a glorious Montecristo (very professionally!) at a table amongst friends and colleagues. Once again? Initial shock and questions and mild piss-taking - and a number of teacher tut-tuts - followed by a whatever reaction.

Teachers, myself definitely included, are bloody strange people when gathered together in groups of more than one. I never want to play in a band with another teacher. Never!

This may seem silly, but each step was genuinely quite courageous for me. In my job, I have to lead pastoral sessions with children on Anti-Nicotine Education lol, and I was getting increasingly annoyed and intellectually frustrated at the doctrinaire bullshit of it all.

I detest it when adult fun and pleasures are banned, in short.

This week (Feb 09), I came out as a quality cigar smoker on Facebook in words and pictures after the Cuban Cigar Walk I made with Nic Wing in London, and it was another small trial. My wife said to me that nobody would give a damn ? and I know she?s right!

I trace my neurosis straight back to my fear of boarding school canings and old men in Harry Potter capes with torches and wandering hands - no exaggeration here - but I?m just about over it now. I?m an intelligent adult man lol who knows nobody really gives a shit if I smoke Havana cigars, but it has taken me many years for that penny to drop.

To be a member of this website is great fun ? but it is also a form of group reassurance for me. I need contact with Brothers Of The Leaf, and in this album on our forum, I'm probably at my most comfortable as a card-carrying and definitely life-long cigar aficionado lighting a great Havana in Winston Churchill's chair!


MEMORABLE CIGAR SMOKING MOMENTS

• Quiet, reflective times spent in many fine English pubs over a Havana and a couple of pints of bitter
• The coming out moments above, and my resultant heart palpitations
• Civilised walks in London, New York, Paris, Nice, Aix-en-Provence, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, amongst others, smoking great Havanas
• Herfs with male mates in pubs or in each other?s homes. I am a straight man who loves male company over Havanas, beers and jokes. I have yet to meet a woman who smokes cigars!
• Quiet times smoking cigars alone in thought in my garden smoking cabin. A godsend since the smoking ban of Summer 2007
• Smoking in the house with all windows and doors open when I?m home alone and can get away with it

WHAT ANNOYS ME
?The blanket UK smoking ban in public places and how powerless I feel about it
?The way that cigars are not seen as being different to cigarettes when smoking is discussed in the media. (I have never smoked a pipe). We really need a Cigar Ambassador in the British media!
?Loud, thick, prejudiced people
- Drunks who come up on stage and grope you. Drunks who get in the way when you are carrying out PA and instruments at the end of long gigs. Drunks generally, really

A COUPLE OF OTHER THINGS
I am passionate about many forms of music and have played piano/keyboards regularly in public in different line-ups since my teenage years. I play two or three nights a week on a regular basis in a band locally called EK1 which is busy and respected in the area.

I love laughter, and I must stay upbeat. Chris Morris and his stablemates are my favourites. Dame Edna Everage / Madge Allsop / Sir Les Patterson / Barry Humphries are next.

Please don't worry about the hands earlier. They never got me.
This ain't trauma counselling by catharsis, brothers. It's just about having a laugh and enjoying good smokes.