I gave up smoking ten years ago, for the second time, after keeping off it for 6[six] years from the previous time. And it was worse than hard that second time, and I know I couldn't do it again. Even now my brain still starts craving tobacco whenever I smell the sweet aroma of fresh tobacco, fresh cigarettes. Even the fresh smoke exhaled across a table, more than briefly. Ahhhhhhh yes, I only have to smell really good fresh tobacco, for my body to start whatever the smoking equivalent is of salivating. Slobbering in a lustful urge to . . . inhale.
Uhhum. So I try to avoid places people smoke, and smokers. I am also very sensitive to the smell and taste of stale smoke now, and I can't stick my tongue in the mouth of someone who smokes. And I don't want their stale tar coated one in mine either.
So my friends and lovers are now nonsmokers. Which is fine, as it also means that they are healthier, will live and love longer, have more disposable income, and well, lots of other good things that go with being a non-smoker.
So it was quite a shock and very worrying when I started to get a whiff of the smell of tobacco smoke when I visited them. All of a sudden the heady aroma of really good tobacco was everywhere, and it all started at a party Morris had one night-not a real party, but maybe ten people, some wine and a BBQ under the new pergola in his recently replanted garden.
I had to be at work at 6 a.m. the next morning, so I left the party early just as the evening started to warm up, saying, "bye" to Neil, Arnold, Morris and Colin, and Dave and the rest of them. Ah well, I've got to make a living. But as I was leaving, a wave of rich tobacco smoke wafted past me, and I was almost knocked over by it. I turned to see who it was, but all I saw was the unfamiliar back of a well-built guy with dark hair and a trail of smoke drifting up from in front of him as he walked out to the garden where the BBQ was. And I was stunned to see Morris, who was also a reformed smoker and was now obsessive about not getting the smell of smoke in his furnishings, rush forward and embrace the new arrival in a gush of half-heard words so that I missed his name.
It wasn't the smell of an ordinary cigarette I knew, but I didn't give it much thought at the time; I was just very surprised he was there and glad to be escaping the seductive aroma.
The next day was Saturday, and after work I stopped by to pick Neil up and take him to the gym. We always worked out together on Saturdays and Tuesdays, and I was surprised not to find him waiting at the door for me. But then again sometimes he worked on the weekends and sometimes I'd find him asleep on his sofa recovering from Friday night. Since the door was wide open, I wandered in and took a bottle of Staminade from his fridge. But there was a strange smell, and as I stood up and opened the bottle, I sniffed and suddenly I was hit by the smell of that tobacco again. The same one as at Morris's, rich and pungent, and in shock again, I wondered what it was doing there and where Neil was.
Muffled noises drew me further into the house, and I wandered on, the smell of tobacco growing stronger, leading me to Neil's open bedroom door. On the bed I saw, and heard, the reason Neil had forgotten about getting ready for the gym.
Neil was on his knees, and I could see his smooth thighs sitting wide outside another pair of solid muscular thighs coated in a light coat of dark, curly hair. Yes, behind him and pumping his ass was the body of the dark-haired, well-built guy I'd last seen at Morris's, whose hairless muscular butt was clenching and releasing as he pumped my moaning gym buddy's ass.
And the aroma of his cigar circled around me. Because I now knew that was what the smell was-a cigar. Yes, the stranger's thick cigar butt sat on a plate on the bedside chest as its owner fucked my reformed smoker, gym buddy, Neil.
Their moans and grunts had led me there, and Neil was moaning more loudly now and writhing under his attacker, as the guy did same gyrating and shallow stroking inside my mate's channel that had me wishing it was me he had there on the bed. I love a guy who can really work his cock around in my arse and reach every part of it, but that thinking was doing me no good. Because the aroma of the tobacco had me starting to salivate. I had to get out of there fast.
So, I escaped, half hard and filled with the desire for a good fuck. But also afraid-because even in the brief time I had been in Neil's house, I had been starting to yearn for the rich tobacco aroma and had been taking deep breaths to suck it into my lungs, ahhh, and slowly exhaling. I'd had to get out of there. Whatever the hunky dark-haired guy was smoking was like a drug to me.
Outside I took big gulps of fresh air and told myself it was much better, cleaner, sweeter, all that, so much more enjoyable than the smell of tobacco. And I also tried to convince myself that the cigar smoker's butt and thighs and back and other body parts were not doing anything for me. I could not get myself hooked on a smoker.
"And he's Neil's," I told myself firmly.
At the gym I worked out hard, breathed deeply, and complained to Garth how hard it could be to stay off them, even ten years after you had given up cigarettes. He agreed. He'd been there too. So by the time I headed home, I had got my lust for the cigar-smoking stranger and his aromatic cigars out of my system.
"So did you . . . um, come by yesterday? On your way to the gym?" Neil asked hesitatingly that evening when he called me.
"Yep," I said, "And, yep, I smelt it. The smoke. And I saw what was keeping you too busy to notice the time," I said bluntly. "He's a smoker? Geez, Neil."
"Yeah," he laughed, "Well. Don't sound so stuffy. Sorry, but you know it's been a while and I couldn't turn down a hunky guy who wants to fuck, and man, that was a great one."
"The guy smokes," I said, "All the time."
"Yeah, well, I can handle it."
"But, Neil," I said in exasperation, "I spent six months listening to you moaning how you were dying for a smoke while you wore patches and had injections and hypnosis."
I had been through more hell than Neil, I was sure. Being a successful "giver upper" I had babied several friends though the drama of giving up smoking.
"He imports them. Luca the Latin hunk. Genuine, hand rolled, Cuban cigars made on the sweaty thighs of testosterone-loaded young Cuban men. And . . . and," he stopped and giggled, then whispered, "And you have no idea, Steve, how many things he can do with a cigar."
Geezus, dream on, Neil, I thought, but he was saying it all with real lust in his voice, whether for the guy or his cigars I had no idea.
"And you know cigars are not as bad for you as cigarettes. Cigars have less nicotine and are organic," Neil added.
"Neil," I shouted down the phone, "Don't you dare."
On Sunday I was having lunch with Arnold and his sister at the Aqua café on the waterfront. Lots of fresh air and great views of the lake, and I had walked down sucking in the joys of summer and thinking about sex. Particularly about solid muscular thighs with a fine coat of black, curly hair and topped by a hair-free pumping butt and imagining a nice seven incher. Sigh. I tried to change the image. This was bad.
Arnold and Lydia were late, and I got a nasty shock when we finished our Thai beef salads. I hadn't smelt it on him as we were outdoors, but suddenly Arnold had to get up and cross the pavement, and I watched in shock as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one and dragged hard on it. I was stunned.
"But . . . he gave up, years ago," I said gaping at him.
"Don't talk about it," his sister Lydia snapped. "I have already yelled at him, but he's hooked already. It's that bloody Luca he's been dating. God, he's a hunk, but he's got a cigar in his hand the whole time and leaves one behind every time he visits," She said angrily. "But of course one cigar isn't enough, he was a two-pack-a-day man when he gave up, and he's already back on to a pack a day"
"Luca?" I asked. "But, um . . ." I wasn't quite sure how to tell Lydia that the dark hunk was also fucking Neil. "The guy seems to be a one-man conversion to smoking campaign," I said, frowning.
Arnold had had a lump removed from a lung and given up in a panic. Gone cold turkey. I had never expected him to take smoking up again. He came back to the table looking sheepish, and lunch was spoiled. Lydia and I both glared at him, and he reacted by telling us how good a fucker his new boyfriend was.
There wasn't much I could say to that. I knew he was good. I'd seen him in action. I just shook my head at the end of lunch and said, "If you want to die for a good fuck, Arnold, well, don't expect us to come running with the fruit and sympathy when you are in hospital with lung cancer." I was brutal, I know, but we all knew what his family history was-his father and two uncles dead of lung cancer, and what his specialist had said.
On Tuesday I went to pick up Neil, and I could smell it-smoke-but it wasn't the rich aroma that came from a hand-rolled Cuban cigar, spun off some nubile youths' sweaty thigh. More like the stale smell of Alpine menthol.
"What? No way. I haven't had a smoke, promise," he said, when I confronted him on it, but he didn't look me in the eye.
I dropped him off afterwards, and he didn't ask me in for a drink like usual. I knew why. He couldn't have a nicotine fix if I was there. I sighed and drove off. Damn, Luca, I thought. What was he, some one-man devil's helper? Or perhaps he had been let loose on the gay community by Phillip Morris now that AIDS was waning.
That night I dreamed of those bare-butt cheeks and imagined the cigar man pumping my ass amid a haze of smoke and woke up sweating. The guy, Luca, was spoiling my sex life.
Ok. I lusted for him, but the cigars-well, they terrified me, and I had no idea if I could resist him, and them. I certainly couldn't have him without succumbing to the other. Fortunately, he was Arnold's date. Well, supposedly.
On Friday night I went to meet Morris, his other half, Colin, and Neil for dinner in town at Goldbergs'. It was busy as usual, and I was pulling my chair out when I realised that "he" was the guy with his back to me sitting on the other side of Neil. I was looking at the back of him, and the faint smell of fine aromatic tobacco was in the air.
