How I Learned To Smoke A Cigar

I just returned from a week of socializing and play in Chicago at the International Mr. Leather (IML) weekend. What a great time. At one point over the weekend I learned how to smoke a cigar. (Please, no lectures on the health implications. I’m not likely to be a frequent smoker anyway.)

For many kinky men (and some women), the smoking of a cigar themselves, or by their partner, is an erotic experience. All one has to do is see the plethora of pictures on the web or on cruise sites, mostly of gay men, smoking cigars in their leather or gear, to know that cigars have reached true fetish status within the kink scene.

Being the erotic adventurer that I am, I figured I’d give this a try. I never smoked a cigar before this past weekend. I liked it.

Of course, I could have gone the route so many in BDSM and kink seem to feel necessary these days and taken a class somewhere on the erotic nature of cigars and how to smoke them. I am sure someone, somewhere teaches such a class and there are those kink education proponents that seem to feel that’s the best way to learn BDSM and kink. I respectfully disagree.

So how did I learn to smoke a cigar? I happened to be hanging out at IML with a wonderful man for whom cigars are an erotic passion. Being at IML, I was also surrounded by many men who share that passion and they were evident in the IML host hotel smoking area throughout the weekend. So I did what I feel anyone wanting to learn something about kink should do. I asked.

I had expressed an interest in cigars to the man I was hanging out with and he brought with him a good but mild cigar for me to try. I stood with him and he explained a bit about cigars themselves, how to cut one properly, how to light one properly, how to best hold the cigar, how to smoke it, and we discussed how cigars figure into his erotic life and how they might fit into mine.

At the same time, I was surrounded by others smoking cigars and one of them let me try his cigar so I’d get a sense of the difference in cigar flavors and strengths. I discussed cigars with that person and the erotic implications for them, which were somewhat different than my friend’s.

All of this transpired in perhaps 10-20 minutes. Socially. In the real world. With friends. And I didn’t just passively try to absorb what I was being taught. I actually engaged in the activity itself in real time so that the learning stuck and I could get tips and make adjustments as I smoked the cigar. Best of all? The entire learning process was truly and deeply enjoyable and I simultaneously learned something new while bonding more closely with friends, old and new.

This is how we best learn BDSM or kink. This is how everyone learned such kinky activities once upon a time. This is what I believe we need to move back toward rather than continuing to proliferate the runaway number of classes now offered on BDSM and kink.

Learning is best done socially and in a real world setting. Learning is best done when one can actually put into practice immediately what one learns. Learning sticks when done this way far better than when we passively try to absorb information that we hope to put into practice at a later time. Learning in such a real world, social environment allows us to fine tune and improve upon what we learn immediately.

I’m not going to try and convince an entire scene that we should eliminate all classroom-based learning of kink, which is essentially the type of learning that most kinksters seem to be embracing these days. But I think we need to reduce, not increase, the number of such classes and replace them with the permission, environments, resources and connections by which they can be learned in more natural and social settings.

Learning BDSM and other kink should usually be an organic, fun and natural process and not reduced to a classroom curriculum.