The Cuban Missile Crisis
Let me introduce myself. My name is Major Curtis Garr. I am a simple man; just another old soldier, a killer of men and a lover of women. And the new, reluctant cigar reviewer for the latest internet venture from the Dick D. Devlin family of companies.
I say reluctant because I was sleeping recently on a Chesterfield at my club, when Dick D. Devlin woke me and asked if I – as the man who taught him all he knows about cigars - would share that wisdom with his customers. “No, bugger off and don’t ever wake me again”, I replied. But the big bald bastard wouldn’t let up, so in order to get him away from me I was forced to put pen to paper.
Let me begin by saying I’m a modest man, which is suprising considering I once advised Churchill on war-time strategy, am a close confidant of Maggie Thatcher, went chasing women with JFK, taught a young Bill Clinton all about cigars and other vices, and am a drinking pal of George W.
I only mention this, of course, because it leads into today’s review: the faux-Cohiba, available from Dick D. Devlin's Cigar Emporium & House o' Love (located at 4211 Claude de Bernales Boulevard, US Minor Outlying Islands). Now, as many of you know, Cohibas were Fidel Castro’s favourite cigar before he stopped smoking. He says he did so on the advice of doctors, but that’s not true. No, the real story of why Fidel quit cigars has something to do with a little task JFK commissioned me to perform.
We had just finished cunnilingus on Marilyn Monroe when JFK looked at me and said, “Curt, I’ve been meaning to ask you to do me a little favour.” Now anyone who has been a swinger knows they’re not the words you want another man to say when you’re wrist-deep in starlets, but I’m a patriot and I do what my President asks. Luckily, my fears were unfounded when he said, “I want you to kill Castro”. As I recall my exact reply was, “For my country no duty is too great a burden to bear. Now wipe your face.”
Next thing I knew I was astride a Zodiac, covertly pulling up on a Cuban beach. I could see some lights off in the distance, the tunes of Ernesto Lecuona (the Cuban Gershwin for you music lovers) drifting through the air and mixing with Cohiba smoke and the addictively aromatic smell of Cuban women. I was a man with a mission, and that mission had just become chasing skirt. I wandered down towards the bar, and like commies to Lenin’s tomb some Cuban whores saw me and approached. Good thing it was only whores and not soldiers, I thought, as in my obsessive pursuit I had left my weapons back in the boat. Armed only with an erection and some hard currency, I went on the attack.
Waking up the next day was hellish, the light almost blinding me. What had happened? What was that damn bright light burning into my retinas? Had they drugged me and now I was being interrogated? I sat bolt upright, removing a pair of ladies underwear from my face and realised I had simply come to on the beach where I must have passed out last night. Staggering over empty bottles of Bacardi, stopping only to put a hand on the old todger and check my equipment was still intact, I decided to check if my equipment was still intact – so back down the beach to the Zodiac I went.
When I got there, my special encrypted radio was flashing. I got straight on the line to Langley, where they told me my failure to complete the mission that night had allowed the Soviets to sneak some missiles into the country. Not wanting to return a failure, I grabbed my gear and headed towards Castro’s palace. Once there, I stealthily snuck into his office and found his humidor. It was filled with Cohiba’s. The plan was to lace each cigar with a special CIA manufactured poison. Unfortunately, I realised as I searched my pockets, I must have left it back in the boat. Things were not going well, I was majorly hangover, and I desperately needed to drop a special kind of bomb from the night before. That’s when I struck upon my great idea. I took his cigars into his bathroom, and after dropping some friends in his toilet wiped each Cohiba across my ass. As well as feeling surprisingly good, my rudimentary knowledge of biology told me it would add some very nasty bacteria to them. The smell was enough to kill me, so I figured the poisoning he would get would be so bloody strong he’d have to die.
As I entered his office I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I quickly replaced the Cohibas and hid in his cupboard. Moments later, Castro walked in with his advisers. After opening some windows and Castro issuing an execution order for his toilet cleaners, they got down to the business of discussing the Cuban missile crisis. Now I know from talking to JFK when I got home that he agonised over what to do. None of that for Castro: he genuinely was a crazy bastard. Every time Kruschev called Castro he said the same thing: “Fuck ‘em. Drop all the nukes on them. Every one.” This was usually followed by a pause after which he would yell down the phone, “I’m not a crazy bastard.” After Kruschev stopped calling, Castro became quite agitated and decided he needed one of his favourite Cohibas to calm down. He lit one up, put it in his mouth, then started spitting. “This thing tastes like shit”, he said. Then he spent the next 72 hours face down in a toilet bowl. When he emerged, he swore to never smoke another cigar again.
Now some of you may find this story of biological weapons use funny, but let me tell you we came damn close to the end of the world back in 1962. I learnt this some years later in a girly bar in Moscow. Looking across past an Anna Kornakova look-a-like, I saw a man who looked decidely like Kruschev drunkenly sticking banknotes to his head and leering at the girls. We struck up a conversation and I asked him about the crisis. “We never listened to Castro,” he told me. “That guy was frickin’ insane. The only time we ever would have dropped those bombs was if the US had invaded first.”
That line struck fear deep into my heart, for in 1960 JFK’s father, Joseph, had given me a considerable sum of money to take some dodgy mafia types and a few old Tammany Hall Irishmen up to Cook County and stuff ballots. Those votes got JFK over the line and stopped Nixon from winning the presidency. Nixon, I knew, was considerably more hawkish than Kennedy, and would have listened to another old friend of mine, General Curtis LeMay.
LeMay had told me in the days after the missile crisis that JFK had been a total wimp in not taking his advice. Smoking cigars in the Oval Office, LeMay had told the President he wanted to wipe Cuba from the face of the earth. And he meant it: this is the man who had fire-bombed half of Japan and nuked two cities during World War II.
Who would have thought that whilst the assassin in me would fail, my stuffing of a ballot would save the world?
So my verdict on the faux-Cohiba is:
1. Always smell the end before smoking one.
2. Do not buy any while that commie bastard is still in power: the last thing we want to do is fund him to buy his own bombs.
3. Vote early and vote often.
I say reluctant because I was sleeping recently on a Chesterfield at my club, when Dick D. Devlin woke me and asked if I – as the man who taught him all he knows about cigars - would share that wisdom with his customers. “No, bugger off and don’t ever wake me again”, I replied. But the big bald bastard wouldn’t let up, so in order to get him away from me I was forced to put pen to paper.
Let me begin by saying I’m a modest man, which is suprising considering I once advised Churchill on war-time strategy, am a close confidant of Maggie Thatcher, went chasing women with JFK, taught a young Bill Clinton all about cigars and other vices, and am a drinking pal of George W.
I only mention this, of course, because it leads into today’s review: the faux-Cohiba, available from Dick D. Devlin's Cigar Emporium & House o' Love (located at 4211 Claude de Bernales Boulevard, US Minor Outlying Islands). Now, as many of you know, Cohibas were Fidel Castro’s favourite cigar before he stopped smoking. He says he did so on the advice of doctors, but that’s not true. No, the real story of why Fidel quit cigars has something to do with a little task JFK commissioned me to perform.
We had just finished cunnilingus on Marilyn Monroe when JFK looked at me and said, “Curt, I’ve been meaning to ask you to do me a little favour.” Now anyone who has been a swinger knows they’re not the words you want another man to say when you’re wrist-deep in starlets, but I’m a patriot and I do what my President asks. Luckily, my fears were unfounded when he said, “I want you to kill Castro”. As I recall my exact reply was, “For my country no duty is too great a burden to bear. Now wipe your face.”
Next thing I knew I was astride a Zodiac, covertly pulling up on a Cuban beach. I could see some lights off in the distance, the tunes of Ernesto Lecuona (the Cuban Gershwin for you music lovers) drifting through the air and mixing with Cohiba smoke and the addictively aromatic smell of Cuban women. I was a man with a mission, and that mission had just become chasing skirt. I wandered down towards the bar, and like commies to Lenin’s tomb some Cuban whores saw me and approached. Good thing it was only whores and not soldiers, I thought, as in my obsessive pursuit I had left my weapons back in the boat. Armed only with an erection and some hard currency, I went on the attack.
Waking up the next day was hellish, the light almost blinding me. What had happened? What was that damn bright light burning into my retinas? Had they drugged me and now I was being interrogated? I sat bolt upright, removing a pair of ladies underwear from my face and realised I had simply come to on the beach where I must have passed out last night. Staggering over empty bottles of Bacardi, stopping only to put a hand on the old todger and check my equipment was still intact, I decided to check if my equipment was still intact – so back down the beach to the Zodiac I went.
When I got there, my special encrypted radio was flashing. I got straight on the line to Langley, where they told me my failure to complete the mission that night had allowed the Soviets to sneak some missiles into the country. Not wanting to return a failure, I grabbed my gear and headed towards Castro’s palace. Once there, I stealthily snuck into his office and found his humidor. It was filled with Cohiba’s. The plan was to lace each cigar with a special CIA manufactured poison. Unfortunately, I realised as I searched my pockets, I must have left it back in the boat. Things were not going well, I was majorly hangover, and I desperately needed to drop a special kind of bomb from the night before. That’s when I struck upon my great idea. I took his cigars into his bathroom, and after dropping some friends in his toilet wiped each Cohiba across my ass. As well as feeling surprisingly good, my rudimentary knowledge of biology told me it would add some very nasty bacteria to them. The smell was enough to kill me, so I figured the poisoning he would get would be so bloody strong he’d have to die.
As I entered his office I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I quickly replaced the Cohibas and hid in his cupboard. Moments later, Castro walked in with his advisers. After opening some windows and Castro issuing an execution order for his toilet cleaners, they got down to the business of discussing the Cuban missile crisis. Now I know from talking to JFK when I got home that he agonised over what to do. None of that for Castro: he genuinely was a crazy bastard. Every time Kruschev called Castro he said the same thing: “Fuck ‘em. Drop all the nukes on them. Every one.” This was usually followed by a pause after which he would yell down the phone, “I’m not a crazy bastard.” After Kruschev stopped calling, Castro became quite agitated and decided he needed one of his favourite Cohibas to calm down. He lit one up, put it in his mouth, then started spitting. “This thing tastes like shit”, he said. Then he spent the next 72 hours face down in a toilet bowl. When he emerged, he swore to never smoke another cigar again.
Now some of you may find this story of biological weapons use funny, but let me tell you we came damn close to the end of the world back in 1962. I learnt this some years later in a girly bar in Moscow. Looking across past an Anna Kornakova look-a-like, I saw a man who looked decidely like Kruschev drunkenly sticking banknotes to his head and leering at the girls. We struck up a conversation and I asked him about the crisis. “We never listened to Castro,” he told me. “That guy was frickin’ insane. The only time we ever would have dropped those bombs was if the US had invaded first.”
That line struck fear deep into my heart, for in 1960 JFK’s father, Joseph, had given me a considerable sum of money to take some dodgy mafia types and a few old Tammany Hall Irishmen up to Cook County and stuff ballots. Those votes got JFK over the line and stopped Nixon from winning the presidency. Nixon, I knew, was considerably more hawkish than Kennedy, and would have listened to another old friend of mine, General Curtis LeMay.
LeMay had told me in the days after the missile crisis that JFK had been a total wimp in not taking his advice. Smoking cigars in the Oval Office, LeMay had told the President he wanted to wipe Cuba from the face of the earth. And he meant it: this is the man who had fire-bombed half of Japan and nuked two cities during World War II.
Who would have thought that whilst the assassin in me would fail, my stuffing of a ballot would save the world?
So my verdict on the faux-Cohiba is:
1. Always smell the end before smoking one.
2. Do not buy any while that commie bastard is still in power: the last thing we want to do is fund him to buy his own bombs.
3. Vote early and vote often.
posted by Major Curtis Garr (Ret.) at 01:41
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