Cigars and Ferretts

Basically, a cigar is a good way of slowing the world down for a bit.
Now, normally I’m awash in input – writing, checking texts, hey a Twitter notification, Gini has a joke to tell me, new email! – but this summer, about every two weeks, I’ve poured myself a nice tall glass of good bourbon, set up my chair in the back yard, and lit up a cigar.
I leave my phone in my pocket.  There’s only the cigar, my drink, and my company.
There’s something delightfully contemplative about a cigar.  You’re not supposed to draw the smoke into your lungs – in fact, you’d choke on it.  No, you’re supposed to puff to fill your mouth, and let it linger there for a while.  It’s not an act I could imagine doing quickly, or casually.  To enjoy it, you have to move at the pace of rising smoke.
And you can’t just puff away like a madman.  It takes a while to cycle, maybe a minute or two between draws, so you’re made to be leisurely.  Everything else slows; conversation becomes delightfully paced as people draw thoughtfully on their cigar between thoughts.  Even arguments take place sluggishly.
The thing is, I still feel dreadfully ignorant when it comes to cigars.  I don’t even know the general classifications of cigars yet – if cigars were beer, I would not yet know the difference between an IPA and a stout.  And when I go to my local cigar stores, they ask me, “So what do you like?” and I fumble out my phone and show them the pictures of cigar bands from the four cigars I’ve enjoyed, and they go, “Oh, we don’t carry those.”
My education is very incomplete at this stage. And everyone seems to assume that I do know what I like, or even where to start, and it’s a bit vexing.
It’s also vexing to realize what a snob I am.  Were I a normal person, I might go, “Well, I liked this brand!” and then buy more of it and smoke the same thing.  But no.  I’m the sort of explorer who has to try everything, to see the finest and the worst any experience has to offer.  People ask me what my favorite bourbon is and I tell them “The one I haven’t had yet” – and that’s because for me, finding the shades of difference between a good Blanton’s and this Eagle Rare is the fun.
If I wasn’t so prone to wandering, I could be content.  But as it is, there’s thousands of cigars, and I can’t even group them, so when someone asks me “What flavor intensity do you like?” I just flail.
The little fuckers don’t even have the respect to look the same.  If all dark cigars smoked similarly, I’d be happy, but sometimes the cigar store rep points at a dusky cigar and says “That’s very intense” and points at another one the same shade and goes, “That’s much lighter.”
Ah, but there’s a ceremony I crave.  I like cutting the head.  I like toasting the edge.  I like realizing that I’m not particularly good at this ceremony, and when I go smoke with others, I’ll eventually see what I’m doing wrong. I like learning.  Cigars are a skill to be mastered, like writing.
The summer’s drawn to a close.  I’ll probably get to go out in the back yard once, maybe twice, with my daughters before it’s too cold to smoke any more.  And then what will I do?  I could go to a cigar bar, I guess, but part of the thrill is being anchored in a place I’m usually trotting past on the way to walk the dog or get some wood or park the car, and just taking it all in.  I puff until the stars come out.  I drink until I’m light-headed.  I smoke until I’m clear.
I couldn’t get that in a bar.
I couldn’t get stoked up on my life on someone else’s stool.
And so I’ll hope for friends, and bourbon, and a new wadded leaf of tobacco, and I’ll wait for spring.
I’ve never looked forward to summer, before.
So lovely to find new treasures as I get older.

Being Nice To My Wife Is Not A "Survival Mechanism"

My wife is long used to being disappointed in me. I think most marriages are, if the people are honest.
Not the big disappointments. If you’re disappointed in your spouse’s fidelity, or their trustworthiness, or their support, then usually that marriage is gonna collapse like a deflating hot air balloon.  Those are worth getting really mad about.  But any normal co-existence is studded with little disappointments like:
“Did you remember to pick up the rubbing alcohol on the way home?” “…shit.”
“You watched that show? But I told you I wanted to see it with you!” “…shit.”
“You went to my favorite take-out fried chicken joint in the world, and didn’t bring any back for me?” “…shit.”
And yesterday, I almost – almost – committed that crime.  I went to Hot Chicken Takeover, which is quite literally the best fried chicken I’ve ever had, a place so good that there’s a 200-person line at 10:00 on a Sunday morning and the chicken is usually gone by noon.  I stood in that line with a friend, ate my chicken, and then realized in horror that I’d forgotten to get takeout for Gini.
So I went back and got some more.  Then posted this status:

Love is getting in a very long line again because you were so sleepy you forgot to get your wife chicken but you’re not going home w/o it.

— Ferrett Steinmetz (@ferretthimself) September 13, 2015

And the interesting thing was the number of friends responding across the social media platforms with something like, “That doesn’t seem like love. That seems like a survival instinct, so she doesn’t kill you.”  And I’m uncomfortable and then baffled by that.
I’m uncomfortable because – even though I do it sometimes – that whole “My God, my wife will kill me” joke plays into a stereotype that normalizes male abuse and trivializes women’s power.  Basically, it’s a gag that springs from the whole idea that women are so powerless that they can’t really hurt a guy, and so it’s okay to discuss disproportionate fatal rage that springs from a lack of take-out chicken.
(Don’t believe me? Switch the genders. It’s a little more uncomfortable to joke that it might be a “survival instinct” for a wife to not forget to bring home the chicken to her male husband.)
And given that it’s hard to say just how prevalent female-on-male domestic abuse is, simply because so many men are ashamed to be “unmanly”, and because that “the wife will kill me joke” can wind up being toxic, I’m a little tentative to just nod and smile with it.  (Even if said jokes are often made by both feminists and whatever we’re calling anti-feminists this week.)
Yet even aside from my social concerns, I have personal concerns about how dangerous that line of thought is.
The proper survival technique to survive disproportionate rage is to lie.  It would have been nothing to say, “Aww, by the time we got to the front of the line, they’d sold out.”  I wouldn’t have gotten in hot water, and Gini wouldn’t spend the day fuming what a fucking idiot, how could you do that to me, and I’d still have a belly full of delicious chicken.  If your partner is really going to fly off the rails for trivial things, then they don’t encourage honesty: they encourage subterfuge.
But Gini wouldn’t have been mad.  She’s reasonable.  She understands mistakes will happen, particularly when I’m running on four hours’ sleep after a long convention, facing a two-hour drive home.  If I’d come back without any Hot Chicken Takeover, she would sigh, and be sad, and get over it.
And in our relationship – and, again, I think most sane ones – it hurts me a lot more when I see my wife sadly accepting than when she’s yelling.  Yelling gets me defensive; seeing her sad thinks Oh, fuck, my life’s goal here is to make her happy, and I just did… not… that… thing.
(I get very nonverbal when I realize I’ve fucked up.)
And if I had forgotten, there could be two outcomes:
The next time I’m at Hot Chicken Takeover, I’d remember Gini screaming at me for an hour when I got home without the chicken.  And everyone, bafflingly, seems to think that fury and shame is a great incentive – as witness Donald Trump’s candidacy – but really what happens for me is that I see Hot Chicken Takeover and I feel that defensive anger welling up inside me again, and my fear has a battle with my resentment, and I think, She yelled at me, I don’t wanna reward that bitch with chicken.
And maybe I get her the chicken, if fear wins.  Or maybe I skip getting chicken entirely because now my chicken’s now tainted with the unpleasant reek of verbal abuse.  Or maybe – just maybe – I go get one over on Gini by getting my chicken, and lying about it, and feeling like I’ve secretly gotten my victory in here.
But the outcome that happens here is that when I get to Hot Chicken Takeover, I think, my wife was so understanding of what happened last time.  She looked so sad.  And it’s a pretty shitty way of rewarding her for being so nice by forgetting again.  And now, in getting the Hot Chicken Takeover – and I swear I wasn’t paid for this advertisement – I become not a convict being forced to provide services, but a fucking hero in a redemption story.
By bringing her the Hot Chicken Takeover, I become a better person, and my wife becomes more loved, and that is so more win-win than any bullshit “survival mode” framing.
And yeah, there are oblivious people who don’t ever think about their partner’s needs and need to be shamed and yelled at and banged around before they’ll listen to you.  But I tend to think that someone who needs major overhaul work before they can remember the little things like chicken is gonna be even harder to teach when it comes to major things like fidelity and trustworthiness and support, and the question is – as it always is when seeking long-term relationships – “Do you want to spend years of your life trying to teach someone who’s not fundamentally compatible with you to be compatible, or would it be better to spend years of your life looking for someone who you don’t have to scream at so they remember your preferences?”
In any case, no.  It’s not a survival mechanism.  Gini would forgive me a tray of fried chicken, as she’s forgiven so much in life before.
The real survival mechanism is realizing that her acceptance of my flaws means I should do better. And I do. And she does. For there are days she forgets my fried chicken, and I hug her and tell her that’s all right.
The end result? We have a lot of fried chicken, and a lot more love.
 

Don't Go There. Just Please, Don't Go There.

(THE SCENE: Having gotten out of a lovely but exhausting convention, my friend Raven and I go out for fried chicken on the morning after, as is tradition.)
ME: Oh, God, this mac and cheese is brilliant.  It’s gonna kill my heart, but it’s worth dying for.
RAVEN: Ferrett, no! You have to live until Star Wars!  If you die on my watch, Gini is never gonna forgive me!
ME: All right, fine. I guess I’ll live until Star Wars.
(A few minutes later, when I snatch a bite of food off her plate:)
RAVEN (raises fork): Do not make me stab you in the throat with this fork.
ME, loftily: Too late! You’ve shown your hand. You’ve told me you don’t dare harm me, lest Gini harm you!  You have to protect me!
RAVEN: …and what are the odds that Gini sanctions me injuring you after I’ve explained what you did?
ME: Don’t use that logic. It’s a very bad logic.
 

Physicists! Further Assistance In Breaking Europe?

So a while back, I asked you rampant physicists to assist me in destroying a (fictional) Europe, and I got some fine feedback.  Then I had a bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the experiment tumbled to a halt in a slurry of misplaced depression.
Unfortunately, I am now approaching the stage where I need to write the chapter that explores the wounded Europe – as in, “My muse is going there right now, and if I don’t follow it this very weekend, I’m gonna lose something vital” – and I need some assistance.
So!  If you’re a) willing to deal with some mild spoilers in what happens in The Fix, and b) quickly ponder some questions about how to tweak the laws of physics so things will be awful for humans but survivable in spots, then please email me stat at theferrett@gmail.com.
(As an added bonus, anyone who helps out will get credit in the acknowledgments, and if they want will get to read a beta-draft of The Fix when I eventually finalize the sucker in a few months.)
Because I know what the characters are doing.  I just don’t know where they are. And I’ll fake it if I have to.  But it’ll be less cool without your assistance.

THE FLUX Has A Release Party! Come To Cleveland, October 9th!

The sequel to Flex is coming out in a month, and precisely one month from now we will be partying at Loganberry Books!
Now, I’ll be honest with you: the sequel is kind of a make-or-break moment for me.  Sometimes, the first book does well and people liked it, but for no apparent reason folks don’t want to follow these characters into more narrative.  So I’m nervous about The Flux, because even though I think it’s a way better book than Flex, will anyone show up for Round 2: Fight?
So I debated holding a book party for book 2, and then I asked myself a vital question:
Do I get to eat all the FLUX-themed cupcakes I want that night?
Yes.  Yes, I do.
So there will be a release party at Loganberry Books, one of Cleveland’s finest indie book stores, on Friday, October 9th at 7:00 p.m.  If you’re going, please say you’re attending at the Facebook event page, and share if you feel like it.
There will be new THE FLUX-themed nails, and cupcakes, and a dramatic reading where you find out exactly what happened to Aliyah. Things are… not good.  And you should show up to see how it all turns out.