. . . like a cigarette should.

Smokers are loyal to their brands. I mean this is the very reason that the cigarette companies marketed to children for so long, right? In fact:

cigarette brands enjoy the highest brand loyalty of all consumer products, with less than 10% changing brands annually. brand choices are usually made early during the life of a smoker, with a high concordance between the brand first smoked and the brand eventually selected as a usual brand. thus, once a consumer embraces a cigarette brand, it is quite unlikely that they will change.

I’m not going to attempt to rationalize my bad habit in this particular post, so spare me the lectures, but I do want to explore my choice of brands. I started smoking when I was in high school. I grew up in a small town that revered military service, and I really looked up to the old WWII-era GIs, who were ubiquitous in my childhood. Most of those GIs were smokers, and most of them smoked Lucky Strikes. When I (illegally) purchased my first pack of cigarettes, I bought a pack of non-filtered Luckies, of course. Joe fucking Camel didn’t have anything on my grandfather, who stormed Anzio beachhead, or my dad’s high school principal, who was a Bataan Death March survivor. Lucky Strikes came in a little square soft-pack, and I thought the packaging was pretty cool. I didn’t know better, so I thought all cigarettes tasted and smoked like a Lucky Strike. Fourteen years later, I still love a lot of the Lucky Strike “mystique” – the packaging, the history, the name – but it wasn’t until I went to college that I realized that there’s a reason Lucky Strikes (and Chesterfields, and Pall Malls) no longer command the market share the once did: they’re just not good.

In one of my first weeks at college I found myself at a fraternity party during pledge week. I was out of smokes, so I bummed one. That cigarette happened to be a Marlboro red. Compared to a non-filtered Lucky Strike, the Marlboro was exceptionally smooth, mild, and pleasurable. It was love at first drag. I bought a pack of reds the next day – and it came in a box! A box that I could put in my front pocket and not crush. The Marlboros had filters! No more tobacco falling onto my tongue. All in all, they were a superior product.

Now, folks will tell you that Marlboro reds are pretty high-up on the “harsh” scale, and I guess they’re right, but coming from where I came from, I had the opposite impression of them. Most smokers I know these days smoke some sort of light cigarette, but I’ve never been able to smoke lights. It sort of feels like I’m sucking on a straw when I do so. My lungs actually crave a little harshness (for that matter, I drink my coffee black and don’t have much of a like for sweet cocktails). An unintended consequence is that when folks see you smoking a red, they assume that you’re serious about your vice. I’m not one for the “Marlboro Man” appeal, but I’ll take it if you want to give it to me.

Winter wardrobe

I guess I haven’t mentioned that the Fulbright scholar invited me and Frankie to a little cocktail party at her house this evening. Which is funny for many reasons, including the fact that we met her at Melissa’s party and Melissa didn’t get invited. Melissa’s thoughts on that:

I don't know who this beeotch is, but tell her thanks for coming over to my house and drinking my liquor and enjoying the outside heaters and pleasant company. Then tell her to write the check out to: Melissa "I invite people to my parties" Sorensen. I'm not bitter.

Further excerpts from the e-mail chain among me, Frankie, and Melissa yesterday afternoon and this morning:

Frankie: Jack’s masculinity is always an easy target....can you convince him not to wear turtlenecks?

Melissa: The turtleneck is a key part of the gay uniform. Frankie, apparently, you’re the other part. Have fun at the party I wasn’t invited to!!

Jack: The turtleneck is one of the most flattering things a man can wear. Seriously, it puts your head on a pedestal. Just to spite you, I'm wearing one tomorrow. Cashmere.

Frankie: People already think you are my gay lover, so just don’t wear the turtleneck . . .

Fuck him; I’m wearing a black cable-knit turtleneck today. A note to heterosexual men everywhere: I think it’s time to take back the turtleneck. Since when did it become "a key part of the gay uniform"? Seriously, some of the straightest men to ever walk this Earth were fans of the turtleneck. Two words for you: Steve Fucking McQueen. Just look at the stills from Bullit, and tell me he looks like he’s light in the loafers in his black turtleneck. Or how about this picture of Ernest Hemingway, the man who single-handedly defined the paradigmatic American male for most of the twentieth century? Nobody would ever have called Hem a poof for wearing his turtleneck and gotten away with it. It’s a damned shame that our cultural notions of masculinity have ebbed so much in the last half-century. I yearn to somehow reclaim the core and code of manhood that men like Hemingway so carefully described and tried to obey (but certainly did not invent). Dressing like a man should not be solely the province of the homosexual because they have more fashion sense. That’s all I’m saying.

The history of cool.

[T]he wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour. Acting in this like the skillful archer, who seeing that the object he would hit is distant, and knowing the range of his bow, takes aim much above the destined mark; not designing that his arrow should strike so high, but that flying high it may alight at the point intended.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter VI

For a while now, I’ve wanted to write a new blog series: “Famous International Playboys,” to pay an homage to those historical figures whom I have sought to emulate at various points in my life – whose works or lifestyles have inspired me somehow – and who have positively impacted my outlook in some way.

Apologies to Morrissey, “Famous International Playboy” is just a verbose way of saying “Byronic.” How badass do you have to have been when your name went on to become an adjective for “cool motherfucker”? For that reason, I have to make Lord Byron the focus of my inaugural column. Byron was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” And not only that; he was a pretty good writer. His poetry is pretty good to plagiarize if you need to write an epic love letter. Throughout my twenties, I secretly wanted to be described by someone as “Byronic” – ideally by a girl that was in love with me. Alas, I don’t think that’s ever happened. And now that I’m pretty jaded, I don’t really care how I’m described anymore. According to Wiki:

The Byronic hero presents an idealised but flawed character whose attributes include:

• having great talent
• exhibiting great passion
• having a distaste for society and social institutions
• expressing a lack of respect for rank and privilege
• thwarted in love by social constraint or death
• rebelling
• suffering exile
• hiding an unsavoury past
• arrogance, overconfidence or lack of foresight
• ultimately, acting in a self-destructive manner

Jaded or not, my hat tips to Lord Byron, the consummate Famous International Playboy who set the stage for countless many more to follow and aspire.