For Tony, it happened during a New York Mets baseball game.  He was nine.

"I was watching TV.  There was family in the room.  I saw players smoking cigars, and it turned me on.   My dick got hard, but I didn't masturbate."   

Tony isn't certain when his interest became a fetish.  He remembers enjoying cartoons featuring characters smoking cigars.  He liked the look of a man with a cigar in his jaw.  Once, at a sex club, he saw a man smoking while in a cop uniform.  "It wasn't just the smell but the look and attitude the guy had."

Other cigar men remember actor Guy Williams of "Zorro" fame as one who could hold a cigar right.  Or Robert Conrad on the old "Wild Wild West" TV show.  There he was, shirtless, smoking his cigar, playing poker.  Mmm.

Tony presided at "The Cigar Connection," GMSMA's program on Oct. 25, 2000. Many of the 50 players on hand were quite experienced. Tony runs Hot Ash in New York, a fetish club for men into cigars.  With a mailing list of 600 and 175 dues-paying members (60 of whom are in the New York City area), the club is becoming increasingly popular.  It holds two parties a month at the meat-packing district club known as Manhole—complete with complimentary cigars available to all.

There is also an occasionally appearing newsletter called Hot Tips.  Shenton highly recommends Smoke Signals, published by the Hot Ash brother club in London, Blue Haze.

The group's first newsletter was published in 1987, "before any bar nights," notes Tony. "It's just grown and grown."

Today, there are chapters and events in New York, Toronto, Boston, San Diego and New Orleans, and a new chapter forming in Ohio.

So how do novices get started?  

"I advocate experimenting on your own if you have a place. See what turns you on," says Tony.  "Go to an event of some kind.  Smoke a cigar.  It doesn't have to be a sex party right away.  It could be a bar night.  Talk to someone who's alone.  Find out just what they're into with cigars."   

Three of the members did dramatic readings from cigar-oriented fiction.  There were also results released from an unscientific survey on cigar interests among Hot Ash membership.  

Among the findings:

•  The top-bottom-versatile split among membership is about even at 33%-33%-34%.
•  Favorite print cigar erotica tended to be out-of-print magazines, specifically Drummer 122, Powerplay 6 and the French publication Projet X (No. 40).
•  Favorite cigar fetish/fuck videos most often mentioned were "Red Dog Saloon" (from Jim Wigler) and Jack Fritscher's Palm Drive Video series.  Also mentioned:  "Sludgemaster," "Uniforms M4M," "Code of Conduct," "Smokin' Hunks," "BIC" and "Bareback II: Crime Pays."  Performers mentioned most often included Cole Tucker, Donnie Russo and the revered thespian known affectionately as Titpig.

But just how deep can a scene go?  Has Tony ever achieved an altered state of consciousness while using cigars?  

"I've certainly achieved some sort of altered state, but not every time," he says. "I think people into breath play and pain using cigars more frequently achieve altered states."  

Pain

For some, simply being around men who smoke cigars is tremendously stimulating.  For others, they're a tool for inflicting serious pain.  Among the variety of scenes mentioned were the following:

• Fucking someone with the aluminum tube that protects cigars.
• Making a cigar part of a piss scene.
• Feed or be fed smoke.
• Control your partner's air flow while introducing cigar smoke.
• Using smoke or cigars as part of a bigger raunch or scat scene.
• Using a lit cigar to create a sense of menace and danger during a blowjob or fuck
• Using a lit cigar to brand your partner.
• Doing a human ashtray scene.
• Using lit or extinguished cigars on dicks, balls and pecs.
• Using a bottom as a humidor.
• Covering your partner in cigar ash.

Safety

I asked Tony if there's something he would never do in a cigar scene.  

"In bars and clubs, I've seen ash play above the neck," he says.  "If you're careless in dropping ash on someone's face, or worse, in their eyes, it is, of course, really dangerous."

Experienced and careful players, he adds, are not the ones committing careless acts.  As in so many other areas of power exchange, responsibility and care remain paramount.

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