The audacity of smoke

(Yale Daily News) When I was 15, my mother’s sometime boyfriend visited us on our vacation in Wildwood, NJ. We had not seen each other since I was a baby, and none of us knew what to expect. He entered the door to our ocean-view motel room, walked to the kitchen table, and placed on it a Cuban cigar and a bottle of vintage port. “Tonight, Michael,” he told me, “we’re going to make you a man.” Together, the three of us sat on our balcony, sipped our port, and shared in one of the greatest joys available to us on this earth.
I shared this story last month, as I sat in New York’s Grand Havana Room with former mayor Rudy Giuliani. “Fifteen, huh?” replied Giuliani. “I was 11.” Continued