Anyway, while I was taking in the bizzaroland that is SoBe, I began to feel better about my life, that although it has its trials, at least I wasn’t the over-tanned guy who just passed us on a unicycle in Daisy Dukes wearing a white python around his neck and stinking worse than an anchovy’s crotch.
In that moment of solace provided by the evils of schadenfreude, I ordered drinks for my lovely Italian wife and myself and fired up my first cigar for that evening, a Rocky Patel Edge. While I was enjoying the Edge and its full-bodied, spicy aroma and super long finish afforded by its five-year-old blend in a Corojo wrapper, a lesbian sitting at the table next to us started fake coughing at my smoke and flailing her arms like Nell did when she tried to explain the trees.
How did I know it was a lesbian protesting my cigar, you ask? Well, the Justin Bieber haircut and the softball jersey was a hand tip. Plus, she was making out with another chick. Nothing gets past me.
With my Smith shades on and my chair quartering away from her table I pretended not to notice her childish demonstration and then blew out a smoke cloud that darkened what was left of the setting sun. Yes, I don’t believe in being bullied to put out my legal smoke just because she finds it offensive. I’ll put out my smoke when she gets a new doo and quits lip locking Melissa Etheridge in public. Maybe.
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Unable to get me to stop wafting billowing clouds of glorious blue smoke, my neighbor went stupid and came over and told me to put it out, with the addendum that what I was doing would give me throat cancer. And I said, “Throat cancer? Honey, I hate to ruin your date night, but oral sex will give you throat cancer, in our day, more readily than my Rocky will.” She looked at me like a calf looks at a new gate then huffed and puffed and moved upwind of our table.
In an eye-opening column, “Is Oral Sex Worse Than Tobacco?! … Say It Ain’t So!” Caroline May points out the following freaky facts surrounding oral sex in a society run amok. Check it out:
American scientists now say that oral cancer caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV) has become more prevalent in the U.S. than oral cancer caused by tobacco.Maura Gillison, a cancer researcher at Ohio State University told reporters Sunday at an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting that scientists have found a 225 percent increase in the number of oral cancer cases in the U.S. during the last three decades.
“When you compare people who have an oral infection or not … the single greatest factor is the number of partners on whom the person has performed oral sex,” said Gillison, adding that studies have shown that people who have performed oral sex on more than six partners have an eight times greater risk of developing head or neck cancer than their perhaps less promiscuous peers.
In the last two decades, incidents of oral cancer in the U.S. from HPV have doubled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that half of all sexually active Americans will get HPV throughout the course of their lifetime.
HPV has gotten attention in recent years for causing cervical cancer in women, with some states mandating and gynecologists recommending Gardasil and Cervarix to their patients as preventative vaccines. With this troubling data, however, researchers are advising boys and men to get vaccinated as well.
Sara Hiom, Cancer Research U.K.’s director of health information, told the Daily Mail that many people infected with HPV do not see symptoms or require treatment. She added that while many may hope to find the silver bullet in mass vaccinations, there is no fail safe.
“While it’s reasonable to assume that HPV vaccination in girls and boys would protect against these cancers, there is as yet no evidence as to whether the current HPV vaccines are effective at preventing them,” Hiom said.
At Sunday’s AAAS meeting Bonnie Halpern-Felsher of the University of California San Francisco recommended that one solution might be to increase awareness and get doctors to discuss risks with their patients.
“Teens really have no idea that oral sex is related to any outcome like STIs (sexually transmitted infections), HPV, chlamydia and so on,” she said.
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