Kinky Friedman

For the introduction to this interview, see: The day James Leavey first met Kinky Friedman

JL: Where did you first start smoking?

KF: In my anus.

JL: What cigars do you smoke now?

KF: Now, I smoke them in my mouth. Orally.  I enjoy any kind of Cuban cigars that I can get hold of.  I like Montecristo No. 2s, and Epicure No. 2s.  I smoke cigars that are big, like a Negro penis.

JL: Why?

KF: It’s a Freudian thing, an oral fixation.  I think that probably all men who smoke cigars do it unconsciously.  Now African-Americans who smoke cigars – I don’t know why they do this.  That’s a good question.  Maybe African-Americans like to smoke a Negro penis subconsciously too.  There’s definitely an oral fixation here, and there’s something very Freudian going on.  But I don’t like to look too hard.  That said, cigars, like love, are often better the second time around. I don’t like to think about that too much either.

JL: How many cigars do you smoke?

KF: I smoke as many as ten cigars a day and I expect to live forever.  Of course, I don’t inhale.  I just blow the smoke at small children, green plants, vegetarians, and anybody who happens to be jogging by at the same time I’m exhaling.

JL: Who’s your favourite smoker-friendly literary character?

KF: I guess Sherlock Holmes.  He equated certain things as being three-pipe problems. I know what he’s talking about. There are certain tasks I can almost tell you how many cigars they are gonna take.  I wrote a short story last night about nine pages long, and it was a three-cigar situation.  And they had to be the right cigars – Cuban cigars – which I guess are the only ones that have a certain, I don’t know what it is… I’ve become a vegetarian now - so that may affect certain things – for the past seven weeks, but I probably won’t be forever.  Big meaty cigars are the only things that I eat, other than pussy.

JL: What kind of songs do you like to smoke to?

KF: I only smoke when I’m singing, 'cos I don’t listen to music much. So music is kind of irrelevant to me, 'cos I’ve heard too much music already.  I prefer the sound of silence.  I prefer smoking and typing, probably to anything.  These days I’m very married to my typewriter 'cos I have a lot of ongoing projects.  Currently I have four dogs, four women and four editors.  And this requires more than four cigars a day.

JL: Do you smoke more when you’re writing?

KF: Yeah, without as doubt. When I’m writing and there’s no time I may write up to 2 or 3 in the morning, or later.  Then I may smoke not quite up to the Winston Churchill level but I would smoke probably more the Thomas Edison/Mark Twain level, of twelve cigars maybe.  I’m either waiting to die of throat cancer or something like that.  That could happen.  But now that I’m a vegetarian, I think I’m much healthier. Although that’s not the reason why I became a vegetarian, I’d just like to say that now. I’m a vegetarian because I wanna be kind to animals, and to be morally superior to other people.

JL: Tell me about the day you were invited to dinner at the White House.

KF: We just did a Dutch documentary that’s coming out called ‘Proud to be an Asshole from El Paso’, in which they interviewed Clinton about me and my books, and he read some passages from the books.  And he recounted the time I went to the White House for dinner and how I gave him a Cuban cigar. And he said, ‘Uh, you know, that’s illegal in this country’. And there were a lot of people around and all that, and he said, ‘You can’t do that here.’ And I said, ‘Just remember, Mr President, don’t think of it as supporting their economy, think of it as burning their fields.’  I’m going to see President Bush in the first week of October, and do a reading for him. We’re Pen-Pals now.

JL: Does George smoke?

KF: George does smoke – he smokes cigars. I don’t know if he smokes Cubans, or not.  We’ll find out what he smokes. I’ve never smoke with him really – but I guess I will. I’m a friend of friend of Presidents.  I belong to a very small group  - including Bernard Beruch, Jesse Jackson and Billy Graham.  None of them is in very good shape at the moment, I think.  I guess it goes with the territory.

JL: You’re working on a book with your pal Willie Nelson. Does Willie Nelson still smoke, or has he packed it in?

KF: Willie still smokes an occasional cigar.  He still smokes enough dope, it’s just incredible…  I was on the bus with him last week and I was standing back to back with this very attractive young woman, and I told him, ‘I’m not sure which of us is taller, but her ass is six inches higher than mine.’  To which Willie responded, ‘My ass is higher than both of your asses.’ At any rate, yes, Willie definitely smokes enough marihuana to choke an iguana.

JL: Are you ever gonna write a book when nobody smokes in it?

KF: No.  Well, it could happen.  I’m working on a non-Kinky novel right now and I’m almost done with it, about three people who are trying to blow up Starbucks in New York.  I have two books coming out this fall: ‘Stepping on a Rainbow’, which is a mystery, with Simon & Schuster, and then, in October, HarperCollins is coming out with ‘Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette’, or ‘How to Get to Heaven or Hell without going through Dallas, Fort Worth.’  It’s the cigars that wrote these books.  It’s the cigar writing – that’s what I blame.