Me & Mr. Cigar

Prologue: The Next Best Thing to Getting Even Is Regretting It
 
By all accounts, twelve-year-old G. Oscar Lester III was a lucky boy. He lived on top of a hill in the biggest house in town with his father, G. Oscar Lester II, and his mother, Dolores Aims-Lester. The Aims before the Lester was important because, as his mother said, The Aimses were better than the Lesters and ought to come first. In addition to his mother and father, there were two servants, one butler, a gardener, two cooks and his sister, Rachel Dunbar Lester. Nobody but Mother knew where the Dunbar came from, but we all assumed it too was better than Lester.
     Rachel tattled on Oscar, was mean to his dog, Mr. Cigar, and even stole Oscar s allowance once and blamed it on the gardener. The gardener was fired, then rehired two days later, when Rachel tearfully admitted the crime at the family dinner table after showing up with a doll worth twice the value of her allowance.
     Besides all that, the family was fairly normal for a family that lived on a hill in the biggest house in town with two servants, one butler, a gardener, two cooks and a dog named Mr. Cigar.
     From all appearances, life was good for Oscar, and especially today, because it was Saturday. He could wake up late because his mom was at the club, and Big Oscar was playing golf. Oscar had all afternoon to walk around City Lake with Mr. Cigar. Then they would run home through the woods and eat pork and beans and tuna-fish sandwiches, because that s what the cooks made on Saturdays when Dolores Aims and Big Oscar were not at home.
     Oh, what a Saturday it was. There wasn t a cloud in the bright blue sky. It was spring. The trees were just now green with blossoms of every kind and color all over.
     This would be a great hike. Oscar had a stick in case they found a snake, two hard-boiled eggs in case

Gibby Haynes is a musician, visual artist, writer, and filmmaker best known as a founding member of the Butthole Surfers, whose outrageous concerts spawned a global cult following and whose albums have sold millions worldwide. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. Me & Mr. Cigar is his first novel.

An LA Weekly Book of the Month
A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Novel of 2020

Praise for Me and Mr. Cigar

It takes a book as hilarious, bizarre, profane, and heartfelt as Me & Mr. Cigar to truly convey the surreality of coming of age as a teenage boy. This book hit this former teenage boy and new dog owner right in the heart, by way of the gut.
Jeff Zentner, Morris Award winning author of The Serpent King and Goodbye Days

This book is so wild, so mind-blowing, much fun to read, that I almost forgot it was fiction! (It is fiction, right? Mega-giant tech companies aren't really in cahoots with the government, right? Flying alien creatures aren't really mistaken for lawnmowers . . . right? Please, tell me this is fiction!) Fast-paced, brilliantly funny, irreverent, clever . . . AND it s illustrated? Me and Mr. Cigar is the quintessential teen read, and ipso facto a must-read for adults, too!
Garth Stein, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

In the book world we call it 'magical realism.' In the music world they call it 'psychedelic rock.' Gibby Haynes is very good at both, which he proves with his brilliant first novel Me and Mr. Cigar. This novel has it all: glimpses into Haynes's Texas childhood and teen years, a touch of his distinctive surrealism, and a heartfelt story which makes it a very good read."
Blake Nelson, author of Girl and Recovery Road

I felt like I was diving into a YA written by Thomas Pynchon. It was a dang blast!
Geoff Herbach, bestselling author of Stupid Fast

Butthole Surfers Gibby Haynes wrote a YA book as weird as the band s music.
The AV Club

"Particularly odd."
Houston Chronicle

"Between the bindings of Me & Mr. Cigar dwells a strange chain of events indeed, but profane, tangible fantasy is what indie nation has come to expect