Racially Insensitive Lighter Soon to Arrive in Mail

When I was in law school, I started smoking cigars, and I bought a Zippo.

Some cigar smokers don't like Zippos. They burn oily lighter fluid, which gives off a very distinct smell. If you use the lighter carelessly, you may inhale the smelly fumes into the cigar, which will detract from the taste for four or five seconds. This is the kind of thing cigar nuts flip out over. Personally, I think that if you're that sensitive, you ought to switch to candy cigarettes.

Do they still make those?

Here's a tip: when using a Zippo to light a cigar, let the flame burn for a few seconds before bringing it to the tip of the cigar. During those seconds, the flame will start to burn cleaner and smell less.

Or just grow a pair and quit whining.

When I bought my first Zippo, I did not realize they had limited editions. I figured there was an endless supply of cool Zippos.

One day I was in a mall, and I passed a cigar-accessory cart, and I saw the coolest Zippo ever made (possibly). It was brass, with a cast cigar-store Indian on the front. I had to have it or just stop living, so I shelled out seventeen bucks, I think.

Everyone loved the Zippo. I have wonderful taste in little unimportant things like lighters and cufflinks, and I really scored this time.

Then I lent it to a friend of mine, and she left it at the Rathskeller at the University of Miami. But they found it. And she went to get it, and they had lost it again. "Lost." Right, you little dirtbags. You lost it into your dirty little pockets. But there was nothing I could do.

I tried to find a new one like it, and it was impossible, so one day at the drugstore, I grabbed a brass Zippo Venetian. But it wasn't the same. I never even bothered to get my initials cut into it.

Last night, at Val's, I was talking cigars with my father and Tommy, and the old man started complaining that I had never been a good dutiful son and located a torch lighter for him. This is how the old man operates. Delegation of duty, with no warning. I had a duty to get him a torch lighter, and I wasn't even aware of it.

So today I went online and ordered him a torch lighter. Then I saw a new product called the Z-Plus. It's an insert you stick in a Zippo, to turn it into a torch lighter. Pretty cool. You get the style points of a Zippo, but you can use it in a high wind, and you don't have to worry about the Zippo user's perennial hazard: excess fuel dripping through your pocket onto your crotch and causing a burning sensation similar to sitting on an electric stove.

I decided to order one, and then I decided to see if I could find a new Zippo with an Indian on it. Ward Churchill probably has one; why shouldn't I?

Timely Arrival

It turns out this lighter was made in cooperation with an outfit called Barrett-Smythe. I know nothing about them, but they occasionally team up with Zippo to make limited edition lighters. Mine was such a lighter. It was only made in 1995, and it was made in both cheesy chrome and unbelievably sexy brass. You can get the chrome one on Ebay for like fifteen bucks. But the brass one...it's as if it never existed. I thought I would never find it.

Finally, after way more Googling time than I could ever hope to justify to a shrink, I found the damn thing. FORTY BUCKS. Ridiculous. Insane.

But this has been sticking in my craw since 1998. A really huge pea under a really thin mattress. It gnaws at me. It does.

So I bought it. I know this makes me incredibly immature and foolish, but I just could not live another day unless I knew that lighter was in the mail to me.

What's the moral of the story? I don't know. Maybe that I have no common sense and will pay almost anything for something I want.

By the way, collecting Zippos seems like a real interesting hobby. Like I said, the chrome version of the Indian lighter is available for $15. But the price sticker, which is still on the package in the Ebay photo, says $22.95. So if you buy a Zippo and hold it for nine years, it still won't be worth MSRP. I think you get a better rate of return by shoving your cash into a mattress.

Unless of course you're selling the lighter to ME, in which case you double your money.

I saw a few other Zippos I liked. If I decide to get them, I'll try to do it before they skyrocket to forty bucks. The one I like best has a nice pewter casting of a Martini on it. Then there's the delightfully trashy one that has a suicide king playing card printed on the side. And of course, the tumbling pewter dice.

I think when you buy a Zippo, the crucial question you have to ask yourself is, "Would Michael Madsen use this lighter?" "Would he use this lighter to light a smoke right before committing a violent felony while dancing to 'Stuck in the Middle With You'"?

If not Michael Madsen, then Mickey Rourke. It has to be someone a little trashy, because spoiled rich boys use Colibris and DuPonts.

Brad Pitt would use a Zippo, but he'd be faking it. George Clooney would probably open it upside-down and then yell at his assistant for not stopping him.

Have you ever paid more than you should for some trivial thing you were absolutely determined to have? It usually turns out to be a very satisfying investment.