zippo tricks

In eighth grade, my science teacher assigned a unit on simple machines, and with it a project that required everyone to research a basic contraption of our choosing and perform some sort of experiment. As a young cinephile obsessed with action films and still determined to become James Bond, I used the project as a way to convince my mom to let me buy a Zippo lighter. It was something I’d always wanted but never, as a thirteen-year-old, had a sensible excuse to buy. Although anyone could buy the lighter, an ID was required to purchase lighter fluid, so my mom reluctantly drove me to CVS and we bought two brushed silver brass Zippos and a yellow plastic bottle of Ronsonol.

I devised an experiment with the two lighters that would test the classic advertised windproof-ness of the Zippo, and slowly began to surf the web to learn its history and workings. But by eighth grade I’d already become an accomplished procrastinator and put off the project night after night, instead lying in bed listening to music. When the day of my presentation arrived, I still hadn’t done any of the actual work. I set an alarm to wake up early that day and hopefully scrape together a Powerpoint presentation before school, but I overslept and got on the bus that morning having still not even attempted my experiment.

I sat through my morning classes restlessly and ran to the computer lab at 10 a.m. for the fifteen minute recess before my 10:15 science class. I hastily threw together a presentation and filled in a table with various numbers that looked random enough to resemble test results. The rest of the slides I covered with diagrams from Google Images and bulleted info about the history of the Zippo paraphrased from Wikipedia. I walked into science class just a minute or two late and sat at the back of the room, holding my laptop under my desk while putting the final touches on my Powerpoint’s theme.

When it was my turn to present, I got up nervously and launched into my improvised presentation sans notecards and with some uncertainty of which slide would appear on the projector screen next. But I explained the inner workings of the lighter I’d been playing with for two weeks easily, realizing I’d learned plenty about it from Youtube videos long before my mom had allowed me to buy one. I took it apart and passed it around the class, explaining how the cam made that distinctive click, how lighter fluid was transferred to a wick, and how it was all cleverly shielded from wind that would instantly put out a traditional lighter or match.

Somehow I scraped an A-minus on the project, one of my best grades that semester. My teacher didn’t take a second glance at the experiment data, and I didn’t feel that bad; I knew by that point I wasn’t going to be a scientist anyway. I played with the lighters for a few weeks more before I heard my mother make a comment to my dad about my room smelling like lighter fluid and became afraid she would take them away. I put both Zippos back into their black plastic boxes and shoved them to the back of my bottom bureau drawer. The lighters stayed there until my sophomore year of high school.

I remember sitting in my best friend’s bedroom, a tiny, cramped space where one of us sat in a desk chair and the other on his bed surrounded by Vans sneakers, unwashed Stussy t-shirts and selvedge jeans. From freshman year into the beginning of sophomore, I was there at least a few days every week, more in the summer, and we spent most of the time playing rap music on his Logitech speakers and staring at our computers. We were into music - really, really into music. It was what we lived and breathed. We illegally downloaded and listened to every single hip-hop album that ‘dropped’ every week. We noticed when albums started releasing on Fridays instead of Tuesdays, when iTunes started updating at 12 at night instead of 11. We knew every rapper from their mixtapes, and could name the producer of all the biggest hit songs. We were also encyclopedic about sneakers and streetwear, from Bape to Supreme to Undefeated, and spent afternoons playing basketball and talking about it all.

The Zippos came back into my life when I sold one to my friend on one of those afternoons. After the fall of sophomore year, we’d shed our freshman awkwardness and begun to branch out and make new friends and try new things. I started writing, stopped watching as many movies and became invested in playing jazz. He’d been going to more social events outside of school and had recently just started smoking weed. One of those days while sitting in his bedroom, speakers blaring, fans cutting through the heat, he asked me while scrolling through a subreddit: “What kind of lighter should I get?” I knew he’d just tried smoking, and he wanted more, and he had to look cool while doing it. He didn’t yet know that no one lights a J with a Zippo because of the lighter fluid smell, or that Zippos are a hassle for non-everyday smokers to refill, and he didn’t yet know about Clippers and hemp wicks and all the culture surrounding the drug. He just knew having a cool lighter was an in with the kids at our school who were already stoners. Silently I didn’t approve but I said I’d sell him one of my Zippos anyway. He bought it from me and I put the money towards buying Supreme.

The other Zippo became my own. Although I didn’t smoke, I started carrying it around anyway, as a toy and a distraction and eventually to loan to all my other friends as everyone else started to smoke. I loved the elegance of it, the sound of it opening and closing, the feel of the hinges, the scratches it developed from sitting in my pocket with keys. When friends were too drunk or high to find a lighter I usually had one to pass around, fancifully popping it open and sparking it on my jeans. And after everyone else had lit up, night after night, I played with the Zippo, taking it apart and reassembling it and practicing tricks, occupying myself until my friends finished smoking and we all went home.

Only once I remember being called out for opening, sparking, closing, opening, sparking, closing the lighter over and over again, letting the predictable noise relax my nerves and calm my mind. I was walking along a sidewalk up one of the many hills of the city I lived and went to school in, walking away from a failed post-prom house party with a group of my close friends. One strided alongside me while four others lagged behind, chattering about weed or vodka they’d managed to snag. It was the end of senior year and the night had been a mess of undeveloped plans that had all turned out for the worst. My own poor planning had caused everyone I knew to be scattered and it had gotten late. The last five or six of us were walking to a soccer field to wait it out and hope for the best. I was angry, frustrated, and disappointed, and was unconsciously slamming the Zippo open and shut for half a mile’s walk. Finally, I felt the resistance of the sparking wheel give and I stopped and stared at the little chrome box in my hands. “The flint’s out,” I said to no one, shaking my head, angry at just one more thing ruined for the evening. The boy walking alongside me turned. “You need to give that thing a break,” he said with a smile. “This isn’t how I expected things to go,” he continued, “but you know what? It’s alright.”

We headed out onto the soccer field and sat down in a lopsided circle, looking up at the starless black sky. Someone pulled out a bluetooth speaker and the boy I’d been talking to gestured to me and asked me to pair my phone, play some music. I set the Zippo down and picked up my iPhone, scrolling through songs and texting a few last remaining friends our location and to drop by. It wasn’t long before the music overtook me and I’d created a perfect twenty-track queue. A few more people eventually came and we stayed out on that field for hours, chatting about songs we loved and telling stories. We looked at the time around 2:00 and made a last minute dash to try to grab a burrito before the restaurants all closed. Clutching our rental tuxedos and dress shoes we ran down the sidewalks, music still blaring, food and sleep the only things on our minds.

In college now, I rarely carry the lighter anymore. It rests in my desk drawer, usually out of fluid but ready to be refilled again if needed. During vacations and summer break I’ll bring the Zippo home with me, fill it and throw it in my tote bag to go meet up with old friends. Usually it stays there though, buried under my notebook and headphones that travel with me everywhere I go. It’s there if needed, to lend or light up anything, but I rarely find myself playing with the Zippo anymore.

Since eighth grade, I’ve replaced the flint three or four times and emptied two full bottles of lighter fluid refilling it. I’ve only lost the lighter once, just a few months ago after handing it to someone to set off fireworks in a park late at night on the fourth of July. But the next day, defeated that I’d finally lost the Zippo after almost seven years, I biked back to the spot as best I could remember it, following a trail of paper fragments and discarded bottles through the park in the morning heat. After only a couple minutes, I found the lighter lying open in the grass right in the middle of a field. I smiled, flicked the flint wheel, and the spark caught the wick on the first try.

© 2018