Billy Bic.
I was born, yeah that’d be right, I said born, in Milford,
Connecticut. We didn’t like to say assembled, it felt cold. The year was 1961. I
was a bright eyed young Bic lighter, eager to explore the world, they told us
we were meant for grand lives back then, they told us lighters travelled more
than anything else, they told us we’d meet more people, live more life, they
told us a lot of fanciful tales that painted the world in black and white. I
suppose it’s like a parent. They tried their best to prepare us, but we had to
see it for ourselves. They left some things out, they left out the pain.
They left out the part about getting attached to your owner,
only to be discarded. The part of your life when lighting his cigarettes or his
pipe or his cigars is all you do. You do it for so long you can’t even remember
a time when you were apart. If you were lucky enough, like me, you’d have a
time period when an owner felt a connection back to you, and made an effort to
keep you, for a while at least.
When I started, I was always smiling, I was red, and I was
good at what I did, so I got a break, but not right away. I got noticed, but by
the wrong people at times. I thought I
was special, but to most, I wasn’t. I suppose I was just an object, but I was
glad for knowing those who saw me as more.
My first owner bought me at a grocery store in 1962, after a
long time being packaged and shipped with the other boys all around the world; I
still remember the box opening, the package tearing, and the manager of the
place gruffly stuffing us into one of those cramped lighter holders. Tight fit,
if I remember, but it’s been quite a while.
I stood as tall and as proud as I could. I did like they
told us, I stayed positive, I smiled and I made eye contact. I was trying
harder than everyone else around me and they all knew it, they resented me for
it I think, but I didn’t care. I was the first one picked.
“The red one, on the right there.” The sentence that launched my career and
started my life and I was told I’d remember it forever. They were right about
that, I just wish I could forget the man who said it.
He gave me my first lesson about the harsh reality of this
world we live in, and it was one I’d never forget. His eyes were cold and dead,
his brow was heavy and awkward like a badly packed bag. He smelled terrible,
and his pocket was filthy.
I was there in all the meetings, I heard all the planning, I
saw how he and his associates discussed taking a man’s life like it was some
sort of nine to five they were muscling through, as if filing paperwork were
the same as pulling a trigger. The rest of them, they seemed detached on
purpose, like they were told to do a job and wanted to get on with it and go
home. That doesn’t excuse what happened, of course, but I could tell the man
whose pocket I rode home in every day enjoyed the idea of what he was about to
do. I could feel his hunger for it, his anticipation for the day.
People speculate so much about what actually happened that
day, and I have spent many sleepless nights wishing I could tell them who it
was and what really happened, and now they will definitely never know.
I’ve heard people say that everyone remembers
where they were when John Kennedy was assassinated, well I certainly do.
The man who shot John F. Kennedy did it on a hill; The man
who shot John Kennedy smoked Winstons.
Thankfully we parted ways soon after that, but I knew what I
had seen and heard would stay with me forever. I heard the people screaming,
running crying, not knowing what to do. I knew it was coming.
And I heard him laugh.
He left me at a bar by accident a few days later.
Considering how long I’d been with him and his other suit wearing badge
wielding brutes he took little notice, but I was glad of it. A waitress picked
me up and pocketed me.
Her name was Nancy Fielder, and she was beautiful.
She smoked Lucky Strike and her boyfriend Marc smoked Lucky
Strike. They were simple and kind and neat and organized and I was happy with
them. I never wanted to leave, I tried to put the past behind me, but it would
still come up in conversation and I would have to relive it all. They had no idea
what had happened to me, so I couldn’t blame them, but I loved being their
friend. They seemed to like me as well, they got a lot of compliments on my appearance,
which made me feel good. People seemed to think I was sturdy, and I always lit
first time, even in the wind.
For a long time I hated Marc for handing me over and not
coming back for me. For a long time I blamed him, and I just knew Nancy would
be furious. I don’t blame Marc anymore, he didn’t know what he was doing, and
we had our time together.
Listen to me, I sound like a rejected beaux.
Anyway, next was Mike, and he was forgettable, then John,
and then Diane. I had begun to see a bit of the world, I remember planes and
trains. I remember parties and conversations. I ended up with a slob named
Felix, slumming with a drunk that lacked people skills and hygiene wasn’t the
highlight of my year, but the Felix’s of the world do wonders for perspective.
Thankfully, I was his lighter for only four torturous days
before I was taken by a girl attempting to grab her things in a 7am mad dash,
filled to her brim with early morning regret. If you knew Felix, you wouldn’t blame
her for feeling that way, but I was glad she arrived when she did.
She was a student, her name was May, and she didn’t smoke,
but liked having me around for some reason. She would twirl me in her fingers,
light me occasionally, and would help out strangers with a light every now and
again, just to spark up conversation. Excuse the pun.
May was my education and how wonderful it was. She took her
studies seriously and spent most of her time with a book or a notebook or in a
class, and she would take me with her everywhere she went, without fail. I got
to see beautiful, sprawling forests, mountain trails and lakes lit up by the
moons glow at night. I saw life for the first time through her eyes. I grew close to May in those months, and I
know she was fond of me, as well. But I had learned by then not to rely too
much on people for that kind of reciprocation.
My time with May gave me a perspective; it taught me where I
was, when I was, and, most of all, who I was.
I was in Boston, it was 1969, and, through May, I now had
opinions, I had a perspective. I supported women’s rights and learned all about
the suffragettes, I supported Black Civil Rights and knew everything there was
to know about Dr. King, I wept the day he died and at first wondered if it was
the same evil fuck that shot John Kennedy.
May took care of me; she refilled me, which doesn’t happen
to a regular old red Bic, let me tell you. She even gave me my name. I’d never
had a name before, and I was so proud the day she said it. “This is my favorite
lighter I don’t know why. I take it
everywhere I don’t even smoke. I even named it Billy. Billy Bic.” She laughed
her awkward laugh and had no idea what she had done for me that day.
I could tell the blue eyed jerk she was talking to wasn’t
listening but I didn’t care, I couldn’t believe it, I wasn’t just a lighter
anymore, no longer just a red lighter.
I was Billy and the world was full of possibilities.
May got her purse snatched getting on the J train in
Brooklyn while visiting a friend in the spring. I was in there, and it took me
a minute to realize what was happening. I was distraught, at first, to be apart
from May, but I consoled myself with the fact that she would be fine, she
wasn’t hurt in the robbery, and it was time for me to see more of the world. I
was grateful to her but I had taught myself now how to let go.
New York City wasn’t like Boston, it wouldn’t chew you up
and spit you out, instead it felt like it would bite off a big piece and leave
you to die if you didn’t have your wits about you.
But I did. I was ready, and I had something to prove.
I escaped from the thief quickly; he left me on the table at
some party and a groupie for Fleetwood Mac picked me up. What happened next was
a whirlwind of excitement and glitz, parties and glamour. The seventies was my
decade, and New York was my city.
I saw Henry Fonda snort cocaine and I lit his cigarette
afterward, I saw Joan Jett sleep with Stevie Nicks’ boyfriend in a coatroom and
I saw the fight afterward.
I hung out with Ginsberg when he sat next to Dylan during
the Rolling Thunder Revue and they jammed.
I swapped stories with other lighters that had done this
circuit, some of them a lot older than me, and they taught me some survival
tricks I hadn’t known before. Not lighting very well for the shitty owners,
going first time for the good ones, refusing to light cocaine or burn up
heroine cause that’s a sure fire way to run you out of gas. Even if you’re
probably getting chucked somewhere after that, some hippie would pick you up,
they spent a lot of time on the grass.
Discarded lighters are known to come out of whatever hole
they are left in a little tainted, a little bit off. We met a couple on the
road, the ones who had been dropped down couches or sewers just to wash up
still working somehow, but not quite right in the head. I mean, I’d met them,
but I never expected to be one of them, I was having the time of my life.
One of the roadies put me in his pocket at an after party. I
never minded going with the road guys, they were good salt of the earth people,
but this one let me slip down the side of a couch at some apartment in Detroit.
Detroit. He could have picked a
better place for my descent into madness, but I suppose every good time ends. Hell,
most of them probably end in Detroit.
When the darkness hit, first there was panic. I reassured
myself, it was all I could do not to fly off the handle. Someone would stick
their hand down the side and find me. I had some near misses in my time, and
told myself to remain calm. Then the hours started to slip away and I lost
track of time. I remember thinking at one point I had definitely been down
there for days, maybe weeks, and then the madness.
I completely lost it, and everything started rushing back to
me. Everyone I’d grown close to was gone, and I was completely alone. Without
any kind of contact, in a dark hole, your sanity goes quicker than I’m
comfortable admitting. My thoughts were disjointed, the only contact I had with
the outside world were grumblings, like I was hearing voices in my head I could
barely hear.
I can tell you what the first drop of water feels like to a
man dying of thirst, it was the same feeling I got when I saw the light again
for the first time. The couch was being moved out to the sidewalk, it was old
and ragged now, looked nothing like what I had fallen into in the first place.
I didn’t get out as I had dreamed all that time, with the helping hand of a
kind stranger; instead I fell with a loud CLACK out of a hole in the bottom of
the couch and onto the stone steps of the apartment building.
One of the two movers picked me up on his way back in, and I
would, if I could have, leapt with pure thanks as he slipped me into his
pocket. I could not believe I was here, I was alive.
Where the hell was here? What month was it? It felt cold
outside. Did I still work, could I still light?
The man who saved my life smoked Newport 100’s. His name was
James and he was a part time mover, part time coke dealer in the year 1988. I
had been in that couch for well over a decade and it showed. He blew the dust
out of my head and tried to light me, I knew I had to concentrate and light for
him or I would be discarded.
One flick, no light.
Two, still nothing.
I thought he was going to give up.
Then, on the third attempt, glorious and seemingly eternal I
lit, and I stayed lit. He seemed happy with himself and his find, and he
slipped me into his pocket.
Later, when a deal went bad and he got winged, he seemed to
put the luck of not being dead on my shoulders, started calling me “lucky red”
after a girl he once knew, although judging by some of the stories I heard
about her the title must have been given ironically. Me and James were together
for a long time, and despite him being a horrible piece of shit I grew fond of
him. Call it Stockholm, call it whatever, but I was sad when they capped him.
I had to figure out what had happened when he didn’t come
home one night. I felt like a police wife worried sick and brewing tea. I guess
I was his lucky red after all. I got
scooped up by one of his “friends” when they were ransacking his place and then
went on another cross country trip, one of those you get used to as a lighter,
going from pocket to pocket. I had gotten my head straight after my time in the
couch hole and I was ready to pick back up again. The fun was over now, though,
and I knew it, it was time to try and lay low, keep my head down and survive.
Maybe get picked up by a nice elderly couple and live out the rest of my days
helping them through theirs. Always end up in the same place every night,
always in use. Wouldn’t have been a bad gig to end things with.
But that’s not the way it went. Never does work out how you
plan things, especially when you can’t move under your own volition.
I knew it was him right away, I recognized the must and whatever
horrible hair product he still used somehow. I remember how that smell that
turned my stomach the day he bought me. At first I prayed he wouldn’t pick me
up, I’d been left at a bar, same way he left me all those years prior, with
bags of relief and bad memories. The years hadn’t been kind to him, and a cold
chill went over me when I saw his eyes fall to where I lay.
“Whose is this?” He asked, innocently enough.
“Someone left it here,” replied the bartender “Take it if
you want it”.
“I think I will, used to have one just like it”.
“It’s just an old Bic, man.”
“Nah, they don’t make em’ like this no more.”
He wore an old paddy cap that sat snugly on his head above
the cavernous wrinkles that had formed on his face. His brow still sat low and
heavy like his face had trouble carrying it, shelter for his cold, dead brown
eyes.
He was still shaved clean, and he still smoked Winstons.
When he took me, first I felt fear. Then rage, and then a
cold, settled feeling washed over me. I knew what I had to do, I just didn’t
know how.
I traveled with him for a long time, and he was still a
horribly vicious and evil man, just no longer sanctioned by the government. The
things I watched him do, powerless to change them, would break most people, but
my mission was solitary, my purpose set.
Then, after so much pain, so much waiting, my moment came.
We had left the motel from the night before, me sitting
solemnly in the bottom of his jean pocket, the girl from the bar lying lifeless
in the room we absconded from so casually. We rumbled along in his massive Lincoln,
presumably going onto the next town, the next horror, when I heard him stop.
The familiar sounds of the gas pump leaving its cradle and going into the tank.
Then, as he brought the pump back out he swore audibly as the
smell of gas filled my nostrils. Notoriously, my kind don’t do well with
gasoline, but he has spilled it all over his jeans, and this was my moment. I
wanted to do it right away, but I didn’t know who was around, what the damage
could be. So I waited, and that wait was the longest of my life. Longer than
the assembly line, longer than the couch, longer than my whole life, it seemed,
but it was only a few minutes. I knew I was going with him, but I didn’t care,
the bastard had to go.
I tried the first flick, the flint was soaked wet from the
gasoline. My heart sank.
The second flick, still nothing.
The third flick, I thought I was going to give up.
A fourth, a flick, a flame, a scream.
I felt the road vanish from underneath the car, I heard him
scream like I had heard him make so many others scream.
I smiled. Not because he died in pain, but because I
remembered how I had lived with joy. I remembered all the people that I had
come into contact with, those who had loved me even though I was just a
lighter, just an object. They didn’t know me, but I knew them, and I knew one
thing for certain:
I was Billy Bic.
