Jesse Ball - How to Set a Fire and Why

The orderly came back and he must have noticed I was okay with him putting his hand on my shoulder, because he did it again, this time with both hands, one on each shoulder. So, I was sitting there and he was standing behind me sort of touching my shoulders. I leaned back a bit, which encouraged him more.

I said before that my mom doesn’t really notice anything that happens. That’s true. It’s also true that the fish pond is behind a screen of trees on one side, and the back of another building with no windows on the other side. No one goes there, ever.

So, I didn’t have many misgivings about it. I could tell that he was pretty happy about how things were going with his hands on me, and for the record—I don’t get very much affection elsewhere, so I am a little starved. I was conscientious, I mean, when he started undoing my pants, I made sure we were going to do it safely, and he was like, yes, of course, and he showed me, and so—it felt really good. I can treat a person well. I really can, and he treated me really well. People aren’t all horrible. They aren’t. Sometimes you find a good one, at least for a while—even if it’s just for twenty minutes or so.

While we were at it, I looked up and my mom had gotten out of her chair. She had come over toward the pool and was looking around in confusion as if she couldn’t remember where to look. She came toward me and I met her eye, but there was no recognition, none. I must have shifted suddenly, because he shifted too. His hand moved over my breast and I shivered a little. That broke our gaze and I shut my eyes. When I looked back at my mom, she was over the pond, shaking her head, shaking her head, shaking her head.

That Monday was my sixth detention, so I was done with them for the time being. I finished writing the paper based on Russia Is Burning . and it was much easier because it turned out the school will loan me a computer to use while I am there. I can’t take it home—but I can check it out. So, I typed the paper on that. It is a pretty bad computer. Certainly, I don’t look cool while using it, but I am a fast typist, so it didn’t take long.

Kennison came over and we had an argument about citation. She had some idea about helping me, I guess. But, I don’t need help. She wanted me to do parenthetical citation. I said footnotes are fine. She failed to present a cogent argument about why her way is better. I said footnotes allow for the author to comment on the source immediately at the point of use . She basically threatened me with more detention—but that was just because some of the students laughed when I clowned her.

Lana was there again. Maybe she is my friend. We went to a twenty-four-hour donut shop where her cousin works. He gave us free donuts. She kissed him a little and that’s when I knew he wasn’t her cousin. She said she calls him that because she thinks it’s funny. I thought to myself—this is my kind of girl, and I said, you think that because it is funny. It is funny.

We went outside the donut shop to smoke a cigarette and Hal, her “cousin,” asked to use my dad’s lighter, which I was holding in my hand (as usual). I gave it to him.

He did some zippo tricks with it and lit his cigarette. I did some too, so we have that in common now. He told Lana that I was cool, that it was cool with him if she brought me around now and then. It wasn’t a creepy thing to say—it was more like, the three of us can talk without other people messing it up, so let’s keep doing that.

He doesn’t go to school. Hal thinks school is a waste, and I could not fucking agree more.

I want to describe my dad’s lighter to you.

It is a zippo, so it is made up of several parts.

There is an outer shell, a metal case. That holds the parts together. The shell is rectangular, but it is curved at the edge, almost slightly beveled. The top of the case has a true curve across it. Even with all this curving that I’m describing, the main impression you get from the zippo is flatness. All the sides, even the top, they’re all pretty flat. It is intensely comforting. Some lighters seem like they’ll jump out of your hand. The zippo is the opposite of that. The tricks and things that you can do with it are evidence. The zippo likes to be in the hand—it isn’t trying to flee the hand. You can pop it open, make it do a somersault—whatever you want. It isn’t trying to escape to the ground.

That’s the case. Inside the case, there is a sort of spring attachment that flips the top up or down. This spring attachment is connected to the body of the lighter. The body of the lighter consists of: the wick, the flint, the striking wheel, the cloth-like part that holds the fluid. Essentially, the zippo is always releasing gas. If you keep one in your pocket, your pocket will smell like gas (or it will smell like what they make gas smell like so you can smell it).

The outside of a zippo can look a number of different ways. Sometimes it will have a Vietnam kind of POW you are not forgotten thing going on. Sometimes it will have a USMC thing. Sometimes, just a skull. Some of them are mirrored. Others are matte silver. Some are dull black. Like other blue-collar things they will often feature gambling elements, like dice, cards, pool balls, or flags. My father’s is matte black and has a white dot in the center. I haven’t seen another like it. Years ago, I thought about asking him if he had done it himself, but I realized, and this was kind of a big deal for me to be smart enough at that point to realize something like this—I realized that I didn’t want to know. I liked not knowing. So, I still don’t know. The only thing that will make it clear is if one day I see another exactly like it. To be precise, that won’t make it 100 percent clear. But, it would make it likely.

Other things that can vary about zippos:

1. Some are smaller—I don’t know why. Maybe those are marketed to women, or to men with small pockets.

Often, people want to say that things are “for men” or “for women,” but I think that many of these items just share the property that they can or can’t fit into the shitty pockets women get. Of course, if girls were less focused on their appearance, maybe they would wear carpenter’s pants and carry whatever they wanted. Who is to say? It is inarguable, though, whomever’s fault it is, that having small pockets is terrible.

2. Some are looser or tighter in the way they snap open.

3. Some leak like crazy.

4. The inner cartridge on some slips around, so that when you go to shut the zippo, it doesn’t shut properly. This was happening with my dad’s, so I put a little sand into the case, and it is tighter now.

was in the middle of beating me six times in a row in cribbage. They call it a skunking or something like that. I was getting skunked. That’s when someone tapped on the door. I figured, it is the landlord, since no one else ever comes to the house. My aunt knows nobody. I know nobody. There isn’t anything left to take. Why would someone come?

But, when I went to the door, Stephan was there.

Stephan, what are you doing here? How do you know where I live? It’s eight o’clock. I said something like that to him.

He said it was on the emergency contact card we had to fill out that day. He got the pile of cards for a second and he has a photographic memory.

I thought to myself that this explained why he sometimes seemed smart and sometimes not. I didn’t say that to him; maybe I should have. Sometimes people need to know what other people are thinking.

Mostly, though, I was just embarrassed about him seeing where I live, and then I was ashamed for feeling embarrassed about it, because it is a shallow thing to be embarrassed like that—and certainly not a way of behaving that I could feel proud about.