Humandor

Ever rip the everloving Christshit ass out of your house looking for something you know you're never going to find?

Yeah. That was me yesterday. Special.

See, that afternoon, I happened to see a coworker of mine on the Dunhill website, shopping for cigar lighters. These objects ranged in price from approximately $500, all the way to an astonishing $2, 700 for a Rollagas lighter by Harold Riley, Carnoustie Golf Course edition, to an motherfucking cockblocking $8, 200 for a mini lighter cast in white gold, to a Federal, pound-me-in-the-ass-prison Hobnail 18-carat gold Rollagas lighter for $13, 100.

No joke. For goddamn lighter. That lights things on fire that will blacken your lungs and quite possible end up making your mouth look like those cleft palate children ads you see in Car & Driver. A thing that lights other things on fire. You know, like a match could.

I looked over his shoulder and said,

"So, I couldn't help looking over your shoulder just now. Would you like a butane Colibri cigar lighter? I think I have one at home."

My normally blase coworker's ears perked up, like a dog's might at the mention of a readily available side of beef, or a defenseless infant.

"Sure!" he said, "if you have it lying around, that'd be great. Of course I'd pay you for it."

"Meh," I replied, "if I have it, it's been lying around doing nothing for years-- you can just have the damned thing."

Pretty magnanimous of me. Of course, I don't have it anymore.

This fact became apparent after nearly two hours of furiously tossing around boxes and random objects all around my house after arriving home from work, and toileting the dogs. Actually, I confess that I started looking for the lighter before toileting the dogs. Then I felt guilty, toileted the dogs, and resumed destroying the house. It was all for naught. No lighter.

Once upon a time, say, oh, I don't know, ten years ago, I had two Colibri lighters. One was silver, and the other was cobalt blue, and they were both butane lighters. The cobalt blue one was easily the coolest one, shaped like a bullet with gas (literally) with a little flip top that the flame would shoot out of, and a flip-out cigar-cutter attachment, it was the grande dame of cigar lighters to me. At least, it was until I saw that crazy fucking Dunhill website. I mean, are you kidding me, Cletus?

I acquired the lighters, along with a burled wood humidor, and thirty Davidoff cigars, and 20 mini cigarillos from my ex-girlfriend's mother. For Christmas. In the year 2000.

"Use it in good health," she said to me before descending into the joyous throes of a smokers hacking cackle (hackle?).

"Um, thanks," I said.

According to my wife, I gave the humidor away, maybe two years ago. For the life of me, I can't remember to whom I gave the stupid thing-- probably my former best friend, who no longer speaks to me. "But I remember that you kept one of the lighters," she said.

That sounds like something I'd do.

Of course, now the one lighter, if I did indeed keep it, is as good as gone, too. I can't find it, and it won't be found. And I'll walk into work today and go, "Um, yeah, so, remember when I offered to give you something I don't actually have? Yeah. I don't have it. But the offer still stands."

All things considered, it's really not such a big deal, but it is just another infuriating reminder that I am desperately fallible and, in the exuberant rush to try to do something nice for someone, to make someone else feel good, I can't not open my mouth. I could have silently observed my coworker looking at that absurd site, and gone home quietly to look for the lighter, unimpeded and untortured by the knowledge that I had said something and that foot was firmly entrenched in mouth.

"Buddy," my wife said to me last night, "you're allowed to be human, you know."

And I know that. But I also know that my humanity is unceasingly disappointing.