Got a Light? A Ritual Gone in a Puff of Smoke
The seduction dance, circa 1955: He lights her cigarette, and flames erupt. If Washington bans smoking in bars, flirting may need a new cover.
(By Tom Kelley -- Hulton Archive Via Getty Images)
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Saturday, January 7, 2006
Sure, we'll all live longer, but how will this affect the future of flirting?
No smoking in bars, if the city pushes such legislation through, means no excuse to approach a stranger, unless you count You look familiar , which doesn't count.
Why, just earlier on this night, at Rumors restaurant and bar south of Dupont Circle . . .
"Girl comes up and she says, 'Can I bum a smoke?' and it was obviously a pretext," says a guy named Jason Ewart, 29. The girl talked to Ewart awhile after that, one of those classic Washington dialogues about law school.
"Dude!" says Ewart's friend across the table. "She had to justify getting a cigarette!"
"She did stay longer than necessary," says a third guy.
Ewart tells the story of a woman he met some while back, when he was single. She came over to bum a smoke, and only later, when they were exchanging cards, did he catch sight of the pack of cigarettes in her bag.
Cigarette etiquette is ancient stuff, stowed in the cultural marrow back when men wore real hats and glam movie stars with impossible cheekbones gave come-hither looks through unfiltered haze. What relics of chivalry still surround this tiny lethal object, the cigarette! What other than a cigarette could a person request of a total stranger? What but splendid pretense prompts a fellow to flick a lighter for a girl who already has a match?
Speaking of which, Ewart has a rule.
"Why can't you light another guy's cigarette?" asks his friend Nate Tamarin.
"You just don't do it," Ewart says.
Pinup Betty Grable in a turban, circa 1935, her eyebrows thin as starving commas: She rests a cigarette on her lips, cradled between two dark fingernails. The man beside her stares at the lit match he's holding out, while she looks intently into his eyes. That look was part of the ritual, you figure; even if she didn't mean it, that was the polite thing to do. He made her feel like a lady and she made him feel like a man. It seems a whole lot of silliness now, but everyone knew their parts.
