There’s something about those four words that hits me right in the ‘feels’. Maybe it’s the simplicity. Maybe it’s the softness. Maybe it’s how human it feels.
But the other night, I was out with my friend while she was rolling a cigarette, and this man came up to us, out of nowhere, all gentle confidence, and asked her, “Do you have a lighter?”
And suddenly we were having one of those tiny human moments you don’t see coming. Five minutes on a pavement along Oxford Street, with the chaos of London spinning around us like a carousel, and yet we were in our own little bubble. Myself, my friend, and this stranger chatting like we’d known each other for years. “What are you guys up to?”, “Which shops do you go to?”, “I hate winter”, “Where did you get that coat from?”, “Are you going for drinks later?”
It felt… human. Like the city cracked open and let us breathe a little. No filters, no curated profiles, no “ugh I hope they don’t ghost.” Simply a real-time connection in the middle of the busiest street in the country.
And it made me realise how much I romanticise pre-social media connections. The era of not having to swipe or “match”, when people went outside and just naturally collided. You existed in the same place at the same time and let life happen without algorithms mediating the chemistry.
I’ve been thinking about that era a lot lately. The pre-digital one (I wasn’t a part of it). The one where if you fancied someone at a bar, you’d scribble your number on a napkin (an actual napkin) and sometimes, if you were feeling extra, you’d even spray it with perfume before handing it the person you like. I read that in an old 1998 Cosmopolitan article about dating tips and honestly? That’s the kind of dramatic, cinematic behaviour I want back in circulation.
Everything then required presence. You couldn’t fall in love through a screen. You had to physically show up. You had to talk to people. You had to risk embarrassing yourself in front of another actual human being. There’s something beautifully fragile and brave about that.
Maybe that’s why “Do you have a lighter?” hit so deep. It was about the spark of connection that can still happen if we let ourselves look up from the digital fog for more than ten seconds.
I know the internet isn’t going anywhere. I know we’re all terminally online. But moments like that remind me that the world is still full of accidental intimacy, if we’re willing to step into it.
And maybe love doesn’t always need a curated profile. Maybe it just needs a question. A simple little question like: “Do you have a lighter?”
hot girl reference: the cosmo dating tip in https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-aug-02-ls-9330-story.html
This is a beautiful (dare I say, beautifully human) piece. Thank you for writing it.
There is something disarming about how a small, ordinary question can open a pocket of connection in the middle of a crowded city. No profiles, no expectations, just presence and a few minutes of shared attention. It is a reminder that chemistry does not need optimization, only willingness. Sometimes all it takes is looking up and letting the moment happen.