Posted on October 14th, 2012

Bling is not the name of my dog. It refers to jewelry and is often associated with organized crime and contrived teenage angst. This is my bling coming-of-age story.

As a kid growing up, I knew that pock-marked, swashbuckling pirates and rugged, leathery skinned American Indians had pierced ears with hoop (or pendant) earrings hanging from them. The Indians also stuck decorative feathers in their hair and collected human scalps. Later, I realized that if you were bohemian, artistic, or gay you were also entitled to wear earrings. An earring was like a boy-scout merit badge; you somehow earned the right to wear it, and you had to be true to its values. Wearing one marked you as belonging to a tribe cast in a crucible of rebellion and non-conformity. It also made you a very hip dude.

My father, on the other hand, was more prude than dude. He was the Minister of Culture hell-bent on making sure only circus clowns, girls, and sissies wore rings, chains, bracelets, lipstick, earrings, and nail polish. Not surprisingly, his only pieces of jewelry were a watch … with a boring (and slightly mildewy) blue nylon strap … and a gold-plated money clip that doubled as a tie-bar. He used an ordinary bar of ivory soap to shave with and to shampoo his hair. He splashed witch hazel on his face, and he rubbed Vitalis – a concoction that looks and smells like Budweiser … or horse piss … - on his hair when the creamier, musky smelling Brylcream was all-the-rage. In other words, if it was shiny or smelled good (i.e., if it made him feel attractive, confident or polished), he dismissively brushed it away with the back of his hand. He was, in the spirit of his times, all-man, a sturdy oak tree. I was only an acorn, not sure what kind of tree I wanted to be … although Lilac and Dogwood come to mind.

Now, we all know that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree (in fact, Galileo proved that the acorn falls straight down at the constant rate of 32’ per second squared). So, until recently the only jewelry I owned was a Timex Indiglo watch (the kind where you push a little button and a very cool green nite-light lights up the dial). For a short while I did wear one of those ubiquitous yellow LiveStrong plastic wristbands.

But my attitude towards jewelry-on-men is different today … and I owe it all to Lucas. I met him by chance at a local watering hole where I go to feel the buzz of human existence and hear the comforting din of clinking (or breaking) glassware. He had the-cutest-dimples-in-the-world, a Colgate smile, and a steady job. But he also had diamond studs in his ears, a couple of neck chains, half dozen bracelets on his wrist, and at least 2 rings on most of his fingers. But the more we talked the more I discovered that he’s really smart; he follows politics and current events, knows history, and carries recipes in his head. Clearly, Lucas was forging his own path and setting his own style. I bought him another drink.

I learned a lot from Lucas. The first thing I learned is how much I was dying to drip vanilla ice cream into his dimples so I could lick them clean. There, I said it. The second is that I don’t need to pretend I’m an acorn any more. The third is that jewelry sends signals about who we are, what commitments we’ve made, and how we make ourselves attractive and appealing to others. 

So, I now have only Three Rules: ONE, it’s one ring per ten fingers; TWO, no gum chewing in public … and especially if you’re going to try to kiss me; and THREE, men should not wear too much jewelry or have piercings in sensitive body parts or have one of those tattoos that looks like a snake wrapped in flames.

If you choose to wear a kilt or a djellabah, I’m okay with that. We all should be.