The guy who came to put my window AC units in had one. The man I talked to at the wedding who was standing by the wine table had one. I squinted hard at the photo of the novelist whose book I just finished but couldn’t see one. A google search told me that there’s one somewhere – maybe he keeps it in his underwear drawer. The dads at the swimming pool who toss the kids into the air all wear them. Neon signs of takenness, of belonging elsewhere. I liked high school and college better – no rings, only possibility. Now the world is a grid, a chess board with the ringed on one side and a ragtag army of the unattached on the other.
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3 comments
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June 24, 2009 at 1:38 am
Lara
I’ve been noticing that a lot lately. That and the vanishing pool of remotely attractive men…ring or not.
June 24, 2009 at 1:45 am
kristin
i have been hit by this too . . .the curious hope as one looks (with attempted casual glance), the let down when the glint appears. sometimes it just makes me feel down-right-pissy. especially when i feel the guy has been flirting with me while his hand was out of sight.
but i figure, i am a catch. i have no ring. surely it is just a matter of time before i meet the dreamy eligible. and undoubtedly it will happen when i have come to a place when i stop looking.
i have been trying to look with the intention of seeing NO ring. sometimes i think surely i manifest the married by EXPECTING to see the ring.
but, of course, as history has proven . . .there are the married guys who don’t wear the ring and you find out later thank you’d like.
June 24, 2009 at 1:11 pm
fg
I’m a man and I don’t wear one. And it’s not so I can seem atractive to women. It’s because I find it disracting to look at and how it feels on my finger also disracts. There is also the idea that I’m “taken.” I don’t like that and I don’t think that way so I don’t want to seem like I do. Not that I’m not taken in another sense with my wife. Maybe that’s what the other men mean to say. Hopefully. It is a beautiful one, though, and I do wear it sometimes when my wife wants me to and when she wears hers. fg