So I sort of figured I had the engagement ring thing all figured out. I’d wanted the simple platinum (or white gold, or silver, who cares) ring with a single solitaire diamond. Easy, right? Ha.
Little did I know that the search for the engagment ring is your first full blown encounter with the Wedding Industrial Complex. The conversation goes a little like this: ” You are getting married! Fantastic! There are so many things you must BUY BUY BUY! We don’t care if you want these things or not! They are traditional! They are vital to your future happyness! Everyone Else is doing it! You don’t want to look POOR do you?”
We started off at your run of the mill jewelers, and I’d tell them what size stone I was looking for and they would look disappointed, then giggle a little (who was I to know what I wanted, after all), then say they had the perfect thing. Then out would come a stone that would feed a family for a year. I have little hands. These rings looked crazy on me. And I didn’t like the way the jewelers were looking at us. It creeped me out. They seemed to be implying that David would only be a Real Man if he ponied up three months salary on the ring. I didn’t want to be the all American princess Barbie bride. I felt sort of panicked. Suddenly I didn’t even want to be engaged anymore.
So, we stopped looking at engagement rings for a while. Then I realized to hell with these sleazy Jewelers, I knew what I wanted, and what we were comfortable with.
- A ring I could wear in a board room, and not be embarrassed by.
- A ring that wouldn’t feel outdated in 10 or 15 years.
- Something that had character.
- Something I could wear in a third world country and not look like “HEY! I’M A AMERICAN! MUG ME!”
- Something I could wear doing work in a housing project or a soup kitchen or just back in San Bernardino where I grew up, and not look like a asshole.
- Something that was beautiful.
I was afraid my list was near impossible. But then we found it. A estate diamond ring from the 1920’s, in a gay antique store in the Castro. They specialize in estate jewelry and vintage gay porn. We just went with the ring. This time.
