The Ring!

No I don't mean Wagner's Ring Cycle or Tolkein's Lord of the Ring trilogy. It was Monday May 17th at about 4:30PM on the westbound line of the Bloor-Danforth subway line. I was sitting in the last carriage of the train on my way to High Park, the stop where I was staying. There was a young guy in his early twenties, blonde, very English school-boy look, grey flannel trousers, blue blazer with a white shirt, very wrinkled, not quite white anymore...a bit grey and dingy, untucked hanging over his trousers and he was playing with a silver ring on his left hand. He wore it on his index finger.
He seemed quite anxious and kept checking his mobile phone, perhaps for a signal or a missed call, a text message or waiting impatiently for a phone call. He was sitting, then standing then sitting when he took of the ring and tossed it on the seat beside him then picked it up and threw it under his seat and onto the floor.

What was going through this guy's head? Had he just broken up with someone or had someone just dumped him? A ring can be a symbol of commitment, friendship, marriage or token of how much someone means to us. But now for this young man this relationship was over! But throwing away the ring...an inexpensive silver ring was his way of admitting it was the end of something!

My boyfriend did the same to me. S.M. and I had exchanged rings twice. Once in San Francisco in the Paris Cafe, I gave him a simple gold band and bought one for myself. It was a symbol of our relationship. He lost that ring a few years later when he was visiting a rest stop in BXL looking for sex with a guy. He removed it because he thought they might think he was married and straight and not interested in a blow job. He dropped the ring and searched for it...but could not find it. I was in a class at the time. He told me about it that evening. I was not too upset...I was more upset about the fact he thought he had to take off the ring! As if a man who is giving a blow job cares if you are married or not! The second time we bought rings was in Greece on the island of Mykonos. We bought very nice silver rings from a local artist in a nice jewelry store. I did not wear mine all the time as it was quite thick and I was always catching it on things. S.M. wore his constantly. That is until he decided our relationship was over..and he removed it...and he probably threw it away as well...I was out of his life!

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