The Phenomenon

The Phenomenon

My friend had a baby recently, the first one in our little Bear Clan of modern day Grunters and he asked us all over to see it. I was excited, not to see the baby, but to see him with a baby. The idea was mind boggling that he would have progressed to the rank of Father.

We all got there and I went to take my turn by the baby. I did the quick assessment, counted the fingers and toes and eyes and swiftly concluded that the baby was normal, although to me newborns greatly resemble giant grubs, fat, soft, pale, generally immobile and often leave a secretion of sticky and odorous fluids wherever they go. It took all of about a minute and then I turned to my friends and we turned on a college basketball game on TV. I don’t particularly care for basketball, but it would be all entirely more entertaining then a sleeping baby.

There must have been something that I was unaware of when it comes to the entertainment of sleeping babies. While the guys gathered on the couch with beers and watched Villanova the women gathered in silence around the cradle in the corner. With downcast eyes they hovered in vigilance over it. There they stood, only talking in brief hushed whispers, for the entire length of the basketball game. At no point did the baby wake or utter a sound and only faintly moved, but from where the guys sat it looked as though the baby must have been performing card tricks or reading off tarot cards. The women never moved, never shifted their weight, never removed their clasped hands from beside their fluttering hearts. They were captives.

The total control and immersion of many women at once was a phenomenon I had witnessed in one other occasion. When one women of the flock presented the rest with the physical evidence of her recent engagement.

Nothing else takes total control over the mind, body and soul of women in their mid-twenties like the power of the Engagement Ring. It reminded me of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Each banded diamond turned every unwed one of the women into the luminous eyed and dark skinned creature known as Gollum. They coveted. They yearned. They physically needed.

As the engaged and blissful Fiancée held her decorated finger out into the center of the group of women something came over them. It was the same look on their faces as that which captured men when a scantily clad and beautiful woman walked by in an inappropriate place. They lost all functions above the neck except for vision. The muscles in their face ceased to work and their skin and lips hung lose, their mouth agape and a small line of saliva ran down their chins. Engagement rings caused minor strokes. Only the one wearing it was capable of a smile. There was nothing innocent behind it. She had “The Precious”. It wasn’t sharing, it was boasting. The rest of the women hated her more then they were happy.

One the way home from one of these encounters each of the unwed men, including myself, were then educated in terms of Engagement Rings by our significant others. I learned the importance of cut and clarity. I learned that White gold was better then golden gold and that there was even a thing as White gold. I knew what a Princess cut was and I got an inventory of all known engagement rings within our circle of friends. I learned at what age she had determined what exactly her ring would look like and it was at an age where I had been unaware of marriage or women or been capable of walking upright. Most importantly I learned that none of these things compared to what mattered most and that was size.

I was informed, or instructed rather, that there was a simple rule to the presentation of a ring and that was its size and cost were illustrative of the amount of love I had for her. If I presented her with a ring of equal or lesser value then any of the rings given to the women of my friends it would be the gravest insult.

Silently I sat and drove as she instructed me on these subtleties. It was an ongoing education that became part of our weekly ritual. There was no poetry in any of it.

Size mattered. It was to be so big that she would be unable to lift her arm. It was to be so large that if the sun hit it there would shoot a focused laser that could cut their the diameter of the earth. It was to be so massive that when one approached it they would utter “That’s no ring, that’s a space station.”

Little did we boys know what effect it would have when the first of us got down on his knee and gave his girl a ring. The Ring. Our relationships would all be totally changed. We were now fully responsible for the fructification of the greatest of their lifelong dreams. Their happiness rested solely on our shoulders.
It was an unfair responsibility, not just because of the lack of realism in the expectations but because the women could not understand the level of terror that grips men. At some point proceeding the Ring’s offering each of the engaged men felt a terrible need and desire to tear it from her hand and cast it down into the fiery depths of Mount Doom. These artifacts controlled us and everything we did was in appeasement of them. We feared to buy them, we feared to give them and then afterwards we lived in fear because of them.

For them, my girlfriend most of all, it was expected as the natural course of events. The logical progression. It was the competitiveness in them. They simply wanted us men to fulfill our obligation to them. Buy them a ring.

We faced this battle with different degrees of determination and will power but slowly the ranks of our male cluster began to fall. This posed massive and increasing problems on those that remained stubborn against the powers of The Ring. First, it increased the price and size in which we enduring would have to eventually meet and the pressure to produce it doubled with every “Ring Boasting” ceremony they unwed women were forced to bear. With every occasion of a male friend of mine dropping to that one humble knee and with mounting pressure it began to happen at a faster rate. This only infuriated my girlfriend more.

It was a matter of perspective, or a lack of it. Through out the years I had been asking myself the important question of “Do I want to marry this woman?” She hadn’t yet asked her question, as important to her but a large alteration of the one that I pondered over. By not buying her “The Precious” I felt I was robbing her the opportunity to ask herself the question “Do I want to marry with this ring?”

Compromise seemed to be a foreign word that couldn’t be understood. The Hamas and the Israelites were better at it. She matched her Italian Guilt against my Irish Stubbornness. Her desire became desperation. She would say things like “Everyone else is getting what they want.” Her desperation became detestation. She would say things like “You are holding me back from my dreams.” She was just never saying the right things.

In time more of my friends succumbed to the influence of the Ring and the power it held over their girlfriends. Those men that had once proudly sang about their independence had quickly became smaller halves of a whole. Our world was changing. “It is simply what happens,” they would say. “We are getting older.” they would claim. “It’s the natural progression.” they would sob. Maybe the power of The Ring had taken hold. Maybe their women had simply said the right things.

For me the problem was that there were too many questions for my logical brain to tackle. Was she more in love with a ring then she was with me? Should a man feel obligated to marry his girlfriend rather then feel a desire to? If marriage was forever, and she wanted to marry me, then why would it matter when we did get married? I felt like an Means to an End.

There was an end result to our standstill and the closest thing she could accept to a compromise. She sought out a better Means to that end. In reality, it just seemed so. It was sly and slick and behind my back but when it came out that she had been seeing someone else the past few months I should have expected it. This is what inflexibility gets you when matched against persistence. It wasn’t her fault. She had her life to live and her dreams to realize and I had become the largest obstacle not the vehicle in which to achieve them. That’s what she told me, at least. All that I did hear was that I was not a part of those dreams and doubted greatly that I ever had been.

At my newly parental friend’s house, drinking beer and pretending to enjoy basketball I am the only one who hasn’t given out The Ring or set in motion plans to do so. I am the single guy again and the only single one. I like to think I averted a disaster, that the truth did come out and I had been spared. That’s what my guy friends tell me. I will admit that little axiom gets me through those nights when we all go out as couples and I am treated to tales of Caribbean cruises mixed with nauseating displays of snuggling. They wonder why I drink so much. Even so my world is changing. It is simply what happens. We are getting older. It is the natural progression.

After the visit I drove home alone in silence. No guilt or persistence or talk about dreams and I am left alone to my own. There is some relief. I know that in those other cars, driven by the men that have given their wives and fiancées rings they are getting a new education. They are learning about babies and baby names and nursery decorations and pregnancy. It is a whole new fear.