on being fingered with rings

Marriage is a contract that I may never make, and yet I like being fingered by men with wedding rings. It’s not that I can feel the ring. Wedding rings tend toward the slim and the flat. I’ve never had the experienced the interior wriggling of a finger with a ring rococo as Liberace’s , a skull bauble thick as Keith Richard’s, a chunk of metal clunky as Robert Lee Morris’s Superman. The rings that have been inside me have been modest, prudent, utilitarian bands signaling commitment.

There have been three of them in reality and one in my imagination. Of the three real rings, one man was unquestionably cheating and after we fucked, would stomp around the room muttering, “I’m damned. I’m going to hell.” That was not the best part of our sexual congress, and I didn’t keep the affair going very long. (Parenthetically, I might add, shortly after our brief tryst ended, this man fell in love with another woman, and now he, his wife, and this woman live separately in what is by all accounts an amicable polyamory. Bully for him.) One of them lived in a state of prolonged commitment to both his wife and his unabashed affairs with multiple women. He was very open about it all to the women in his life, almost business-like, and yet quite caring to me. He interested me intellectually, but not enough to see him more than twice. The third, and most recent, lives in a happily open relationship with his wife of several years. He has lovers; she has lovers; it all seems quite idyllic.

I feel conflicted about cheating. On the one hand, it’s just not a very nice thing to do to the person to whom you’ve plighted your troth. It isn’t honest, and it smacks of cowardice. A person should strive not to be pusillanimous, a word that feels so much like what it means as to be nearly onomatopoetic. On the other, I tend to be compassionate to people in pain, and often—though not always—people who cheat are people in pain. They’re putting their feelings into actions, not into words, and that, unless it’s interpretive dance, is often a problem. When I consider infidelity, I am caught betwixt me moral core and between my compassion. Mostly, I come down on the side of not cheating, if you’re at all interested.

But this piece of writing is less about the squishy ethical territory of infidelity and more about how I like being fingered by a finger with a wedding ring. Clearly, when the finger is diddling me, I can’t see the ring. I can’t even feel the ring. So the pleasure of the ring comes neither from the visual nor from the sensual. It’s a purely imaginative power. It’s a pleasure that rests in the seat of all pleasure—my pinky-grey and corrugated brain.

It’s difficult for me to put my finger on the exact spot of that imaginary pleasure. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that part is powered by the shock of the illicit thrill, if indeed the finger belonging to the man fingering me is infidel. Like almost every other human, I do feel pleasure in transgression, and crossing this boundary, like all the strange others that for one reason or another give me the good down-low tingle, nudges whatever purely physical pleasure there is into electrically-charged territory. But the illicitness isn’t it in and of itself.

I know that it’s not because the man, the imagined man, the one without the ring, the one whose ring I imagined and in imagining it found great delight, was Donny, my now-X and then erstwhile fiancé. It was his imagined not-ring that prodded me to gyrate indecorously one sunny August afternoon, his naked fingers twisting and turning inside me. My mind furnished his finger with a ring. It bedighted his third finger on his left hand with a ring, and though neither the ring nor even possibly that exact finger was rubbing the walls of my pussy like a magic lamp, it was real enough to me, and I came from the concept as much as from the reality.

Which all leads me to believe it’s not the cheating that I like. It’s the abstract concept of commitment. It’s the symbolism of the ring, this piece of metal that our culture uses to denote those of us who have made a pact with another human from those of us who haven’t. It doesn’t matter whether the man has committed to me—though clearly my fetishization of the ring in general and my somatic response to Donny’s fictive ring in specific suggests that a commitment to me would be ideal—it’s that this man has committed, for good, bad, or ugly to someone.

I’m sure that my ring thing speaks silent tomes about me. Commitment is something that has eluded me. I, like Mr Ramsay in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, have reached Q. I cannot, however, reach R, and I should very much like to, even if I suspect that commitment, like the lighthouse, will seem a lot less mystical once I get there, whenever it does, however late in life, in whatever way I’ve been altered by my own world war. I’m sure that my ring thing is fertile ground for solipsism. I think, however, I’ll prefer to hold onto it with my febrile erotic imaginings, flickering, imaginary and powerful.

Comments

[Karl Elvis]

(looks down at skull-ringed fingers)

There's an image I won't get out of my head all day.

[J.J. Adler]

And suddenly, married men everywhere are feeling strangely confused.

"Wait... it's not that we're forbidden fruit? It's that we're wearing a friggin' ring?? IT'S ALL ABOUT THE RING????" LOL

Seriously though, loved the post. The ring is a symbol of commitment, after all. And yeah, commitment is sexy as hell. Glad to hear that you're similarly inclined.

[Sera]

I am so with you on this. The thought of my lover wearing (my, his, our, hopefully-someday-sometime) wedding ring makes me go _nuts_. Whenever he sends me erotica (or actually, any picture, even an advert) showing a man with a wedding ring, I go into similar heat. It's just the idea of the lurve.

Thank you for validating my sappiness, in less inane language than I could muster.

[Christina]

Ah, yes, the wedding ring. I've always made a point of licking and/or sucking on the ring; if it has recently been inside me all the better. Other women's husbands seem to love it.

[Raj]

Honestly, just like the playboy that I read only for the articles, I read your blog only to improve my vocabulary.

>
A person should strive not to be pusillanimous, a word that feels so much like what it means as to be nearly onomatopoetic.
>

This was really nice; two words I didn't know, in a same sentence.

But seriously, I don't think I fully understood this post.
I understand "forbidden fruit" theory and how it can make the fruit taste better.
I understand the sweet joy of imagination of somebody wearing a ring for you.

But these can't possibly be the same kinds of pleasures originating from the same part of the brain or coming from the same types of thought patterns.

[selkie]

I found this interesting ... and it seems you're still struggling with the "why" you find this erotic ... in one way, it is like indulging in a threesome without the complications and subsequent POSSIBLE issues of the person physically being there ...

I don't wear a ring nor does my finbar, although we're hitting anniversary 26 this coming summer ... I wore mine for around 2 months give or take but I don't like RINGS on my fingers so off it came and he was never interested in having one, so there you are! I do wear a silver collar though all the time LOL

[chelsea g]

Gosh, I don't think it's that confusing. If I were to rewrite the whole thing, I might boil it down to--and I paraphrase J.J. here--commitment is hott.

And I'm so happy to hear you're expanding your vocabulary. The limits of your language are the limits of your world, or so said Wittgenstein. It might as well be a great, big, roiling vista, and not a tiny, hemmed-in pocket.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[marianne]

This is fascinating. In the same way you fetishize the idea of commitment, I am amazed by those who have made it to my age and have managed to escape that ultimate commitment. I've been married for 20 years, and have frequently wished that I had been strong enough to remain single instead of just falling into it as an automatic response to hitting my early twenties. The thought of a single man, who, from my perspective, could have anyone, wanting to be with me, is arousing.

[C7]

Oh Chelsea! So lonely! I know what thats like.I am sure there is a fine man in your future, just try not to worry too much about it.

You deserve someone like Hector the Hero.Big. Strong, kind,in a kilt, with a great big ring ( yours to him)
on his finger. Maybe a US Marine Gunnery Sergeant who has a Masters in Engineering? LOL.

Yes, such a fanatasy makes me quite horny as well!LOL.

Cheers and Love to you.

C7

[Little Jezebel]

For those girls who can barely commit, married men, good married men, husbands who would rarely cheat and love their gent's castle - are perfect.

I love married men, I know I will never end up signing a contract with them. And they tend to have their shirts well ironed.