girly man

Riding in a bus today, my attention alighted on the back of a young man's left earlobe. He wore an earring. If he and his stud had been facing me, his face and jewel would have seemed patches of color, wallpaper on a bus. But because he had been facing away, I saw it. The earring back was silver and dainty, its two ends curling c0yly. I thought the whole business girly.

Pirates don't look girly, from the front or back. Maybe it is because the earrings they sport are hoop-shaped. Just as they don't use pretty ribbons to tie their wooden legs on, they don't need backs to keep their earrings in.

The young man was also wearing a ring. It was a brass band with carvings on it. Visualize this ring as if it had a big fat diamond or emerald or ruby protruding from it and you will understand my feeling toward the earring back.

To speak a Romance language compels one to make decisions about, or be reminded of, what is masculine and what is feminine. In a Romance language, there are no queer nouns, no sliding scales, no spectrum of beings.

Though now it is normal, even hip and sometimes uber manly, for a heterosexual man to wear earrings, to me, in my Spanish-speaking frame of mind, I was looking at a transvestite.