Just M t ▼ B«pt«mb«r I M I T 33
A Zippo in my
pocket
,
,
,
,
Necklaces gym whistles cufflinks bandannas and crystals
pile up in a hodgepodge o f strange marriages
by L ee L y n c h
^
L
ooking through the old jewelry box
can sure stir up memories. Every­
thing from the antique granny glasses
of my long-hair radical days to my
last and favorite Zippo lighter from
the bars, is piled hodgepodge in strange m ar­
riages.
First, in a great inextricable clump, come the
necklaces. The dainty little girl atrocities that
never succeeded in
turning me into a
dainty little girl are
twisted with the
worry beads from
my hippy-dippy
years.
Some I
bought at a w on­
derful bead shop
down the block
from
Andy
W arhol’s Electric Circus: worry beads in the
windows, worry beads on the walls, worry beads
on whirling racks. There was a style for every
freak, head and lefty college kid in the metropoli­
tan area. Each bead was a different color and un­
der the right chemical influence had universes of
significance.
My gym whistle, lying under the necklaces, is
testimony to an earlier life. I bought it at the
same time that I got my volleyball rule book in
high school. I ’d probably never felt more proud
than the first time I walked across the volleyball
court, M iss B irchielli watching, to referee. I
wore the whistle like a badge. Finally I had a
place, some status in the world.
After school I was haunting the lesbian bars,
foolishly hoping for a glimpse of my gym teach­
ers, learning lesbian ways. Dykes smoked.
Some lit their cigarettes with wooden matches
struck on the soles of their shoes, but the ones I
emulated used Zippo lighters. My first Zippo
was the same clunky silver device my father
had-too butch. I switched to the slender style
that’s still stored in my jewelry box, engraved
initials intact. I carried it in my right front pants
pocket and was eager for opportunities to ignite
it in front of the cigarettes o f femmes. When I
gave up smoking seventeen years later it was
more difficult to part with the lighter, and the
style lighters gave me, than the cigarettes. Now
I carry a pocket knife in its place. Lover may not
smoke, but m any’s the time that I ’ve gleefully
rescued her from knotty strings and overzealous
packaging.
I loved cufflinks. In the sixties it w asn’t
unusual for women’s shirts to be made with the
French cuffs that required them. If it was pos­
sible to buy such items in women’s jewelry de­
partments I never found any. That was fine with
me. I grabbed any chance I could to cross-dress.
Aside from that tinge o f transvestism s in my
make-up I was very conservative. All jewelry
must be silver because gold was femmy. If there
had to be a pattern then I wanted the plainest I
could find. My tie tacs or clips were subtle.
That a woman wearing a tie w asn’t anywhere
near subtle did n ’t bother me at all. I had the
fashion sense of a penniless, passing street ur­
chin.
The rings in this magic jewelry box! Every
relationship seemed to go through stages of
rings. There arc the first timid, silly rings, some­
times purchased from gumball machines. The
dollar rings, now five dollars, found in the shal­
low bins or display cases o f import stores that
sprang up in the hippie era. The import shops
AMAZON
TRAIL
were generally next door to the leather shops,
down the street from the head shops. Who from
that era hasn’t had a collection o f silver rings
with tiny red, or green, or flat turquoise stones?
My homemade rings have disappeared. In
the early 1970s, all the women in my living col­
lective seemed to be stringing beads into brace­
lets, exchanging beaded rings, learning ever
more complex patterns that evoked the feel of
childhood summer projects.
In their lonely velour-covered boxes are the
rings that have mates out there somewhere. Plain
bands that promised so much at the time and now
are sore reminders of ceremonies and certainties
and ex-mates out there somewhere.
My pinky rings are happier tokens. The first
one with the sapphire birthstone, a family gift.
The second, a signet with my dyke initials, L.L.
Some are lost, like the one with the red stone,
purchased simply because the heroine o f The
Swashbuckler wore one. Today, I wear yet an­
other ring. The stone is purple because it’s the
gay color. I choose a pinky ring because it’s a
gay tradition. I always wear it because there are
still women out there who look for it, who use
that signal along with dykey looks and manner to
confirm sisterhood.
Scrabbling around the bottom of the box I
come upon My First Crystal. A teeny thing, col­
umn-shaped with a pointed end. I bought it in
the eighties when I was seeking self-healing and
carried it briefly in my pocket, the pocket in
which I once carried a lighter. Did it help me?
Who knows? Did the rainbow crocheted bag of
“rubies” hanging from my car mirror help? Or
the bag of protective herbs? I haven’t had a car
accident (knock on wood) since I hung them.
There’s a collection of name tags, too. My
first women’s studies conference in 1981 when
lesbian publishing began to prove more effective
in making lesbians visible than pinky rings ever
had. Next to it lies a Girl Scout name tag from
the era of invisible lesbians.
My grandm other’s pocket watch! It still
works, but it’s slow. What was she doing with
a pocket watch? Well, this was the Grandma that
made aprons by sewing together two red bandan­
nas. The same kind o f bandannas I carry, for
equally practical purposes, in my back pocket
today. This was the Grandma who wouldn’t al­
low liquor in her house. The Grandma everyone
thought was a little eccentric. Pocket watches
are too butch even for me.
What other treasures are in this box? Belt
buckles from Provincetown. A mood ring like
M o’s from Dykes To Watch Out For (would
someone please tell her they’re too, too seven­
ties!). Key chains I keep without knowing why.
A white braided rope bracelet like everyone had
one summer at the Cape.
I may not wear these trinkets any more, but
my personal archeology reminds me who I ’ve
been.
I ^pent last weekend at a women’s gathering
high in the Oregon mountains. We pitched our
tent alongside a raucously babbling creek. At the
craft fair, a woman sold “natural jew elry,” the
kind we dykes like so much. I fell for a hand­
some necklace of hematite, a silvery-black stone
reputed to have a grounding effect on its wearer.
Later, I ran into a lesbian realtor friend w ho’d
bought one, too. On the spot we declared it a
butchstone. I ’ll wear it until it goes into my
jewelry box. Like my gym whistle, my pinky
rings, like the Zippo in my pocket.
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