My family heirloom is an x-rated ring

An important note: though it may seem odd to put a content warning before what’s intended to be a (mostly) humorous essay, this does address the subject of child sexual abuse, so I’ll do so out of an abundance of concern and caution. Should this essay offend anyone, I apologize in advance, but please be assured that it’s not meant to mock or minimize anything. It’s just the way my brain processes things.

We all own something we always forget about until it turns up while deep-cleaning or organizing our homes. Usually it’s a small item we keep hidden away rather than simply get rid of it, we find it, think “oh yeah, I forgot I had this,” consider it for a moment, and then return it to where we found it and once again memory hole it out of existence.

It may be a Hummel figurine, or a faded t-shirt from Woodstock ‘99 (the shitty one). Whatever the case, it’s not an object you have any real sentimental attachment to, but for some reason haven’t let go of yet.

Mine is a silver ring graphically depicting two people fucking.

Here it is from the side. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the opening groans of “Love to Love You, Baby.”

And here’s one more at an angle that will make you glad it was captured in metal and not flesh. It looks like something Eric Roberts would have worn in “Star 80.”

This work of erotic art normally lives in the back of a jewelry box I almost never open, except when I get a wild hair up my butt to reorganize my bedroom, which I did over Labor Day weekend. I once again found the ring (which I've had for over 25 years), but rather than just throw it back in the box and that file folder in my brain marked THINGS I’M BETTER OFF NOT THINKING ABOUT, I kept it out and pondered its existence.

You’d think that my acquiring it was a goof, maybe something I got specifically because it was so tacky, like one of those souvenir boobie cups you can get on the Atlantic City boardwalk. But here’s the thing: I got it from my grandparents’ house. That much I know for certain. It wasn’t long after my grandmother passed away in 1999, and my mother insisted that I come by the house to take some of her belongings. Bypassing the copper bracelets, the complete box set of The Benny Hill Show, and a collectible plate honoring her favorite TV character, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (I regret not taking the plate), I chose instead to go through my grandmother’s costume jewelry, which had no real value except the sentimental kind. My prizes for this expedition were a Little Drummer Boy pin she wore every Christmas, a charm bracelet of every family member’s zodiac sign, a few other shiny bits and baubles, and the piece of true craftsmanship illustrated above. 

I don’t know why I took the ring, as it didn’t instill the same sort of nostalgic warmth as, say, the Little Drummer Boy pin. It was likely out of secondhand (and firsthand) embarrassment, and a desire to hide it from my sister, who was an extremely uptight teenager at the time, and my mother, who probably would have been able to tell me more about it, but the last thing I wanted at that moment (or any moment, really) was to have a conversation with my mother about the origins of a ring shaped like two people fucking.

Still, I had (and continue to have) questions. Considering its size and heft, it was a man’s ring, so how did it end up with my grandmother’s jewelry? Did she win it in a poker game? Was it even worth anything? Though it’s silver and very heavy, there’s no indication that it’s real silver, and I’m certainly not going to take it to a jeweler for an appraisal. A quick look online (after clarifying with Google that I did not mean “cock ring”) showed that (a) similar rings can be found on eBay and Etsy, (b) none of them have an asking price of more than $45, and (c) the one I have is among the more tasteful designs, but if you’re looking for something a little racier, like a ring shaped like two people 69’ing or one where the guy’s entire dick and balls are visible, those are available too.

Needless to say, it was manufactured in the 70s. This ring could not be more representative of the 70s if it was burnt orange and avocado green. The only way it’d be more accurate was if the guy’s ass flipped up on a tiny hinge to reveal a secret compartment to store a Quaalude. That was the thing about the 70s: the music? Impeccable. The movies? Unimpeachable. The culture? Weird and kind of gross.

While the sexual revolution played an invaluable role in both second wave feminism and nascent recognition of the LGBTQ+ community, it also ushered in an aggressively heterosexual openness about sex. First-wave Baby Boomers were young adults (or close to it) by that point, and pushing back against the Puritanical morals of their parents’ generation, which suggested that unmarried couples should be chaperoned on dates, marriage was for life no matter how miserable either person might be, and that sex was for procreation, not pleasure. 

Mind you, those were all very reasonable to rebel against, but, as is so often the case with these things, Boomers pushed too hard in the other direction. It became too in your face, exacerbated by the fact that finding any of it distasteful risked being perceived as uptight and, god forbid, old-fashioned. In order to be considered hip and with it, one had to create the image of being ready, willing, and eager to fuck at all times. Pants got much tighter, shirt collars got much lower, and underwear got much skimpier, if it was worn at all. Much of it was crass and juvenile, like t-shirts for men offering mustache rides for the bargain basement price of just five cents, and bras for women with inserts that made it look as if their nipples were constantly erect.

The crassness and juvenility of it was emphasized by the fact that it was meant to be sophisticated, like developing a knowledge of fine wines. Porn entered the mainstream, as illustrated by the release of Deep Throat, which became such a bizarre object of cultural fascination that even people like Johnny Carson, Lucille Ball, and Vice President Spiro Agnew were spotted seeing it at a theater. Imagine that, you sit down in a dark theater that smells of stale popcorn and bleach, ready to have a soothing wank, and you look over and see Vice President Spiro Agnew in the seat next to you.

Anyway, Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione greased their grody little surfboards to catch the wave of “porno chic” and started their own media empires to compete with Hugh Hefner. While Penthouse initially tried to mimic Playboy’s image of being for the discriminating gentleman who enjoyed both literature and ripe, luscious tits, Hustler did away with any pretenses of faux elegance in favor of full, wide-open nudity and a long-running comic strip about a hapless child molester.

Meanwhile, middle and upper-class suburbanites were encouraged to spice up their marriages by engaging in swinging, group sex, and key parties, which, as 1995’s The Ice Storm illustrated, rarely resulted in anything but awkward groping, resentment, and depression. If you desired something a little more anonymous (and more likely to result in herpes), you could have gone to New York City for a stop at Plato’s Retreat, the notorious sex club and ultimate example of “I know it smell crazy in there.”

Eventually, this suddenly perhaps a little too laidback attitude made its way to television. Now, sitcoms like Welcome Back, Kotter and Happy Days featured female supporting characters whose primary roles were to be the target of slut jokes. On Laverne & Shirley, while Shirley was prim and only had eyes for Carmine, Laverne had a different boyfriend every week and talked about her pursuit of “vo-dee-oh-doh-doh” a baffling euphemism for sex. Charlie’s Angels, while on paper a detective drama, seemed to exist mostly to get its stars into the skimpiest bikinis legally permitted on screen. Even cop shows took on a smarmy, winking tone, as women cops were frequently assigned to go undercover as “ladies of the evening,” and episodes of Starsky & Hutch often ended with the guys picking up starstruck bimbos at a bar and debating over whose apartment they’d all go back to together.

Advertisers heard the sweaty, panting call, and responded with commercials for Ultrabrite toothpaste, which promised to get your teeth so clean and bright that you’d be sexually harassed at work, which was treated as a good thing: after all, why become a nurse if you’re not going to land a handsome doctor? Shampoo, breath mints, airlines, and other normally innocuous products and services were now being marketed as the pathway to (presumably no strings attached) sex with women who reacted to the scent of drugstore cologne like a cartoon dog with a freshly baked pie. Hanes ran a long-standing campaign that suggested that wearing their pantyhose would get you ogled and cat-called more than competing brands, whether you were just walking down the street or trying your first case as a new lawyer.

In what was an obvious rebuke to the feminist movement, the women in these ads were always positively thrilled with the slobbering, Tex Avery wolf-like attention their pantyhose or toothpaste earned them. Similarly, in real life, they were supposed to be eager to hop into bed with a man wearing bikini briefs designated as “Home of the Whopper” and cocaine crumbs caught in his chest hair.

Or, you know, a ring shaped like two people fucking.

Which brings this back to me, sort of. I’m not reporting this just from an amused (and vaguely repulsed) anthropological level, I was there for some of it. Born in 1972 to very young parents, I was shielded from almost nothing. I’ve mentioned before how I was allowed to watch and read pretty much anything I wanted, with no concern about how age-appropriate it was. That also applied to real life. My parents had no issue with talking right in front of me about one of their friends who tried to talk them into wife-swapping (apparently the only reason they declined was because my father thought the other guy’s wife was ugly). They both walked around naked. They often held raucous parties that ended with everyone getting high and watching porn, either unaware or unbothered by the fact that 5-year-old me was just in the next room, kept awake with all the laughing and hooting. My mom bought my dad a subscription to Playboy, and they just kept them piled up on the coffee table, like other parents would keep copies of Newsweek.

Some of you may be reading this with a frown and thinking “Gosh, that’s a form of sexual abuse she’s talking about.” Yeah, I know! If I’m ever able to find a therapist who takes my insurance I’ll be sure to bring it up with them sometime. On the other hand, maybe I won’t: I’ve spent so much of my adult life pondering the myriad ways both my parents fucked me up that I’m actually kind of tired of talking about it. What I still struggle with, however, is how much of this unfiltered environment happened at my grandparents’ house.

Caught in an increasingly chaotic home life, my grandparents’ house was a sanctuary, where I could be certain that a bologna and cheese sandwich cut into two triangles would always be waiting for me. Luckily, because my mother didn’t enjoy parenting, we were there more often than not. It was a big, old house at the very edge of Atlantic City, and I was allowed to roam around wherever I wanted. My favorite places to go (other than wherever my grandmother was) were the sewing room, my grandfather’s office, and the upstairs bathroom, where that was a clawfoot tub that I treated like my personal swimming pool/mermaid grotto. There was always something interesting to find, like old photo albums, an enormous box of buttons, and my grandfather’s model plane collection.

There were also a few things I shouldn’t have been able to find, like a copy of The Joy of Sex, on the bookshelf along with Time-Life books on home repair and All Creatures Great and Small. Also available for anybody to look at was Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus, which fetishized incest decades before Ryan Murphy wrote his first TV script. Not to be outdone was the box of hardcore pornography barely hidden under a table in an upstairs room.

Now, you might be thinking “Well, you shouldn’t have been snooping.” But here’s the thing: I wasn’t. The books were just left out in case anyone wanted to read some rape “erotica” while relaxing with a nice cup of tea, and, again, the message that I was allowed to read whatever I wanted was loud and clear. As far as the box of pornographic magazines, I suppose an argument could be made that I was snooping if you consider crawling around on the floor merely looking at the contents of an open, unobscured box to be “snooping.”

As far as failing to protect children in one’s house, there was neglecting to cover electric outlets, and then there was…whatever the fuck this was. I hope to the deepest parts of my heart that it was nothing other than everyone either forgetting that shit was there, or simply figuring I wouldn’t find it. There’s no reasonable explanation for why I was allowed to spend time in my uncle’s room, despite the walls being papered from ceiling to floor with centerfolds and other explicit images. Again, I didn’t just sneak into his room when he wasn’t there, he invited me in. The other adults in the house knew I was in there, despite presumably knowing that it was decorated in a style best described as “mid-century pervert.”

I’m pretty sure the first time I ever saw a picture of a naked person was in that room, and that alone was wildly inappropriate. Which leads to a rather obvious (and very difficult question): did any physical contact happen in there? And my answer is, I don’t know. Probably? I don’t have any specific memories, but it’s entirely possible that I blocked it out. It would certainly explain the number of behavioral changes I experienced, such as going from being so talkative my first-grade teacher referred to me as “Jabberjaws” to so quiet that my third-grade teacher gently took me aside once to ask if everything was alright at home. Already a fretful child, my anxiety grew to crushing levels, where I cried at the drop of a hat and had chronic stomachaches.

The older I got, the more I struggled with making eye contact with people, which is a very common neurodivergent trait, but also could have meant that I wasn’t comfortable being looked at (and I’m still not, honestly). I put on a lot of weight as a teenager. I was uncomfortable being alone with older men. Once I became sexually active, I was embarrassed to outwardly show that I was enjoying it (thankfully, I got over that). A lot of boxes for “sexual abuse survivor” were checked off, despite my not being able to recall any specific incidents.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that my uncle was, in fact, a child molester, though the irrefutable proof of that wasn’t discovered until after he died. The proof involved only one victim, but when do you ever hear about a child molester who just preys on one child?

Anyway, believe it or not, I don’t think about this too much, except in a general “here’s another thing on the long list of reasons I’m mentally ill” way. Whatever did or didn’t happen with my uncle, it wouldn’t be the last time an adult man behaved inappropriately towards me. It’s depressingly common. I promise that every woman you know has experienced some sort of weird or gross interaction when they were young with a man old enough to know better. It’s why generations older than Millennials tend to be unsympathetic about such issues as #MeToo: a guy making unsolicited comments about your body, touching you, or just outright showing you his cock without your consent is such a familiar experience for women that we mistakenly minimize it as not a big deal, and just keep letting men get away with it.

At this point, it’s just one more bizarre experience in my life, another thing I can say I survived. What I have trouble with is one glaring question, and it’s the same question a lot of sexual abuse survivors have: why wasn’t anyone else looking out for me? Some memories are hazy now, but I know for certain, like “I’d take a lie detector test” certain, that my uncle and I were never in that house alone together. There were always other people there, whether it was one or or both of my grandparents, or my mother, or all three of them together. 

Sometimes my dad was there. Sometimes other relatives and friends dropped by. Did any of them wonder what was going on up there, when my uncle would take me to his room, where every flat surface was covered in dirty pictures? They knew what was in there, didn’t they? You don’t share a house with someone and never know what the inside of their bedroom looks like, even just a peek. Even just a quick peek wouldn’t miss the vast amount of tits and bush on display and pinned to a wall like I’d cover my walls in pictures of Patrick Swayze years later. So…what did they think was happening? Did anyone check on us? Ask questions? Knock on the door? Nothing? Even if nothing physical happened (and I suppose it’s possible nothing did, but exposing me to that was still a form of abuse), did no one think it was weird or inappropriate?

They’re hard questions, because it forces me to question the judgment of my grandparents, whom I loved beyond reason, and were the only real parental figures I had in my life. But they did also go to great lengths to protect my mother and uncle from the harm they inflicted due to substance abuse and a long genetic history of undiagnosed mental illness. Even after my uncle was unable to hold down a job due to his alcoholism, even after my mother stopped doing anything to hide the abuse she was inflicting on my siblings, my grandparents still covered for them, still made excuses, still forgave. I don’t know how much they might have known about what happened in my uncle’s room, and it hurts to ponder that, even more than to think about what I might have experienced that my brain mercifully blocked.

I’ll never know for certain. A lot of questions will never be answered, because almost anyone who could tell me anything is dead except for my mother, and I haven’t talked to her in a decade. I’m not interested in “regression therapy” or whatever other pseudoscience bullshit people might try to push on me, because I don’t think reliving any experiences I might be blocking will do me any good. I already have enough bad dreams, I don’t need bad memories to go with them.

I also don’t need this tacky-ass ring, but I’m keeping it anyway. It’s a tangible symbol of my strange childhood, something I can point to when my memories feel foggy and unreliable. I’m certainly not going to wear it. It’s heavy and much too big for my hand, and even if it did fit, I wouldn’t wear it out in public because there’s statement jewelry and there’s a hefty silver ring upon which someone lovingly carved a detailed image of two people fucking. I would, however, enjoy the opportunity to punch someone while wearing it, just so i can leave a mark on their face shaped like two people fucking.

It’s okay to laugh, I promise you. It’s very funny. I think it’s hilarious that I have this thing, and someday, when I transition to the next plane, one of my descendants will be stuck having to figure out what to do with it. The only thing that’d be better is if I could find one of those novelty TIME TO FUCK watches, which, unsurprisingly, was also manufactured in the 70s. 

I feel like I earned it by keeping my sense of humor and passion for the absurd intact. Because it is all, in the end, very absurd.