***NOT as provocative as the title suggests, but the title nonetheless felt thematically appropriate***
Another short memoir piece, inspired by my trip to England and France, when I was 16.
Leather and Chains and Psalm 69
He was tawny, despite the sickly fluorescent lighting. Caramel-and-honey hair falling in loose waves to his shoulders. His eye color remains a mystery, but I’ll never forget the retinal tears that turned his pupils hypnotically fluid, like lava lamps in motion. Possibly a loose leather coat. Something longish, and dark, that added to his mystique. Rough around the edges. Appealingly so.
His Aussie accent gave him an unfair advantage, seductively. Sure, the whole population of England had fascinating accents, but THIS guy!
He stood in the center of a rectangle formed of tables, upon which rested his wares. All manner of bracelets, right in the middle of the London Underground. My high school tour group was in a hurry to catch our train, but I needed a bracelet, once I’d seen them. And honestly, in retrospect, I also wanted him. I was just too naive and inexperienced to parse through my emotions.
So many of the bracelets appealed. I told him I wasn’t sure how to decide which one to buy, as I walked the perimeter of the tables.
“What kind of music do you like? That’ll tell me which one’s for you.”
From the plastic bag I was carrying, I produced the album I’d just purchased that day. Our teacher had advised against buying anything we could easily acquire back home, since the exchange rate wasn’t great. It would be more expensive in England, whatever it was.
I disregarded this, and bought a Ministry CD. The one with the black and white nude angel on the cover, the title of which was just a series of symbols. It’s now also known as Psalm 69, after one of its tracks.
His jaw dropped.
I guess I didn’t strike him as a Ministry fan?
Not sure what I was wearing that day. Possibly something sedately pastel. I remember a very comfortable top in a muted mint green that we bought for that trip. A sweatshirt or knit of some kind.
He may have been more impressed with my look the day of the flight. Much to the teacher’s dismay, I wore a ring on every finger and had to be patted down by security since I kept setting off the metal detector. I still don’t know what last lingering bit of metal outraged the device, since I’d stripped off all my jewelry by then. No body piercings at that time.
And none now, for the record, though I did briefly experiment with them. Had my tongue redone when I was trying to quit smoking, to give myself a fidget toy for my mouth, but ultimately let that piercing heal over, as well.
Once he recovered from the shock at my love of Industrial music, he showed me a braided bracelet made from two strips of black leather and one length of silver chain. It fastened with a silver snap.
I fell in love immediately.
“It’s a little big,” I lamented, trying it on.
“You can wear it higher up your arm,” he suggested.
He also told me he’d charge me a quid less than the Brits, whom he despised, as a nation. Unaware at this juncture in my life that my Irish-American nationality didn’t mean shit overseas, that I was just plain-ass, vanilla American anywhere else, I told him I was Irish.
That really caught his interest. He narrowed in on me, asking me where exactly in Ireland I was from, rattling off cities I’d never heard of. Nothing I said about ancestry persuaded him otherwise.
He may not have clocked me as a minor, or else he just didn’t care.
I was only 16.
We never exchanged names, and I have since lost the bracelet.
I think it ended up in the dumpster, when I went through a bizarre manic phase. One of many. I bagged up all my jewelry, believing my tendency to draw too much attention to myself was the root of all my problems. Seeing it in a white plastic trash bag, I knew in my soul it was all garbage, and threw it away.
Shame. It may not have been real silver, and such, but some of it had been rather pricey. And even with weight lost and gained, earrings and necklaces would still fit now. Slowly rebuilding my collection of pretties.
Since that day in London, I have only met one other individual with the same eye condition as the Australian bracelet-seller. Someone we met in Chicago, during one of the clandestine trips my friends and I made into the city, unbeknownst to my parents.
Even that seems an embarrassment of inspirational riches.
I’m guessing most haven’t heard of such retinal tearing.
Locking gazes with the Australian in the London Underground, I felt very mouse-like, frozen before an undulating snake. I fell into his eyes and forgot all about my chaperone, and the rest of the group.
Who doesn’t long to pitch face-first into beautiful eyes?
It’s rare that anyone appeals to me to that degree, especially now.
I’ve been told my standards are too high and that I suck at compromise. My daughter added that somewhere out there lives someone who “looks like a god and will take you to art museums and bookstores,” but that I “shouldn’t wait for that person.”
Maybe I also shouldn’t have talked to a strange man, in the middle of the London Underground, when I was only in high school, but “shouldn’t” seldom stops me.
Above, a CD organizer for travel, that I bought and got a second one of, for long-distance bestie… zipper is busted now, but having found it hidden in the stuff taken out of the car, I think I’ll use it again somehow.
And the pic way up above is the CD. I don’t have the album art anymore but still have the album.
All the Bright and Sparkly Things 
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