00036: The “Jewels” of the family

20 Days, twenty items

I imagine I’m a very wealthy man. My husband and I don’t wear jewels at all but we do have plenty of them for reasons we don’t really think about it. We’re rich, why does it matter? And because I like theatre and dress in drag in some of the shows, and because my husband likes to dress in drag every weekend, we decorate our outfits with lots of jewels. Unbeknown to everyone, though, the jewels I wear in my theatre shows and the jewels my husband wears in his drag weekends are not fake. They are all real. Real jewels! But because we are Latinx folks, because we are brown people, because we are immigrants, because we are QPOC, because we are who we are, no one ever imagines that we, as we are, can actually afford real jewels so everyone looks at our outfits in awe, thinking our jewels are fake but very sparkling.

Of course, that is just my imagination. In reality, we are the Latinx people, the brown people, the immigrant people, the QPOC couple that doesn’t wear jewelry for two main reasons: 1) we have not like wearing jewelry on our body, 2) if we do, the most expensive material is ‘sterling silver’ from the local flee market or cultural festival jewelry stand.

Back in the 90s, when I was trying to come to terms with who I am, I wore lots of pendants, rings, neckless, earrings, watches, wrist bands, etc… they were all made of cheap metals and/or sterling silver. At some point in my life, I decided to stop wearing things on my body and as of today, I wear a very small ring on my left pinky. It is a sterling silver ring in the form of the infinity symbol.

As I declutter my home office, I found this bag filled with jewelry and watches. The bag is half-full and it has at least 5 different wrist watches that would work if I only change their batteries. But I’m not going to do that so I might as well, take the “family jewels” and deliver them to the theatre so they can serve as props for future shows.

I must confess that I still kept five wrist watches. They are not super expensive but they are the most expensive jewels I seem to have. The process of decluttering takes time. I’m sure that at some point, (the goal being this year), I will also get rid of those watches. But instead of donating them as props, I’m going to look for people who might wear them. These watches are not so cheap, after all. #carlosmanuelspeaksthetruth