Because my neck, shoulder, and back were still hurting, H.E. scheduled some massage appointments for me, and I had my knots excruciatingly smoothed out by an expert in medieval torture in a couple of one-hour sessions. So I am feeling much better than I did a week ago.

But one of the things an expert in medieval torture knows how to do is to allow you to receive a little bit more pain than you ever thought you could … by distracting your thoughts of finally giving up those state secrets with unending small talk. My expert, a (misleadingly!) petite Asian young woman, brought up the subject of jewelry in both sessions and pointed out how important such a thing as a little bit of bling is among Asian families. I agreed, not because I was under the duress of extreme muscle pain at her Herculean hands, but because it’s true. Asians love the bling.

All you have to do is walk into a mall in Little Saigon and see the ratio of jewelry shops to everything else. For further proof, count the number of people in each of those jewelry shops, and by then you should be pretty well convinced. If not, well … I am, by loose definition, an Asian myself, and I can confirm it; I still remember the days my mother and aunts bought and sold jewelry like cupcakes at a bake sale, and I’d get little gold necklaces and earrings as gifts on all occasions. I was a big fan of Pac-Man in the fourth grade, so naturally, my mother got me a gold Pac-Man pendant on a thin gold chain.

Another proof to add to the pudding? Many Asian girls have had their ears pierced since just after birth, and I am one among them. As is customary, my mother simply had my ears done when I was too young to retain the painful memory. There is none of that nonsense of rebelling at 15 years old and getting it done on the sly with friends at the mall or at the local tattoo shop. I was wearing tiny gem-studded earrings long before I could talk.

Then, of course, there were after-school Catholic classes, so I had a gold cross pendant, too, which I’d wear hanging from a thick twisted gold chain after I got tired of wearing Pac-Man.

But one thing cured me of all that Asian fascination of the bling—cheerleading.

I don’t remember with whom I was paired when I first started learning how to do a shoulder stand. It was very likely one of the three co-captains, Missy. She was shorter and skinnier than I was, so she got to be the flier, while I got to be the base. She had succeeded in teaching me a shoulder sit—as I lunged, she stepped onto the crook of my hip and thigh, swung one leg over my shoulder, and plopped her butt onto the back of my shoulders as I straightened and spotted her thighs from the front—nice and easy, though a tad bit heavy on my twisted chain necklace.

But shoulder stands were a touch more complicated—instead of swinging a leg over after stepping onto the crook of my hip and thigh, she placed a foot onto my shoulder and stepped up, then placed the other foot on the other shoulder and stood up straight, while I spotted her calves from below. Simple, right? But hold on. Time out! She had stepped right onto the gold chain, and her shoes held hard against the twisted metal, her weight adding strength and pushing the chain down into my skin and crushing my collarbone. My thoughts?

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

And I never wore jewelry again. Ever.

That is, until H.E. came along and wondered why I wasn’t as girly girl as apparently all women in their right mind should be. Other women showed off their dangly earrings. Me? I imagined them getting caught in something and ripping the lobes straight through. Other women proudly displayed their bracelets. Me? I imagined them snagging a loose thread on my sweater. Other women drew the eyes to their cleavage with their necklaces. Me? I imagined the chain getting tangled in my hair somehow.

But I have been lured step by baby step back to the fold of the girly girl Asian ways. While it is still not my end-all, be-all, I now no longer mind wearing the occasional piece of jewelry. And the only time I ever take off my ring is when I’m giving H.E. a foot rub with cream. I hardly even get it snagged in my clothes any more.

I’ve a long way to go in matching the bling obsession of the average frequenter of the Asian mall jewelry shops, the average ghetto gangster rapper, or the not-so-average Mr. T’s and Elizabeth Taylors of this world, but I think I’ve struck a nice middle—not too much that I feel materialistic, but just enough that I feel treasured.

And that’s quite enough bling for me. It goes nicely with the back rub.

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