All Wound Up: Confessions of a Lovesick Paneristi

By John Edwards

The chubby little fellow on www.Paneristi.com looked innocent enough. With its 40-millimeter girth and strange, stubby-looking winder, not too big, but not too small. Never seen the likes of this one before.

I'd recently dumped the skinny Franck Muller Casablanca and Cartier Santos in a mad dash to raise money as my tech-heavy stock portfolio evaporated into thin air. “Gotta pay the mortgage somehow,” I sobbed to my wife as I headed to the Post Office and sent my beloved watches away for good.

Even sold the gold Rolex and other pretentious trinkets, but a man’s gotta wear something, doesn’t he? The money from the watch sales arrived not long afterward—and immediately began burning a hole in my wrist.

“If you gotta pick just one watch, what would it be?” I kept asking myself time again. Like the $120 share of Intel stock, the days of multiple, highfalutin watches were over. One, maybe two watches, but that’s it, I said to myself. The IWC UTC on bracelet had the best all around appeal, I thought. I also dabbled in Hublot, Chronoswiss, Zenith and others, looking for the perfect piece.

Now, I’ve got to admit, sex with my beautiful wife was like nothing else on this planet—until the day the PAM 48 arrived.

Softly, gently, she caressed my forearm, dazzled my eyes—but alas, I sold the beautiful siren because again I needed the money. For weeks afterward, her mocha-colored skin and shiny body beckoned me to come back. I could not.

In my quest to find the right mate, I once again turned to the Paneristi looking or answers. The Panerai 44 millimeter? Lovely and audacious, to be sure, but not for me. I weigh 155 pounds soaking wet and my skinny little wrist makes even a rubber band around it look big.

Eventually, I decided to go with an IWC GST chrono as my regular everyday watch, that and perhaps one more Panerai. Two watches. There. I’m done. Finished. My child’s college education is safe. My wife’s arms (and legs) are open to me once again.

So, surfing the posts—you can never keep away—I saw the big brown eyes and simplistic beauty of the PAM 55 and the PAM 61. I bought and sold not one, but two of the 61s, finally purging them from my system. Who needs a seconds hand anyway? Time stands still for these Historic models, wrapped in their ageless titanium bodies and powered with a hundred years’ worth of bright superluminova. Daily, I click, click, click on the manual winding mechanism as soldiers and sailors once did in the days gone by.

The most beautiful watch in the world? The PAM 55. Big, bold and sassy, yet warmly presented amid shades of soft brown and green. Perfectly symmetrical— yet different in a strange sort of way. Indestructible. Indescribable. Good enough to keep.

As with my lovely wife, this is one baby I'll never give away.