February 14th. Here it is. Hearts...love...and flowers that are technically dead when you receive them.
That lovely day of the year where happily coupled couples prove their undying love for each other by paying $300 at a restaurant for a chicken caesar salad, embarrass the entire human race by frolicking around together in their matching red sweaters, and exchange waxy boxed chocolates that they purchased from the same store they buy their Q-tips and diarrhea remedies from.
What other day but Valentines Day. And as we know all too well, usually only to bite into every piece of chocolate, to find out that you didn't get the one you really thought it was.
A little too synonymous with relationships, if you ask me.
What other day but Valentines Day. And as we know all too well, usually only to bite into every piece of chocolate, to find out that you didn't get the one you really thought it was.
A little too synonymous with relationships, if you ask me.
The other kind of persons you'll encounter on Valentines Day are the surly singles. The disgruntled dateless who'll celebrate the day by cursing those in love, fantasizing about creative ways to handicap their exes, ripping every friend to shreds who happen to have their Facebook profile picture as 'the couple shot', or simply decide to sit home and pop in the extended version of Loius Armstrong's " What A Wonderful World" as they're blubbering and praying for a speedy relocation to February 15th, where they can go out and appear to be less single again.
I'm not really sure which category I fall into because A) I do like popping chocolate in my mouth like it's fistfuls of popcorn. But B) I also do love bawling my tear ducts dry to my wedding song, "What a Wonderful World".
But honestly, to me Valentine's Day has always been a pretty ludicrous day. Even when I was happily married or dating someone seriously, I opted out on the forced romantic evening out / Beanie Baby stuffed animal/pre-written Hallmark card exchanges. That's like giving someone a meme. I think Valentine's Day actually became the day I detested relationships ... mainly because this eternal love for me wasn't typically expressed in loving, poetic words and hardcore romance, it wasn't expressed by running naked through a field holding hands (never do this with me by the way ), but generally more through the purchase of something like a new vacuum cleaner or coffee grinder with a half case of hazelnut CoffeeMate Creamer. Seriously guys, this isn't Black and Deckers Centennial Celebration. Women don't want to plug their Valentines Day gifts in. Even if they're lacy and pink, and encrusted with diamonds, nail guns, cleaning apparatuses and stud finders are gross gifts.
So whether you're married and happy, married and disgusted, single and dating every night, single and ugly every night, single but really married, it doesn't matter. Valentine's day is still a premeditated day of love and certainly not the day to judge the one you're with based on any type of stupid present. Women, being notorious for this.
Plenty of crappy spouses buying awesome presents, and quite as many awesome spouses buying some pretty ridiculous ones.
Take my mom for example. One year she complained to my stepdad that she was disappointed that she couldn't find artichokes anywhere. He thought he was being cute and oh so adorable, and a few weeks later for Valentines Day, bought her 8 artichokes, put them in a box, wrapped them, and proudly gave them to her.
My stepdad is a retired NYC police officer. After that present, and 20 years on the force in the South Bronx, the only person he's ever encountered in the 5 boroughs where he actually became in fear of his life, was from my mother that day. So no gifts with cords, and no produce.
And guys, while we're on the subject of gift giving, I'd personally stay away from surprising a women with any type of lingerie. Women are a bit picky about what fat reserves they're willing to display after gorging themselves on dinner.
And the last thing you want to do with a women, is get her to begrudgingly stuff her ripely-dinnered self into a tight contraption that she didn't first try on 86 versions of---that is more than likely made up of nothing more than a wheel of dental floss. And as a Valentines Day special, comes with a free camera. I personally think you'd be safer with the outcome if you swam in a tank with a school of piranhas and a raw steak wedged in your every orifice.
Women need dress rehearsals.
Or someone dies.
And the last thing you want to do with a women, is get her to begrudgingly stuff her ripely-dinnered self into a tight contraption that she didn't first try on 86 versions of---that is more than likely made up of nothing more than a wheel of dental floss. And as a Valentines Day special, comes with a free camera. I personally think you'd be safer with the outcome if you swam in a tank with a school of piranhas and a raw steak wedged in your every orifice.
Women need dress rehearsals.
Or someone dies.
So keep your lingerie fantasies exclusively to the Victorias Secret window mannequins until she's the one buying it.
And speaking of lingerie, if sex is on your Valentines Day itinerary, do yourself a favor and stay away from any conversations involving her weight. If you say she looks thin, she'll hear it as "Oh, are you saying i usually look fat?"
Even if you say "You look great tonight, hun!", she'll misconstrue it into: "What does that mean... I don't look great all the other nights?" Trust. It'll happen. We're females. We have PHD's in this shit.
Even if you say "You look great tonight, hun!", she'll misconstrue it into: "What does that mean... I don't look great all the other nights?" Trust. It'll happen. We're females. We have PHD's in this shit.
And for the love of God, please don't ask a girl... "Will you be my Valentine?". Or even worse yet, get engaged.
That's just straight up Cringeville.
Post Valentines Day week, is twenty times worse. It's sadly the week of neurotic, loser women comparing and contrasting V-Day night stories /gifts, and lamely emasculating him for comparing poorly to that dude that always seems to crop up around this time of year... The guy who buys his girlfriend a house in the Costa Rican rainforest, as he delivers her the deed to that house on a glistening, pulsating steed, while he's flicking rose petals in her wake and holding her up to the heavens on his bicep. Doesn't matter whether you're a man or a women. We all want that bastard drawn and quartered.
Obviously, we all know loving someone is a complicated idea. And it can be just as complicated to express that love. Be it verbally or otherwise. But we also know that love is not a tangible gift. It's a deep understanding and often an inexplicable magical, spiritual force between two people.
Or in my experience, a Norelco SpeedTrim Razor with a built-in Heel Exfoliator.
Or in my experience, a Norelco SpeedTrim Razor with a built-in Heel Exfoliator.
I think true love needs to be that intoxicating pull between 2 people that makes everyone else around them seem to disappear. (Those people usually first being their friends.)
Love can feel equally powerful, yet dramatically different with every person. Each one being as unique as say, a tomato splatter on a wall, from a tomato that was hucked against it by different pitchers. That's love.
That mysterious sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, every time you see them, like you just ate a steak that you thought said expires Feb.14, 2017, but really said Feb. 17, 2014. That's real love. It's having that one person in your arms and feeling complete. A feeling of holding on and never wanting to let go, like you're on a turbulent flight to LA, holding a spiked grenade and a vile of nitroglycerine. That's love.
Love can feel equally powerful, yet dramatically different with every person. Each one being as unique as say, a tomato splatter on a wall, from a tomato that was hucked against it by different pitchers. That's love.
That mysterious sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, every time you see them, like you just ate a steak that you thought said expires Feb.14, 2017, but really said Feb. 17, 2014. That's real love. It's having that one person in your arms and feeling complete. A feeling of holding on and never wanting to let go, like you're on a turbulent flight to LA, holding a spiked grenade and a vile of nitroglycerine. That's love.
Love is a special, beautiful thing that happens between two people, that shouldn't be undermined by appointing it only one day of the year. Oddly enough, when you're not in love, it's more like that absolutely disgusting thing that happens between two people that induces vomiting. But regardless, real love is an every day love. Valentines Day is amateurs night. It's the prom for love. Am I starting to sound like one of the surly singles? I'm just curious.
And too many people often mistake true deep love, for a person they're just physically attracted to. If that were the case, I believe I should march off to a Justice of Peace with an Oreo, a bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and a vibrator.
The purely surface things can be tricky. Beautiful bone structure doesn't pay the bills. So don't be fooled. Look deeper. Try and get them to talk, form a sentence, complete one side of a Rubix cube. Picture them old. Visit their aging, ailing parents for a quick genetic crystal ball reference, look for facial structure weaknesses, live with them when they're vomiting and have a disgusting stomach flu, and for good measure, throw a few screaming kids and some astronomical Amex bills in there, and then decide whether or not it's true love. Otherwise, they're just cute and fun. True love is earned, and proven over the years and multitude of life's hardships. Not when everything is picture perfect and your faces still haven't slid off your skulls.
The purely surface things can be tricky. Beautiful bone structure doesn't pay the bills. So don't be fooled. Look deeper. Try and get them to talk, form a sentence, complete one side of a Rubix cube. Picture them old. Visit their aging, ailing parents for a quick genetic crystal ball reference, look for facial structure weaknesses, live with them when they're vomiting and have a disgusting stomach flu, and for good measure, throw a few screaming kids and some astronomical Amex bills in there, and then decide whether or not it's true love. Otherwise, they're just cute and fun. True love is earned, and proven over the years and multitude of life's hardships. Not when everything is picture perfect and your faces still haven't slid off your skulls.
I'd hope that to know me, or any of you, is to love us, all year round.
So I'm wishing all of you true love, every day you're alive.
And minimal boxed chocolate homicides on February 14th.
<3
~dawn
~dawn
