It's our favorite time of year. It's been cold long enough that we've all had ample time this season to witness the way couples walk down the street when the temperature drops: her hand in his back pocket, his arm draped around her like a curtain, their feet coordinated to take every step at the same time, so they sway down the sidewalk like some three-legged monstrosity scaring away the pigeons and the squirrels. And you happen to like the squirrels. Lately, they are the only ones you'll make eye contact with when you walk. They're the only ones polite enough to step to one side of the sidewalk when you pass, instead of hogging the whole thing like these mutant couples do, who think that every inch of sidewalk is red carpet laid down to celebrate their coupledom.
Just when you decide to stay off the street for the rest of the winter and eat chocolate and watch television, it starts. The chocolate: it's all shaped like hearts, when you go to put it in your mouth sick little inscriptions appear; you can trace the letters with your tongue (KISS ME! U R CUTE!) The television: all the characters on cable TV are falling in love, even your favorite grumpy self-deprecating ones. Happy Valentine's Day! This is a hard themed-month to blow off. When it's National Poetry Month, if you don't want to participate, you can always pull out the “I-don't-get-poetry” card. Or you can boycott it because Billy Collins has a feature in every newspaper and you happen to think his stuff trivializes what it means to create anything, retired national poet laureate or not. When it's Take-Your-Kid-To-Work day, if you don't have a kid or if you don't have a job, you're off the hook. You don't have to celebrate employment or family. But this month is relentless.
The last time I was with someone on Valentine's Day, I drank a lot of wine to get into the spirit of the holiday. The boy and I decided to go out to dinner to this Chinese restaurant, which happens to be the first place we had ever eaten in public together, a big deal, what with the swallowing, using all the utensils, and maintaining a dialogue. The first public meal is the first big test of whether you can actually get along with someone. We passed, so we were going back to the site to celebrate enjoying each other's company and eating habits for over a year. We had only been to the restaurant once, and we kept driving up and down this bank of strip malls looking for the place without seeing a sign for it. When we pulled over at a gas station, we came to find that the restaurant, our special restaurant, had burned down a few months ago. “Burned to a crisp,” said the gas station attendant, “Pilot light. Fire codes.” The boy, who had a predisposition for melodrama, said that perhaps this was “symbolic of our relationship.” We fought. This is one way to celebrate the day.
Another year, I attended an Anti-Valentine's Day cocktail party. If you've never been to one of these, it's where you and all your single friends get dressed up in your most revealing clothing and drink too many vodka gimlets and complain to potential sex partners about commercialism. They're a blast. This one was particularly fun, because there were little hearts hanging from the ceiling with a skull and crossbones drawn over them as party favors, and in the line for the bathroom there was a little sign on the wall that read “Don't get a V.D. on V-Day.” There's nothing like mention of venereal disease to get everyone mingling. So, I find the one boy at the party from whom I wouldn't mind contracting a V.D., and start a conversation. Naturally, what with our revealing clothing and talk of commercialism, it starts to get awfully hot in there. So this boy I found happens to try to open the window behind the couch we were sitting on by pushing on the glass with his fist, which is not the best way to open a window. The glass breaks. Blood starts running down the arm of his pinstriped suit. Minutes later he's in the emergency room getting his hand sewn back together. I spent the rest of the night on his porch, chain-smoking.