Contrived Romance Is Far From Romantic
Call me the Anti-Valentine, the Scrooge of Sentimentality, but I want no truck next week with long-stemmed roses, boxed chocolates or dinner for two at an intimate restaurant.
Even when sipped from cut-crystal flutes, champagne goes up my nose.
And with all apologies to the friend who suggested it, I’m afraid I won’t be donning a black lace teddy and gold-lame mules to cook dinner for my husband on that special day.
We would both feel foolish in such roles, like a couple of cheesy actors playing out some advertiser’s fantasy to sell more lingerie.
Frankly, Valentine’s Day makes me cringe. When it comes to manipulated feelings, Feb. 14 is right up there with New Year’s Eve, another holiday in which the entire world seems grimly determined to have a good time.
At least during a bad New Year’s Eve party, you can lock yourself in the bathroom at 11:55 p.m. and not come out until the hoopla is safely over--a trick I discovered a few years back.
But there is no hiding from Valentine’s Day, a weeks-long marketing extravaganza in which the entire Western world seems to conspire against fragile, insecure egos, exhorting men and women to “ show their love” with pricey, goofy and superfluous tokens of affection.
Silly me, and here I thought love was intangible.
Well then, what about the time I accompanied my husband to the Pixies concert at the Paladium and got stomped on by hobnailed cretins? Or the term papers I volunteered to type during his two years of graduate school? Didn’t that show my love?
To me, there’s nothing romantic about being clobbered over the head with the ultimatum: You must be romantic on this day. My mother always said I was contrary as a child, and that trait has only hardened like arteries with age.
It started in first grade, when my classmates swapped little paper Valentines. My mother, despite being from France, the romance capital of the world, didn’t know from Valentine’s Day and wouldn’t have dreamed of wasting money on something so frivolous anyway.
Besides, there was only one boy I remotely wanted to present with a Valentine, and we had developed a much more satisfying ritual: I chased him through the playground at recess and planted big kisses on his protesting, squealing form whenever I caught him.
My tactics grew more refined as time passed, but I was never a classic romantic. While I swooned to Frank Sinatra crooning those big band hits, I didn’t miss the wink in his voice when he sang, “Heaven, I’m in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.”
Somehow, I managed to find a like-minded mate.
“We celebrate Valentine’s Day every day of the year,” my husband announces with cheerful irony when the dreaded day yawns.
Our wedding wasn’t too romantic. It took place a week after the L.A. riots and you could still smell the smoke. My father was dying of emphysema. Three weeks earlier, my sister-in-law had undergone a kidney transplant, receiving a new organ from my mother-in-law.
At that moment, we were all just happy to be alive. Ostentatious celebration seemed superfluous. I felt like the Grinch discovering that Christmas “came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
So can love, so can love.
Others will undoubtedly disagree, but my experiences have taught me to beware the ones who come bearing perfume and flowers, limo rides and caviar. Sometimes it is easier to shower one with presents than to speak about feelings, and it’s a great distraction to say, “Hey, Honey, let’s fly to Paris on the Concorde for Valentine’s Day this year.”
So you can imagine how it gets me when I read those “Dear Abby” letters in which the woman starts out by extolling her perfect, wonderful, loving husband who helps around the house and brings home good money. Yet the woman is nagged by such feelings of inadequacy and emptiness that she is considering an affair.
Why? Because she can’t remember the last time her husband brought her a romantic Valentine’s Day gift. He presents her with hiking boots when what she really yearns for is edible panties.
My heart bleeds. And what if you don’t have a significant other on Valentine’s Day? What if you’re poor and saving your money to buy a car? What if you are just starting a relationship and don’t relish the sticky dilemma of buying something that will be gauged for the level of commitment it symbolizes.
Lest I come across as a tight-lipped Puritan, let me say that our life is filled with small and spontaneous moments that anthropologists might classify as romantic. I’m thinking of a Bryan Ferry tape my husband once recorded for me after I complained about having lost the album. Or the Paul Bowles book I gave him when he told me that he was curious about Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie “The Sheltering Sky.”
What really sends me swooning, however, is hiking with my husband for 16 kilometers through the Samaria Gorge in Crete in mid-summer, until our muscles ache and the sweat streaks our skin with salt. Then plunging into the warm coastal waters before dinner as the moon rises above the Libyan Sea.
Now that’s romantic.