Ahh, St. Valentine’s Day. You cheesy-as-fuck fake-holiday that puts so many in a tizzy every year… with your thirty-dollar chocolate boxes, fifty-dollar roses and multiple-hundred-dollar bottles of cologne – the things you make us do to show our love to our beloved – it’s a feat that someone hasn’t turned Cupid’s bloody arrow back on you and all this nonsense.
Andy and I long ago agreed that this ‘holiday’ wasn’t worth the hassle and craziness of a dinner out, and for several years early on in our relationship it always seemed to snow wildly on this date anyway. Once you get into the habit of staying in, it’s a hard habit to break, and for this day of love, why would we want to?
But before this takes a bitter turn into an anti-V-Day crusade, I’m going to throw out a peace-offering to all those who love what this day has come to embody – all the cheesiness and over-the-top bombast of celebrating love, Love, LOVE! – because I remember what I thought it meant when I was a little kid handing out Valentines to my classmates. Let’s consult with the sages of Air Supply for what this day really means:
So much of my early life was informed by the power ballads of the 80’s, and that might have given me a slightly-skewed view of what love was – it felt wondrous and unattainable, dizzying and grand – and somehow I felt that songs like this only touched at the real glory of love. I couldn’t wait to try it out for myself, and I wanted all the drama and heightened emotion of a song like this. Little did I know how traumatic that could truly get, and how insanely silly, and how absolutely soul-enriching.
And if that’s not dramatic enough for you, here’s Bonnie Tyler doing what Bonnie Tyler does best.
And so we have arrived at another Valentine’s Day – make love out of nothing at all, or make of it whatever you want. Happy V-Day to all the friends, and all the lovers!
