We are fast approaching yet another Valentine’s Day and the endless stream of invectives that seem to follow it like sea gulls after garbage trucks, and the taunts of “Hallmark holiday,” the spate of date-night flicks with which to fill that frosty February evening and the songs that invariably get trotted out to illustrate one’s undying devotion to another, and the melodrama and hyperventilation it all seems to conjure. To them I say, go for it.

I actually don’t have a big problem with Valentine’s Day. Sure, it has less to do with making love than it does making money, but that’s every holiday, be it ancient or recent. Besides, it’s a harmless diversion from the fact that we really don’t know a damned thing about love. At the sound of the word, the mind kicks off a short list of nouns that seem to be connected: roses, champagne, pink greeting cards, nasty little chalky candies with frisky sentiments on them. There’s nothing wrong with any of them, except perhaps the candies which would be better used to plug holes in your drywall. The reality of love tends to be a whole lot less floral, and it is that divide that I believe causes so many relationships to wither away.

Love is, in fact, shit, piss, and pus. It is being up to one’s elbows in it, alongside blood and phlegm and that inner-you is screaming and cursing in your head, telling you to run, to get out before you start gagging. You don’t want to be there, but you will stay. It’s beyond compulsion, it’s nowhere near obligation. It’s also something few think about in the middle of romantic reverie. (more…)