No glove, no love

There’s a burning feeling deep inside and it won’t go away. Your skin feels inflamed and raw, you can’t stop scratching. You’re worried that someone will find out your dirty little secret, you’re paranoid, and its making you lash out. You’re alternately angry and weepy – life just isn’t fair! And you think to yourself, “Maybe if I hadn’t given in so easily...things would be different.”

And of course by “you”, I mean “me”. And by all of the above I’m referring, in a possibly over-dramatized fashion, to Valentine’s Day. Though I can see how you might have been misled.

If venereal disease was a holiday, I’m pretty sure it would be Valentine’s Day - based on Wikipedia facts and those nasty little brochures they leave lying around in the vagina doctor’s waiting room. I’ve never actually had a venereal disease, but I have had a yeast infection. And if a yeast infection was a holiday, it would be the equally annoying, yet less shamefully soul sucking, Halloween. It puts on an ugly costume and tries to scare you, but you know it’s just kidding.

Where was I going with this?

Oh, right. Valentine’s Day is gross.

It’s largely a meaningless, consumer driven holiday, designed to make single people miserable – either because they’re sick and tired of watching couples be all nasty or because the loneliness has just become too much.

As a strong, independent woman (read: single and with no current prospects), I can’t just go around admitting that it sometimes “sucks to be alone” or that every time the bell rings for the back door of our office I start to break out in hives because I know it’s another motherfucking flower delivery. “No one by that name works here! Go away! Scratch scratch scratch.”

I can’t really pretend Valentine’s Day doesn’t exist, but damn it I can hate it. I can scoff at the idiots that waste their money on stuffed animals and lip-shaped balloons, say “It’s so stupid” to anyone that will listen, and then secretly watch the all-about-love marathon on Lifetime in my pajamas with a tub of ice cream. That’s the more socially acceptable route: You can hate the holiday, just don’t ruin it with your sad sack routine in front of all the happy people...loser.

And I play by the rules. I only get all wistful about not having someone once in awhile, like on Valentine’s Day, and I generally keep it to myself. And it’s never for the whole day because, let’s face it, I’m not really one for romantic hoo-ha.

It’s easy to want the things you don’t have, the grass is always greener and all that, but if I think about it objectively I probably wouldn’t like all that girly hearts and flowers shit anyway.

You know what I think is romantic? Not rose petals, silk, and champagne. Not love poems, watching the sunset, and whispered words of devotion. It’s simple:

Put your dick in a box.

Alright, so that’s not entirely accurate, but it would definitely trump a stuffed animal.

I have one romantic fantasy, and it’s pretty simple. There aren’t any props or gifts and it’s not in a specific location. I won’t go into a lot of details but basically it starts with a look in his eyes and a little leisurely touching, then a bit of clothes ripping, then ends with, well, a bang. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom: Romantico!

Mom says that I shoot myself in the foot where men are concerned, and that if I’d stop giving up the goods so soon they’d probably stick around and buy me stuff for Valentine’s Day.

There may be a grain of truth in that since I just heard that the last man I went out with is suddenly in love with someone else. Not that he was ever in love with me, there wasn’t any of that, but maybe if I’d played my cards right he would have been? I guess we’ll never know. Either way, I hope she loves him back because he’s an alright guy, and there’s nothing worse than loving someone that doesn’t love you in return. Except maybe VD.

Anyway, since I’m alone again this year, I wondered if I should do something different. Maybe start my own Valentine’s Day tradition that has nothing to do with romance, cheap presents, or venereal disease. It should be something healthy, something that keeps me away from the Lifetime movies and doesn’t cause my temper to flare up.

That immediately got rid of the “go out on the town with other single friends” idea. Inevitably, someone always ends up crying and blowing their nose on someone else’s sparkly tube top in the bathroom after they got groped on the dance floor by a guy that kind of looked like their ex, but seemed so much nicer at first. Or, as proof of our independence from all things love and male, we’d end up making out with each other, groping each other, taking pictures and then deeply regretting it the next day when they showed up on some bitch’s Facebook as revenge for when so-in-so just happened to mention that you made out with her boyfriend seven years ago. Nope, not a good idea.

Some other things that were quickly discarded were: going to the gym, making an “I’m not bitter” video blog, and hanging out with high school age children and making prank calls. In the end, though, I just decided to keep it simple:

Put on Phil Collins, take a muscle relaxer and masturbate. My hand won’t feel like it’s attached to my body, therefore, it’ll seem like it belongs to someone else.

“And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord...”