This Valentine's Day, like most of my last fifteen or sixteen Valentine's Days, I have a sweetheart. But that wasn't always the case. My first twenty-one years or so, no sweethearts. & the vast majority of the years in-between.
Since I met the woman who was ridiculous enough to marry me, I have had a de facto Valentine's sweetheart. But I've never really bought her candy or flowers, & most certainly not on Valentine's Day. The candy she would hate because she would think it would make her fat. The flowers she would hate because our cats would eat them & get sick. If Valentine's Day had a tradition of a loved one giving his sweetheart dried mango & baingan bharta, my wife would be all for it.
When I worked at a gas station, in my senior year of high school, it was a Mobil, I worked in the Mini-Mart, we had a small display at the front, a sort of cylinder really, in which rested, in a small amount of water, a few shabby roses. I don't think I worked at the Mobil during Valentine's Day, but those overpriced flowers were very popular on weekend nights when some half-assed swain stopped in for cigarettes & gas. Aha! he'd think. A rose! She'll like that! I wonder if some clever woman looked at this putz & said, Gas station flowers? Again?!?
Navigating the whole concept of a relationship was difficult for me most of my life. I preferred to ask, which, as you know, some women find off-putting. I'd ask to kiss them, & I'd ask if we were going out, if we were boyfriend/girlfriend, & if they preferred it to be exclusive. That last question, by the way, was more for them than for me. I was never the type who had offers pouring in.
Once I was in love with a girl & I remember we met during my workday after dating (or "dating") for a couple of weeks. We wandered around the outside of the Harry Ransom Center on the University Of Texas campus. I very uncomfortably asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend. She wasn't a talker & didn't exactly say no, but she also didn't say yes, which was what her silence meant. I felt like I had gone out on a limb & it broke & I fell like Wile E. Coyote down down down until all that was left of me was a little puff of smoke.
As was the custom in those days, I made her a mixed tape, which, because she was pretty hip, was full of songs she knew & liked. Her response to me about the tape was, "I feel like you're ruining for me songs that I have always loved." I should've known at that point that we didn't have much of a future.
What I'm trying to say is that I am & have always been a terrible sweetheart. I have disdained the holiday but have also never had much of an occasion to celebrate it, except these shows. I've done Valentine's Day shows forever on Self Help Radio. Thirteen in fourteen years, in fact. You can see the list here. Some of the themes have been a bit snarky - "jealousy" comes to mind - but "sweethearts" is sweet. Just be aware the person making this radio show has a terrible track record in this particular field.
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