Black Valentines

When I was in my early twenties, I used to celebrate Valentine’s Day by sending out my annual “Black Valentines” messages to a select group of like-minded individuals.

At the time, this was more about protesting too much. You know the story–I was single, and I hated the pressure of V-Day, so I would kick against it and act like I didn’t care that I didn’t have a hand to hold.

However, now that I am many, many years into being happily in love, I can say without a hint of that hypocrisy that I still think Valentine’s Day is stupid. If you love someone you show them all year, you don’t just put on a special show for birthdays and Hallmark holidays. Now, if you want to take an excuse to celebrate, go nuts–I’ve got no problem with that. Just don’t expect me to do it any more today than any other day.

Alternatively, you may want to celebrate Horny Werewolf Day, as Warren Ellis points out:

Happy Valentine’s Day to all. And to those who hate the day, I say this: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

Anyway, for your amusement, I present the text of my 1995 “Black Valentine” message. (Yes. I am a pack rat. I keep everything.)

An anthology of appropriate verse.

By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying-
One of you is lying.
–Dorothy Parker

I drink to our ruined house,
to the dolor of my life,
to our loneliness together;
and to you I raise my glass,
to lying lips that have betrayed us,
to dead-cold, pitiless eyes,
and to the hard realities:
that the world is brutal and coarse,
that God in fact has not saved us.
–Anna Akhnatova

SOMEBODY’S SONG
This is what I vow:
He shall have my heart to keep,
Sweetly will we stir and sleep,
All the years, as now.
Swift the measured sands may run,
Love like this is never done,
He and I are welded one;
This is what I vow.

This is what I pray:
Keep him by me tenderly,
Keep him sweet in pride of me,
Ever and a day.
Keep me from the old distress;
Let me, for our happiness,
Be the one to love the less.
This is what I pray.

This is what I know:
Lovers’ oaths are thin as rain,
Love’s a harbinger of pain;
Would it were not so!
Ever is my heart a-thirst,
Ever is my love accurst;
He is neither last nor first.
This is what I know.
–Dorothy Parker

Egarement
Je veux vous avouer une chose
un peu risible, un peu morose
Que je désire:
Que vous mourites comme une rose
qui pleure ses pétales roses:
Sa vie expire,
Très douce, très pure, à peine éclose
Que vous mourûtes dans une narcose,
Que mon amour en fût la cause.
Je vous ai raconté cette chose,
car je veux rire…
Quoi, vous pleurez, j’en suis la cause?

Words of Wisdom

“Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering she looks like a haddock”-John Barrymore

“Love is the most subtle form of self-interest”-Holbrook Jackson

“A temporary insanity curable by marriage”-Ambrose Bierce

“Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another”-H. L. Mencken

“Love is two minutes fifty-two seconds of squishing noises. It shows your mind isn’t clicking right.”-John Lydon

“Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.”-John Ciardi

“Boy Meets Girl, So What?”-Bertolt Brecht