My So-called Sex Life
Number 5: February 14th
I've noticed that the two weeks before Valentine's Day invariably seem to bring with them a sudden upturn in the number of couples breaking up.
Perhaps we are honouring the festival's pagan origins as the day to choose a new mate for the spring, in which case it seems only fair to cast off the previous incumbent as part of the preparation. Or perhaps we are simply battling with the perennial question, "What's the least I can get away with spending this time around?", and arriving at the most financially sensible answer.
Whatever happens to me this Valentine's Day, I hope it won't be as depressing as last year. Two weeks after ending a long-term relationship (for more complex reasons than those expressed above - honest), I found myself playing the piano in a hotel lobby full of the most unpalatably smug couples suburban Oxfordshire could produce.
Unable to take my break until the last canoodling pair had gone up to dinner - he wearing enough jewellery to sink a cruise-ship, she having decided to use up her 'Year's Worth of Cosmetics' Valentine's gift in one glorious night of Rocky Horror-style indecency - I resorted to a medley of favourites such as Food, Glorious Food, Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah, and finally Who Ate All the Pies. Eventually it worked. You play an hour and a half of love songs and they sit there with not a thought of slinking away to their room, but five minutes of songs about food and they're scampering off to the hotel restaurant like kids in a sweetshop.
Two years ago was even worse. For the first time since the age of seven, when I was assiduously courting beautiful Cynthia Young, I sent an anonymous card. I haven't spoken to the girl since, nor she to me; but then she hardly spoke to me before that either, so I shouldn't be surprised.
She knew it was me, though. To my lasting embarrassment, the card included an attempt at poetry. I am relieved to tell you that the content of this literary adventure escapes me entirely - my brain is humanely trying to protect me from the humiliation, I suppose - but I think this reconstruction passably evokes the tone of the piece.
It seems to be the time of year to overcome my halting fear. I hope that I won't rock the boat, by sending you this little note. I think you're great, as you must know. And there's no length I will not go. To see if I can make you think. It can't hurt to go for a drink.
This year, I hope things might be rather different, since things have just got a little more intimate with a friend I'd been flirting with for about six months (Lothario that I am). I've been wondering whether the situation demands some sort of material offering. A pen, it occurred to me, is a useful everyday object, something one can never too many of; it's a nice present without being prematurely soppy, and it's durable, which after all is a pretty integral part of the symbolism if you're trying to demonstrate the constancy of your affection.
"Oh, darling! A new fountain pen! That would be lovely...I never got round to replacing the one I dropped behind the washing-machine trying to fish out a renegade sock..."
Actually, babe, I got you a black Biro. It's really much better really; no need for all that mucking around with cartridges and smudges and nib-moulding and all the rest of it.
"No. Would you like me to go over a few other kinds of hassle I think I may be able to do without? Several spring to mind."
And that's how people end up getting spontaneously treated to five-course meals with champagne cocktail apéritifs.
Still, it doesn't have to be like that. While it may not be better to give than to receive, it is definitely better to give than not to receive. Besides, if you turn up with the more expensive present, you'll probably end up with some sort of compensation that may well turn out to be preferable.
Like, er, poetry.
12th Feb 2004