Papa’s Basement 2-14-11-How I Got AIDS from a Turlet
This was going to be a big boy episode. I was going to discuss the recent events over in Egypt and the impact that Hosni Mubarak’s resignation will have on […]
I like to think of myself as a relatively normal person. (For those of you who read the site often, obviously that’s not the case, but play along.) I go to work. I pay my taxes. I don’t secretly wear ladies undergarments or believe I can speak with animals telepathically. But every year, a few days before Valentine’s Day, something in me snaps, and I follow a specific set of behaviors so ritualistically that even the Trinity Killer would let out a low whistle then mutter “holy shit” if he learned of them. They are as follows:
- Feb 10-12-Get into a big enough fight with the current significant other that we cease speaking to one another.
- Feb 14 (12am-2am)-Go to CVS to buy candy, cards and flowers for my mother.
- Feb 15-16-Gorge on Valentine’s Day candy and resume speaking to significant other.
That might all sound a little vague, so allow me to elaborate.
The first of my “rituals” is simple enough: No matter how casual or serious the relationship I’m currently in, I initiate an argument heated enough to cause the woman to cut off communication with me, then maintain the silence until after Valentine’s Day. If this were premeditated in any way whatsoever, it would be a stratagem of Machiavellian brilliance. I mean, you’d be saving money on flowers, candy and dinner, and the subsequent makeup sex would easily equal the quality of anything you’d be getting on Valentine’s Day. But it isn’t. I simply black out like a lycanthrope under a full moon then come to hours later, covered in gallons of metaphorical relationship blood and thinking “So..it begins.”
I’m horrible with deadlines, but I’m worse with guilt, which means every Valentine’s Day since my dad’s passing in 2001, I’ve taken over his job of making sure that my mom has had flowers, cards and candy to wake up to. Flowers, cards and candy that were invariably purchased mere hours before at the local CVS at a 300% markup. Hey, as long as they’re there on the coffee table come morning, she’s none the wiser. Until she reads this article. Well played, Papageorgiou. You goddamn simpleton.
If it hasn’t become abundantly clear to you by now, I hate Valentine’s Day. It’s an artificial holiday that drains my wallet and somehow puts so much subconscious pressure on me that I’d rather spend it away from a girl I like rather than disappoint her. But I do love chocolate. Especially chocolate that’s sold at a dramatic discount because it’s no longer in season.
Once a few days of me devouring Russell Stover chocolates by the heart-shaped boxful have passed and my Serotonin levels are sufficiently elevated enough from the four pounds of cocoa in my small intestine that I fear nothing, I extend the olive branch to the little lady and see if I’m welcome back. Typically I am and we laugh about the incident. Until the next fight, when it’s hurled in my face like a cup of urine lobbed at a prison guard by a death row inmate. Okay, time to wrap this up before I’ve written a small novel (or I shoot myself as the Oedipal underpinnings of my insanity become more apparent with every word I type). Happy Valentine’s Day.
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