V-Day, hold the V

I know. Two posts in one day? Don't get used to it. Once I get sucked back into the time vacuum of academia, you won't be hearing from me this frequently.

Well, it's that time again. A lot of people who read this and know me (or hell, even if they don't), are probably expecting some embittered, irate rant about how Valentine's Day sucks and should be renamed Singles Awareness Day or die. Sorry to disappoint, but it's not happening this year. I go into this, my twenty-second V-Day without a V, rather ambivalent towards the whole thing. You see, in Paris, every day is Valentine's Day - or at least it seems like it - and no one makes too big a deal about buying a big bouquet of roses or a heart-shaped box of chocolates or the perfect greeting card or making any other outlandish gesture of affection on February 14. There are signs and posters in store windows saying things like "Do something special for your St. Valentin," and I even saw something of that nature in the basement of BHV - the mother of all department stores - in the hardware section implying that what he really wants for Valentine's Day is a new electric screwdriver. But what he really, really wants is that skimpy little red and black number in the window of DIM lingerie down the street. Same price, twice the fun.

My point is that, although they do recognize the holiday, it hasn't become another annual sacrifice to the consumer gods like Halloween or Easter. I mean, shit, even I hand out candy on Easter. But France has resisted somewhat to the call for sappy red and pink cards and those little saccharin hearts with words written on them. My main theory behind this is, like I said before, that here, V-Day is just another in a string of 365 days where expressing your love for someone doesn't need a reason or specific time. Come on, this is France. Making love is a national pastime, just after drinking wine and smoking yourself to death and cheating on your significant other. Well, there's no real order to it, but love is kind of like an instinct here. I don't know how they did it, but I've yet to meet a French man or woman that hasn't had some sort of torrid love affair or isn't in a long-term, committed relationship. Oh, I'm sure they exist. And I'm also sure they're ashamed of it and commiserate while downing a bottle of Bordeaux and lighting up a pack of Gaulois. I mean, really, what self-respecting Frenchie hasn't ever loved and doesn't know how? In a country that produces some of the most gorgeous people I've ever seen and speaks one of the sexiest languages around (although I'd also argue Spanish and Italian's case for that one), how can you not have been in love at some point in your life?

And so, Paris is constantly filled with lip-locking, cuddling, bordering-on-fornicating couples, none the least bit concerned with who sees them and what they may think of them. I once saw, in the jardin des Tuileries, a couple in their early forties, dressed for work and walking hand in hand stop to kiss in the middle of a row of trees. While making out, the man put his briefcase down to hold her with both hands. And they stayed like that for a good few minutes. They were probably both married to different people, as a lunchtime make-out session in the middle of a garden are what I'd assume a rarity in monotone married life, but still - you can't deny the romance in it. And that happens every day, all over the city. In parks, in movie theaters, on the street, in the metro, in a fucking bowling alley. No one has any shame when it comes to public displays of affection, it seems. Maybe it all goes back to when kings would parade around their mistresses?

But then again, it's private life on display, but you can't ask any questions about it. No, no. That would be entirely too presumptuous of you. But go ahead, keep playing tonsil hockey while I'm crammed up against the door behind you in the metro. No, really, I don't mind the noises and the sight of your tongues wrestling each other in a pool of saliva. Please, continue, by all means. I mean, really, it's fine to a certain degree, but once you start doing things that make me want to shield the eyes of children passing by, you should really just get a room or find some darkened alley or something. I hear the rue du chat qui pêche is quite lovely this time of year.

Tonight, instead of wearing black and getting blazingly drunk with my friends in protest of this commercialized excuse to tell someone you may or may not actually care about that you love them (not that I even could if I wanted to, since I'm pretty much the only single person I know here), I'm going to be productive. I'm going to translate those three pages I need to for Monday, make myself dinner, and try not to feel sad that I'm going on nearly a quarter of a century without a Valentine.