Golly gee, do I love Valentine’s Day!
Have you ever noticed how virgin and Valentine start with the same letter? What a delightful little coincidence of language. Suppose you’re trying to lose your v-card on V-Day (not to be confused with D-Day or V-J Day); should you send an e-card? Eh, wordplay isn’t quite the same as foreplay, except maybe for those English perverts.
This holiday has got to be the second-most commercially deranged in the Western world. Easter’s first. How exactly we ended up getting chocolate and marshmallow bunnies out of a religious holiday is a bit of a mystery to me.
Good old Valentine isn’t far behind, though. For those of you who neither know nor are capable of using Wikipedia, the dude was martyred—apparently for attempting to convert the emperor. Wow, that’s romantic. Nicholas Sparks could make a book about it. I bet girls would still cry.
More importantly, Valentine’s Day is also the absolute bane of male existence. The menstrual cycle doesn’t count since women aren’t exactly fans either (so I’m told, anyway). There’s really no win for the guys here. It’s a fantastic hassle, and the absolute best thing that can happen is you don’t manage to get yourself in trouble.
There aren’t really many safe positions for us heterosexual males to be in this time of year—not that I’m being deliberately hetero-centric, it’s just that our “normal” relationships have a special screwed-up component (be jealous).
One possible scenario is the guy dating several girls around this time of year. He has to get them all the appropriate crap, demonstrate that he put careful thought into each of their gifts and write or say the correct romantic things. That’s a whole lot of thinking for just one guy, you know. You might as well expect a Neanderthal to calculate the entropy of a black hole.
In the unlikely event that he plays his cards perfectly, the guy’s probably still only going to get to see one girl in sexy lingerie. Poor sap. Life is rough.
The guy in a committed monogamous relationship is just freaking screwed. There are precious few ways he can satisfy his girlfriend. (That’s what she said?) I’m not convinced any of them actually exist. His efforts to make it through Valentine’s Day are much like attempting to navigate through an asteroid field—Han Solo might be able to do it, but C-3PO’s odds sure as heck aren’t in his favor.
Some guys find themselves in slightly less committed relationships approaching mid-February, meaning they have to figure out what’s appropriate. Allow me to give you some insight on how this works:
“Am I expected to do something? Should I get flowers? No, that’d probably be too much. What about edible underwear?”
This fellow’s chances of survival aren’t too great either. The outcome is inevitably dichotomous—either he drives the girl away or he makes her swoon. In the latter case, she will turn out to be six-ways-from-Sunday crazy. Trust me.
What about the dude trying to woo a girl on Valentine’s Day? Seems like an opportunity for him, but he doesn’t realize he’s just hosing himself in the long-term. You see, if he does manage to get the girl’s attention, what he’ll ultimately have succeeded in doing is setting impossible standards to follow.
Girls haven’t caught on to the fact that most guys aren’t especially romantic unless they’re trying to obtain HappyTimes (can I trademark that?), and thus he will be expected to be that romantic all the time. Oh, and he has to outdo himself every anniversary. Pace yourself!
Never fear, my brave male compatriots, for I have a solution! We all know Valentine’s Day isn’t going to go away, at least not any time soon. We know that those annoying expectations will always be there. What we need to do is bring some balance to the equation.
Therefore, I propose a new holiday for men. It could even be called Men’s Day. We could do any number of obnoxiously typical male things—I’m open to suggestions—without getting stern disapproval from the fairer sex. In fact, they would even have to reward our behavior in some way (I don’t need any help with this one).
I’m scheduling this holiday for Feb. 30. I’ve chosen that date because I’m pretty sure it’s the only one which women will be open to. Mark your calendars!
Jeremy Walch is a Pratt junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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