Saturday, February 13, 2010

I Ask You...

What would Valentine's Day be without another installment of the adventures of Advo and She-Who-Visits?

Ahh, Valentine's Day. I must just be one of those guys who doesn't have a feel for the day. It always just seems to me like such a made-up Hallmark holiday. Forced romance - now there's a fetish for you! There's such an outsized expectation for such little actual payoff. Plus, there's never anything in it for me except downside. On the one hand, expectation is sky-high. Anticipation leaps from romantic prospect like a nasty jolt from a TENS unit to the sincere offering of effort. If I succeed, I've managed only to do what's expected, whereas the dial-turned zap of failure looms large, always ready to electrocute everything.

Wait a second. I sound like I'm enjoying this a bit, don't I?

Last year I totally missed She's boat when it came to Valentine's Day. I remember the horrible feeling when she called and asked me where her flowers were. It literally took me months to paw dig myself out of the doghouse. I vowed I'd change things this year.

So I started early as I related on a previous post and began sending her store bought Valentine's cards which I personalized and customized. Sometimes I'd paste some song lyrics into the card. On others I would find images of places we'd been or restaurants we'd eaten at and I'd add them. I had fun and some of the cards were really pretty well done. So I sent them off in batches with the total card count coming in close to the day of the month upon which this wretched holiday falls.

I loved making She her cards. I felt the whole process bring me closer to her every time I did one of my little arts and crafts offerings. I pasted an image of a death-by-super-chocolate souffle we'd shared at Capsuto Frères with a description about its "precarious rising" and admonished her to refrain from peanut gallery comments about other such similar "risings". I glued in Patti Smith lyrics about love's angelic, lustful disguise. I made lots of x's and o's.

Then I sent her flowers on Thursday, just to make sure she got them. Red roses, circus roses (red with yellow and orange tips), and yellow callas. My message was about how flowers were fleeting, furiously fun, and completely evanescent. Beautiful, like our time together.

Thursday I was home, cramming more law into a brain that feels it is leaking the Rule Against Perpetuities, Promissory Estoppel, and the Homestead Exemption from every orifice of my tired, tired body. She wrote me a nice email in which she proclaimed the flowers just lovely, but She allowed as to how she liked the cards much better than the flowers. Soooo much effort She praised. "I just loved them!"

"I love pleasing my Valentine", I replied

"Then you should have sent a plant", she answered

Oh, She, you really love me. You met me halfway!

3 comments:

Her Majesty's Plaything said...

Dear Advo:

Happy Valentines Day you mad romantic you! ;-)

Love

HMP

Aarkey said...

Brilliant...

And I'm stealing that next year :)

ovkilyin?

advochasty said...

HMP & Aarkey -

Ah we few, we happy few, we band of kinky brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my kinky brother!

Happy V-day boys! Happy V-day!!