Paul J. Williams
Special Contributor
Oh, the beauty of love! And oh, the joy of celebrating love every February 14! Oh, what bliss to give and receive love letters on Valentine’s Day!
Oh, give me a break.
I’ve taken the liberty of doing a little research on our friend, St. Valentine. On Feb. 14, 269 A.D., he was beheaded for refusing to give up Christianity. Allegedly, he left a note for the jailer’s daughter, of whom he had grown fond, and signed it “from your Valentine.”
I see. And from this LOVELY story, we have our present-day celebration.
This must be why I’m not too fond of Valentine’s Day!
I think my ambivalence towards Valentine’s Day goes back to Mrs. Dawson’s second grade class at Jackson-Keller Elementary School in San Antonio. It was there that I first experienced the “double edge” of this holiday.
I remember how we each got to decorate a white paper sack with hearts and Cupids and red crayons. These creations, each with our names boldly on the front, would then hang from the chalk tray on the blackboard at the front of the class. On Valentine’s Day, they would be filled with tiny little valentines that had been bought for 89 cents a box at the drugstore.
Or so I thought.
When it came time to empty the throngs of cards from our sacks, I watched as each of the cute little girls in class to whom I had given a valentine went through 25 cards! I anxiously grabbed my tastefully decorated sack, (I’ve always had a flair), and emptied onto my desk three cards — one from the teacher, one from the librarian (who was impressed with my reading skills) and one from the girl who always kicked me during recess.
I felt like Charlie Brown after his trick-or-treating fiasco. As the other kids are prizing their candy treasures at each house, Charlie merely announces, “I got a rock.”
This was also my first recollection of using the word “bitter.”
For years, I dreaded those classroom Valentine parties. Then I got to high school and got to go to my first Valentine’s banquet, at church — no less!
Oh good! Finally I’ll get to enjoy this holiday of lovers in my own adolescent way.
Yes, well.
I seem to remember that this was the night that my date told me what a fun guy I was and how I was just like a brother to her.
“I got a rock.”
Fast-forward to college. I’ve come to the realization that I’m gay. Oh good! I can start all over with this Valentine’s Day mess from “the other side of the fence.”
Allow me to inform you that the grass is the same color.
And so, I’ve finally learned to enjoy Valentine’s Day as the celebration of love between people that it has always been — maybe not a smoochy, kissy kind of love, but love between friends.
Now I exchange flowers and/or chocolates with my other single, gay friends. Then we all laugh about why we give such fattening things to someone we’re supposed to care about, and we joke about the fact that this holiday of giving something to your lover can be abbreviated as V.D.!
I don’t know what was in that letter that St. Valentine left for the jailer’s daughter. But I’ll bet her white paper sack wasn’t as pretty as mine.
Happy V. D.!