Valencunt's Day

So some priest called Valentine helped prisoners marry against the rule of an Emperor and happened to be beaten and beheaded by the Roman empire or around the day that birds seem to pair. Or whatever. There are plenty of stories concerning the origins of Valentine’s day, revolving around three, separate, martyred guys called Valentine. Shrug.

Whatever amazingly coincidental set of events that led to a small ripple through eternity doesn’t bother me – it’s just a Saint’s day. A mark of history. What bothers me is when these tiny ripples are seized upon by private power and harmonically resonated until they’re a money-spinning tidal wave of near-meaningless shite. And what really makes me want to kill everybody ever, is when people buy into it. When they lap it up like starving puppies suckling a subtly toxic, surrogate bitch. Yep. I hate Valencunts.

What’s a Valencunt? Well, have you spent a good deal of time planning your Valentine’s day celebration? Working on reservations at that restaurant, putting cards in the mail, buying the gift, planning the proposal? Looking forward to that special day, when you and your loved one will swoon and drool over each other, in a setting of romance and dreams? Then you’re a Valencunt.

Or more succinctly – a cunt.

I don’t give one single, solitary, jizz-borne spermatozoa that you spent hours online in a virtual auction for tickets to Rome or Paris or the Ice Hotel in Sweden, selling three kidneys and the left side of your face just so you could make sure your Valentine’s day pre-fuck-fest was so stuffed with candy-floss your partner could pass for diabetic. Why did you compete? What’s so special about February the 14th? Apart from the fact that everything’s so much more expensive and crowded and booked since 1843?

Aside from the coincidental ‘err, it’s an actual anniversary/birthday’, let’s look at the typical responses:

1. The fact we got tickets to Richard Branson’s pay-as-you-fuck Gingerbread Hotel in Venice over everybody else means we won!

Competition is sadly rife amongst so many relationships. The continual looking over the shoulder and examining what other couples are up to, and the requirement that your own partnership should be doing bigger and better things. You’re more in love. Therefore you need to look it. What you succeed in doing is building your love into a self-serving propaganda machine that runs on envy. If you fucked off to a desert island – and I kinda hope you do – you’d find that your relationship wouldn’t last very long without the jealous public eye. You’ll have broken up before you starved to death.

2. The fact it’s such a chore to get seats at Madame Gastronomie’s Palace of Magic Beans on a day like Valentine's just shows how great our love is.

Love shouldn’t task you. It should be natural, free-flowing and immediately apparent without planned gestures or financial injection. If you couldn’t get the reservation, that doesn’t mean your love is any worse. Go someplace else if you must. And if it’s such a great place, why not book the fucking 15th?

3. Actually, I didn't task myself with over-booked venues, nor do I care what other people think of us. I simply phoned the Royal Philharmonic and paid them to camp outside her window so she'd awake to strains of Pacelbel’s Canon.

Gifts – modest, thoughtful gifts – are all well and good. Even on Valentine’s. But when gifts start becoming less about thought and more about materialism, then love starts to lose its focus and gets overtaken by something more primitive. Probably lust. It’s so lazy and uninspired to spend money on lavish presents. Oh, it’s fine to do that once in a while - everybody likes to be spoiled. But romance – the thing that Valentine’s is supposedly about – is nothing to do with that fact. Romance is about thought, deep thought, and the more thought in a gift the more special it is. Buying something so extravagant that it cannot fail to evoke oral sex is great, but it’s sadly ignoring all the individuality and connection in your relationship. Don’t buy your loved something that any other random pulled out of a hat might get them on the same day in the same manner and with the same stupid “I Love You” message attached with a bow. Do something really special, on a really special day. I don’t know what or when that is. Only you do - that’s the point.

4. Look, it’s only Valentine’s you feckless cynic. Why not do something nice?

I don’t necessarily have an issue with doing stuff on Valentine’s day. Why not? It’s a little spot of historical fluff that makes it nice to spend some time or thought on a significant other. What I have an issue with, is people who specifically select that day to concentrate their shows of affection. That’s not love. That’s some sort of contrived, boxed-up package that helps out people that haven’t a romantic bone in their body. Love is continual, creative and diffuse – not staged, predictable and concentrated on a day picked randomly by the history of mankind.

5. Fine, fine. We’ll cancel our plans! I think we can get a refund… Can we, darling? What? Ow! Fuck, she’s hit me now.

Specifically choosing not to do something on Valentine’s is also cuntish.

6. Right – so now I’m confused as to what to do on Valentine’s. Thanks, you total cunt.

Look, there is nothing you should or shouldn’t do on the day. It’s just a random day! If you do something nice, then call it serendipity and carry on. Just please, for the love of god, don’t let your relationship mill around with the penned sheep. Let’s not even consider the fact that you’re about to be utterly fucked over by your other half, but to subscribe your notions of ‘what makes a good relationship’ to the same ones as every other fucker out there just cheapens romance and deadens individuality.

So yes – think twice if you’ve planned your Valentine’s to be the most romantic venture this side of Shakespeare. Is it really? Is it really that romantic? Or is it just a contrived, complacent, uninspired, exploited bit of fuck-all?

Have a great Valencunts' day,