Hands sweating, head racing, I paced around the room. My feet weren’t too keen on the idea of me staying still, and apparently neither was my wrist; I kept fidgeting around to check what time it was. She would be there any minute. I groomed myself a bit. This was a stupid idea. I can’t believe I actually thought this would be a good idea. My friend was staring at me, chatting. He could tell I was nervous; he didn’t know the half of it. All these grandiose ideas run through my head, and this was the first time I had the chance to act on one of them. I had never been in this position before, certainly not on Valentine’s Day. Actually, I had never really had the chance to do much of anything on Valentine’s Day before. The whole experience was strange and foreign. It was supposed to feel exciting. It was supposed to feel magical. I felt like throwing up.
It wasn’t that it hadn’t been well thought out. We had been planning for weeks, and every piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. My friend, the songwriter, came up with an instrumental and emailed it to me. In the dark of night, as my girlfriend lay sleeping, I would toil over lyrics, emailing rewrites and thinking of days to practice. I talked another friend into hovering in the hallway until my girlfriend arrived so that, the minute my girl was in the room, she could guard the door from anyone else. We kicked everybody else out of the office, we tuned the guitar, and all that was left to do was…wait.
After an eternity of fifteen minutes, I saw my girlfriend through the window. She was turning the corner, and my heart had taken up temporary residence in my throat. Okay, now or never. She opened the door to my friend, still sitting with his guitar, and me, pretending to be relaxed. I stood up, barely breathing, and asked her to sit down. My thoughts were all a blur, and the only thing I remember saying after that was “no laughing, okay?” She agreed to those terms. I nodded at my friend and he began to play. I don’t know how my blank mind managed to come up with all the words, but it did. I looked into her eyes the entire time. When we finished, my heart actually stopped. I asked what she thought of it. She quietly stood up, walked towards me, and shoved me against the wall, kissing me. My friend, the most respectful straight boy ever, politely excused himself and left us alone. I suppose she liked it.
I have been very vocal about my disdain for Valentine’s Day. I don’t like Valentine’s Day. I don’t believe in using one day to show all the love you didn’t show any other day of the year, and I don’t believe that love cost money (like Jennifer Lopez and old school movies, my love don’t cost a thing). Still, do not get it twisted. This does not mean that I do not appreciate love. In fact, quite the opposite is true. From the moment I sat in a bedroom and nearly cried because I was too afraid to force those three little words out, I have known the truly transformative power of love and I have been in awe of it. I value it. I cherish it. I celebrate it. It can hurt like nothing else, and it can cripple the mighty to weakness and silence, but it can also bring out the most beautiful things in humanity. It can turn the cynic into the faithful, the broken into the whole. It can mean finding your other half. It can mean finding your better half. I like to think it means finding the person who was whole before you so that you can spend your days being whole together. I hate Valentine’s Day because why should you put all that power, all that wonder, all that gladness into one day? Love, true love, cannot be contained by a day. It is for every day, for every person, male, female, both, neither, and anything in between and beyond. Love simply is.
A fire drill. It was nine something at night and it was cold and it was Valentine’s Day and it was a fire drill. Of all the stupid ideas the university could have had, this seemed like the stupidest. First of all, who the hell was in the University Center at this time of night besides people working out and us? This wasn’t exactly the prime time to test the most people on their ability to file down stairs quickly and orderly. Second, we were in the middle of a build. The show was in a week, we had been there for hours, and the set was not yet done. The last thing we needed was a major interruption. We probably would’ve stayed and worked through an actual fire if it meant getting this done at a reasonable hour. Apparently reason had left a long time ago.
We all stood outside in the brightly lit walkway as we watched the firemen go to inspect the building. I shivered to the point of my teeth chattering. I had this brilliant idea in my head that I would go outside and conveniently “forget” my jacket (which was still in the space) so that I would be chilly. Seeing my dilemma, the boy I liked at the time would come over and share his jacket with me. It was the only thing to do, really. What I happened planned on is him paying me as little attention as he had all night. While we were working on the set, it made sense; he was, after all, the carpenter. Away from all that, however, things had to be different. Surely he would notice that he had not really spoken to the girl he had been flirting with for months and rectify the situation with a simple “hello” or a “Happy Valentine’s Day”. I mean, we weren’t exactly dating, but we were…something. Well, I thought we were something. Apparently he was just a carpenter and I was just cold.
The drill was taking longer than expected and people were getting anxious. My cast was not a fan of building in the first place, let alone having to wait outside for permission to do so. They took in all in stride, their annoyance coming out as goofiness instead. I watched them dancing about and generally adding to the silliness of the situation. I was proud of them, proud to be their director. Somewhere in all that pride, I missed him come up next to me to say hello. I told him hello back. Once pleasantries were exchanged, he noticed my inability to keep still. Like a gentleman, he removed his coat and draped it around me. It was slightly too big and very warm, although not as warm as my blushing ears. He lingered on my shoulders as he helped me put it on and stayed close by until we were permitted to go back into the building. I didn’t have a mirror, but my friends later assured me I was grinning from ear to ear.
People look at homosexuality and bisexuality and pansexuality and try to make it all about sex. Sure, of course, sex has a place in one’s sexual orientation (duh), but it’s not just about that. If that’s all it was, then the sex would be the part that’s still illegal and not the marriage. In the United States, you have the ability and right to sleep with anyone willing and capable of giving consent, but you don’t have the right to marry anyone following that same criteria. You don’t have the right to visit that person in any hospital, be assumed legally responsible as next of kin, even to easily divorce if you get married in one of the states that WILL let you get married. It’s not just about the sex, because the thing that has been made illegal, the thing that we are fighting for, is the love. Meanwhile, the truth is that, regardless of the sex/genders of the people involved, love looks the same. It may not share the same details, but the frame stays the same and hasn’t changed. At this point, if love isn’t going to change, then it looks like our only choice is to change our world.
Happy Valentine’s Day. You are loved.
& you are toooooo.
Happy Late Valentines Day! Love this!