On The Upcoming Holiday

On a plane once, I had to choose between watching this movie or staring at the seat in front of me for three hours. The seat in front of me was green. Very, very green.

For God’s sake, quit calling it Singles Awareness Day, would you?

Yes, I get it – Valentine’s Day is a holiday for people in relationships, and if you aren’t in one you can’t celebrate. That’s a damn shame, yes, but it’s no reason to get all butthurt and start changing the name of the holiday. Do you call Hanukkah Gentile Awareness Week?

It’s not even that it’s especially rude or offensive to people who are celebrating Valentine’s Day, because from what I’ve seen, couples on Valentine’s Day are too busy affirming the success of their relationship to notice the singles on the sideline trying to make everyone have less fun.

No, it’s more of a recommendation for your own good: People who go around bemoaning Valentine’s Day as Singles Awareness Day give the vibe that they get bitter and jaded when they see other people in love, which, as far as personality traits go, is not especially attractive.

So if you want to be celebrating Singles Awareness Day next year and the year after, by all means, go ahead and call it that.

What is this single person doing on Valentine’s Day? I’m getting a hotel room, and I’ll tell you why.

No, before you even start, this isn’t going to turn into a masturbation joke. If the schizophrenic hobo who has taken up residence under the tree in the vacant lot across the street from our house has taught me anything, it’s that masturbation, like true love, can happen anytime and anywhere, such as under the tree in the vacant lot across the street from our house, within the direct line of sight of our living room window. If he doesn’t need a hotel room, neither do I.

Okay, I guess that kind of turned into a masturbation joke anyway. Also, I managed to compare true love to a hobo masturbating – try to keep that image out of your head at dinner tomorrow, lovebirds.

Where was I? Oh, right. Hotel room.

I’m getting a hotel room because all three of my roommates have girlfriends, all three of them will be spending Valentine’s Day at our thin-walled house, and, at the risk of making yet another dirty joke in a blog my parents and third grade teacher read, that’s not a symphony I want to listen to.*

*If any of my roommates’ parents are reading this, I apologize for the baseless assumption I made about your son. I’m probably way off base, and he and his girlfriend are going to go read the Bible to blind elderly people in a retirement home or something.

Of course, making a hotel reservation this soon before Valentine’s Day would probably be impossible. Doing anything on Valentine’s Day is impossible – restaurants are jam packed, movies are sold out, Castle is a mob scene… Yes, I suppose love does make the world go ‘round, but all the love happening at once brings it to a grinding halt.

None of my relationships have fallen on Valentine’s Day. I consider it a blessing, really, that my love life seems to exclusively operate in the spring, summer, and fall, because I’ve never had to try and throw together a romantic evening at the same time as everyone else is.

Well, I suppose this isn’t entirely true. The Ex Girlfriend and I started officially dating on Valentine’s Day, but at that point it was too late for me to be expected to pull a romantic evening out of my ass.

The following year, of course, the pressure would have been on, because we’d be celebrating our anniversary and Valentine’s Day at the same time, not to mention her birthday, which was the day before Valentine’s Day. To be honest, I was pretty happy with that arrangement – as a boyfriend, all the major dates that I had to plan for and remember were within the same 48-hour period.

One of the many great things about us breaking up when we did, though, was that it spared me having to come up with The Most Romantic 48 Hours Of All Time. When you’re celebrating just a birthday or just an anniversary or just Valentine’s Day you can conceivably squeak by with some cheap roses, a dinner at Olive Garden, and maybe one of those plaques where you name a star after the girl, if you’re feeling really romantic.*

*If there’s intelligent life out there, I sure hope they don’t have lovestruck douchebags pointing a telescope around the sky, picking stars they like, and naming them after their girlfriends, because that puts us in danger of spending the rest of our lives living in the Leslie System.

When all of those events fall on the same weekend, though, you’ve got to be the Jack Bauer of love. You can’t just name a star after the girl at that point; you actually have to take her there, and when you arrive there need to be sentient beings with champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries waiting for you.

All told, that would’ve been a lot of time and energy for me to invest in somebody whose favorite show was Friends.

So yes, from a lazy man’s standpoint my Valentine’s Day will be awesome, but the main reason why I won’t be bitter on Valentine’s Day, even when I’m listening to all three of my roommates making whale music is this:

If those three, who I know for a fact drink beer on the toilet, have been able to find their blue heaven, there is absolutely nothing standing in the way of me or anyone else who doesn’t consume alcohol during a bowel movement.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, get a divorce, Christina Hendricks. And while you’re at it, get rid of that restraining order, too. I think we can make this thing work.

Truman Capps would like to thank his roommates for providing him so much material, and also remind them that he loves them.