Heart attack

Up with romance! Down with Valentine's Day!

by Stephen Heuser

A few years ago, when I was living in a large city very far from everyone I knew, a strange thing happened on my commute home. I noticed a woman rising out of the subway escalator with a big bouquet of flowers. And another. And another. Women with flowers were being burped onto the sidewalk every few seconds.

For a while I was perplexed. I actually wondered if there had been a flower sale in the train station.

Then suddenly, alone in this strange city, I realized what was going on. It was like one of those moments in a book about war, or about growing up poor in Ireland, where at the end of a particularly bleak episode the narrator writes, poignantly: "I looked at the calendar. It was Christmas Day." With no one to remind me, I hadn't hit on the obvious reason all those people -- people with someone in their lives -- would be carrying bouquets. It was Valentine's Day.

It was the best Valentine's Day of my life.

---

Today it seems almost churlish to dislike Valentine's Day. Increasingly, scientists tell us that the feeling we mistake for love is mostly an accident of biology, a chemical imbalance triggered by certain events in the mammalian mating process. A news magazine just published an article explaining that men are more likely to respond with "love" to women who exhibit a waist-to-hip ratio between 0.6 and 0.7. Amid all this, a holiday that purports to celebrate romance -- the one aspect of human mating that can't be calibrated -- seems optimistic and sweetly humane.

It's not. Science may be driving nails into the coffin of romance, but it's Valentine's Day that put the lid on it in the first place. If we really want romance in our lives, we shouldn't celebrate Valentine's Day. We should abolish it.

Don't get me wrong. We shouldn't abolish Valentine's Day just because it is sappy. We shouldn't abolish it just because it has been ruthlessly exploited by card companies and drugstores as the most lucrative national sales event next to Christmas. We shouldn't even abolish it just because last year at this time, after our vacation plans collapsed, we spent almost a full day on the telephone, calling restaurant after restaurant, trying desperately to book a table until finally the host at one romantic little nook said he had an opening for 8 p.m. -- the night before. (Yes, I took it.) The reason we should abolish Valentine's Day is because it has the whole idea of love terribly, discouragingly wrong.

When you are eight years old Valentine's Day makes sense. For one thing, it involves getting candy, a prospect that, when you are eight, could make Arbor Day seem exciting. And there is that frisson of pre-adolescent stimulation you get from giving little Austin or Beth the special valentine that is fully two millimeters larger than the valentines you're giving every other kid in the class.

But once you become an adult, Valentine's Day makes no sense at all. The thing it celebrates -- love -- is one of the few aspects of anyone's life that isn't dictated by the calendar. Your school, your job, your church, your parole arrangement: all of those are beholden to schedules. Not love. It is not given to mortal men to control the DayTimer of the heart.

(There are exceptions, of course. I have a close friend who finished an important project in law school, made a list of three people he wanted to date, asked out the one at the top of the list, and married her three years later. This is a guy who could probably time his relationships so that his girlfriend would experience chocolate cravings, right on the nose, every February 14.)

Ever wonder why sports are so popular on TV? It's not just the competition. A game is the only entertainment we have left that's not completely pre-scripted, where the outcome is genuinely in doubt, where the action is spontaneous. Love is the same way. Chemical or not, love happens on its own terms. Every great passion, every goofy little crush, obeys its own schedule. Romance dictated by the calendar resembles genuine romance in the same way that professional wrestling resembles a sport. The gestures are there, but only children mistake it for the real thing.

---

The case against Valentine's Day isn't strictly philosophical. In purely personal terms, forced romance can be a catastrophe. Most couples I know go out to a restaurant on romantic occasions, and restaurants are at their absolute worst on Valentine's Day. Every kitchen is pressed to its limit, every staff is harried; elbow room is at a minimum and noise is at a peak. Imagine you're in a fledgling relationship -- girl wondering where do I stand?, boy wondering why don't the Celts just trade Antoine Walker and get someone who can shoot the three? -- and you subject this delicate, promising connection to a high-pressure evening the highlight of which is a burnt $18 piece of salmon served directly onto your pants. I'm surprised any couples survive February 14 at all. (You could say that the relationship that survives Valentine's Day can survive anything, but I'm not sure that's supposed to be the idea.)

Once you're past that point, once you're in a serious relationship, some of the uncertainty dissipates. But Valentine's Day is then even more pointlessly hazardous. Because -- ask your married friends -- commitment does not erase obligation. (If it did, all those DeBeers diamond billboards wouldn't pop up in the subway every February.) You've replaced the hellish, ritualized experience of dating with something better, something lasting, something that, if it works, may turn out to be the most special and distinctive thing that ever happens to you. And every February 14, you're expected to subordinate the uniqueness of this experience to another ritual of dorky American groupthink.

The fundamental problem with Valentine's Day is that "romantic holiday" is an oxymoron. A holiday is a thing that serves to unite us, to bring the nation together in patriotic frenzy or religious contemplation or proud civic remembrance accompanied by cold beer and tasty barbecued meats. A holiday reminds us that we are all bound together in a vast, interwoven society, and that for all our differences, we have some things in common.

This is not the case with love. Love is a retreat, a refuge from all those awful people with whom you're supposed to have something in common. The biologists may be doing their best to chip away at the notion, but a relationship is still deeply idiosyncratic and human. It is built on hip-to-waist ratio, maybe, but also on quirks and tastes and memories that only two people share. Valentine's Day takes those things -- the eccentricities, the cute little physical imperfections, the nonstandard sexual proclivities -- and reduces them to the kind of bland, chalky sentiment that can be written on a card and delivered by millions of men and carried, in lockstep, up millions of escalators every February 14.

Think of it this way: Valentine's Day is the romantic equivalent of doing the Wave. You might tolerate the Wave at a baseball game, but you sure as hell won't be doing it at your wedding.

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser[a]phx.com.