Valentine's Day is here again and, as usual, I'm bitter.
Katr's in town for work and she leaves on Valentine's Day and this is the last I will see of my love for a month, but because of the nasty cold I contracted while she was here, I suspect that there will be far more hanky than panky. Nothing says "Come hither" like a sexy negligée and a wet, hacking cough. My one consolation is that at least my illness will make it a little easier for her to leave me, because when I am sick, I am also whiny like a man.
It must said that, single or no, I've always hated the Valentine's Day. In elementary school, the agony and ecstasy of card-sending - in junior high, the drama of the carnation-gram - in high school, the tragic searing of the tongue with too many cinnamon hearts - in university, the dreaded Goldschlager hangover. For years, my roommate Jesk and I had a Bitter Single Girl's Valentine's Day ritual where she would buy a flat of Valentine's cupcakes at the Loblaw's and I would rent a tender, heart-warming film from the Blockbuster, like Terminator 2. Then we would order pizza, eat cupcakes and enjoy the bloodshed. Those were good times.
Anyway - I've been tagged again by the lovely Winter to tell you 5 Things You Don't Know About Me (the same Winter tagged me to share 5 Weird Things awhile back) and I thought that with Valentine's Day shitting cinnamon hearts and shiny red decorations upon us, I'd like to share a Special Embarassing Lurve Edition 5 Things with you all. I've always been freakish and secretive about love, so coming up with these took a really long time. In no particular order, here they are.
1. Before I met Katr, my longest relationship was with a boy named Daniel. I fell in love with him on the first day of kindergarten, when he wouldn't stop crying after his mom left. "Yep," I said to myself as the tears rained down on his Cookie Monster sweatshirt, "that sissy boy is MINE." We used to play Star Wars at recess together - he was Luke and I was Leia. We were together until Grade 4, when I gave him an ultimatum - his video games or ME. It was hard being single again after all that time, but it wasn't long before I stepped into the arms of my next love, Yorgo. Coincidentally, Yorgo often played Han Solo in our Star Wars recess games and he and I took up together around the same time Return of the Jedi came out and we all found out about Luke and Leia being twins. Clearly, Daniel and I weren't meant to be. Plus, Yorgo bought better stuffed toys. Score!
2. I mentioned the queer youth crush I had on Buliana Bivato in the previous post, but I did not mention the root causes of this crush, namely that she was a great singer, she was taller than me (a rarity) and that at some Fringe or Teen Fest party, she kissed me on the mouth. Looking back, it was not in any way a hot n' heavy liplock - it was closer to the hello or goodbye peck you give your close friends, if you have kissy friends. Any lingering I perceived was no doubt due to teen drunkeness. But my knees giving out after she walked away? THAT was teen lust. I was wearing a pink sweater. I turned the same colour as the sweater. I may have slept with the sweater on that night but I confirm nothing.
3. Once - and I am not proud of this, except that I AM kind of proud of it - I shouted out my own name in a . . . climactic moment. I was not alone at the time. Now, in my defense, I was with someone I had no intention of ever seeing again and in my mind, the whole point of getting it on that night was to make myself feel better. Still . . . not my classiest moment. Nor were the subsequent moments when I couldn't stop laughing.
4. Deeply fed up with a years-long bout of unrequited love, I decided for awhile to have an imaginary girlfriend. Not the "I totally have a girlfriend! Ooh, you wouldn't know her, she goes to another school" kind. The "you don't measure up to my imaginary girlfriend" kind. Her name was Mel. She was a creampuff and she had a chin piercing (which is funny to me - why a chin piercing??). She was also very handy around the house. After a few weeks, I shyly and reluctantly told my therapist about Mel and she was THRILLED that I had found love - IN MY MIND. "She shows up on time! She returns your calls! She's fat - and she LOVES it!" Mel and I had a blissful few months together and she helped me through a very rough patch. Thanks, Mel!
5. Starting in high school, I kept a journal that was SUPPOSED to be about theatre projects, but which quickly devolved into what can only be described as a WANK repository. Oh my god, people. The WANKERY of this thing. I am surprised that my laptop has not collapsed under the weight of all the (often lurve-related) angst. I suppose you could argue that, because I generally write comedy, the wank had to end up SOMEwhere. And despite it's EXTREME embarassingness, I cannot bring myself to delete it. All of its longing and yearning and self-hatred and screaming blood metaphors and word by word accounts of dramatic conversations were important to me at some point - also, it's a great file to poke around in when I'm looking for a good title. My latest play, Kiss With Your Teeth, takes its title from the following Wank Journal line: "You know it's time to stop smiling when you start to kiss with your teeth."
The problem with the Wank Journal is that there are no dates and generally no identifiable names or places, in case the WJ ever fell in the wrong (i.e., anyone else's) hands. So while I like the title of the play, I really have no idea where that line came from. Probably best not to.
So there you have it - 5 Embarassing Lurve Things About Me. If you'd like to celebrate Valentine's Day by mocking your past love-capades on your own blog, let me know! For Katr leaves me tomorrow afternoon and I will need to be distracted and amused come nightfall. Perhaps I'd better pick up some of those lesbian books you all recommended. And some Kleenex.
