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I am sleeping with a younger man. I could not have asked for anything more as a Valentine’s Day present. Romance to me is Mute and Muscular. However, I didn’t actually ask for anything from Saint Valentine. Simply because I do not believe in it. It has just never made sense to me. A day about great sex and eating chocolate? I call them “weekdays”. And, sometimes, “weekends”.
“I don’t have a date for February Fourteen,” my girl friend wailed to me.
“So what? You don’t have a date for February Thirteen either. Or fifteenth, for that matter.”
“Shut up. Just because you’re getting laid…”
I didn’t make sense to me. Pointing out the fact that she didn’t have a date had nothing to do with the reality that I was having sex. Every. Single. Day. I wasn’t trying to mock, aggravate or boast…Too much. I was simply trying to prove a point. Any correlation to my sex life was plain wrong. Just like how Valentine’s Day, actually, has nothing to do with sex, dating, romance or, even, love in the first place.

One of the biggest fights I have had with my parents was when I told them that I planned to get married in Las Vegas. I didn’t have a boyfriend, or even someone to sleep with, at the time. But that wasn’t the point. It sounded like the best idea ever to me and nothing, not even the lack of a Groom, was going to get in my way.
“Over my dead body,” my dad announced when I revealed that, at some stage of my life, I would get hitched in a Vegas chapel. Being that he is a staunch atheist, I did have to enquire as to whether he was forbidding my desire to marry a stranger and get coupons for an All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet or the fact that it would be officiated in God’s house. It turns out, both pissed him off in equal measure. He was standing up for good, old-fashioned romance.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“For fun?” I shrugged. I had already been through my Pog phase, I had tried to get on that Yo-Yo revival and mastering the art of consuming an entire bottle of scotch in one sitting was already a past time. I needed something new and exciting to do. “Plus, you know, I have absolutely no respect for the sanctity of marriage. A piece of paper is never going to define my love for someone any more than being sober would.”
“OK,” he relented. Possibly because he thought I was joking. Just like the time I arrived home from school and told him that I wanted to be a professional writer. “But please have the decency to call and let us know that you have destroyed your life.”
The man has been married for almost thirty years.

The younger man proposed to me over the Internet while I was drunk and eating chocolate. We had been sporadically sleeping together and somehow had discovered a mutual distain for traditional love and marketed romance. Post-coital conversation is never a good idea, is it? Anyhow, it made perfect sense to celebrate the conjoined philosophy by joining in Holy matrimony at a Casino. Other people could gamble while we beat the system.
“That is just an insult to the institution of marriage,” my boy friend told me. “It is supposed to be sacred and romantic.”
He is the same person who once yelled at me for calling bullshit on Valentine’s Day, for announcing that it would be more meaningful to do something sweet on Any Other Day Of The Year. I happened to have made my announcement in front of his girlfriend. I think his anger had more to do with the fact that I had the ability to stop the special treat of sex.
“If tradition is so important to you, do you mind telling me what you give your girlfriend on the most romantic day of the year?”

“Kisses and chocolate.”
“And what does she give you?”
“Anal Sex.”
If someone gave me a heart-shaped box of chocolates, I would feel more comfortable shoving them up my ass, so, really, we had something of sorts in common. An orchestrated gift is never going to define romance to me. The entire concept of Valentine’s Day, actually, could crawl up my ass for all I care. I have never told this to my boy friend. Out of fear that he would once again misinterpret me and try to give me a present.

People frequently confuse intimacy and romance. Intimacy is what leads to real love and, maybe, a real marriage. It is talking to someone, knowing them completely and acknowledging that just one day, whether for a saint or for a wedding, could never encapsulate the brilliance of what it is to have someone to love on all weekdays and weekends. Romance, however, is what we distract ourselves with while we are waiting for intimacy. Flowers, heart-shaped chocolates and teddy bears sinfully fill the gap. It isn’t real and the house will always win.

I have neither intimacy or romance in my life. But it doesn’t get me down. I am sleeping with a younger man. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Just because I have sex, doesn’t mean that I am happier, more complete or more desirable than anyone else. To think that either will define you is a misinterpretation. It is as stupid as thinking of anal sex as a gift. Many people go up and down like a Yo-Yo on February Fourteen because they don’t have a date or someone to sleep with. It doesn’t make sense to me. Because I am sad every day that I don’t have sex.