february, the month you're supposed to be in love
Valentine's Day sucks for nearly everyone... Must it?
The locked heart / The Arts District // Las Vegas, Nevada /// November 2017
Valentine’s Day sucks for nearly everyone.
It sucks for single people for obvious reasons. It sucks for people who lost partners to death or divorce, for even more obvious reasons. And it even sucks for people in romantic relationships, pressured to perform relationshipping, or pressured to act like a Valentine’s-hater.
FUCK VALENTINE’S DAY, they seem compelled to shout into the social media ether.
YEAH! FUCK VALENTINE’S DAY HARRRRD! the algorithmic echo chamber replies.
We could ignore it, if drugstores and the entire advertising industry would give us a break. But they won’t, so. Pink and red and hearts and diamonds and champagne and chocolates are zeitgiestically inevitable come February-time. (Even in Bali!) Now, I am not categorically against any of these things (although I am not personally a fan of champagne. I prefer good old Martinelli’s apple cider, and I probably always will, so there).
I’d really rather Valentine’s Day didn’t suck for me. I’d prefer not approach mid-February, already a pisser of a month, with trepidation. I’d rather not hate it. I’d rather not act like I hate it.
I don’t think hating it will assuage my lonesomeness.
I’d much rather consider it a bit of cultural sugar that takes the edge off the bitter icy whisky armpit of February. Rather like an old fashioned.
I remember hearing that Valentine’s Day is a marketing gimmick made up by Hallmark, or the greeting card industry at large, or the chocolate mafia, or the champagne cartel, or something. Last year, I decided to look it up.
According to Snopes (which I clearly trust), the notion that Valentine’s-day-is-a-greeting-card-company-campaign comes directly from the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Which is to say, from the imagination of a screenwriter. (I thought Eternal Sunshine was one of my favorite films of all time, by the way, until I rewatched it recently. I then took it off my list. {I do actually have a list, and I did actually remove it.} The movie didn’t change, so I suppose I did. Or the past 20 years of film history and the golden age of streaming television has me expecting more? Or different? Or, better? I mean. I still loved a doomed romance with a flutter of hope, but… I remember being so incredibly moved. To be fair to Eternal Sunshine though, I did my rewatch while extremely depressed, so that could be at play.)
I used to feel like Clementine.
Maybe people calling her a manic pixie dream girl soured me on the whole thing. I like to think I’m less susceptible to public opinion than that, though.
I love what I love. Even if lots of people love it, but not because lots of people love it.
I think that’s what makes me a good critic. Probs could have made decent money that way, but. It just strikes me as such an ugly job. To make one’s living picking at other people’s art. Like a contractor who only knows how to demo. Just destruction. No balance.
Yes, I love what I love. As opposed to hipsters. Remember them? In the early 2000s (I could never get used to calling them the aughts), I lived in hipster-adjacent Greenpoint, Brooklyn, during the Reign of the Hipster. I didn’t understand them then. And I didn’t like them very much. I thought this was because they were the unpopular kids in school (that part’s fine) who grew up and formed their own club in order to exclude other people like they’d been excluded (that part’s less fine).
Who said there are two types of people in the world: the ones who don’t want you to have to go through what they went through, and the ones who go, I had to go through it, why shouldn’t you?
(My googling on this matter has been inconclusive.)
At any rate, after years of walking the almost-mile to the L train and back, and observing hipsters in their natural habitat of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, most especially while they played Dodgeball in McCarren Park in short-shorts and got giant to-go sippy cups of beer from that place on the corner, but also while they watched, nonplussed, as their dogs greeted other dogs with the kind of enthusiasm they reserve for… what? What do they reserve it for? … I figured out why they bothered me so much.
They bothered me so much because they defined themselves by what they did not like. They were obsessed with stuff they didn’t like. Popular things, mainly, and subpar coffee, and people who make an effort, I think.
Rather than by what they love.
I want to spend my whole entire life being about what and whom I love.
This is why I’m a nerd. That’s what society calls humans with the absolute unabashed willingness to love what they love, loudly, in public, plastered on your t-shirt, writ large across the internet.
The greatest of great marquee signs / LES? // NYC /// December 2023
Which brings me back to Valentine’s Day.
I’m a very use-the-good-china, wear-the-ball-gown kind of person. I dress up every day. If I am not dressed up, I give you permission to ask me if I’m okay. New York City is a great place to live if you are a person who dresses up every day. The subway is a runway. All archetypes are on display. And while people will still notice you if you are Noticeable, there are enough people being noticeable that being noticeable is not particularly noteworthy. Which is, in its way, rather relaxing. Still, dressing up and dressing out is an invitation. Like having a dog. Or a tiny human. People talk to you. They ask you questions. I developed a series of stock responses for some of the question I fielded most often on the subway.
They’d say, “Where are you going?”
I’d say, “I’m here!”
They’d say, “What’s the occasion?”
I’d say, “It’s today!”
They’d say, “What are you so dressed up for?”
I’d say, “I’m alive!”
In light of this, I’m not the sort of person who needs a Day to proclaim my love for someone. That’s a Tuesday. A Thursday. An any-day, any-time, up at 4am, when the fancy doth strike me, whenever I think of it, and most especially if death awareness is on my mind.
I had this lover a couple of years back. Brilliant, mentally ill, emotionally-stunted. Wildly — and admittedly — unreliable. Sent me a screenshot of his cell phone home screen once. Three thousand unread emails. Eight hundred unread texts. These are not exact numbers, and yet I am not exaggerating. Dating him was like playing text message Russian Roulette. Inadvisable. I loved him anyway.
He told me more than once, “I consider anybody having feelings for me to be an act of self-harm on their part.”
Painfully self-aware disclaimer: his version of a Get Out of Jail Free card.
But because my feelings for him were not up to him, and because I wanted him to know how I felt, even if he could not or would not or was not capable of reciprocating — which is the meaning of a gift, yeah? — each time we parted, during our exceedingly intermittent, yearlong love affair, I’d say,
“In case one of us dies, I love you.”
I figured if I said it that way, he would, without outwardly, or maybe even inwardly, acknowledging it, somewhere in recesses of his secret heart, receive it.
Annie Lalla, the love coach I would trust with my love life, who explains the unexplainable in ways that break open my head and my heart, once told me of smuggling love. Some people do not demonstrate love in ways that we at first recognize as love. She spoke of becoming a Detective on the Case of Love, noticing where a partner might be smuggling morsels of it. Refilling your water glass while you’re busy writing, perhaps. Going out to the car early to defrost it before you get in. Things like that, and things far less legible.
When I first courted her for a couple of episodes of horizontal with lila, I asked, “How do I smuggle love?” She replied immediately that I don’t seem to smuggle at all; I just come right out with it. Make like confetti. Festoon a person. She said loads of people are more reserved than I am because they believe compliments, effusiveness, and praise, once offered, lower their social status. She said I don’t care much about that, because it’s more important to me to let the person know.
Let the people know.
We are all going to die. And it seems like most of the time, it will be a surprise when. What does status matter, really? Really really.
The fact that I will express my love with a freeness is a thing I love about myself even when I don’t love myself.
So sure, I don’t need a holiday to express my love — which is one of the main annoyances I hear bandied about near February 14th — “I don’t need a holiday to tell me to tell my wife I love her!”
Okay. But setting aside a day for a thing can certainly help, right?
Atonement.
Independence.
Rights.
Holocaust remembrance.
If anything, Valentine’s offers us that cultural pause in the middle of an unfavorite month, a will-we-make-it-through-the-winter, hope-our-stores-last, do-we-have-enough firewood, dear-God-don’t-let-me-freeze-to-death month that says, in candy-colored suspended animation:
Think about love, will you?
What kind do you have?
What kind do you want?
And:
Now what do you want to do about that, sweetheart?
cultivate the heart / street art // Williamsburg, Brooklyn /// June 2014
I’m in love with loads of things and loads of people. All my friends. Some former lovers. Most of the people I’ve ever been maddeningly sexually-attracted to. Los Angeles. New York. Bali. Anyplace I’ve ever felt like I belonged. Anyone who makes me laugh uncontrollably. Any community I’ve felt safe enough to be silly in. Theatre. Acting. Singing. AcroYoga. The Villa. My Vespa. My ebike. The spaces I carve and curate.
love in the form of crafts / St. Petersburg, FL // January 2025
I learned a lot of really useful stuff in kindergarten. Arguably more than I learned in college. (Looking at you, NYU.)
And if you were in kindergarten in the United States of America around the time that I was, you probably had to make a Valentine for everyone in your class. No exceptions. It’s the ‘everyone gets a trophy’ thing that people are so mad about.
Last year, I took a leaf out of that book, and made a tiny Valentine for everyone who lived in my co-housing house. Even the ones I didn’t love. Even the ones it took me three days to think of something nice to truthfully say about.
There were 11 Valentines. On the front was a bright yellow sun, and in the sun’s orb, their name in tall letters. On the back, across the pale blue background and puffy white clouds, I wrote something simple.
You are kind.
Or: Your story is worth telling.
Or: I love the way you smile; it makes me think of what you were like as a little boy.
In the lower righthand corner I wrote 2.14.24 in teeny numbers. I didn’t sign them.
On February 14th at 10am, I scurried around the house, taping them to their doors. I once did a similar thing at The Villa, years ago. Deniz left his up for years.
Half of my housemates found out it was me within the hour. (I was really the only likely suspect.) The other half didn’t bother to ask. I’m still a little annoyed by that. But.
It was a gift, wasn’t it, Lila?
So sometimes, it seems, I do smuggle love, after all.
Love Spray & Phoebe New York / Street Art // NYC /// June 2016
14 Rooms
The best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever spent was a date with 75 people.
I was deeply committed to Valentine’s not sucking that year. I wanted to curate an event that you could go alone, with a friend, with a lover, with a group, or, yes sure, with a romantic partner, and it would be a sensual, delicious time for all!
A sexy party, not a sex party.
I have nothing against sex parties. I have attended many and co-hosted a handful. But what I really love are (hat tip to Steve Dean of Dateworking for this one) low-risk intimate experiences with high potential for reward.
People can go home and fuck! Or go on a date later! But to share a space full of sensual delights, vibrating with turn-on . . . that’s the sort of thing I wanted to offer.
Lisa dressed as a 50s housewife & baked you treats in the first floor kitchen / 14 Rooms // The Villa /// Bushwick, Brooklyn //// February 14th, 2019
The invitation read like this:
horizontal with lila presents…
14 Rooms
{an intimate immersive Valentine’s experience}
When: Thursday, February 14th, 2019. 8pm – midnight
Where: sumptuous location revealed upon ticket purchase, dahling
How: $50 in advance, $75 day of
With whom: Come with others or come alone. These experiences are for everyone.
Take my money: TICKETS HERE
She also made cake. Can you believe how lucky?! / 14 Rooms // The Villa /// Bushwick, Brooklyn //// February 14th, 2019
A townhouse full of delights for all the senses:
4-handed massages
live erotica readings
the best hot cocoa you’ve ever tasted
sensual performances
sweet smells from the oven, sweet treats for the tongue
a hot tub
and a giant teddy bear named Tiny.
And that’s not even what’s in the 14 rooms…
Each room unlocks a secret: an intimate, sensual, immersive experience.
Your ticket comes with 5 tokens, which you can exchange for delights / experiences. Choose how to spend them — on treats, on libations, on a rendezvous or two.
If you wish to collect more experiences (there are 14 rooms of delight, after all!) you may purchase more tokens for $5 each, cash, from someone very prettily dressed.
1 token for a treat, 2 tokens for a rendezvous.
Things that are important to know:
Dress code: Anything that makes you feel FOXY.
This event is for people not in relationships + people in relationships + people in situationships + people who frankly don’t give a damn + everyone, Everyone. Let’s celebrate sensuality and loveliness all together!
No alcohol, ***no phones. Check your phone with your coat. Immerse yourself.
*** There will be a single area of well-lit fabulosity, near the coat check, for your photographic pleasure.
The single well-lit area of fabulosity in question / 14 Rooms // The Villa /// Bushwick, Brooklyn //// February 14th, 2019
FAQs, dahlings:
Are there ID or minimum age requirements to enter the event?
You must be 21 to enter. This is an event for adults.
What can I bring into the event?
Your playful spirit, curious nature, respectful titillation, and really fabulous outfits.
More of the lovely humans who fully understood the assignment / 14 Rooms // The Villa /// Bushwick, Brooklyn //// February 14th, 2019
There are people who met at 14 Rooms and were lovers for years. (Years!)
People still talk about it.
I’m thinking about bringing it back.
If I do… would you come?
A tiny corner of my altar / “People are naturally attracted to you” // a fortune I have been carrying in my wallet for a least 20 years and just recently laminated /// love magnet //// Bushwick, Brooklyn circa 2013-2014
How about we take back Valentine’s Day, and we make it like 14 Rooms? We make it for All the Love. A day for every one, and every thing, you love.
Now that’s a holiday I can get behind.
That’s a holiday that doesn’t suck.
My son is in elementary school where they still give Valentines out to everyone in class. Can we send you one?
Love is in the heart Bebe!! I remember I was dropping off this gal, Zara, who I was crazy about at the time, but was all kinds of bad for me. We were sitting in the car and this little bird lands in a little puddle outside and starts playing. The kind of pure, joyful play that only an innocent, little thing does. Zara was watching it too. And when she looked back at me, I could tell she "saw" it too. It's not very often I've felt that connected to someone. I remember when you did the 14 Rooms party. It sounded really awesome. I was going through a real dark night of the soul when I was listening to you show back then. It really helped me hearing about other people in the world with hearts. Thank-you for that! And Martinelli's cider IS delightful.