Looking back on the two decades (give or take) that I’ve been dating, I can only really remember one Valentine’s Day. It’s the V-Day I spent with Tim W., this Australian kid that fell fast and hard for me over the summer of 2010. When I think about that Valentine’s, it comes back to me in a series of clear-as-day snapshot moments.
…riding the escalator up to the streets of Adam’s Morgan, holding down the short hem of my beautiful blush-pink satin babydoll dress that I’d thrifted just for the night
…walking heel to toe along a bit of concrete wall while tall & sturdy Tim holds my hand …the string lights over the too-chilly alley of the too-expensive restaurant and eating Italian food at a small wrought iron table
…Tim pulling out an envelope, handing it to me, and his nervous fidgets while I open it
… the paper, covered front and back in tiny text, framed by pink WordArt hearts
…gingerly placing the love essay into my pink shoe box of secret things and hiding it deep in the back of my closet
I’ve been sitting around wondering why this is the only Valentine’s Day that I can bring up out of the memory vault. It’s the only one I really remember. I know I’ve had other ones — the past eight and a half years of my life were spent in two back-to-back monogamous committed relationships, and the fact that I can’t remember them isn’t meant as a diss to those two guys. It’s just that, whatever it was we did, it wasn’t as memorable as Tim W., his love essay, and the cold nighttime air streaming through my perfect dress.
The more I think about it, the greater clarity I have on a certain aspect of the night: Tim planned the whole thing. I spent the early part of that evening excitedly preening, putting my hair into a big beehive bun with a thick curtain of carefully disheveled bangs and choosing the right lipstick while playing some music I probably don’t want to admit to. Anticipation was my only job. With my past two exes, even though I can’t remember the details, I’m almost positive that I was the one bringing the magic. It’s just the dynamic we had. I’m the whimsical one; I’m the opportunist when it comes to romance; I’m the one who believes that we should choose to punctuate our lives with self-generated moments of delight. Usually, at least. With Tim though, I got swept off my feet instead of doing the sweeping — and I’d gamble that this is a big part of why the night, fourteen years later, is the only one I remember.
Another Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and I’m thinking about how lucky I am this year to have two men in my life who are both pure-hearted givers. I didn’t intend to wind up with two boyfriends, but here I am, accidentally polyamorous and loving it. One of them, Jake, is somewhat cynical of the capitalism-fueled fervor of Valentine’s Day — he and I never really broached the subject and that’s perfectly alright. The other, Tom, is a ball of unwieldy energy who can’t resist a chance to indulge a day of showering me in affection — he asked me to spend Valentine’s Day with him weeks ago. So on Wednesday, Tom is meeting me at my apartment in Queens before we head into the city for a full day of our favorite things. When he gets here, I’ll give him a blank piece of paper, folded like a card. Here’s the fun part: it’s not really blank. A message is written inside in white crayon. Once he looks properly stumped by my empty card, I’ll hand him some water color paints and tell him to paint the card. Since white crayon stops the cardstock from absorbing the watercolor, his brush strokes will cause my secret message to appear. This is how I like to show my love — in strange yet sentimental surprises. Then, we plan to hit the city. We’ll start with caffeine and pastries, then go shopping at our favorite punk and vintage shops. I plan to sneakily buy him gifts (there’s a David Bowie t-shirt I have my eye on) and I imagine he plans to do the same for me. We’ll say things like “you shouldn’t have!” while cheesing ridiculously big smiles. By dusk we’ll be ready for dinner and at night, we have tickets to see Amelié, a quirky French film about a strange girl and the nonsense of love. We’ll end the whole affair where we started, back at mine.
Being in two two-sided giver relationships is, if I may be so bold, objectively the best. I’m still experiencing the way that doing things for someone I love recharges my soul — it feels good to give. But I’m also doing a lot of sitting back and receiving, and (shocker!) that feels good, too. Things don’t need to be perfectly reciprocal in relationships and striving for that is, frankly, a death sentence — but I think it’s also necessary to switch off delighting one another at least every now and then, to make sure your sweetheart has little snapshot moments in their memory bank to flip through when they want to.