Obligatory Valentine's Post

I guess an obligatory Valentine's Day post should happen on or before VDay, but whatever.  Like Trixie playing Candy Land, I make the rules up as I go.  

I'm supposed to have some bitterly cynical remark about the commercialization of a thinly-veiled Catholic holiday, but I don't.  I just want to share some stories with y'all.  

During my freshman year of college, my boyfriend and I had been secretly dating for a few months and wanted to do something secretly awesome for Valentine's Day.  We ended up spending the day writing our favorite memories on Parliament Light cigarettes.  Here's an example:

No, that's not one of the originals*.  We lived desperate lives back then.  One by one, we smoked up all those memories.  

This year, The Butler was blessed with the honor of being my Valentine.  He doesn't smoke PFunks and we don't have that many memories though.  We made some inglorious Dupont Circle plans, but ended up watching Kung Fu Panda with Coco and the kids and then playing Guitar Hero with Francois Philippe.  We made FP go upstairs later so The Butler could listen to me make my typically insane comments while watching TV.  ("I LOVE this furniture commercial."  -2 seconds later- "Oh wait, no, I HATE it!  It's boring me!  It's boring me!!!)

But I actually had fun doing all this and the only real let down of this holiday was that The Butler didn't buy me any fucking candy.  Has he met me?  Candy is always a good idea with me.  Candy, crushed red pepper, and cheese.  All of these are like E-Z-Passes to my heart.  Fortunately for him, I'd already bought myself lovey-dovey candy earlier in the week, gorged myself on it, and subsequently lost interest (the story of my life, eh?).  

But The Butler MORE than made up for this minor faux pas with the CD he brought over.  It was filled with recordings of ... himself.  I don't know a whole lot about the type of music he plays, so I can only vaguely describe it as Radiohead-ish.  But that's besides the point.  The point is: I'm dating a rockstar.  

Before hearing him play, I was all, "I like you but I'm keeping you at an emotional arm's length so you won't break my heart." and now I'm all, "Uh, you sound like a real rockstar so you can break my heart all you want to just as long as I get to go on tour with you."  I've never been morally rigid.  

Of course, after hearing his songs, I kept insisting that I was going to make him famous.  He claims to have tried in vain to get his music career off the ground in the past (hence the current butler gig), but he's never had Nanny Garcia (and Coco) in his corner. 

I kept telling him, "My team never loses, Butler.  We may not always win, but we sure as hell never lose."  

We may have played a Saturday Night Live drinking game too long (take a shot of whiskey every time you find a skit genuinely funny) and The Butler may not have been able to drive home.  I did, however, make him move his car from in front of our house to around the corner.  Then, after we woke up at noon, I made him sneak out the nanny door, pull his car back up to our house, ring the doorbell, and pretend like he was there anew to pick me up for a hangover brunch.  

I thought this was an ingenious plan, but he was convinced we weren't fooling anyone.  His evidence:

a) His car seemed invisible when we drunkenly moved it in the dead of night.  In the light of day, however, it was painfully obvious, even from the front window of our house.

b) Escaping from the nanny door requires a dense fog to be really successful as you still have to work past the entire wall of windows on the side of the house.  

But I think we still got away with it, mainly because our target audience was the most oblivious and self-absorbed people in the house: Francois Philippe and the twins.  I don't need to hide anything from Coco and les bebes are still young enough to accept an innocent sleepover as just that.  It's those filthy teenage minds I'm trying to avoid.  

After we carried out our escape plans, I was dragged into the outside world to face the eyes of the world.  I was initially wearing my purple wig because my hair was all greezy and shiz, but after about 5 minutes of standing in Angst's place of employment, I yanked that shiz off my head faster than a crack whore on Jerry Springer.  The world is cruel and unapologetic. 

Seriously, I don't know why he keeps insisting on making me go out in public.  I spend the whole time avoiding eye contact with him as I am far too busy watching other people.  Every time he tries to talk to me, I have to shush him so I can eavesdrop on the people at the table next to us.  An anthropologist's work is never done.  

* This one says, "I love the way you open and close my window for me."