Last Saturday was an entire day nominally devoted to something we already think about every second of every year. The opiate of the masses: Amor, Amour, Amore, Eros, Liebe, Lubov. Love.
As if our on-campus groups we’ve created haven’t already taught us how important love (liberté, égalité, afraternité) is You know, groups like “WSA” (Wanting Serious Ass!) and “SJB” (Someone Jack-off Boys!) preaching doctrines like “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” which has helped our society so much already.
So does anyone know where this conspiracy comes from? Well, one conjecture pins the painful holiday, which serves more as a reminder of one’s hopelessly lonely existence than as an illustration of paradise on Earth romance, on a canonized Valentine. The saint signed a letter, “From your Valentine” around A.D. 270, professing his love to his special someone. The circumstances around this are pretty joyful and are worth relaying: he was in jail as a Christian martyr, became infatuated with the jailor’s daughter and wrote her longing, despairing letters.
Does it surprise you that this holiday is based on impossible and imperfect love? It shouldn’t; in fact, I’d say we all feel incarcerated by lack of love and by need of love. (I can’t resist the old joke: we’d probably be getting more, too, if we were incarcerated—nudge nudge nudge). To be perfectly frank though, sometimes the old “ball and chain” metaphor seems all too appropriate. (Note that in Spanish the word for female spouse, esposa, also means hand-cuffs—whoooopsy!) We’ve been trapped and trained into shackling up in order to be shacking up.
Yaron Aronowicz ’05, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, declared his wish for a major in Love Studies. Why? Because then he could proclaim to the object of his affection: “I’m majoring in love with a concentration in you.” I’d like to reply by saying that this major exists, and I’m in it: CoL, College of Love, furbished by Bayard Peabody Love ’05.
In this cheeky, vomitously cheesy line, my housemate has encapsulated all that is St. Valentine’s Day: runny romance, lukewarm passion, tiresome clichés and pick-up lines all shrouding most people’s actual V-day goal: As Marvin Gaye would put, “Let’s get it on.” There’s a man who cut to the chase—well, more precisely, he cut out the chase and jumped into the sack.
I’m not the first to deride St. Valentine’s Day (and I don’t mind it so much—it’s about as noticeable as a three-day old hickey—but heart cookies and Hershey’s kisses are amazing). Let us notice though, there is only one person on this campus who has Love, and that’s Bay Love, and even Love doesn’t have love, figurative College of Love (he dropped us for LAST the bastard), nor literal espousing love.
In other V-day subjects, what about the re-appropriation of St. Valentine’s Day: V-day come Vagina day? I guess in the spirit of loving others, loving thyself, “thy truest self” was a hit-the-jackpot idea. If you can’t find love, find your vagina. While procrastinating the idea of a Superhero Vagina named Vag Madge occurred to me. The strip, coined “The Comic Adventures of Vag Madge,” features a radioactive vagina with the ability to destroy evil, patriarchal beings—to clarify for those foreign to the concept, White Man’s Hegemony. Vag Mag has the ability to cripple and decimate imperialistic, consumeristic, commodifying Hegemons with her radioactive vagina-shaped tractor beam. Her only kryptonite-like weakness is the “Love machine,” a motorized Skyscraper-sized vibrator constructed by the Man to keep her at bay (Bay?). Yes, I believe love is a conspiracy designed by the government to drug us, distract us, and confuse our ability to reason.
Furthermore, this V-day has a much more ransacking, fight the power quality to it, which appeals to me a hell of a lot more than worshipping another Christian martyr, especially one who died not for our sins, but apparently for our right to love foolishly and wrongly.
I’m willing to give up Love for a Supreme Vagina Being. To be completely honest, I can’t say that I believe in love. I’ve never fallen in love or been in love; my closest brush with love is when I try hot-wiring other people’s love machines.
Conceptually love sounds great: bunny rabbits and roses, chocolate and candlelight, divans and pillows. Practically though, it’s stilted dinner conversation, awkward making out in the back seat of a movie theater, wilted flowers, melted chocolate, and worst of all, crusty white stuff.
I don’t think love is a biological trick, and I don’t really think it’s socially constructed (okay, yes I do: the government’s out to get ME); it’s also just impractical. I know these emblematic love signs are just symbols and love itself shouldn’t be faulted for their faults, but, “My love is like woah,” i.e. that was kind of nasty, don’t touch me there.
If the spirit moves you, you’re probably deluding yourself, but have no fear. Vag Madge is on call 24 hours a day. She is pumped and ready to radioactively counteract the Hegemons’ evil ploy to stupefy you, to brainwash you with romance, to shackle you under the pretense of Love!
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