Valentine's Day Confessions ...
Real Talk For Would-Be Lovers
I woke this morning from a vivid dream. In it, I realized that the ‘love of my life’ had been lying to me, manipulating me, and basically using me as a sexual vacation from a man she had no intention of leaving. I lay there shaking with anger and grief, until the dream faded and I processed that all of this was not really happening.
Problem is … this dream was not my brain writing fiction in its sleep … but a wee-hours re-run of actual events. A love-gone-wrong story from 26 years ago. There she was again, with her sweet dishonest voice and tender fraudulent touch, effing me over once again. While I tried to get some sleep. On Valentine’s Friggin’ Day, no less.
I was out last night with my guitar. It was a short drive to the open-mic at Jeweled Universe in South Pasadena. But not an easy drive. A storm had been raging all day, leaving streets flooded. And now - though the downpour was all but poured out - intersections were blocked here and there in a manner that must have made sense to somebody, but just seemed random AF to me.
I’d had a lovely hot shower in the Dojo Redux; a fine wheeled-dwelling within which every comfort can be found at the flick of a switch. I was ready for a vibrant crowd. Instead the joint was nearly empty. Like the usually bustling street where it lives.
I suppose that Los Angeles will shelter-in-place for a while, whenever nature throws a hissy fit. I wasn’t there ten minutes before my phone screamed at me to lock the doors and pray to a merciful god for deliverance. We’re jumpy out here. And the automated cellphone alert-system can’t be turned off.
I was a little gun-shy when I took to the stage. I’d brought two songs that I really didn’t have ‘under my fingers’, as we guitar-slingers say. I knew them well enough for the bedroom at home, but not so much for the stage. It was a small forgiving crowd though. And they were both love songs.
Well, they were both songs about love. Which is thornier territory.
The first was a Jason Isbell song called ‘Traveling Alone’, in which a lost and broken truck-driver makes a plea into the void for somebody to save him from his solitude.
The second was ‘If You See Her Say Hello’, an old Bob Dylan tune which finds him wearily referencing his own isolating famous-dude life, while prepping a friend about what to do and say, should that friend encounter the narrator’s lost love. This song contains one of my favorite couplets.
”Say for me that I’m alright, though things get kind of slow.
She might think that I’ve forgotten her. Don’t tell her it isn’t so.“
Those two lines from Dylan’s pen pretty much capture my take on romantic love here in 2025 with the sun drawing ever closer to the horizon of my life.
I can sum it up like this. ‘First … do no harm.’ A sort of Hippocratic Oath for those of us from whom self-reflection has removed all pretense of innocence. Those of us who know that we’ve entered willingly into a series of amorous misadventures even while we knew - in our heart of hearts - that the person we were about to get naked with … was not really the one. Perhaps that is why the past sometimes haunts my dreams.
Dylan’s protagonist is willing to bear the weight of his loss, by not letting on that he still yearns for her. It’s a kindness disguised as shallow forgetfulness.
There are varieties of love, to be sure. I’m typing this from the comfort of a very nice mobile dwelling because one of those types of love - charity - came to my rescue. 200 people who know me well, or even just a little, ponied up to help a brother out. Nothing in it for them other than to know that I’d be better off for their help.
That ‘community love’ is about as far away from ‘romantic love’ as it gets on the spectrum of amour. If we’re honest, we don’t charm somebody into our bed because we just want to help them. No, we do that because we want them to help us. To transform us in some way.
Make us laugh. Make us feel young and desirable. Perhaps pull us back from the suspicion that we’re on our own and will likely die alone. Grant us a life, instead, of sun-drenched surety. Where we thrive in the certain knowledge that - however sketchy things had gotten before - we’ll never again fear that our lives were wasted and that we’ll soon be forgotten.
It’s an unspoken deal we make. “If you agree to make me feel treasured … I will do the same for you”.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a transactional cynic. I’m fully aware that humans do, in fact, care for one another. I just gave an example of that that touched me deeply, and I’ve written several times about the enormous outpouring of community-love here in Southern California since 2025 arrived swinging a wrecking ball.
And beyond that we mammals do, in fact, bond with whatever creatures we care for. Whether that be the clutch of feral cats my landlord feeds, or our own troublesome offspring. Going through the motions of concern does create genuine concern.
But for our purposes here, we’re speaking about the sort of love that demands recognition in a heart-shaped box on the fourteenth day of February. And that sort of love implies exclusivity. And everybody knows it.
If I’m seen with a woman in public more than a few times, many people will assume that the two of us are ‘paired off’. Even if we’ve both gone to great lengths to say that we’re just good friends.
If neither of us has the slightest urge to possess one another, our friends will attach a proprietary aspect to our relationship for us. As a guy who’s had many good female friends, I know that this is true.
If I’m seen holding that woman’s hand, well then, we might as well be married. Hands off, everybody, those two are ‘taken’!
Humans are a mating species. It’s important for the survival of our young, that we form parenting units. And though we are not, biologically speaking, strictly monogamous … we have built monogamy into all of our cultural institutions.
Heck, after being on the cultural vanguard for decades, even gay people demanded to be paired off by legally binding contractual agreements.
My coupled-up gay friends are subject to the same assumptions as are my coupled-up straight friends.
Even a couple well past the age of reproduction, and physically lacking one component or the other of the breeding process … will be treated like Ozzie & Harriet at the cocktail party. (I may have just dated myself terribly with that reference … look it up)
The point is that relationships of the sort that we celebrate on Valentine’s Day, come with demands. If we want the perks, we’ve got to play by the rules. And monogamy is rule number one.
This means that whomever you’ve paired off with, will need to fill your sexual needs all by his of her self … standing in for all other possible partners. That’s a big ask.
I’m not implying here that I have something against monogamy. If the right life-changing female was to appear in my life right now - before I even finish this sentence - I’d be happy to sign on the dotted line.
But as far as I can see, she’s not out there in the yard just beyond my window.
On occasion, it’s been suggested to me that I join one of the dating sites. Way back in the digital stone-age when my window was Windows 95, and I was newly single after 15 years in the marital yoke … I joined Match.com. And later, when I was less certain that I was ‘Match’ material, I downsized to PlentyOfFish.com.
I played the game. I went on the coffee dates. I even went on a few secondary dates where alcoholic beverages offered some ice-breaking help. I don’t remember ever sleeping with any of these women. I’m quite sure I didn’t. Several of them were attractive. One in particular stands out in memory.
We met for dinner at that little Mediterranean restaurant on South Lake in Pasadena. The one where you passed the buffet on the way in, and sat outdoors in a courtyard where soon belly-dancers would raise the pulse of any man.
Later, we walked hand in hand up and down the boulevard and stopped to make out a little on a park-bench. I’m telling you … I was all-in, and she gave no indication of lesser enthusiasm. I never saw or heard from her again.
When asked why I’d given up online dating, this became my stock answer:
”I spent half my time being rejected, and the other half rejecting somebody else. Both of which experiences I hate equally.”
And that is true. Of course it hurts to be passed over. But it’s just as painful for those of us with a heart - to make another human being feel that sting.
In the last couple of years, I think I’ve been on two dates. Both of them with the same woman. She’s very attractive and the conversation was great both times - first a hike followed by lunch, and then dinner followed by live music. I’d thought that things were progressing nicely. But then a good-night kiss felt so awkward that neither of us asked for a third meeting.
In recent months, an equally attractive woman has vibed me on a number of occasions when we’ve run into each other. We’ve text-flirted some. And we got ‘this close’ to an actual date. And then … she canceled due to extenuating circumstances.
I didn’t put up the slightest protest.
Because here’s the thing. I completely ‘get’ what both of those women must feel. Dating - when you are no longer young - introduces all kinds of problems. Is there a one of us who’s not toting enough baggage to fill a Subaru Outback? This is not a group-insult. People who have taken risks and been open and engaged in life, have had a few corners knocked off. Baggage … is actually a sign that somebody has dared to live unguarded from time to time. It also means that they’ve learned enough to be wary.
The mere prospect of getting to know another person well enough to either trust them or know better … feels like a very long uphill slog.
Particularly among those of ‘a certain age’. Because we’ve lived with ourselves long enough that ‘alone’ can be quite a comfortable state.
And therein lies the rub.
If a woman is confident and secure enough to really get my attention, she probably doesn’t feel a very strong need to be paired off. And really … neither do I.
So what then does one do on Valentine’s day? I suppose that if you are me, which I was last time I checked … you make coffee, sit comfortably near a window where unexpected sunshine is painting a citrus tree with brilliant light, and write down what you feel about this feast-day of monogamous love.
And then, on the morrow, you get right back to doing what you do. While the rest of the world, and all of its unencountered women, does the same.
Thanks for reading.
I must remind you, Dave, that Valentine's Day has been skewered into a modern marketing perversion of its original intent. Unless I am deluding myself, Valentines Day back in the world I grew up in, was a day on which to _secretly_ divulge your admiration for a person with whom you wished to be romantically involved.
"Be my Valentine" appears to have been brushed off the shelf and swept into the same place where other non-profitable endeavours now reside. Our memories.
Great read. I’ve missed your thoughts .
Thank you - helps me spin my own reality into a better view.