A Guide To Enjoying Yourself On Valentine's Day
orgasms are great, but have you ever tried sitting in silence?
Step one. Look briefly at the news, and be grateful you are not in a partnership with anyone who is currently tasked with running this country and/or staging a coup and/or supporting the aforementioned and/or being quietly grateful they don’t have to alter their behavior in any way to demonstrate consideration or respect for others.
Do you need more than that?
I mean, if you do, that’s perfectly reasonable. Romance, at least what we’re taught to experience as romance, can be nice. And we still live in a world where the only sure way we have to measure women’s success is, largely, marriage. And one of the main ways to measure a man’s is for him to “acquire” a wife.
(I will also note, that once you’ve aged through most of your friends’ marriages, especially through the early years of small children, you realize romance for them (beyond being in partnership with someone who picks up after themselves) is often being gifted a night out with…me. Aka their friends.)
Anyway. I have no interest in shading romance. Go forth and be romantic! (Or, if you are a Gen Xer, go forth an have great sex, which according to the New York Times, we are the last generation to have.)(Or you can read my book, which in the same piece, the New York Times helpfully describes as a “popular memoir about going to Paris to get laid”).
Romance can be great. I watched Romancing the Stone the other day, and it remains a perfect film (possibly because it was written by a woman). Of course, two of my favorite so-called romances are Dirty Dancing (“Frances, after the first woman in the Cabinet.” BOOM) and An Unmarried Woman…WHICH is making a rare showing at the Metrograph in New York later this month(!!!). Perhaps, not surprisingly, both are movies that end with women going their separate ways.
There’s a good chance that I will spending at least part of Valentine’s Day at the Paris Theatre watching Casablanca. Another great romance in which the lovers famously go their separate ways. (Most “great” romances do not end up with two people riding off into the sunset. One, or both, usually die. Which suggests great storytellers knew better than to tell the story of romance in the long term. “They finally picked up the socks!” may feel operatic in the moment, but does not make for good opera or romcom, though it might make for a more enjoyable partnership in the long term.)
That Ingrid Bergman gets on the plane at the end Casablanca is supposed to be a tragedy (of some sort). Harry and Sally (of that other great romcom we just can’t quit) have a back and forth about this. Sally understands the decision, Harry is baffled.
SALLY: I don't think she wants to stay.
HARRY: Of course she wants to stay. Wouldn't you rather be with Humphrey Bogart than the other guy?
SALLY: I don't want to spend the rest of my life in Casablanca married to a man who runs a bar. I probably sound very snobbish to you but I don't.
HARRY: You'd rather be in a passionless marriage.
SALLY: And be the first lady of Czechoslovakia.
HARRY: Than live with the man you've had the greatest sex of you life with, and just because he owns a bar and that is all he does.
SALLY: Yes. And so would any woman in her right mind. Women are very practical, even Ingrid Bergman, which is why she gets on the plane at the end of the movie.
I don’t know that women are practical, necessarily. Or that Nora Ephron was, particularly. I do know, when I was younger, I also thought it was dumb that she got on the plane. Mostly because the actor cast as her husband had the charisma of a cardboard cutout, raising the question: how did such a stultifying man lead a revolution? Of course, maybe that was the point. Had they cast, say, James Cagney, no one would be pondering her decision.
But now that I’m in my Gen seX years, I get it. And when I think of Ilsa’s post plane ride future, I imagine they made it to America and forthwith secured a sprawling rent-controlled apartment on Park Ave (à la Betty Halbreich). He had a few good years at the UN then died suddenly (this is still a romance, after all). Ilsa probably wore mourning black for a while (Chanel or Cristóbal Balenciaga) and then started some sort of foundation in his name. She then spent the next few decades doing advocacy work, attending parties, traveling, investing in art and artists and being an excellent patron, and was undoubtedly one of the fabulous older women in Halston at Studio 54. She probably lunched and walked around with Greta G and later, Jackie O (after the O). And threw fantastic dinner parties. And maybe had a column in Town & Country or Architectural Digest and basically had a spectacular time, as anyone with a rent-controlled apartment in New York is wont to have. Obviously, she took on many lovers. And probably fell in love once or twice. It goes without saying she never remarried. When you have a rent-controlled apartment in New York, you do not need to be married.
This, to me, is the ideal ending to a great romance: New York City real estate. (I’m sorry to tell you, I think Baby probably ended up in the wealthy, leafy, suburbs of Virginia and likely still has lunch with Nancy Pelosi.)
Which brings us back to the only question that matters when it comes to celebrating Valentine’s Day (or really, any day): What do you want?
Here are some ways you might consider approaching this question on Valentine’s Day: