26. Saint Valentine was a Roman Martyr.
by hannah
March 1st, 2010
From Sex, Life, & Hannah::Volume 1, Winter Season (CHAPTER 6: VALENTINE’S DAY MARTYRDOM)
Saint Valentine was a Roman martyr. Sometime during the third century, the Roman Catholic priest was tortured and beheaded on February fourteenth for marrying soldiers, who were forbidden the tradition by the emperor of the era.
Today, Valentine’s Day is a holiday celebrating love. A holiday when people express their emotions with flowers, chocolate, stuffed animals, jewelry, and other fashionable trinkets. A holiday filled with anticipation and expectation over what that special someone in your life will do to prove their devotion. It is a holiday for starting new relationships, proposing in old relationships, and repairing teetering relationships. A perfect holiday for romance.
Ireland is spending the holiday with her new boyfriend: The Guitar Instructor. After four guitar lessons she perfected the fingering of the G-major scale, and they decided their kinship for music was uncanny and their meeting undoubtedly written in the stars. Some might call this a textbook romance.
Jack is at a Valentine’s Day party for swingers at some ultra–hip, ultra-rich, coffee-shop-chain entrepreneur’s house, where he is going to peruse and experiment with sexually easy people. Some might call this the perfect way to spend the romantic holiday.
I am at a Valentine’s Day work function with Celeste because The Ex still hasn’t called begging me back into his life, and Ben and I didn’t get an opportunity to make plans while bent over the side of my bed in fits of attempted passion. Of course, Clark invited me out to dinner after apologizing profusely for his behavior the other night. He felt just terrible about having drunk too much and causing a scene that ruined a perfectly “magical” evening with his favorite girl. And then he asked me if I really was in love with Ben. I threw my head back and laughed generously as I exclaimed: “Of course not! I drank too much too, and didn’t know what I was saying either.” And then I told him I’d already made plans, closed the door, and wished for a pack of cigarettes to burn away the pitiful state of my romantic life.
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