Ben Lee Handler Ben Lee is home alone in
his birthday suit, waiting for Valentine’s. E-mail him at shirtsleeves@hotmail.com.
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Twenty-two years ago at 2:14 in the afternoon on this very day,
I was given a rather bloody Valentine from one of the only women I
have ever truly loved.
Thrust forth from her inner sanctum of vaginal bliss, my heart
was forced to beat on its own for the first time; I guess my mother
““ as most mothers are in the moments preceding true
motherhood ““ carried the if-you-love-something-set-it-free
mentality, and I was the something she was setting into freedom
““ horrible freedom.
Ever since the brutal clubbing and beheading of Saint Valentine
in the third century, Feb. 14 ““ my birthday ““ has come
to be associated with much violence, grief and sorrow. Take, for
example, the Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929 in Chicago,
where five of Al Capone’s men disguised as police officers
heartlessly executed all seven members of a rival bootlegging
operation run by Bugsy Malone.
Or, how last year when my roommate ““ full of anticipation
for the night to come, dressed to the teeth, and armed with flowers
and plush toys ““ waited for two hours past his dinner
reservation at the Stinking Rose, while his girlfriend sat at home
with the lights out and her phone off the hook and dined on his
heart instead.
Don’t be fooled by all the Hallmark cards and heart-shaped
sugar candies with cute sayings printed on them, Valentine’s
Day is forever tainted with the stain of slaughtered hearts and
loves lost, and is usually best spent alone.
But why suffer in solitude when you can drag countless others
down with you?
This Valentine’s Day, while storefront after storefront
taunts you with your lack of a lover ““ or if you have one,
the pain and sacrifice you must endure to keep him or her around
““ let your open wound of discontent fester and infect others.
Make a baby. Make lots of babies, and get paid for it.
It’s easy, you need not look any further than the
classified section of the paper you are reading now to see ads
proclaiming: “Sperm/Egg Donors Wanted.” Thousands of
imperfect lovers ““ and every lover is imperfect ““ are
so desperate to continue their bloodlines and complete the action
nature has denied them that they are willing to trust half their
child’s genetic makeup to a perfect stranger.
We, the Valentine’s Day loners oozing angst from every
pore, are the perfect strangers. We are the perfect donors.
A ripe woman need only stop by one of the clinics advertised
and, after a month of pumping herself with fertility drugs and
naturally stimulated hate hormones, allow a doctor to puncture her
navel and enter her womb with an egg vacuum.
A musky male must fill out a few forms, consent himself to be
poked and prodded for various tests, and flood a cup with
semen.
Focus all your loneliness, all your sexual frustration, all your
anger at your mother/nature/society for evicting you from the womb,
focus all this into your donor cup or egg-sucking tube and rest
assured the lives you help to create will cry bloody murder and
gasp for air on their birthdays too.
During the Middle Ages, it was believed that halfway through the
second month of the year the birds began to look for mates and
began to pair. Today, halfway through the second month of 2002, let
us ““ the loners with seed to fly ““ be the ones to
ensure that the happy lovebirds lay at least a few bad eggs. And we
will revel in their bloody babies, the next generation of V-Day
victims whom cupid’s arrow will undoubtedly miss. We, the
Valentine’s Day loners, look forward to their company.