Valentine’s Day is a “hit or miss” event.
If you’re happily involved, it’s a hit. If you’re alone, and don’t want to be, it’s a miss. Couples don’t need Valentine’s Day to rub in how deliriously happy they are to others. Still, how can they resist?
According to Chad Brooks’s article, “Men Will Spend Twice as Much as Women for Valentine’s Day,” total spending for this year’s holiday may reach $17.6 billion, with the average person spending more than $126. It went up almost 10% since last year.
That’s a lot of rubbing in. Brooks’s article also says that the average guy will probably spend $168.74 on Valentine’s Day gifts. That’s a lot more than the average woman.
Meaning men love more than women do?
In the Amsco anthology Short Stories, there are three stories that make me wonder . . .
In Herman Wouk’s “The Party” (1948; from The City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder), eleven-year-old Herbie is madly in love with his red-haired classmate, Lucille. He’s lost in his fantasies, where she’s his underground queen. In reality, he’s scared to speak to her.
He and his family get invited to a housewarming party at Lucille’s house. Herbie keeps changing the part in his hair, then combs his hair straight back, tries to appear older, more sophisticated. “Isn’t that silly?”His sneering older sister Felicia tears him down, makes him doubt himself.
At the party, Herbie is in his glory. “He was in Lucille Glass’s home,” Wouk writes. “He had shaken her hand. He had sat beside her on a sofa for ten minutes, eating corned-beef sandwiches and no more aware of taste than if he had been chewing straw. The girl . . . seemed not of this world, but a changeling fallen from a star.”
To his delight, Lucille takes Herbie to the garage. In the Glass family Chrysler they sit, eating chocolate ice cream, and talking about . . . everything! He exaggerates his knowledge of astronomy (What boy wouldn’t?) and claims he won’t marry till he’s fifty-five, and then only to a red-haired woman.
Poor Herbie. He thought she was his, after that. Till his new hairdo had a meltdown. Lucille howled with laughter. Even worse, his sister Felicia and her guy Lennie had seen the whole thing. “What’s the matter, Fatso?” Lennie says. “Got cooties?”
Of course, Herbie loses Lucille, but to . . .
For an hour, he tried to rebuild the ruins of the underground palace, but it was wrecked forever. Nothing was left but its queen, and she no longer wore crown and robe, but a white bow and a party frock. And he could not even compel her to sit by his side. Her faithless majesty went on and on dancing with Lennie.
In John Collier’s “The Chaser” (1940), Alan loves Diana, but she could care less about him.
Alan seeks out a mysterious man who sells “magic” potions in a dim, drab office. The love potion the man offers Alan will make Diana want nothing but solitude, and . . . him. She will be jealous of any pretty girl he may meet, but will also forgive Alan any indiscretion.
Tongue-in-cheek, Collier writes:
“She’ll want to know all that you do,” said the old man. “All that has happened to you during the day. Every word of it. She’ll want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad.”
Alan is thrilled. And the potion only costs a dollar!
The “antidote,” however, costs five thousand. Collier writes, “ ‘Here is a liquid as colorless as water, almost tasteless. . . . It is also quite imperceptible to any known method of autopsy.’”
You can bet Alan will be saving his pennies.
But it’s in Ruth Rendell’s “The Fever Tree” (1982) that we see a man nearly driven mad from love.
Ford had left silly wife Tricia for soul mate, Marguerite. For some reason (probably guilt), he went back to Tricia. Now he regrets it. He and Tricia are on an African safari (a second honeymoon), and he’s constantly comparing both women, in his head. Tricia is frivolous; Marguerite, intelligent and resourceful.
Ford’s mosquito bites swell up, and he can hardly see, or walk. The accompanying fever makes him almost delirious. Rendell writes, “It affected his mind too, so that each time he looked at Tricia a kind of panic rose in him. Why had he done it? Why had he gone back to her? Was he mad? His eyes and his head throbbed as if his temperature was raised.”
Since the animals roam free, guests are warned not to get out of their cars. But Tricia wants to see the animals up close. At first, Ford tries to stop her. Then, while she’s photographing a family of monkeys, he sees two cheetahs in the distance. Rendell writes, “It came into his mind how he had heard that they were the fastest animals on earth.”
He doesn’t tell Tricia about the cheetahs.
Next day, when she dallies, picking daisies, he starts the car, as if to leave her behind, in the wild.
Who leaves who behind, isn’t important. It’s that a man’s overpowering love caused it to happen.
Could a woman’s have stopped it?
Every Valentine's Day, a post from you, Cindy. I spend the weeks leading up to V-Day talking my male friends out from under beds and down from trees. (Friends, not lovers) No wonder men spend so much money on the day. It makes them c-r-a-z-e-e!
ReplyDeleteIf my husband spent that kind of money on me, I'd freak out. I'm much happier knowing I am loved when he likes how I look or likes my cooking or doesn't complain about dust bunnies. Trust me, the majesty is gone, and the white party frock replaced by a schmata! But the love is mutual, appreciative, and comfortable. Our home, with its imperfections including the occupants, is where love rules!
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