Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2007

Mina and I belong to other people. We know each other from a great distance, and we’ve talked a lot, but we are still two friends-across-miles. Mina is alone this night, as her man is out of town on yet another business trip. I am on the other side of the country, sick of my own bullshit, wondering if she would do anything if I don’t make Valentine’s Day happen. (Turned out, she wouldn’t, and she was upset with me not making it happen.) Yet, in a few more days, I would be taking a trip for a job interview in Mina’s part of the world, and we had agreed to get together, and even had reservations. Neither one of us was expecting anything, but we were hoping.

February 14, 2008

I am screaming at my windshield at the absolute shiftlessness of everyone else in traffic. I’m late getting home, and I do not want to be, for Mina has made plans for dinner. (We agreed that I would plan the one-year anniversary of our meeting, and she would do Valentine’s.) I get home, and the cab is already there. We’re not driving ourselves, so that we can drink to heart’s content. I have her presents in a gift bag with me, so I am ready, and she has mine wrapped as well. I drop off the roses she had sent to me that morning at my office, and meet her at the cab. We rode over to Santa Monica to a fantastic French restaurant she had picked out. Dinner consisted of a wonderful progression of courses and a sensational dessert, over which we exchanged presents. We came back home, enjoying a delightful buzz from the cocktails, and once we got home, we made love together.

—

There are, of course, many details that could be shared, and perhaps I might one day. But, this was the first time I have ever gotten make love on Valentine’s. Today, together with Mina, we have built for ourselves the lives we have always wanted. The thing I will always remember about this year, our first Valentine’s, is how it was finally the way things were always supposed to be. My life is vastly better than it used to be, and she has made it so. I now live with someone who wants to do things for me, just as I do for her. Not for some reward to be received later, but for love. And, for her, I am someone who wants to be there with her, and for whom that is the most important thing in his life.

I used to feel like some ill-fitting part that had been in rubbish heap for so many years, wishing someone would find me and lift me out. Mina has done that for me. There was certainly sex on Valentine’s Day, and we spend a lot of time talking about it in this corner of Cyberia, but this year, it was about love. The kind of love that was always supposed to be there, that you read about happening but never does.

I felt loved, and I felt special. And I love her back. She makes me happy.

What more could you ask of a simple day?