Avoiding Vals Day Posts and strange men......

I have a loyal reader, who was kind of upset that I did not update over the weekend. I figured I owed her an explanation and an apology.



So here is the explanation.

I had to ask myself if i was going to write a celebration of love in all its forms- family, friendships, anything but romantic love....you know avoiding the gaping whole by filling it with something else.....now if you know me you are probably like....'who the hell are you and where have you put my friend'....it is contrary to my nature to write uplifting stuff, it sucks but it just is. So I spared myself and you the fake sentimentality. Now dont get me wrong. I am all about loving families but Valentine's Day is not so much about that, that's what we have Mother's and Father's Days for.



On the other hand, I could write a lovely anti-Valentine about how much love hurts....sometimes literally (cue Rihanna....P.S. Anyone see a Halle Berry part 2 coming up) . Unfortunately, there are 2 topics even I cannot be too cynical about: Religion and Love. I believe too much in their intrinsic value and centrality to human living to take a mick out of it. I simply cannot wallow in all the many instances when it all goes so 'shitastically'* wrong.



Instead I am going to share two interesting experiences from the Valentine weekend.

I had the amazing (= extremely unhappy) experience of using the T alone on V-Day as I made my way from Brighton to Cambridge to meet up with friends. If there was an unhappy couple in Boston, they were all hiding in their caves in the bottom of the twilight zone. Every where I looked there were happy canoodling dressed up couples everywhere. But underneath all the love I noticed something kind of heartbreaking. There was only one, (yep uno, une....) couple that included a Black woman.



Yep. You hear the crazy stats about how like almost 50 % of Black women are never married and you think someone is making it up but then you commute on Vals Day and suddenly you are like....HOLY COW, this may actually be kinda true.



Now the interesting thing is Boston is not the Brownest city in America, and all the Brown people live in the same neighborhoods so for all I know all these brown people were having an orgy of love and togetherness in Roxbury and Dorchester but in my little slice of the Bean it was practically zilch....



Suddenly this is beginning to sound like the anti-Valentine blog I promised not to write, but never fear, my life would not be my own if a good dose of the absurd didn't always creep into my reality.



Fast forward past Saturday night to Sunday morning when I decide to get my regular dose of love in the Romance Novel section of Borders.
I am totally engrossed in my novel, when this guy says he wishes to have some female insight into a problem he has. We have a perfectly lovely conversation when he asks me to go out for a drink. This is where the eternal sunshine of the Janice mind comes into effect. Somehow I thought when he said drink he meant coffee. Imagine my surprise when we ended up at an Irish pub. Okay at this point in the story, I realise that I am obviously engaged in the dating ritual, which I had not signed up for at all. The full details of this event are best told in person, so for further deets contact me directly...lol ;-)

That said, I learnt some interesting things that is worth sharing.

You know how you watch rom-coms and the guy actually asks the girl out for a drink? Well this is the first time something like that has ever happened to me. Not a 'freak danced on you at the club and now wants to drag you home kind-of event', or 'a friend of a friend of a friend', but an honest to goodness 'Would you like to go for a drink'...hmmmm

It was also wierd because I never expected that this question would be coming from an Iranian dude called Hossein....yep you heard me right, talk about differences.

In the end it was a sort of full circle weekend for me. Saturday spent feeling kinda crummy about being single and then Sunday spent realising that I had options not to be single but that I actually love being without the entaglements of relationships.

I guess this post is the Valentine to 'All my single ladies' . You have options, and being single is a great choice amongst those options....muah....

After this convoluted explanation, I am also going to add on the apology. Dear my one fan, sorry I haven't updated in a bit....lol