After all, Charlie Brown never manned up at least not in A Charlie Brown Valentine. He lost the redhaired girl to a flirtatious beagle who liked to live life instead of dwelling in doubt and fear. Then again, he was a dog.
Funny how I never noticed that it wasn't just Charlie Brown who failed miserably in love. Lucy and Sally did too. But the difference is: They actually tried but chose different ways to wallow in their defeat -- Lucy in anger, Sally in denial or eternal hope and Charlie in apathy because he never stepped up to the plate.
One's psychic abilities only go so far. Reminds me of a friend of mine I met in England years ago. I'd run into him at an open mic I would attend every week. He barely said more than two words to me per sighting and had a girlfriend. Still, I supported some of his gigs and saw him around with other friends. But not once did he ever say, "want to get coffee." Not once.
Little did I know that everyone else knew he had a crush on me. It took him three years and 9/11 to tell me this. When he came to visit New York City right after 9/11, I was glad to see him because I considered him a "mate" as the Brits would say. I ended up playing mandolin at a gig he had here. For some reason, he was staying/getting it on with (I suspected) the "most colorful" chick ever. The whole time I was thinking, "What the hell is he doing with her." Not that I was jealous -- completely curious.
I knew she definitely had something going on upstairs when she started talking about how she was going to perform phone sex to raise money to get her eyes done. Yeah, whatever. At this point, I was growing very bored of her self-absorption and domination of every conversation.
I was glad when she wasn't around to be totally honest because she was so tiresome. I felt like a third wheel as if i was interrupting something.
Another songwriter from England my friend knew was in town and flat-out refused to be around the colorful chick. Thank god. i enjoyed hanging around her and my mate. No strange self-absorption or in-depth conversations about phone sex and eye jobs.
Later that week, I had a gig in Hoboken. My "mate" was too busy to come or rather hungover or getting it on with the "interesting" chick. Better him than me. No worries. No skin off my nose. After all, he was just a mate. So what if I backed him up at his own gig and open mics?
So, he returns to London only to finally reveal via email to me that he had had a crush on me for years and was crushed when 9/11 hit, worried about my whereabouts. Sweet but a little too late. I had no idea.
I've got pretty well-refined intuitive abilities but shit I can't read minds that well. How could I not see it? What better way to impress me than miss my gig and sleep with some weird chick. It was clear as day, wasn't it? Clear as mud really. On top of that, he told me how surprised he was that I was still writing songs. Oh really? He obviously did not know me well at all. Whatever.
I'm a very independent person. I've had to be most of my life because if I waited around for people to call me up to do something or men to ask for my number to go out and do something, I'd be six feet under. No joke.
I refuse to let lack of social acceptance deter me from enjoying my life. But it would have been nice if he bothered to ask for one coffee or invited me to something being an American in London, making my way in a city where I had no support network. Fortunately for me, it never stopped me from totally experiencing the place. I did so, by myself at times.
Much like Charlie Brown, my friend didn't take the risk. He didn't give me the opportunity to accept or reject him. But he probably spent a lot of energy about it. Would have been easier for him to ask for the coffee and then it would have taken him about half hour to realize that I'm a freak from hell and he'd be a fool to waste another minute on me.
Anyhow, back to my original thesis here. There's a reason why I loathe Valentine's Day. Very good reason.
My very first love forgot Valentine's Day. Now, imagine how it may have felt, being an 18-year-old college freshman chick freshly in "love," seeing scores of floral deliveries populating the front desk. "Surely one of those has to be for me," I said to myself. Every day leading up to Valentine's Day, I would pass by my mailbox several times in hopes that there would be a red-colored envelope in there. I wanted proof that my first love -- who lived a few states away -- actually remembered me. I didn't need candy or flowers though I wouldn't have refused them. I would have been happy with a cut-out heart. I had given him something similar with a very sappy poem on it.
Well, I eventually called him up. I asked him why he had forgotten. He said because he never celebrated the holiday in the past. Why should he bother celebrating it now? That wasn't a good enough answer. I reacted somewhat the way Lucy does in the following video:
Gifts were sent back to northern Kentucky along with letter bombs. That was the beginning of the end of that relationship. I just couldn't believe he forgot. I was completely crestfallen. That was the last time I had high expectations for the "holiday" known as VD forever more. He now has a wife and young daughter so I'm fairly certain he's learned to celebrate the holiday or at least tolerate it.
In old age I've mellowed or become more tolerant -- probably too tolerant. In fact, about 10 years ago when the guy I had been seeing for a while threw a candy bracelet at me on Valentine's Day when I met up with him and his younger brother -- who was married with a child. The look of abject horror i will never forget. His brother had the, "Jesus H. Christ. No wonder you're the only one left in the family who is still single. For good reason" look on his face. It didn't faze me as I had learned to keep my expectations low. I knew that he would be off to grad school soon enough. Why care now? The relationship was going nowhere. Still, I made more of an effort as usual.
I wasn't devastated. I just accepted it. So, by the time the end of May rolled around -- my birthday, I wasn't really too surprised when he informed me that he didn't purchase a birthday present for me because he didn't know what to get me. I'm pretty easy to buy for. My most coveted Xmas present is probably a pair of piggie slippers. Plus, I play music. A new tuner or pedal will make me happy. How hard is that? A CD is enough for me. He made three times as much as I did and worked fewer hours but he couldn't be bothered to "waste" money on a gift for me. At this point, it didn't surprise me. Made me glad he was leaving.
The icing on the cake? As I was helping him move across the country, he felt compelled to order the most expensive item on the menu at dinner with my best friend's parents. Prime rib for lunch? To add insult to injury, he said, "Free steak!" to me later. I nearly ripped his cheapass head off. A few years later, he was in Europe in Italy. Of course, he felt compelled to contact me while I was in London, looking for a free place to crash. He informed me that he couldn't reciprocate with a free place to stay in Italy because it was too crowded. Needless to say, I didn't respond to his email. Then, lo and behold, on the day he was scheduled to arrive (he didn't bother to call ahead -- then again my phone had been cut off because I was leaving town soon), he decided to plant himself outside my house so I had to invite him in. He had no place to go. That night, I showed him around London, especially a club I had just played at. I showed him my cd. He snickered. So everything works out for a reason. No wonder I didn't miss him much in D.C. after he moved.
Still, friends don't like friends act the way he did. Pathetic in so many ways. A friend of mine reminds me of Lucy. When I told her about the VD incident, she advised me to spell things out because men are thick. "Tell him in no uncertain terms he must remember all Valentine's Days, major holidays and birthdays or he's 86ed," she said. Needless to say, she's married, living in the south of France with a new daughter. I suspect her "in your face" technique works wonders.
I think we all could learn a thing or two from Snoopy, who stole the last dance with the redhaired girl from Charlie Brown. The dog always stepped up to the plate with no expectations. Look where it got him. A lot further than his owner, Lucy and Sally.
That's how I think everyone should approach the "holiday" these days. I'll be staying home. I'd rather celebrate Friday the 13th. d
