Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is this Saturday. While I find the holiday as it is currently practiced rather tiresome and hopelessly commercial, I find its history quite fascinating.

The original Saint Valentines had little if anything to do with romance. It is thought that Roman Catholic Saint Valentine's Day on February 14th came out of an attempt to Christianize a pagan celebration of fertility.

I have very little in common with Christian saints, save perhaps my affinity for denial and flogging, although not directed at myself. Perhaps I have more in common with literary Valentines, with a nod to Shakespeare and Dumas.

Regardless, if I might insinuate myself into this holiday, as it is Valentine's Day, I would aspire to make it naughty. Why spend a perfectly good evening exchanging chocolates and having a polite, Victorian encounter, when one could instead celebrate like an aesthetic saint? Wreaths of thorns, flagellation, strict denial. Followed, of course, by a round of absolutely Roman-inspired debaucheries. That is a holiday I could appreciate.

Souvenirs.

I do so love bruises. There is a bruise, welling deep purple beneath the translucent skin, between two fingers on my hand. A souvenir of fully-administered blow.

After a summer I spent traveling through Europe, I had a fist-sized bruises running the length of my outer thigh from the suitcase I dragged after me. Souvenirs that slowly mottled and faded.

I want to sink my teeth into flesh and leave the imprint there for days. The ache of it a memento.