Every year around this time, a fierce debate wages between me and my buddies: “How much does Valentine’s Day suck?” Now surely we’ve all had terrible Valentine’s Days (what’s that? you haven’t? then please punch yourself in the face). I mean, it really is the fucking absolute worst time to have a holiday. It’s the middle of February. No one really feels like celebrating anything in the dead of Winter. It’s not on a set day of the week so it’s easy to forget about, and usually the times I have someone it’s on something shitty like a Tuesday so no one can really get into it. Plus, it comes not long after guys just got hosed in buying Christmas gifts so there’s not a lot of money going around (and most rednecks work outdoor jobs when the money is scarce in Febru-freeze-your-balls-off-ary anyway).
Oh, I know, I know, the “winter is romantic.” Right, sure, maybe it is a jolly swell time to get in a horse drawn carriage pulled by a miserable animal who can’t wait to be made into glue and go for a spin around Central Park. But what about the rest of us who don’t find parks so romantic because we basically live in a gigantic park known as “nature?” Otherwise known as “the way the world is if you don’t pave over it with asphalt.”
Redneck Valentine’s Day goes something like this…
5pm: Start getting ready. Splash on your finest deodorant because, if everything goes right, you’ll be getting some tonight. Unless this woman is one of the 99 percent of Alabama women that is too religious to have sex on the first date (especially since she’s already gotten pregnant twice off of it) and then not even the most expensive Ban roll-on will save you.
6pm: Stroll up to her aluminum door, pull back the outer screen, take a deep gulp as you hear her kids screaming, and knock twice.
6:15pm: As you wait for her to get fully ready, she suggests you let her kids entertain you. One of them is playing a video game in which grandmothers are chainsawed in half or eaten by zombies and the other one doesn’t blink as he stares at you while playing with matches.
6:18pm: You peal ass out of the gravel driveway, flinging several bits of it to create horizontal rain on the aluminum door, but no one seems to notice you left in the rearview. Either that or one of the little bastards has climbed into your truck bed.
6:22pm: Nope, nothing in the truck bed as you search for it. Nothing but an unopened Natural Light, alright, alright…the night’s looking up.
9:00pm: You’ve been at Appleby’s getting drunk for about two hours, but the night ends on an unexpected score…as you find out you have ten extra dollars than you thought and go for an appetizer sampler.
10:00pm: Closing time for the last bar open in town. You ask the bar tender if she wants to get to know each other better and see what she’s all about. She says no, you ask if she’d rather screw. She says no again, and then it’s just you, your truck, driving home to an empty trailer while drunk thinking about what a great night this turned out to be.
Oh well, at least you can take the flowers you didn’t give the single mom and put them on your mother’s grave instead…if you had bought flowers. Although you did pull up one of the plants outside Appleby’s and throw it at the window after the server wouldn’t sleep with you so maybe that counts.