Famous People #58: Val, val, val, val, val

Kaitlyn: A boy texted Tamar “happy val day!” and we all loved it. We all took it and ran with it and started spreading it around immediately. It’s so much better than “vday,” which is rude, and “Valentine’s Day,” which is for search engines.  

She took her parents to Rocka Rolla for the coffee drink while the rest of us were sitting at our computers, mutilating our spines and getting frustrated with academics who weren’t giving us usable quotes about why people do the things they do on Reddit. When finally the laptops could be closed, I for one changed into a red velvet Beacon’s Closet find from four years ago, which I wore to the Vox Media holiday party at which I got in an absurd fight with my college boyfriend. He is way happier than I am now and posted a photo of his new girlfriend yesterday, with a caption so precisely him—three-year-old pop culture reference, bad play on words, absolutely candied with sincerity—I said out loud, “oh, boy” and then “good for you!” I don’t know if he wishes me well but it’s totally okay if he doesn’t think about me at all. The whole day, I felt so tender scrolling through Instagram! I thought everybody’s contributions were really moving and sweet. I was surprised by this reaction, since I still feel violent when people kiss on the subway or when women I don’t know very well speak to me with “we” pronouns, as if their boyfriends are stapled to their backs and I’m supposed to have noticed already. 

I texted everybody to read Edith Zimmerman’s newsletter, which I thought was particularly good for Val Day. She had the old Awl advice columnist Jim Behrle answer questions about love and he said some stuff I thought was great:

I wrote to her a few times and heard back a few times. I guess I moved on, but did I? She was the funnest, best person I've ever met. I've never met anyone like her, ever. And I've never recaptured that feeling with anyone. I've never forgiven the state of Ohio.

…

real love? Ride or die? Everlasting love? I have no idea about this. I have no idea where it comes from and I don't know where it goes. Cherish it for as long as you have it and feel sure about it. Enjoy it! If it lasts two years, great. If it's 10 years, OK! If it's five minutes, enjoy those five minutes. Being in love is one of the best parts of being alive. And we'll have a long, long time to miss that feeling.

Weeks ago, Tamar made us a dinner reservation at Speedy Romeo, which they did honor even though I was 10 minutes late because of the horribly romantic traffic—I got out and ran the last block just to make myself flushed!—but they did it resentfully, and they’d wedged the tables so tightly together that Tamar had to climb over the top to get into her seat. I was ordered by our waitress to hang my puffy coat up in a separate building, and then she and Tamar had a small spat over whether we should drink sparkling rosé or not, and was that what we really wanted. It was. God. 

We watched a boy get a present from a girl who looked like a prettier Grace Gummer, and we talked about politics. I presented the talking points I’d tried out on Stephanie in our Twitter DM earlier in the week—this is how I make sure I don’t say anything stupid. Because it got a good reaction the first time, I told Tamar and Sonya that rich Democrats are secretly single issue voters and that issue is wealth tax, that’s why Warren is losing and Bernie isn’t winning that much. They were like, hmm, maybe. We got a little drunk! 

Last year I couldn’t write about my Valentine’s Day—even though I had a nice one—because I was still so sad about being broken up with and because I associated my ex-boyfriend so strongly with this newsletter, which Lizzie and I started writing about two weeks after the first time it crossed my mind that maybe I was in love with him. 

This is embarrassing, but I am still sad. My breakup that happened more than 13 months ago is no longer the first thing I think about in the morning, but that’s a recent development and it’s definitely still in the first five. I have no idea if this is normal because writers are not allowed to say what’s “normal” anymore, for fear of being canceled. I have a Post-It with five therapists’ phone numbers on it but I’m too afraid to call any of them because what if I misunderstand my insurance? Last time I went to the gynecologist I owed an unexpected $300 and spent a whole month telling everyone I saw. “I know I didn’t have any sex this year that was worth three hundred dollars”—I said this over and over, until it started to make me actually upset. Meanwhile, not only do men get away with literal murder, they also get away with murder! 

Anyway, the first time I was single in New York, I was thrilled to meet handsome people I could tolerate. Now, when I look at the face of a handsome and tolerable person, I just see a skull with skin over it and wish I were in bed. 

I told Tamar, I’ve been having problematic thoughts about how the men I meet don’t have low enough voices or know how to do anything, including enter a room or make a point. On Thursday I went on an impulse-date with a boy who told me I have perfect teeth, which aside from being kind of morbid and very stupid is also not true. I haven’t been to the dentist in three years because I’m afraid they’ll tell me my gums are receding and that I need to start drinking coffee through a straw like the Kardashians. 

Thank you for tolerating this Val Day digression! I don’t really wish my ex-boyfriend well, but I’ll tell you—he was a perfect talker. I thought he talked just enough. The one time we fought over something he said—rather than something he did—it was only because I was tired. It was also at Speedy Romeo, haha. Last night at dinner I lobbied for us to order a “White Album” pizza because it sounded good (bèchamel and ricotta!), but then when Sonya actually chose it, I realized maybe I was just trying to give myself an in to tell the table about the fight, which had something to do with Joan Didion. 

After dinner, we took a car to Williamsburg to go to Rachel’s annual anti-Valentine’s Day party and I once again made things about me by yelling at James that I’m not ready for my friends to leave New York. He’s moving to Florida in July, for one year, and I am excited for him because it will be warm and cheap and he’ll be with his cool veterinarian girlfriend whose new job is literally attending to manatees. But I can’t help it! I’ve never kept a feeling to myself in my life!

Rachel made a special wall for people to write the names of their exes on, but only the girls were using it because the boys were trying too hard to be good. She had also lined her entire home with photos of former celebrity couples—including Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, which reminded me that Vanessa Hudgens has been in two relationships and they took up a combined 13 years of her life; and Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner, which I felt was a little premature—and she’d also made her usual array of themed baked goods, including “Black Forest of My Heart” cake. There were lemon bars and black mylar balloons, and there were black streamers, and there were little black heart cut-outs made of that paper you can scratch with a sharp wooden instrument to make designs. Where did she even get that? I’m amazed by her. With Rachel, anything that might sound hokey is revealed to be fun and original. She was wearing a black catsuit and a Minnie Mouse headband. We talked about our moms paying for our perfume.

I tried, to explain: I don’t hate everyone. My problem is that I want to feel near-immediately that I have stepped into another dimension that exists side by side with the regular world—I don’t need companionship in general or sex specifically and I don’t miss having someone impede on my personal time and I prefer eating dinner alone so that I can watch The New Pope, but I do miss being in love. To me, dating just to date means I get all the stuff I don’t care about and none of the one thing I do, which is the feeling that I’m in a science-fiction novel and the whole of my experience is being refracted through some space alien kaleidoscope. (Maybe I should just do more drugs.) At the end of my speech, Tamar laughed, which is the correct reaction. Do not let me get away with this!

We all drank a lot of strawberry 7-Up and vodka out of tall paper cups that said “Fries before guys” on them. Sonya did a bit in which she scolded the glitter on the table for thinking it was going to get out of Jersey and make something of itself, when really it was going to end up spiraling down her drain later in the night—because it’s a loser just like its father! Tamar told James that the underwear we decorated last week at her baby shower-themed birthday party, on which we listed all the movies James has seen—A Bug’s Life, Antz, “a bunch of Star Wars,” Mighty Ducks, etc.—had come into play in a romantic situation earlier in the week and he gave her a high-five. I did my favorite thing to do at Rachel’s parties, which is quiz everyone in the room about how they know her and then assert that I’ve known her in a bigger and more important way, by moving to New York with her, which is something you only do once and we also did it with James.

While Tamar was shouting for me to come get in the car, I posed for an uncomfortable photo with the two of them. Claire kept hitting the button while flinching and saying “this lighting is just horrible,” so it was definitely bad. It always is. I’ve deleted every photo ever taken of the three of us, although I do have this terrible one from six years ago of me and James and my college boyfriend. Happy Val!