My unromantic side, let me show you it.

I hate Valentine's Day.

There. I said it. I hate it the way I hate those prank jellybeans that look all nice and yummy on the outside, but end up tasting like jalapenos or water buffalo vomit. Not that I know what water buffalo vomit tastes like, but I've tasted some pretty nasty prank jellybeans.

Why the aversion to Valentine's Day, you wonder quietly to yourself?

Picture this, my loyal blog minions, if you will: Time warp back to the days of old, roundabout 2001, when your humble bloggist was arriving at work one fine, February afternoon. The 14th, since you ask. At the time, I was toiling away in a jewelry store, peddling rocks to the rich and ripoff credit plans to the not-so-rich.

I waltz into the store in my uncomfortable shoes, and what greets me? Dirty looks from two of my co-workers. Hmm, I think to myself, did I screw something up last night? Certainly wouldn't be the first time. Before I have a chance to voice my slightly nervous curiosity, a pair of vases on the counter catch my eye. Lovely flower arrangements, both of them. Some husbands just scored some Valentine's Day brownie points with the wives, methinks.

My co-workers glare at the little vases, then at me.

"What?" I say cluelessly. Because I am...I'm totally clueless.

Glares shift again. Me. Vases. Me. Somewhere behind me.

I turn around, and enlightenment comes in the form of two dozen red roses exploding like the volcanic wrath of Pele from a barely visible crater made of glass on the table in the far corner of the store. They couldn't put it on the front counter because it's simply too big.

I don't have to ask where they came from.

"Your boyfriend is making our husbands look bad," one of them says in between gnashing her teeth.

"Mine's going to be in trouble when he sees that," snarls the other.

I have gone from clueless to speechless. My mind starts doing weird things. I'm giddy and have little hearts floating above my head because then-boyfriend has done something so sweet. But behind that giddiness, in the air below those little floaty hearts, is the stench of water buffalo vomit. The realization that I'm on the verge of an epiphany that probably won't taste very good.

But it's time to get to work, so get to work I do. All the husbands, boyfriends, fiancees, paramours, concubines, and handlers scramble through our doors, sweating bullets and biting nails over the glass cases that contain the baubles that will either put them on a pedestal or in the doghouse for weeks to come. Those who wowed her last year had better stun her this year, but how? Those who bought 1 carat tennis bracelets last year are panicking because the 2 carat is out of their price range, but they have to outdo themselves. Worse still are those who proposed last year. How do you top that? Parroting the sales pitches and manipulative lines of evil taught to me by my employer, I answer that question with "A 2 carat total weight pair of diamond earrings, of course." Or, if I'm feeling particularly ruthless, "A Rolex."

The stench gets stronger, but the epiphany that comes isn't much of an epiphany at all. More of a "No shit, Sherlock" moment. My brain knocks on the inside of my skull with a plastic hammer and says, "Dude, working in retail blows."

Yeah. Thanks. Got that covered.

The day goes on and the customers keep wandering in. As the clock drags us closer to the Valentine's Day witching hour - dinnertime, of course - the panic looms in the air like a barely-restrained Macy's Day Parade Float. Filled with hydrogen. Inching perilously close to a couple of torches. I know what fear smells like, my friends. It smells like 5 o'clock in the evening on February 14th in a jewelry store full of men who haven't found The Right Gift(tm).

The epiphany was still to come, though. The jellybean was in my mouth, but I hadn't yet bit down.

In the waning moments before the witching hour, I finished with a customer and walked back to the register. I passed by one of my co-workers, close enough to hear her speaking to her sweaty, twitchy, terrified customer, and I passed by at the exact moment she uttered the words that would be the first significant nail in the Valentine's Day coffin:

"Well, you have to ask yourself, then: Do you love her $3,000? Or do you love her $5,000?"

I stopped in my tracks.

The air between my mouth and my lungs forgot which way it was going.

I bit down.

In that moment, the Valentine's Day jellybean revealed itself as the prank-flavored candy turd it was all along: A day in which men are badgered - at the risk of cold shoulders and sleeping on the couch - into financially and materialistically demonstrating their affections to the women in their lives.

But it doesn't stop on February 14th. Oh no, that's simply the battle. It is in the light of the rising sun on the 15th that it's time to assess the damage and count casualties. That's the day when all the women come back to work, either pissed as hell or grinning from ear to ear while dripping with their latest jewelry prizes. Notes are compared. Whose husband snagged reservations at the best restaurant? How many flowers? How many carats? Whose man scored infinite romance points by proposing?

Woe be unto the boys who didn't produce the most romantic holiday with the most expensive dinner and the most dazzling piece of jewelry. (Come on, girls! It's not fair to get pissed at your husband for not outdoing a proposal. You're already married to him!)

You don't have to hear the conversations to know which women in the office got the good stuff and which didn't. You can see it in the giddy, shit-eating grin while she's standing at the fax machine. You can hear it in the violent, "oh he is so dead" slamming of the stapler every time she fastens some unsuspecting pages together. It's in the spring in her step or the extra hard clomp-clomp-clomp of furious high heels hitting the floor. Oh yes, you know. And even if you don't, he will.

And people say romance is dead.

I'm not speaking as a bitter, single woman who hates anything that celebrates love. Quite the contrary. I've been married for over seven years, and I like romance as much as the next woman. I'm a romance writer, for God's sake! What I hate is artificial pressure applied to men for grand demonstrations of love.

For that matter, does a gift really mean as much to you if the person is badgered into buying it? If he's caving to societal pressures and obeying Hallmark and DeBeers rather than randomly doing it himself? Is he buying it because he really wants to give you what you deserve? Or is he afraid of being that husband who sends a modest little vase of flowers on the day your co-worker receives a volcanic explosion of longstem red roses?

So, it is with that in mind that I have long since spat out the disgusting prank jellybean and rejected Valentine's Day as superficial, materialistic, and...yes...unromantic.

Since that pivotal day at the jewelry store by which I am mercifully no longer employed, I have lived by the following philosophy:

A single rose any day of the year is more romantic
and more meaningful than
a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day.

Bring back romance - fuck Valentine's Day.