I have a tendency to get burned right before Valentine’s Day. I’m talking emotional burns, not physical. It happened last year (and the year before that.) I have no idea why, but this burnage has been a trend since sixth grade, when I got dumped by Caleb Spencer one week before Valentine’s. Maybe this is because I never forwarded those chain emails. Or maybe some Disney villain stole all of my romantic luck from me when I was a baby. Frankly, I have no idea. Suffice it to say, though: this is my curse.
Having suffered a routinely severe burn this year, I was ready to go to bed at 7 p.m. this year and call it a day. Instead, my gay buddy, Reid, decided to cheer me up. In his words, he was going to show me “how a gay man does Valentine’s.”
Now, I will preface with this: IF REID ASKS YOU ON A DATE, YOU NEED TO GO ON THAT DATE. This man pulled up in his bougie Beemer convertible with a vase of flowers and Madonna blasting, and he looked Great with a capital G. If Reid and I ever became a fake straight couple, we would absolutely dominate.
We headed into downtown to eat at Trio on Main Street. Opinion is pretty much divided on this place. Some of my friends love it and some cannot stand it. I love Trio because they serve free cheese bread. Also, I like the spaghetti.
Anyway, we sat down and ordered our food – two Fettuccine Alfredos, “because we are children,” said Reid – and dug into the free bread. We also had some solid boy talk, which mainly consisted of Reid and I deciphering his cryptic new love interest.
The waiter overheard this snippet and wisely chose to ignore. (Side-note: the waiter was dope. He pretended not to hear our weird conversations, and he also gave us three-times the normal amount of bread.)
When our fettuccine arrived, Reid gave me the pep-talk to end all pep-talks, along with a Valentine’s card and a Snoopy plush holding a box of chocolates. It was honest-to-God the sweetest sentiment I have experienced in the better part of a year. (For my part, I gave him a note and a banana with something lewd written on it. If given the choice between myself and Reid, you know who to go out with.) As I said, Reid knows how to have a good date.
Being the stand-up dude that he is, Reid paid the tab and drove us back to campus, blasting Madonna all the way. He even serenaded me on his violin when we got back to North Village.
Basically: bless Reid. Plus, luckily for me, I think we might make our Valentine’s Day outing into a tradition – which definitely beats my annual burnfest.